Peter AU1 | Feb 19 2022 4:20 utc | 257
Possibly, the corrosive nature of potash on shipping vessels/containers may reduce the abundance of options available to ship it – especially when switching to new destinations. Also, it may restrict the possibilities of shipping it as return cargo (Eastbound) on the BRI trains.

Posted by: marsal | Feb 19 2022 7:34 utc | 303

TAKING UP BED SPACE means death for someone else, say with a heart attack, and guess what?
No bed space, so, leave’em in the hallway. This scenario has occurred because some believe the BS about vaccines. Severity, my god man, that’s the whole f’ing ball game…
Posted by: vetinLA | Feb 19 2022 4:50 utc | 263
You are from the US, I gather. Given the joke of a health care system there, you are probably right, but for the rest of humanity, the omicron variant has caused a great reduction in hospitalization compared to previous variants. Hospitals and ICUs are no where near unduly stressed. Certainly, this is the case in Canada. Try not to project your own country’s health care incomptence on everyone else.
Perhaps, you should educate yourself with some John Campbell videos https://www.youtube.com/user/Campbellteaching

Posted by: Blue Dotterel | Feb 19 2022 7:59 utc | 305

Grieved #290
Perhaps this might inform your inquiry.

The US, considered the richest economy in the world, has the highest rates of coronavirus deaths. At current count, they have lost over 220K people. Most poor countries in the Third World have seen minimal deaths in comparison. Why, we must ask?
Rwanda, for instance, seems to have adopted very good public health measures. Their air flights are still operational. People are taking precautions and safety measures which make travel safe and easy to monitor possibly infectious individuals.
In the US, by comparison, even masks are a major issue. People throw hysterical fits when asked to leave a store if they don’t have a mask on. There are videos of people lying and saying they have a medical condition in order to get an exemption. The tantrums of Americans laid bare their political stupidities. This is a key reason for high infections and deaths, but not the only one.

I used “iatrogenic disaster” as my search term on lazyweb (now Andi) and the above was top of the list. Perhaps some detailed research into this subject will held develop an expose for our times.

Posted by: uncle tungsten | Feb 19 2022 8:20 utc | 307

Iatrogenic disaster ….
Last on that search I cited above is this.

The 20th-century social critic Ivan Illich broadened the concept of medical iatrogenesis in his 1974 book Medical Nemesis: The Expropriation of Health[23] by defining it at three levels.
First, clinical iatrogenesis is the injury done to patients by ineffective, unsafe, and erroneous treatments as described above. In this regard, he described the need for evidence-based medicine 20 years before the term was coined.[24]
Second, at another level social iatrogenesis is the medicalization of life in which medical professionals, pharmaceutical companies, and medical device companies have a vested interest in sponsoring sickness by creating unrealistic health demands that require more treatments or treating non-diseases that are part of the normal human experience, such as age-related declines. In this way, aspects of medical practice and medical industries can produce social harm in which society members ultimately become less healthy or excessively dependent on institutional care. He argued that medical education of physicians contributes to medicalization of society because they are trained predominantly for diagnosing and treating illness, therefore they focus on disease rather than on health. Iatrogenic poverty (above) can be considered a specific manifestation of social iatrogenesis.
Third, cultural iatrogenesis refers to the destruction of traditional ways of dealing with, and making sense of, death, suffering, and sickness. In this way the medicalization of life leads to cultural harm as society members lose their autonomous coping skills. It is worth noting that in these critiques “Illich does not reject all benefits of modern society but rejects those that involve unwarranted dependency and exploitation.”[25]

This seems like it could be a productive inquiry.
I am disturbed that all those online yak yak yak about human rights court and Nuremberg etc still seem bound by inertia.

Posted by: uncle tungsten | Feb 19 2022 8:36 utc | 309

One session of interest… food security
Seed Change Needed: Ensuring Food Security
Posted by: Melaleuca | Feb 19 2022 8:30 utc | 306
The conference misspelled Ensnaring.

Posted by: too scents | Feb 19 2022 8:56 utc | 311

@uncle tungsten | Feb 19 2022 6:44 utc | 289
>>Peel off the allies of that adversary.
And I think that agenda will be dead in water if Russia allows the destruction of the LDNR residents’ livelihoods. It’s not like people in the Middle East are pining “If only we could live like the Syrians.” Look at RT right now, playing up the heroics of the Donbass evacuation. What will the Euros think of that? “Losers” Nobody among Euro elites, people who count and get briefing papers, takes this “Russian aggression” meme seriously–or they’d have started building a serious land army in 2014. Moscow would need to explain to them that the Bear can protect them.
If this goes as it looks now then Dmitri Orlov will feel so smart, while Sweden and Finland rush ahead with NATO accession.

