Some news from unimportant countries (with two important neighbors). Google search “Poland discovery”, and you get two interesting hits on top.
First, a large number of dinosaur tracks were DISCOVERed in Poland. Frankly, and need to read about it, perhaps the tracks lead to or from some important institutions.
Second, the ruling coalition advanced an important law, namely clarifying the conditions for TV broadcast licenses. Applicants have to be own, in the majority, by companies from European Economic Zone, kind of EU+. Until now, the shareholders in control could be owned by other companies that are from the outside of the zone, and that is now disallowed. Motivation that was cited is to prevent hostile governments to control TV broadcasters in Poland.
The law was passed in Sejm (confusingly, translated Diet in English), rejected in Senat, but according to Polish rules, the rejection can be rejected after one month, and this is what happened this week. Now only President’s signature is remaining. The President is strongly associated with Sejm majority. There may be strong pressures on the Presidents, so the outcome is uncertain.
The Discovery part in this story is that there is only one company that would loose TV broadcast license as a result. Its news program is MOST POPULAR in Poland. And it is fully owned by a single company from outside European Economic Zone: Discovery Channel from USA.
The law could be unnecessary if the independent council in charge of TV licenses would not extend the license of TVN. This council took a lot of time to decide, extending the license in 3-1 vote. The single vote against was by a professor who is a member of two Roman Catholic lay knightly orders (I did not find his photo showing him armed and mounted, perhaps they dress like that only in gatherings not open to the public).

Posted by: Piotr Berman | Dec 19 2021 15:51 utc | 4

RE: the balloux article on covid I would like to emphasize the part about two types of protection. For my working hypothesis I like to use a ‘beermat’ or postcard model of the fortress with an inner protection wall and an outer wall. The vaccine boosts the inner wall protection thoroughly but the outer wall only gets a minor and temporary boost.
The outer wall here is the upper respiratory tract. The inner wall is represented by the lower lungs. Since the path for contagion(they call it vectors) is the virus breaking through the outer wall multiplying and then spreading out again you cannot expect vaccines to be effective on the long term there. They are ill suited for that purpose. It would be very wrong however to extrapolate effectiveness rates for the outer wall to the inner wall. That has to be measured separately.
There is a consequence of this for group immunity: on the long term the virus remains epidemic since it freely breaks through the outer walls, but just because it remains epidemic , because it remains ubiquitous, you can get a long time maintenance (frequent boosting) of the inner walls and the virus becomes relatively innocent over generations, much more so than if the outer wall protection was good, since the latter would mean long periods without boosting.

Posted by: Tuyzentfloot | Dec 19 2021 16:00 utc | 6

reply to 1
I haven’t seen anyone comment on a potential loss of leverage or control by Western authorities because of societal change. Blackmail because of being gay has largely evaporated. Epstein is dead and the leverage there seems limited to exposing underage females.
OTOH, bribes involving cryptocurrency probably will increase.

Posted by: Eighthman | Dec 19 2021 16:04 utc | 8

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-03794-8
Nature seems to have normal analysis in briefings, with all necessary caveats. We can cautiously conclude that not all of us are doomed –> 1% hospitalization rate in Denmark, and the patients seem to be still alive (all?).

Posted by: Piotr Berman | Dec 19 2021 16:10 utc | 10

England had a lot of Omicron cases and it has a much larger population than Denmark. Is something wrong in the British data collection?
Posted by: Piotr Berman | Dec 19 2021 16:03 utc | 7
Of course there is! The data doesn’t go in the right direction. Therefore it is silenced.

Posted by: BM | Dec 19 2021 16:27 utc | 12

Interesting read
The EU’s Case for Lockdowns and Blackouts – Hoping to Contain Inflation (to Save the Euro)

Posted by: Down South | Dec 19 2021 16:46 utc | 14

“The COVID-9/11 pandemic is over. With the failure of Omicron to capture the imaginations of only the most unimaginative midwits, the question now is how do we move forward from here. While we can rejoice that the threat to life and limb from COVID-9/11 may be effectively over, there is still the threat in its name to our liberty and sanity from those who profit most from the fear of the virus.”
https://tomluongo.me/2021/12/18/finding-strength-along-post-covid-fury-road/

Posted by: Kiza | Dec 19 2021 16:49 utc | 16

>>>>: DG | Dec 19 2021 14:39 utc | 2

JP Morgan

I would rate JP Morgan as slightly more trustworthy than the CIA. I rate the CIA as a bunch of lying shits, so why should anyone trust JP Morgan? Because they are a private enterprise who has no axe to grind? LOL. Nah, it’s hardly surprising people are conned so easily.

LSHTM assumes that the Omicron variant is just as deadly as Delta

At the time the LSHTM made that assumption and included that in a scenario, it was a perfectly valid one to make.

‘But evidence from South Africa suggests that Omicron infections are milder,’ JP Morgan pointed out in a note to clients.

JP Morgan is assuming that what happens in South Africa with the Omicron variant will be replicated across the world. Until there is more evidence, nobody, including JP Morgan, knows for sure, and if they have got it wrong then given the incompetence of western regimes a lot more people will die. So, it’s better to be on the safe side and ignore JP Morgan for the moment until more evidence is available.
If the death rate in China had been achieved by the UK there would have been about two hundred dead as opposed to about 147,000 while in the US there would have been about a thousand dead as opposed to about 827,000.

