News & views …
Back to Main
July 1, 2021
Open Thread 2021-050
Comments
@Mina #200
Sputnik Light has a much lower efficacy than Sputnik V, about the same as J&J’s vaccine. Your original comment #196 didn’t specify “Light” and might have led readers to assume you were talking about Sputnik V, hence my correction.
Posted by: S | Jul 4 2021 16:09 utc | 201
Posted by: Bemildred | Jul 4 2021 15:05 utc | 199
I hold Martyanov in good regard as far as naval and technical stuff go, and Patrick Armstrong especially for general strategic analysis, he is exceptional rational and objective so far.
Orlov is not my cup of tea, too much monetization and opinions instead of raw data. As they say, jack of all trades – master of none.
Saker is league of its own (in a bad way) IMO.
Posted by: Abe | Jul 4 2021 20:03 utc | 202
Posted by: Abe | Jul 4 2021 20:03 utc | 202
Yeah, that’s about right. Could probably add a few others. B here is one. But I’d have to think it over and this has gone on long enough. Stuck in the anglosphere, you take what you can get.
Posted by: Bemildred | Jul 4 2021 20:26 utc | 203
Paco @180–
Thanks for finding and providing that link. I would never have thought to look at Russia’s VK page!
As for your reply to chu teh regarding narrative control, the John Swinton quote tells a big tale precisely because it was never relayed. I don’t even know if Iggy Stone caught it, and that was well before the age of Operation Mockingbird.
karlof1 204
Paco’s link to the Russian paper opens and by right clicking then clicking translate, fully translates in Yandex. Yandex looks to be the best Russian to English machine translator.
Posted by: Peter AU1 | Jul 4 2021 21:08 utc | 205
Peter AU 1 @205–
Thanks for your suggestion! I’ve been using Edge and its inbuilt translator for several months now, and it works quite well for a Microsoft product. Being Sunday, the day’s cluttered already, and that’s complicated even more by it being the 4th of July. But after 4 days, the fog has finally retreated out to sea and we have a brilliant sunny day, which means I’ll soon be outside relaxing and enjoying an Obsidian Stout while my slow-cooked ribs and beans do their thing. Additionally, the Missus is going to make her fried/baked yellow squash dish that ought to complement nicely. Thanks again for providing the tip!!!
Bemildred #192
Thank you, I liked that as it started the day with a laugh.
John Cleary, 😉 Irish here too from some branch of the Connolly tree with a dash of Yorkshire.
Posted by: uncle tungsten | Jul 4 2021 21:29 utc | 207
Paco | Jul 4 2021 9:19 utc | 185
Rasputin indeed was helpful in prolonging the life of the Tsarina’s homopheliac child…he somehow reasoned out that {IIRC] the child should avoid milk/dairy and the child’s condition markedly improved…though fatal.
I do not know of any credible data that Rasputin was insane or violent.
BTW I just replied to Gordog on earlier Biden thread where he and Karlof1 discuss Robert Goddard’s contribution to rocketry. [I know nothing but was a founding member student-chapter of Amer Rocket Society and happened to be at Stockholm for 1960 Int’l Astronautical Congress…lot of German accents to be heard. {MSM data on Operation Paperclip was limite hangout. There were some 6o,000 who came to US whose paperwork was never vetted…that per former investigator who complained in vain on that exact issue.]
Posted by: chu teh | Jul 4 2021 21:35 utc | 208
S #197
Thank you that was a good read. I know the utoob video was rudimentary but it delivers a small taste of the technological competence of Russian science many decades past. Imagine what a coordinated Russia/China/Iran combined research effort could yield for both civil and military use. BTW I am not advocating the latter, civil society first is my priority.
Posted by: uncle tungsten | Jul 5 2021 5:12 utc | 209
Mina @200: “Sputnik light is also Ad26 only and it seems to work well. So what is the difference if both are viral vectors using Ad26?”
As I understand it the immune system will identify and attack not only the coronavirus aspect of the vaccine but the adenovirus vector itself. If the vector is identical in both shots (Ad26, in this case) then in the second shot the vector will get mobbed by the immune system before the immune system can get in the fighting experience with the coronavirus payload. Sputnik V using two different versions of the adenovirus allows the second shot to survive long enough to stimulate another immune response to the coronavirus payload before it is destroyed.
Posted by: William Gruff | Jul 6 2021 13:26 utc | 210
First place I have seen it stated affirmatively:
“On December 3, Fahmi Hinawi, one of the heads of the Mossad who was involved in killing Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, was killed in his car near Tel Aviv. The scenario for his assassination followed the same pattern that the Israelis had used: Hinawi’s car had stopped at a red traffic light and was then riddled with bullets from automatic weapons.
In late January, a “strange” plane crash in Afghanistan killed a high-ranking American CIA officer, Michael D’Andrea, who was in charge of operations in the Middle East and was involved in setting up the assassination of the Qasem Soleimani, head of the IRGC Quds special forces.
And on June 26 at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, US Air Force officer and Red Horse Squadron commander James Willis was found dead. The Air Force Times reported that the death of the 55-year-old US Air Force lieutenant colonel was not related to any hostilities. Previously, Iranian intelligence services had affirmed that Willis was involved in murdering the IRGC Quds special forces commander Qasem Soleimani on the night of January 3.”
Washington is Progressively Losing the “Match” it is Playing with Tehran
Posted by: Bemildred | Jul 6 2021 13:45 utc | 211
Alistair Crooke has a new article up:
“In practice, the ‘Russia stole the election for Trump narrative’ was a stone cast at two different ‘birds’: One was Trump; but the other was aimed in the direction of Putin. Why? Well, in oligarchic capitalism, the latters huge wealth is both the anvil and hammer, on which western narratives of political ‘reality’ are forged. They ‘beat out’ each successive ‘reality’. Not so in Russia and China. The power of political leaders there trumps the oligarchic machinations (they go to goal). It was not always so. Cosmopolitan oligarchs came within a hairs breadth of literally stealing Russia under Yeltsin; but then Putin entered the frame – to spoil it all. The oligarchs are still extremely cross.
Hopkins’s main theme however, is the War on Populism (the topic which so absorbed the Euro-élites at their Council summit). He asks: ‘So how, and why, has unchecked global capitalism resulted in this War on Populism?’ The problem is [he responds] … well, the problem … is people.
Hopkins writes, in The Last Days of the Trumpian Reich: ‘Not rich and powerful people like themselves [are the problem], or the people they need to continue working, consuming, and servicing the interest on their loans, but … you know, all those other people. Uneducated, un-woke, working-class people. Gun-toting, fanatically religious people. Racist, conspiracy-theorizing people. Deplorable people. Populist people'”
Europe’s Super-Woke ‘Moralocracy’: Time to Take Euro Culture War Seriously
Posted by: Bemildred | Jul 6 2021 13:58 utc | 212
@ Posted by: Mina | Jul 4 2021 14:18 utc | 196
The technology is the same, but the execution of the technology (i.e. the quality of the product, from R&D to manufacturing) is completely different.
The Sputnik V is miles ahead of the J&J vaccine. Gamaleya is the world’s most advanced laboratory in the vaccine sector.