Posted by: Ma Laoshi | Feb 19 2022 9:15 utc | 313

If the covidiots here did not exist, the Fascist empire would find it necessary for you to exist. & here you are. Spin doctors of idiocy that make that make status authorities preferable. The Lunatic Fringe Sovereign Freemen on the Land Citizens presumed to dictate who they would form a new government with, deputized themselves to make arrests on their own `authority’, and issued an arrest warrant for the Prime Minister of Canada. Appreciated Chrystia Freeland coming down on hard with both jackboots on you trash. Canadian Freedom Movement from your anus.

Posted by: Laurence | Feb 19 2022 9:22 utc | 315

FakeHippie [*supra*]
The old lady is not dead. Unlike the mickey-mouse Covidiot Sovereign Shitizen who spooked the horse by charging it dragging a bystander with him, the horse didn’t lay one hoof on her. Get out of here with your spin.

Posted by: Laurence | Feb 19 2022 9:42 utc | 317

Posted by: farm ecologist | Feb 19 2022 3:16 utc | 244
Good questions. There are others:
Why did Trudeau not take any action when the convoy was forming up and in-transit? It takes a week to drive across Canada. Trudeau took no action despite news reports on the size of the protest and its intent.
With regard to noise and inconvenience to the public –
– the truckers agreed to stop honking air horns
– the truckers agreed to open passage lanes for emergency vehicles
– the truckers agreed to move trucks out of residential areas.
– Canada’s COVID restrictions were amongst the most severe. Not as bad as Austria, Australia, and NZ, but still draconian, confused, and lacking support from science.
The truckers were also confused. They lacked cogent leadership and the clear articulation of their grievances. In essence, after 2 years of changing state diktat they were fed up with the whole business and wanted to let the Government know.
In Canada health is the responsibility of the provincial governments not Trudeau’s Federal government. The Feds are responsible for international travel (trucks, airlines, automobiles) and inter-provincial travel. With the outbreak, Trudeau seized the opportunity to be the “public face” holding daily “empathetic” press conferences. He gained great public exposure but achieved little apart from making himself the chief target as the pandemic dragged on and on and became more tiresome, burdensome, and the government response increasingly futile.
There is not much the state can do to prevent you getting wet when it rains. Trudeau jumped at the opportunity to advance himself, treated the pandemic as a personal PR exercise, and basically spent his time saying “Its raining. I feel your wetness. We can get through this together” while participating in a full blown shut down of both economy and society while justifying the shut-downs by fear mongering and bad science.
Lastly he publicly encouraged the VAXed to express hostility towards the VAX hesitant and demonstrated himself to be a wimpish PR idiot by refusing to speak with the truckers while at the same time publicly vilifying them as racist, nazi, white supremacist, treasonous, insurrectionists. In reality they were just fed up average Canadians forced to make a living without being able to work from the comfort of home with a mac in one hand and a latte in the other.
To the degree that the truckers pulled any support it came from all those persons who provide essential services to the mac and latte class – the nursing and hospital staff, the police, food store staff and all the delivery people kept busy supporting the mac and latte class. In essence we are looking at a class war between the “deplorable” service workers and those they serviced. Trudeau is an effete, narcissistic, good hair dude who has demonstrated his complete incapacity and utter lack of any form of leadership skills or any intellectual understanding of the problems he created for both himself and the country.

Posted by: Sushi | Feb 19 2022 10:00 utc | 319

Posted by: blues | Feb 19 2022 4:08 utc | 251

I think the fascist Pervasive Shadow Dictatorship (PSD) simply wants to get Russia to attack the Ukronazis

. . . and do it before the US State of the Union address on March 1st as otherwise Brandon will look like a duffus when he proclaims he “won” and defeated the “Evil Poutine.”
The Evil Poutine, having a decent grasp of geo-politics, will simply wait until March 2nd before making his riposte.

Posted by: Sushi | Feb 19 2022 10:18 utc | 321

Unz review looks at how a genteel report on why the Ukraine invasion mania is all about Germany turned the site on fire and attracted a flood of interest. Ron Unz discusses this and other topics that are red hot at this time and his experiment in presenting more video material through Rumble.
This report is very much worth the read.