Posted by: Ghost Ship | Dec 19 2021 16:54 utc | 18

DG @9 Very insightful observation; I have noticed the same phenonmenon in the corner of the imperial “homeland” where I live. In fact, this behavior brings to mind something the inestimable Glen Ford (PBUH) once wrote: “Americans aren’t a particularly bloodthirsty people, but they do seem to have a high tolerance for spilling other peoples’ blood.”
It’s comforting to know there are still sane and sober thinkers such as yourself, DG (and Norwegian, Blue Dotterel, old hippie, librul, Grieved, and others); gives me hope that humanity might eventually put itself on the path to cultural maturation, rather than the oblivion that is staring at us right in the effing face.
Thanks for the reports b, and I hope you’re feeling better. Have nice holidays everybody.

Posted by: robjira | Dec 19 2021 16:55 utc | 20

LONDON (AP) — The United Kingdom’s central bank on Thursday became the first in a major advanced economy to raise interest rates since the coronavirus pandemic began, as banks controlling monetary policy around the globe shift their focus from stimulating the economy to combating soaring consumer prices that arrived during the recovery.
The moves come despite the threat that the new omicron variant of COVID-19 poses. The European Central Bank took a much more cautious approach than the Bank of England, but it also decided the economic recovery was strong enough for it to start carefully dialing back some of its stimulus efforts over the next year.
The U.K. bank was joined by Norway, which hiked its benchmark interest rate in the face of troublesome levels of inflation. Central banks typically raise rates to fight inflation and lower them when economies are weak, as they were during the pandemic. They have also used bond purchases to drive down market rates for borrowers during the pandemic, aiming to help businesses limit staff cutbacks or avoid bankruptcy.
The U.S. Federal Reserve also decided this week to speed up its exit from pandemic crisis support as inflation reached a 40-year high of 6.8% in November, putting it on a path to start raising interest rates as early as the first half of next year. The eurozone’s inflation rate is 4.9%, highest since statistics started in 1997, though the central bank says much of that is temporary.

UK raises interest rates as central banks focus on inflation

Posted by: Down South | Dec 19 2021 17:12 utc | 22

@perimetr ,post22 , I think the writers in your article could read my beermat model to help them getting their priorities right. If a vaccine achieves a 5 to 10 fold reduction in hospitalizations that means it is doing a pretty good job and claiming ‘vaccines don’t work’ is a gross distortion. A medical expert can point out the downsides and should express reservations about using a vaccine which will do some actual damage, but a policymaker should be able to say that some damage is acceptable, certainly in the short run.

Posted by: Tuyzentfloot | Dec 19 2021 17:23 utc | 24

TASS, Russian press agency, on JCPOA talks. I must stress that in diplomatic/polite political speech, praising something is often “aspirational”, a polite way of saying that this is what you wish.
He said that the Russian delegation understood all the difficulties of the talks and the results of the seventh round have lived up to expectations. “The bottom line is that no one was seeking to damage the results of the previous six rounds,” Ulyanov noted.
Following a lengthy tug-of-war, other participants in the talks, including European partners, have accepted quite a lot of the amendments to the document on nuclear issues suggested by the Iranian side. “Other participants in the talks demonstrated a respectful attitude to the new elements of Iran’s position. It was important, and we achieved it,” he said.
———-
On the other hand, Alexander Mercouris worries that the situation is sliding toward an open war, as advocating by many in Washington, those many projecting wishes of “the most essential ally ever”, if imperfectly. The sale of additional and improved refueling tanker planes to Israel was delayed, by two years, and our valiants FOI advocate a series of very visible exercises exhibiting readiness to actually attack Iran. There were more resolute warmongering campaigns in the past.

Posted by: Piotr Berman | Dec 19 2021 17:35 utc | 26

The study – published by Discovery Health, a healthcare provider responsible for 3.7 million patients in South Africa – also shows that vaccines are not as effective against omicron, which poses a higher risk of “breakthrough infections”.
Epidemiologists have warned that data from a few more weeks is needed to corroborate these preliminary conclusions, especially considering the average age of people involved in the study is 34 – and younger people generally tend to have mild symptoms.
However, the report’s conclusions do appear to mirror that of real-life datasets in other regions. In the UK, for instance, just 10 people are known to have been admitted to hospital with omicron so far, despite the variant first being detected here almost three weeks ago.
A comparison of the first three weeks of some Covid variants’ spread in South Africa shows a stark difference in admissions. For every 1,000 infections in the country, there were 131 beta hospitalisations, 101 delta admissions and just 38 omicron admissions.
However, Dr Ryan Noach, the chief executive of Discovery Health, said he and others “remain concerned that health systems could still be overrun, frankly, because of the sheer volume of cases” caused by omicron.

If omicron infects four times the number of people as beta or three times the number of people as delta, then the number of admissions for omicron will be similar to those for beta and delta respectively.

Posted by: Ghost Ship | Dec 19 2021 17:59 utc | 28

Posted by: juliania | Dec 19 2021 17:42 utc | 28
Thank you! Given that the day of St. Nicholas The Miracle Maker is on December 6, your wishes are a bit late to those of us who use Gregorian calendar, but it is our, gregorians’ fault that we did not made our wishes earlier.
When I was in elementary school, it was a tradition that each child would buy a modest gift for another child in the same class selected by lottery — Communist government was egalitarian, so it adopted a pre-Marxist celebration for its purposes. Association of St. Nicholas with reindeer and Christmas is an invention of capitalists pigs from The Netherlands.