Posted by: uncle tungsten | Feb 19 2022 10:43 utc | 323

On horses and protest. A pocket of marbles to drop on the ground can have a stabilising effect on the power relationship.

Posted by: uncle tungsten | Feb 19 2022 10:45 utc | 325

Covid update from India
The total no of cases per day is declining day by day. At present it is about 20000 cases with Kerala contributing around 1/3 cases. For the rest of the country all rules are being relaxed, everything is open and natural immunity seems to have taken over. Still the government is pressing for booster doses and mask mandates but people are fedup and all rules are on books only.
The way the things are going the covid scare is going to die down unless directions come from abroad to rake it up to jab everyone and start a new wave.

Posted by: R M Rao | Feb 19 2022 10:51 utc | 327

The Canadian Parliament has been suspended by Trudeau.
He has exercised his authority under the emergency powers act.
Covidiots can include Prime Ministers I see.

Posted by: uncle tungsten | Feb 19 2022 11:08 utc | 329

Video of woman reported to be a senior indigenous citizen who was trampled hy a police horse in Ottawa, Canada as part of Trudeau’s assertion of Emergency Act.
https://youtu.be/AsN-5EFM2FU
Caution – may be distrubing

Posted by: Sushi | Feb 19 2022 11:37 utc | 331

Seems Ukraine couldn’t get to step one of Minsk.
Ukraine’s special operations force has unveiled a fleet of indigenous “Punisher” stealth attack drones.
The catapult-launched electric vehicle carries three powerful munitions capable of damaging military vehicles within a radius of 50 meters (164 feet).
At 2.28 meters (7.5 feet) wide, the unmanned aerial vehicle can fly up to 30 miles (48.2 kilometers) at a maximum altitude of 396 meters (1,300 feet) controlled by a ground pilot with a laptop computer, The Sun reported.
The aircraft has a maximum speed of 125 miles (201 kilometers) per hour and releases its explosive immediately after it locks on target. The British daily added that the munition can be preset to either burst into shrapnel or a ball of fire.
The Punisher flies alongside a smaller reconnaissance drone, the Spectre, which helps it identify targets.
“This weapon’s power is its stealth capability,” Engineer Eugene Bulatsev told The Sun.
According to the manufacturer, the drone has been deployed against the country’s pro-Russian rebels since 2016, executing “hundreds” of successful missions.
“It has been causing havoc behind pro-Russian lines on Donbas for years because the enemy has no idea what has hit them.
“It’s relatively small and light enough to be undetectable to radar and you can’t see or hear it once it’s airborne which makes it a nightmare on the battlefield.
“What’s more, it can drop three bombs at a time or hit three separate targets then return to base to be reloaded and sent back into battle within minutes.”

Posted by: thecelticwithinme | Feb 19 2022 11:44 utc | 333

Candace Owens, American conservative author, talk show host,Tweets for Biden to send American troops to Canada to rescue us from Trudeau Castro
https://twitter.com/RealCandaceO/status/1494849704923967491
Toronto Sun Tweets fake photo of woman being trampled by police horse. It’s re-tweeted by FOX News’ Sara Carter. Her Twitter account has many tweets on the convoy.
https://twitter.com/TheTorontoSun/status/1494867817568550917
https://twitter.com/SaraCarterDC/status/1494895121728421889
Canadian journalist attacked by protester during filming. According to journalist Glen McGregor harassment happens to every film crew every time they film.
https://twitter.com/MyleneCrete/status/1494874304814751744
https://twitter.com/glen_mcgregor/status/1494889792668119043

Posted by: Bruised Northerner | Feb 19 2022 11:50 utc | 335

I think I’ll just skip reading the rest of the comments:

Posted by: Bruised Northerner | Feb 19 2022 11:55 utc | 337

The incentives to the hospitals is not Biden’s doing. It was the Trump administration and the Warp Speed program. Some 3000 $ for each covid diagnosis and some 35.000 $ for each patient who was put on ventilators. Guess what happened. I m not sure if remdesivir was part of the WS program but this drug is so toxic that even WHO says it shouldn’t be used for the treatment of covid.
Biden, etal. have been in charge for more than a year….
Is him and his admin asleep at the switch??? or…. just plain lazy…
OR….
Criminally involved in promoting genocide??
I’m saying, that there is more than sufficient data to prove BAU is
a criminal enterprise for the singular purpose of making a few big pharma goons insanely wealthy… by killing millions…
INDY