Posted by: Piotr Berman | Dec 19 2021 18:16 utc | 30

@ juliania | Dec 19 2021 17:42 utc | 28 with the seasons greeting and value comparison of the Robert Kennedy Jr. book with the Shock Doctrine
The best of the season to you as well
I value what the Shock Doctrine book tells us about the financial rape of South America and what is happening in the more “advanced” countries now as well. If the Robert Kennedy Jr. book is comparable in value as you write, I only hope it is more effective than the Shock Doctrine in waking up the zombies of our world.
Enjoy the holidays with your family and best to all barflies at MoA

Posted by: psychohistorian | Dec 19 2021 18:24 utc | 32

Posted by: Ghost Ship | Dec 19 2021 16:54 utc | 18
The redeeming feature of JP Morgan is that it is not Goldman Sachs, I am not sure what would be my pick between GS and CIA as a more destructive organization.
On the bright side, American sanctions, if your country is affected by them, prevents the use of services of Goldman Sachs (and JP Morgan), which is softening the blow.

Posted by: Piotr Berman | Dec 19 2021 18:32 utc | 34

Posted by: psychohistorian | Dec 19 2021 18:24 utc | 33
A comment of Shock Doctrine (doctrine, not the book). Several years ago I read a funny reader’s comment in Virtual Poland. Balcerowicz was employed by then President of Ukraine as an economic advisor, being widely regarded as the architect of shock therapy in Poland. A comment was, as I recall, “I hate Banderowcy to the bone, but Balcerowicz? Even Banderowcy are human, there should be SOME limits.” (Banderowcy = followers of Stepan Bandera, their heroes massacred a lot of Poles, ca. 100 thousands, hard to give precise number as it happened in a chaos of war.)
I read that shock therapy (transition from Communism) was somewhat softened in Poland, because a large sector employed in small farms. The poor people could survive on potatoes and apples that remained cheap and ubiquitous through the hyperinflation and shortages, and together, “this diet is rather complete, very good for heart disease, although it creates a risk of anemia”.

Posted by: Piotr Berman | Dec 19 2021 18:50 utc | 36

How could I forget to thank our esteemed host for his postings and the MoA bar for another year….thanks Bernhard!
Piotr Berman | Dec 19 2021 18:50 utc | 37 with the Shock Doctrine response
I live in the Willamette valley and see too many mono crops….but the hazelnuts nuts are good….I don’t think the valley produces a balanced meal for locals but I also hope not to see that level of FOOD need.

Posted by: psychohistorian | Dec 19 2021 19:04 utc | 38

Chronicles of Democracy.
Former commander of the ground forces of Poland Waldemar Skshipczak in an interview with wPolityce said that the Polish soldier Emil Chechko, who fled to Belarus, should be shot in the head.
P.S. Btw, do not confuse: Poland, where a former high-ranking military man wants to shoot an escaped soldier is a “democracy”, and Belarus, where they demand to arrest the escaped Tikhanovskaya is “authoritarian regime”.

Posted by: alaff | Dec 19 2021 19:16 utc | 40

Posted by: james | Dec 19 2021 18:19 utc | 32
A brief respite for james and other ‘music heads’ tired of Covid talk:
Sweet Georgia Brown
James, not long ago I passed on Theme for the Eulipians by Roland Kirk.
This is from the same album. Check out the stick work, eh?
Also, I get a kick from the conversation – “What road? I’m talkin’ ‘bout the street, brother!”
Myself, I’m weary of the medical/science side of Covid talk, too. It’s way beyond the ability of most of us to
understand, even if we could get good info. But the political side is ongoing and, while that too is confusing,
if you are not concerned about it, you are negligent.

Posted by: waynorinorway | Dec 19 2021 19:32 utc | 42

brazil
Here is a link on Brazil that details imperial tactics which show how countries and power groups are leveraged into the Empire’s web.
This Feb. 2021 story details how Brazilian hacker Walter Delgatti broke open the joint CIA, State Dept./Brazilian oligarch operation to depose and neutralize the left in Brazil: “lawfare”, the use of the judicial branch to gain or retain power. During the 1900s Mafiosi bragged about how many New York, Miami, Chicago judges they owned. Lawfare is basically the same thing only stretched into elite, CIA loaded universities where young ambitious natives are groomed and the sent back “home”, a la Brazilian judge Sergio Moro. Delgatti is a self described “nobody” and his story is both revealing and compelling, also pointing to why the Empire is unable to hold power: Dilma was deposed (impeached) and Lula was imprisoned (his wife died of a stroke due to the stress) but the whole plot has been blown open, leaving Bolsonaro exposed. Also, Delgatti is not happy with the Intercept and wonders why Glenn Greenwald didn’t reveal more of the documents he shared with him for free.
“Delgatti said that he now has mixed feelings about Greenwald and the Intercept. “I only sent the Intercept 57 gigabytes of the conversations from Lava Jato and after this, Glenn refused to take any more of it. He said, ‘no. What I already have is already going to give us enough material for 1 year of articles. It’s a lot of stuff. I have a year’s worth of articles,’ and he didn’t want any more of it. I had a lot more information and he didn’t want it. Now, he has released very little of what he received. To this day I don’t understand why.”
There’s also a long video in Portuguese which I didn’t watch because I wouldn’t understand it.
https://www.brasilwire.com/lava-jato-hacker-walter-delgatti-speaks/

Posted by: migueljose | Dec 19 2021 19:40 utc | 44

Sunday, December 19, 2021
Breaking News: Putin Is Finshed, Russia Is Drafting The Articles of Surrender To Germany.
http://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2021/12/breaking-news-putin-is-finshed-russia.html

Posted by: powerandpeople | Dec 19 2021 19:46 utc | 46

@rico rose | Dec 19 2021 19:27 utc | 42

Something did break. Whole of germany is full of protest against vax mandate.