Posted by: Dr. George W Oprisko | Feb 19 2022 12:38 utc | 339

Women and kids being evacuated from Donbass into Russia. That didn’t happen even in the worst of the fighting between MH17 and Minsk. Five-eyes moving their embassies to Lvov, and Putin will be present for the strategic weapons exercises which I take to mean in the military command center…
All this coming after the Russian ultimatum and the China Russia statement. Makes me wonder if this is now a do or die effort by the US/UK to take Russia down.
Spot on….
It is!
INDY

Posted by: Dr. George W Oprisko | Feb 19 2022 12:42 utc | 341

@Petri Krohn | Feb 19 2022 12:00 utc | 336
>>Russia is ready for war
Didn’t Aragorn say to King Theoden something like “Open war is upon, you, whether you want it or not?” So indeed better be ready.
I just don’t get why there isn’t a national TV address from Putin: “Final warning: knock it off in Donbass, or else.” Are we perhaps very close to that? Or have at least some factions in Moscow concluded that the world is better off without the UAF? That’d be a major, major decision.

Posted by: Ma Laoshi | Feb 19 2022 12:46 utc | 343

uncle tungsten | 323
A pocket of marbles to drop on the ground can have a stabilising effect on the power relationship.
That’s why I find it particularly loathsome that they use animals such as horses and dogs.
There are strategies to deal with both. But the animal, while a tool, is always an innocent.
The cruelty should be reserved and deployed against those who deserve it.

Posted by: Melaleuca | Feb 19 2022 13:04 utc | 345

Why Ukraine, why now? Here’s a clue from Bhadrakumar:
“ Iran and Russia are already throwing sand in the gears of the US sanctions regime. Both are now connected through the Russian SPFS (System for Transfer of Financial Messages) and the Iranian SEPAM (Iran’s financial telecommunications system) so as to bypass US-controlled systems. They are using a new system as an alternative to payments through SWIFT to protect themselves from Washington’s sanctions.
It is all about ditching the US dollar and protecting the two countries’ banks and bank-rollers from secondary sanctions! By the way, Tehran has joined the Russia-led free-trade zone, the Eurasian Economic Union. As things stand, the new system of payment between Iran and Russia and trade in local currencies are here to stay. The two neighbours have got used to their new system of payment and trade in local currencies and their partnership will continue even after the US lifts its sanctions and returns to the nuclear deal.
Importantly, Russia and Iran have proven that trade in local currencies works. They are officially circumventing unilateral and secondary sanctions imposed by the US, and have shown that it is much safer to bilaterally trade in local currencies instead of taking the dollar risk. To be sure, this will not be a short-lived project so long as Washington’s unilateral foreign policy practices continue. ”

Posted by: Jörgen Hassler | Feb 19 2022 13:33 utc | 347

Petri Krohn 366
https://vk.com/wall-35961352_1279982
15 Feb at 1:30 pm
In recent days, residents of Belgorod have often seen military equipment on the roads of the region — this will soon end.
The Ministry of Defense officially announced that they are completing the exercises — and from Tuesday, units of the Southern and Western military Districts will begin returning to their permanent locations.
………..
That was Tuesday 15th, the day before the original invasion until next Tuesday.
Also a video of Russian military spokesman though I don’t speak Russian so no idea what he was saying but I guess the above is correct.

Posted by: Peter AU1 | Feb 19 2022 13:40 utc | 349

Peter AU1 | 135
“By now all protesters would have been photographed at some point.”
True.
—
Digital Spartacus | 136 & ld | 142
Thanks a lot for the vote info! Much appreciated.
This is the first time I’m trying to deal with Canadian politics (which is embarrassing for someone who did English and North American studies). I have to say I’m having a hard time understanding things. It’s especially tough with the parties and where they come from, what agendas there are, who votes for which party and all that.
Am I right in assuming that the Liberal block will vote as one on granting emergency powers? And the NDP will go along with this? That’s 159 plus 25 “ayes”. Got the impression the 2 greens are also in favor.
—
To me, the way Trudeau describes the trucker protests sounds like ridiculous histrionics, through and through. As a German, I compare what I’m seeing in Ottawa to the usual aftermath of any top-level soccer game over here. There’s even a term dedicated to these face-offs between fans, it’s called the third half (dritte Halbzeit). So one of the things that I found amazing about the protests is that until yesterday, not a single person got injured, no windows got smashed, no garbage containers were set on fire. It’s preposterous to call for emergency powers on an assembly like that, no matter how technically unlawful it may be (again, something I cannot judge) or how dubious or even revolting one may find their messages and demands. And as to locals being disturbed, what locals can there be in downtown Ottawa? There’s water, parks, government buildings, museums, hotels, banks and shops where you can buy expensive Swiss watches. That’s it. Real people, families with kids and jobs with shift work? Come on.
Trudeau seems to be on auto pilot, really like a mindless drone. It’s kind of scary.

Posted by: Scotch Bingeington | Feb 19 2022 13:52 utc | 351

Sun Tzu 268
Those eastbound trains are interesting. From what I have read, China needs to import a lot of potash. around 5 million tons in 2019 according to this.
https://www.nationmaster.com/nmx/ranking/potash-fertilizer-imports
Missed your 268 comment earlier.

Posted by: Peter AU1 | Feb 19 2022 14:03 utc | 353

It is my conviction that the Ukrainian government no longer controls anything in the country, not even the Ukrainian armed forces.
When human beings are corrupt and cowardly, they humbly submit to the dictates of those they consider powerful.
Like Macron and Scholz, who were humiliated by Biden and remain subservient to the overlord.
The CIA and MI6 advisers are commanding the operations to attack Donbass, stuck in their bunker, as they did in Syria, now using the Ukrainian Nazis as they used Daesh.

Posted by: Orlando | Feb 19 2022 14:23 utc | 355

@269 I was suggesting that it was nuts for Putin
to do a test of nuclear missiles. Real actual test launches – real live missiles!
Real live missiles in the air during a time when the West’s military is on
heightened alert!

On 25 January 1995, the then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin became the first world leader in history to activate a “nuclear briefcase” – a satchel which contains the instructions and technology for detonating nuclear bombs.
Yeltsin’s radar operators had noticed that a rocket had been launched off the coast of Norway, and they watched uneasily as it rose into the sky. Where was it headed – and was it hostile? With the briefcase in his hands, Yeltsin frantically conferred with his top advisors about whether to launch a counter-attack. With minutes to decide, they realised it was headed out to sea and was therefore not a threat.
It later emerged that this was no nuclear strike, but a scientific probe, which had been sent to investigate the northern lights. Norwegian officials were left baffled that it caused such a commotion, because the launch had been publicly announced at least a month earlier.
Crucially, it doesn’t matter whether a nuclear strike is initiated because of a mix-up or a real threat – and once it’s been sent, it’s irreversible. “If the president responds to a false alarm, then he will have accidentally started a nuclear war,” says William Perry, who served as the US Secretary of Defense under former President Bill Clinton and the Undersecretary of Defense for the Carter administration. “There’s nothing he can do about that. The missiles cannot be called back and they cannot be destroyed.”

Do you trust that Western military units will all act sanely when they see Russian missiles in the air?
Putin should choose a different time for his missile tests.
Right now rabid foam is dripping from the mouths of the leaders of the West.

Posted by: librul | Feb 19 2022 14:33 utc | 357

@269 I was suggesting that it was nuts for Putin
to do a test of nuclear missiles right now. Real actual test launches – real live missiles!
Real live missiles in the air during a time when the West’s military is on
heightened alert!

On 25 January 1995, the then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin became the first world leader in history to activate a “nuclear briefcase” – a satchel which contains the instructions and technology for detonating nuclear bombs.
Yeltsin’s radar operators had noticed that a rocket had been launched off the coast of Norway, and they watched uneasily as it rose into the sky. Where was it headed – and was it hostile? With the briefcase in his hands, Yeltsin frantically conferred with his top advisors about whether to launch a counter-attack. With minutes to decide, they realised it was headed out to sea and was therefore not a threat.
It later emerged that this was no nuclear strike, but a scientific probe, which had been sent to investigate the northern lights. Norwegian officials were left baffled that it caused such a commotion, because the launch had been publicly announced at least a month earlier.
Crucially, it doesn’t matter whether a nuclear strike is initiated because of a mix-up or a real threat – and once it’s been sent, it’s irreversible. “If the president responds to a false alarm, then he will have accidentally started a nuclear war,” says William Perry, who served as the US Secretary of Defense under former President Bill Clinton and the Undersecretary of Defense for the Carter administration. “There’s nothing he can do about that. The missiles cannot be called back and they cannot be destroyed.”