Thanks for that report! Great news, even if inevitable!

Posted by: Norwegian | Dec 19 2021 19:55 utc | 48

Bjørn Andreas Bull-Hansen
They hate us

Posted by: Norwegian | Dec 19 2021 20:02 utc | 50

Most Scientific Comment of the Day right here.
That border crossing between Bulgaria and Turkey looks pretty much like one between BC, Canada and Washington State, USA before Canadian Thanksgiving weekend to me. (Yep, I’ve been in it, cross-border shopping in Bellingham where I meet more Canadians than Americans while doing so. It’s nice actually, fellow citizens are friendlier in another country.) I’m not sure that should be taken as concrete evidence of Turkey’s demise.
About the airborne thing… I believe there may have been some concern somewhere (like in the national defence arena) about water-borne transmission.
Chief Public Health Officer Tam takes direction from this super-creepy board, I remember this from early in the pandemic, I think it’s the National Advisory Committee on Immunization… But really, all those board members care about is the health of Canadians.
I had the distinct impression that the Canadian government didn’t think the rapid tests which were available to them worked properly. Maybe there was some kind of board behind that one too.. although now they are being distributed. Now that 81+ percent of the population is vaccinated.

Posted by: Bruised Northerner | Dec 19 2021 20:19 utc | 52

Fabio Vighi, whose great article was posted in the comments some weeks back, has written extensively on the relationship between financial and monetary central bank policy and the role of the pandemic in it. This one from October is a great variation on his theme. Perhaps it is high time we began thinking about the pandemic as a stage-managed event starring: the BIS, Fed, Fauci, the co-opted MSM, and (the best supporting actor award goes to) a flu variant. The main story is, as Vighi lucidly shows, is late-stage capitalism’s financialization woes. For the long historical view I recommend:
Jason Moore and Giovanni Arrighi, “Capitalist Development in World Historical Perspective”, chapter 4 in Phases of Capitalist Development: Booms, Crises and Globalizations (2001) pp.56-75.
I think you can get the chapter here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/304750373_Capitalist_Development_in_World_Historical_Perspective
The table on p.65 is illuminating. The prediction of the authors in 2001 was that the US imperialist incarnation of capitalism (1945-?) would implode in a financialization phase in the 2020s. They seem right so far…

Posted by: Patroklos | Dec 19 2021 20:44 utc | 54

More interesting news:
Deputy General Secretary of the Baath Party Khilal al-Khilal (Syria) and the head of the Donetsk Republic public movement Aleksey Muratov (DPR) signed an official agreement on interaction and cooperation in Damascus. The DPR delegation in Syria was represented by a number of high-ranking officials. The signing ceremony was also attended as guests of honor by several deputies of the State Duma of the Russian Federation.
A new stage in the formation of the republics of Donbass as a subject of international law.
I think in the foreseeable future (sooner rather than later) we will witness the opening of official diplomatic missions of the DPR and LPR in a number of countries.

Posted by: alaff | Dec 19 2021 21:14 utc | 56

The crackpot christian/zionist warmongers of the Captive Nations are the architects of their own decline. Like sorry losers everywhere, they typically blame their enemies du jour for the misfortunes and sorrows they have led their respective countries into.
“The main global game now is Russia-China relations: the ability of the United States to control or influence the world order is fading fast.
Russian and Chinese leaders seem currently relaxed about East-West summitry as Western security elites desperately play catch-up, trying to shore up their faltering global status.
Five Eyes audiences are being sheltered from the truth of what is happening out there in the larger world. It is easy for even discerning and well-read readers in Australia to be trapped within clinging webs of false Western narratives about what is going on in Russian and Chinese relations with each other and with Western countries.
Washington’s democratic and military intelligence elites — fearful of the continued attractiveness of Trump revanchism at home — are trying desperately to resurrect the Russia and China bogeymen as unifying liberal-imperialist state narratives. Recently they have been pushing the narrative of Russian aggressive intent towards Ukraine and of China’s genocide of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, military threats to Taiwan and human rights abuses in Hong Kong.
In the complacent way of declining empires, Washington elites are indifferent to the unifying effect of their ham-fisted and provocative diplomacy on their defined adversaries. More and more, Washington reminds me of Byzantium…”
https://johnmenadue.com/russia-and-china-sit-together-to-watch-the-decline-of-the-west/

Posted by: Paul | Dec 19 2021 21:52 utc | 58

@Kiza16 imagine the surprise at learning Tom Luongo is a halfwit, referring to our fascist leaders as commie. lord save us.

Posted by: Tannenhouser | Dec 19 2021 22:02 utc | 60

My Twitter conversation with the chairman of the Sage Covid modelling committee (by Fraser Nelson of The Spectator)
An illuminating discussion with Professor Graham Medley (the Chairman of the UK SAGE Covid Modelling Committee) which reveals that Covid models are not impartial but are produced to enable the UK Government to make the decisions they want; specifically, the scenarios the Government needs to justify restrictions but NOT the equally plausible scenarios which would indicate that there is no need for restrictions.

Posted by: ADKC | Dec 19 2021 22:34 utc | 62

NYT alarms that non-RNA vaccines do not protect against Omicron. On rare occasion when NYT writes on a science topic I know about, there is 50-50 chance that it is heavily garbled. Someone tells a story to a journalist, and the latter is “stenographing” to the best of his/her ability, and the results is variable.
Two quotes brought my attention

only the Pfizer and Moderna shots, when reinforced by a booster, appear to have initial success at stopping infections, and these vaccines are unavailable in most of the world.

which contrasts with

A preliminary effectiveness study in Britain found that the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine showed no ability to stop Omicron infection six months after vaccination.

So why people get boosters? I took it because it was explained to me that six month after Pfizer jab I loose the effect. Thus one can suspect that the alarming conclusion — you are doomed, ye Chileans and Englanders — is based on comparison between recent and not recent jabs. For a “fair” comparison we would need to compare results in several groups: recent Pfizer/Moderna, six month + Pfizer/Moderna, and the same for antibody based vaccines. Then overlay with traces of asymptomatic infections that are widespread — with variable frequency — and helpful.
My suspicion is that given a messy state of raw stats and obvious propaganda efforts (we believe in RNA vaccine, we believe in traditional vaccines), it is hard to trust “popular science” at this time. Perhaps the best advise is to spend summer in bars and similar places where people jostle, talk a lot and shed their viral loads with abandon, building immunity during the time when we are least susceptible to dangerous infection symptoms, and ride on that immunity through the cold months. Which I did not do, to my late regrets. Actually, perhaps one should study the diagrams of the “waves”, what temperature and humidity range is most protective of our respiratory system.

Posted by: Piotr Berman | Dec 20 2021 0:19 utc | 64

>>>>: Piotr Berman | Dec 19 2021 18:32 utc | 35

On the bright side, American sanctions, if your country is affected by them, prevents the use of services of Goldman Sachs (and JP Morgan), which is softening the blow.

They have ways and means to get around any sanctions.

Posted by: Ghost Ship | Dec 20 2021 0:23 utc | 66

Whole of germany is full of protest against vax mandate.

rico rose | Dec 19 2021 19:27 utc | 42:   Good.   Let’s hope it spreads globally.

Posted by: Ian2 | Dec 20 2021 0:50 utc | 68

b,
   Everything-Microsoft is Tainted
@1 & @57 I showed that the CIA has had for years a “skeleton key” to all of Microsoft’s infrastructure.
A member of the “clandestine arm of the CIA where the espionage activities took place” took employment
with Microsoft and was eventually given responsibility for the security of all of Microsoft’s infrastructure.

Posted by: librul | Dec 20 2021 1:04 utc | 70

Given my limited knowledge of languages, I have a rather restricted sample of governmental stupidity, mostly USA, UK, Poland and Ukraine (perhaps I should read more about Russia, alas, opposition is too shrill to believe, and “proposition” is too affirmative). Of those, UK may be not singularly stupid, but it has a distinct style, which includes very stupid savings.
Many wasteful regulations were removing in the Kingdom. For example, suppliers of refrigerators (fridges?) have largest freedom to compete anywhere in the world, and cut costs. This lead to the development of unique self-exploding fridges(?). I leak of refrigerant (frigant?) to the main chamber can accumulate, and when you open, the spark from cost-efficient light bulb housing can detonate the flammable gas. But my knowledge of physics is insufficient to explain why, uniquely in the world, British fridges can explode when they just stand there and there is no particular reason to generate sparks in the main chamber. Self-exploding fridge, together with innovative combustible building cladding lead to a famous Grenfell fire. [Complicated story, the aluminum cladding was not THAT flammable, but explosion from within the building did the trick, which still would not produce massive loss of life without a pile of additional stupidities; in USA buildings burn with some regularity, so there are many regulations and inspections to make the fires less lethal].
Now UK suffers particularly large natural gas prices and electricity prices. One aspect is that while on the Continent the levels of NG in storage is “alarmingly low”, in UK there is basically no storage. 70% was removed in 2017 to save costs. I read about it today, so I found this link. In conclusion, the entire world can sleep safer knowing the the prime minister of UK can launch a nuclear attack any time he/she feels like it — perhaps as a cost saving measure?

Posted by: Piotr Berman | Dec 20 2021 1:09 utc | 72

@45 migueljose
That’s a wonderful story about Delgatti – thank you.
One has to wonder, yet again, about Greenwald and the Intercept. He sat on all that date and only published a fraction of it, in his news reports.
And he did the same with Snowden’s data, or so I believe.
You could argue that the effect was made in each case with what was released, but with Delgatti we now see that Lula’s defense team has way more data than Greenwald (still only 20% of the whole), and is working that data to achieve positive results towards a democratic society.
What might some such team have done with the 97% (or whatever it was) of unpublished data from Snowden that the Intercept sat on? I suppose we shall never know.
Anyway, the point is that the similarity between the two episodes, and with the same actors, suggest a compelling story of its own.