Do you trust that Western military units will all act sanely when they see Russian missiles in the air?
Putin should choose a different time for his missile tests.
Right now rabid foam is dripping from the mouths of the leaders of the West.

Posted by: librul | Feb 19 2022 15:08 utc | 359

@librul | Feb 19 2022 15:08 utc | 356
>>real live missiles!
Umm dude what are you suggesting here. Yes they’re missiles, they go up in the air (indeed even above it) and all that. But “live” suggests a nuclear warhead?! I’m pretty sure that nuking Russia is low on Vlad’s to-do list; it’s just a dummy, most likely announced to the major powers to prevent the misunderstandings you fret about.
That said, from watching the Syrian war, I’m none to keen either on Russia showing off its toys. Most of the time it’s not a prelude to something horrible, but a substitute for doing anything concrete.

Posted by: Ma Laoshi | Feb 19 2022 15:21 utc | 361

@ librul | Feb 19 2022 15:08 utc | 356
If I am not wrong, I believe that was a launch from Andøya. Let us that Western military units will all act sanely…

Posted by: Norwegian | Feb 19 2022 15:31 utc | 363

Smoothiex12 discusses what’s at stake in the confrontation between the US and Russia- Europe itself. LDNR is a small but important part in a much bigger picture. That’s what the “Putin must invade” brigade don’t understand.
Here Is My Talking Head.

Posted by: Down South | Feb 19 2022 15:40 utc | 365

@ Norwegian

Pepe Escobar
@RealPepeEscobar
·
2h
Stultifyinberg’s Stupid-O-Meter has gone off the charts:
“If Russia wants less NATO at its borders it will get more NATO.”
Norwegians would do a service to humanity throwing this garbage off a fyord.

Posted by: Down South | Feb 19 2022 15:48 utc | 367

BD @ 303; Thanks for the link, and the advice. Never hurts, no matter what, to add some new info to the mix. Yep, I’m a yank. Home of the most uninsured people in the industrialized world. Health care here works, if you’re wealthy or a former member of a good union. I’m part of the latter group, thankfully. As for me and mine, we’re all vaxed and boosted, with no negative effects, and no trips to the hospital. The future? Who knows? We’ll see. I’m 74, and still feel as well as a 74 yr. can expect. Same for the rest of my family. I find that, considering the differences in people, personal experience is the best guide for behavior.
Again, thanks for the link. I book marked them:)

Posted by: vetinLA | Feb 19 2022 15:58 utc | 369

@Down South | Feb 19 2022 15:48 utc | 364
I can only apologize on behalf of my country. I never voted for that idiot.

Posted by: Norwegian | Feb 19 2022 16:01 utc | 371

@ Peter AU1 #351
Yes, for every measure the combined West fires against economic integration and peaceful prosperity there is a countermeasure or judo move throw. If the Eurasia is serious about integrating economies without meddlesome sanctions, first stop using the US$. If Lithuania and Ukraine want to commit economic suicide by banning trade with neighbours there is a countermeasure. BPC already loads rail cars to go to a port facility in Lithuania. Why not send the hopper cars all the way due East, instead of unloading the hopper car and then using conveyance to a storage dome and then front end tractor loading to subsequent conveyance to a ship hold? Too many operations and steps that can be streamlined and optimized. The trains have to return East anyways (Silk Road) and the railroads are already built and interconnected.
Besides, these multimodal ports for bulk commodities have a collection of domes for storage and ship loading facilities with covered conveyors. To build a new facility in St. Petersburg to handle this additional volume of business (~ 12 million tonnes per annum ) will take a long while and the permitting phase duration is not insignificant.
China can build a dedicated custom built rail car fleet in no time if they so desire for the logistics of the 5 million tonnes of potash they import. They most likely already have a good chunk of them if their trade was via ports as the bulk commodity is transferred to rail cars from their respective ports. Trade could proceed by overland route without going through Suez. Recall that on 23 March 2021, the Suez Canal was temporarily blocked by the Ever Given running aground.

Posted by: Sun Tzu | Feb 19 2022 16:29 utc | 373

Posted by: ted001 | Feb 19 2022 7:29 utc | 301

Should the glutton that lives on a diet of KFC & Coca Cola do the honourable thing, and elect to self-treat at home?
The alcoholic? The risk takers?
Surely they should have the courage of their convictions.
So you are not an obese alcoholic drug abuser but you decide to drive your motor vehicle in the rain? You knowingly expose yourself to an increased risk of an accident. Rather than go to the hospital surely its better if you self treat at home. Courage of your convictions and all that.
Where do you want to stop?