Posted by: Grieved | Dec 20 2021 1:52 utc | 74

re alaff | Dec 19 2021 19:16 utc | 41
Thanks for your gem which I discovered amongst the unending, pointless covid hysteria, it gave me a laugh whilst wondering yet again what the fuck is wrong with Poles, why is it that they never fail to select the most blockheaded corrupt arseholes as their leaders?
The idiot general who reckons Poland is at war with Belarus reminded me of Poland’s idiot leaders in the 1930’s who according to William Shirer in his excellent Berlin diary drove the USSR into the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact in 1939.
Molotov the Soviet Union’s foreign minister had spent two years asking, finally begging Britain & France to make Poland see reason. That is a treaty of alliance aimed at defending Poland from Nazi attack couldn’t be entered into with Poland whilst the Poles refused to allow one of the allies (USSR) to enter Poland if the Nazis attacked Poland. That there was no point to the treaty because as the world saw later in 1939 when the nazis did attack Poland, neither england nor france could get there to help and if the treaty had been agreed to under those conditions, then the USSR forces couldn’t either, they would have to wait on the border until the nazis got close enough to the Poland-Soviet border to be fought from within the USSR territory, an insane thing for the USSR to do as it would inevitably cause the nazis to attack the USSR.
Maybe the englanders didn’t sell the advantages of Molotov’s deal to the Poles too well, after all one of the reasons Poland & england had got so close was that the englanders had been using Poland as a base to launch terrorist attacks on the USSR from for the previous 20 years, so they didn’t want Polish & Soviet allies getting so close that the Poles spilt all the beans on englander perfidy.
However, the Poles should have objectively judged which side their bread was buttered irrespective of england. Cos the upshot was that the Soviet leadership decided that if the stupid poles didn’t see the danger they did and their best bet in lieu of a england, france soviet alliance was to try and placate the nazis for as long as it would take to build sufficient tanks, planes & ships to resist them.
They got close, if the Nazis had been delayed until 1942 from attacking the USSR it is likely that the lives of at least 20 million Soviet citizens would have been saved. Trouble was france & england were such a pushover for them that a. hitler and co were ready before the USSR was.

Posted by: Debsisdead | Dec 20 2021 2:49 utc | 76

Posts being deleted.
It’s his blog, but jfc.

Posted by: Cadence Calls | Dec 20 2021 3:11 utc | 78

Abut that ‘China threat’ !
I think the Germans were the ones who floated the yellow peril scare.
The pommies and gringos lapped it up with relish and became its chief promoter until this very day.
The sentiment are wide spread in the five liars domain, from the elites down to the plebs, following are just some of the more outspoken ….
Tip of an iceberg.
Jack London

China’s population must be seven hundred millions, eight hundred millions, nobody knew how many millions, but at any rate it would soon be a billion. There were two Chinese for every white-skinned human in the world… There was talk of all countries putting bounties on children to increase the birth rate, but it was laughed to scorn by the arithmeticians, who pointed out that China was too far in the lead in that direction.
Where have we heard that before? Smugly, China’s Emperor basically told the world, “Come and get us!” The Western nations set aside their differences and mobilized. The mission was for containment.
Biological warfare did the dirty work—a pretty grim end.
After Western nations repopulated the desolate land that was China…

[1]
Bertrand Russell

Socialism, especially international socialism, is only possible as a stable system if the population is stationary or nearly so. A slow increase might be coped with by improvements in agricultural methods, but a rapid increase must in the end reduce the whole population to penury, … the white population of the world will soon cease to increase. The Asiatic races will be longer, and the negroes still longer, before their birth rate falls sufficiently to make their numbers stable without help of war and pestilence. … Until that happens, the benefits aimed at by socialism can only be partially realized, and the less prolific races will have to defend themselves against the more prolific by methods which are disgusting even if they are necessary

[2]
Churchill

I think we shall have to take the Chinese in hand and regulate them. I believe that as civilized nations become more powerful they will get more ruthless, and the time will come when the world will impatiently bear the existence of great barbaric nations who may at any time arm themselves and menace civilized nations. I believe in the ultimate partition of China—I mean ultimate. I hope we shall not have to do it in our day. The Aryan stock is bound to triumph.

[3]
Prince Philips

If I were reincarnated I would wish to be returned to earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels.

[4]
Aussie Nobel Laureate

Nobel Prize-winning Australian microbiologist Sir Macfarlane Burnet secretly urged the Australian government in 1947 to develop bio-weapons for use against the ‘overpopulated countries of South-East Asia.’

The Anzuk, QUAD, five eyes, nine eyes, 14 eyes, 41 eyes , CANZUK, were needed to contain the yellow horde.
Now we have FUKUSA [aka AUKUS],
THE ultimate yellow men buster.
!
[1]
https://www.returnofkings.com/180627/writer-jack-london-accurately-predicted-the-rise-of-china
[2]
Asiatic is the code word for chinaman.
When u read about Asiatic people being insulted/bashed up/killed in FUKUS/OZ/CANADA/NZ , that means another bunch of chinaman just bite the dust.
[3]
https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2021/12/18/chinese-aggression-is-just-china-responding-to-us-aggression/
[4]
The royal family’s disdain for ‘slitty eyes chicoms’ are well known.
Prince Charles once pointedly snub HU JIn Tao during a state visit.
No prize for guessing who’r his target for depopulation,

Posted by: denk | Dec 20 2021 3:26 utc | 80

Posted by: Grieved | Dec 20 2021 1:52 utc | 77
Thanks Grieved for the response on the Brazilian hacker who blew open the Lula case which I believe Biden was involved in because Biden was the one who went to Brazil to issue the ultimatum to Dilma before they impeached her.
Anyway, your follow up thought on Greenwald: “One has to wonder, yet again, about Greenwald and the Intercept. He sat on all that date and only published a fraction of it, in his news reports.
And he did the same with Snowden’s data, or so I believe.”
Bingo! Can’t prove anything but my memory is– as you said– that Greenwald did the same thing to Snowden too.
The story I linked is old– Feb, 2021– so more is probably coming out and at the same time Lula appears to be gaining ground. He’s very astute: he’s a street fighter and an organizer. If he prevails I believe many of the mysteries will be solved and revealed.
Here’s a deeper dive into Biden’s dirty trail that reveals the ugly tactics he, Obama and their oligarch bosses used on Dilma and Lula.
https://www.mintpressnews.com/joe-biden-latin-america-policy-more-obama-style-coups/272720/

Posted by: migueljose | Dec 20 2021 3:37 utc | 82

Saker has just put up a post that begins by referencing by link b’s stellar Dec 18 post on Russia’s security demands. I was just re-reading that along with comments and find these remarks by Norwegian worth another emphasis:

“…Russia has already done something out of the left field. The two draft documents presented to the Americans and published widely for the whole world to see will force the US to ‘negotiate’ in some way or another. The US has already accepted that the documents exist and that they will be discussed. Trying to ignore them will be very difficult and will expose the US/NATO hypocrisy in front of the whole world. Maybe the Chinese have suggested a Sun Tzu move like this.
Of course, this would not be possible without the “out of left field” event that happened in March 2018 when Russia announced the existence of hypersonic weapons. Since then, the relative advantage of Russia in this area has only increased.”
Posted by: Norwegian | Dec 19 2021 9:11 utc | 94

My bold, as I had earlier overlooked the timing bolded. I also remember March as a significant confluence of events during WW2 in North Africa where my father and uncles were stationed. Others can perhaps advise as to what was happening in Russia then, as it might perhaps give us some sort of timeline for the current unfolding of events.

Posted by: juliania | Dec 20 2021 4:36 utc | 84

RFK is a grifter ? How’s that ?

Posted by: Featherless | Dec 20 2021 5:42 utc | 86

@90 Featherless
Don’t be offended. I did the same double-take. You have to note the formatting – this falls within a section of satire in which b presents some absurdities from the mainstream jackals.
RFK is not being demeaned – quite the opposite. The attacks on him by the mainstream are being ridiculed by b.
All is good. RFK is still our hero, quite unstained. And I am glad, and be at peace.

Posted by: Grieved | Dec 20 2021 6:12 utc | 88

@ Grieved | Dec 20 2021 6:08 utc | 91 with the summary of the Russian position with which I agree
What I want to add was that after “…Russia won the war in 2018.”, the West launched a Hail Mary bio-chemical attack that has not had the results hoped for.
And I want to add the perspective that the China/Taiwan war is being fought simultaneously and it could peak before the Russian demands….
Anyway, good summary of the spinning plates.
Anecdotal report from US
In 1985 I trained union fork lift truck drivers to talk to computers as part of the receiving part of an inventory management system. One of those drivers, who I also taught computer rudiments to, is 88 years old and we still sends humor back and forth to each other….almost weekly, at least.
Ollie is Christian and occasionally sends over the top religious stuff but today I get two messages from him two, the first about the rise of India including having global corporate leadership positions and the second about how China has taken over financial control of the world by having Chinatowns as well as foreign nationals everywhere.
I was thinking that there would be a time w/o the internet but the elite rely on it too much to push their propaganda for that to happen except for scare purposes.

Posted by: psychohistorian | Dec 20 2021 6:51 utc | 90

Some barflies may be interested in some recently discovered trivia.
Ghislaine Maxwell, the Lioness of Longleat:
“In this same 1985 period, Ghislaine also became involved with “philanthropy” tied to her father’s business empire by hosting a “Disney day out for kids” and benefit dinner on behalf of the Mirror Group for the Save the Children NGO. Part of the event took place at the home of the Marquess and Lady of Bath, a gala that was attended by members of the British Royal family. It’s worth noting that the Marquess of Bath at the time was an odd person, having accumulated the largest collection of paintings made by Adolf Hitler and having said that Hitler had done “great things for his country.” The same evening that the Ghislaine-hosted bash concluded, the Marquess of Bath’s son was found hanging from a bedspread tied to an oak beam at the Bath Arms in what was labeled a suicide…..” 
https://unlimitedhangout.com/2021/12/investigative-reports/meet-ghislaine-daddys-girl/
Alexander Thynn, the 7th Marquess of Bath partial obituary,  The Telegraph:
“Lord Bath was mainly known for his interest in pantheism and sex. He had studied painting in Paris, and from 1969 the covering of Longleat’s walls with his murals was one of his most publicised obsessions. These ranged from the “Paranoia Murals” (which include an autobiographical scene featuring a wolf-like father-figure battling it out with a dragon-like mother over an unborn foetus) to the erotic fantasies of the “Kama Sutra room”, featuring depictions of a variety of sexual couplings, triplings and quadruplings. Lord Bath liked to show visitors around these himself.Lord Bath was also a collector of women. Downstairs, visitors could marvel at “Bluebeard’s Gallery”, a spiral staircase on whose walls he had mounted a series of three-dimensional portraits in oil and sawdust of all the women he had known (in the biblical sense), with the date of first meeting to the left of each face and the date of painting to the right.Popular legend had him spending his days in flagrante with a resident harem of young beauties. The reality was rather different, though no less remarkable. Throughout his life, Lord Bath had three or four mistresses – or what he called “wifelets” – at any one time. They came in all shapes and sizes, including a black model, a Chinese artist, a 17-year-old from Sri Lanka, a Wessex housewife and Jo-Jo Laine, former wife of the pop musician Denny Laine. Some lived in cottages on the estate; none ever sued him and only one ever bore him a child.There was also an official wife, Anna Gael, a Hungarian model whom he had picked up outside a Paris cinema when she was just 15. She lived in Paris and visited Longleat once a month.”
The death of the 7th Marquess of Bath, BBC:
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-13797011 

Posted by: Paul | Dec 20 2021 7:26 utc | 92

@83 denk – quoting Phillip: “If I were reincarnated I would wish to be returned to earth as a killer virus to lower human population”
You illustrate well the combination of forces arrayed against us.
But what if there were forces arrayed on our side? What might they be?
~~
I was watching the latest Dark Horse, to bathe in sanity if nothing else, and many of the things they discuss are things I could quote here – but maybe one should just go watch the podcast and then the following Q&A.
They were talking about Omicron, and its characteristics. And Weinstein mentioned a concept he had heard – not thought of or even endorses but wanted to share it as interesting – that Omicron seems to have been frozen for a year since its last traceable ancestry, and then reappeared with 30 mutations. So could it actually have been released from a lab by some “white hat” agent with the purpose of ending this pandemic?
Because Omicron is potentially perfect to solve our situation, if it transmitted everywhere, but only gave everyone a mild case of the disease, but that this was enough to confer naturally acquired immunity – so that the prevalence of Omicron out-competed Delta and the others, so they went extinct, and the human race got better from this virus, and the plague ended.
It would be as if Omicron were the perfect vaccine, and yet a contagious vaccine, a transmissible vaccine, one that conferred immunity at low cost of health or even discomfort, and drove out the more virulent strains, and brought the human race into peace from this hell.
So that’s a thought.
~~
But who would be this “white hat” agent, and how could they dare to take such a risk, that the Omicron solution itself, although beneficial in its beginning, could also mutate into something less friendly?
The Omicron could act as a contagiously spreading vaccine to end the pandemic, shutting it off perhaps as simply as it seemed to have turned on – with an Alpha that came out of nowhere with no evolutionary ancestry – and that would be a concept wouldn’t it?
A lab could do all that.
~~
And I note those concepts. But also when I think of the forces combined against us, with a prince of the royalty wishing to reincarnate as a deadly virus to diminish us, I also think of the opposite of this.
And now you must bear with me, or quit, because I’m going very left field.
~~
Because I think of the opposite wish, the wish to benefit humans and indeed all living beings.
I think of the Bodhisattva in the Buddhist universe, who prays only to be the cloud that rains on the being who is parched, to be the shade for the being overheated by the sun, to be the food for the being suffering from hunger, the pennies for the pauper, the solace for the abandoned, the guide for the lost – whatever a caring soul can be to help another soul in distress, and to end suffering through the gift of oneself.
I truly don’t have words good enough for those aspirations – they are sublime from their realized sources – but they are real, and there are those who wish to be such things in this universe. The wish exists, and we all have it in us – even the Prince, who got it backwards.
All of which is to say that I found it astonishing to think that Omicron could actually benefit us – and I accept the reasoning that explains how it could be the end of the pandemic for the world.
But also I was cast irresistibly into the knowledge that if such a thing were possible, the motivation and wish exists in abundance in this universe for such a goodness to occur.
Yes, the speculation could be wrong. Or it could be right and still be part of a whole scheme, planned from front to back. But it could also be – why not? – a matter of good forces intervening in the morass of bad forces, with some relief, the rain cloud in the desert, whether we deserve it or not, simply from the act of caritas, simply because we suffer, and there are those who cannot abide this without offering all they have to alleviate the pain.
~~
And on the chance that any readers might be in despair and burdened, and longing for the lightness as a thought such as this, I decided to offer it.

Posted by: Grieved | Dec 20 2021 7:36 utc | 94

@juliania | Dec 20 2021 4:36 utc | 88
Thank you for reposting that. It is important to evaluate the Russian initiative with some other perspective than the one dimensional perspective that now totally dominates the ‘western’ world. Both the Russians and the Chinese are known to play the long game, they are far more sophisticated than the bullies in the US and western Europe.
The surprise in March 2018 set the stage for the current initiative because the Russians have real military power to back their very reasonable demands, and the Russians are not known to be bluffing. Still, a peaceful way out is offered, using the whole world as observers to the US response. That is challenging the ridiculous image of “the shining city on the hill” that the US americans are painting for themselves and are trying to sell to the world. You either live up to that image or you put that image in the trash can.
The russians have established an immense moral and political pressure on the US, backed by real force. The question is how the raving lunatics will react.

Posted by: Norwegian | Dec 20 2021 8:14 utc | 96

Grieved | Dec 20 2021 7:36 utc | 94
thank you for those words. I would have very much liked to have met you. I can imagine spending time over a glass of whiskey or a bowl and talking about what might be or could have been.
I am becoming ever more jaded and believe that it is nearly impossible to better the world. the evil bastards are very well organized and the general public too incurious to ever call them out on their bs.
still, who knows? maybe there will be a savior.

Posted by: dan of steele | Dec 20 2021 8:37 utc | 98

I From my phone, apologies for inept skills.
Piotr, thanks for your continuous humourous posts.
Re Piotr Berman | Dec 19 2021 18:32 utc | 35
JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs.
Having worked briefly for both in the early 90s I can say that Golden Sachs was then a leading well-run partnership that treated their employees well and gained loyalty in return.
Best cafeteria on Wall Street, other company employees cherished the chit to have lunch there. No kidding.
Now it is no longer a partnership and much much bigger.
JP Morgan is a old school bank with a terrible culture, and communications affect the market and decision makers.
They both suck but JPM sucks bigly.

Posted by: jonku | Dec 20 2021 8:46 utc | 100