Firstly, some facts. The health care system in Canada has been overwhelmed for much of the last 2 years. ICU units have been particularly stressed with covid patients, many of whom have previously elected not to be vaccinated. This is not/was not a hypothetical situation. This has caused countless deferred surgeries and treatments, and dissuaded countless others from getting early diagnosis for afflictions (cancer, cardio issues, etc).
Now if the anti-vaxxers have some mental health issues, then they have my sympathy, and maybe they should be treated with the same care that others are provided.
I am really interested in hearing the perspective of those on this blog who have elected to not be vaccinated. Do they feel that they should have equal rights to hospital treatment as those that elected to be vaccinated? How do they define “honourable”? And, if they are hospitalized and develop serious covid complications, and are told that in a few minutes that they are to be anesthetized to be intubated (with the distinct possibility of a one way journey (in on a bed and out in a box)), and they are asked if they have any thoughts they would like to share with their friends and family members, what would be going through their heads? Again, this is not a hypothetical scenario. It is playing out daily for hundreds of people every day in Canada, and for thousands in the US.
And another perspective I would like to hear more of is from the health care providers that are on the front line dealing with the pandemic. Is this perspective represented on this blog?

Posted by: retiredmecheng | Feb 19 2022 16:51 utc | 375

@vetinLA #265
Hospitals in the US have never had any overflow issues related to COVID or anything else. Not during NY in the beginning, not during the 2020-2021 spike, not during the 2021-2022 let ‘er rip spike.

Posted by: c1ue | Feb 19 2022 16:56 utc | 377

RMB rising
RMB usage in international payments rises to record high 3.2 percent – What China Reads link to SWIFT

Information from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) website on February 16 shows that in January this year, the RMB maintained its fourth place in the global payment ranking based on the amount of global payment currencies, with a record high of 3.2%, up from 2.7% in the previous month.

This is a big jump but obviously is only one month.

Posted by: c1ue | Feb 19 2022 17:17 utc | 379

@ retiredmecheng #375
I know of an unvaccinated Canadian woman (in her late 70s ) who suffers badly from asthma but swears by her multiple health supplements. Last year she went to the UK to visit her sister, got Covid there and went to hospital but refused to be intubated. She survived and returned to Canada still unvaccinated. She is still alive living somewhere in GTA. My daughter is double vaccinated, went to UK and got Covid. I am still unvaccinated, Covid free and not planning to take any of the kill shots ever. Went to emergency room for a puncture wound on my hand. East Indian resident doctor tried to coerce me into taking the kill shot. I replied: “No thanks, I don’t want to be guinea pig for Pfizer & Moderna.” Other than that, I hardly use my Health Card.
I am a vaccine skeptic in general and suspicious of mRNA gene therapy in particular. I used to get the flu shots since they are peddled by Canadian & American employers which I used to work for. However, since it is / was a shot for the previous year’s prevailing flu strain and I was always sick with flu of the next strain, I decided to stop taking it. Since then, I stopped getting the prevailing flu.
My family physician heard my story but still managed to convince me to take the SHINGRIX vaccine and the booster. A while latter I got Renaud’s syndrome. I didn’t have proof that it was caused by the SHINGRIX vaccine and subsequent booster shot. But since then I became ever more convinced that constant flu vaccination and other vaccination isn’t smart nor helping the immune system. No one believed me then, but lo and behold it is now known that there is such thing called: Antibody Dependent Enhancement ( ADE). Here is the definition from wiki

Antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE), sometimes less precisely called immune enhancement or disease enhancement, is a phenomenon in which binding of a virus to suboptimal antibodies enhances its entry into host cells, followed by its replication.[1][2] The suboptimal antibodies can result from natural infection or from vaccination.

I am retired also and held an iron ring on my pinky finger.

Posted by: Sun Tzu | Feb 19 2022 17:35 utc | 381

@Posted by: Ma Laoshi | Feb 19 2022 15:21 utc | 361
Are you addressing me
or your strawman?

Posted by: librul | Feb 19 2022 17:37 utc | 383

@Posted by: Sun Tzu | Feb 19 2022 17:35 utc | 381
Thx (/sarcasm) I don’t want Raynaud’s syndrome.
Didn’t want to worry about the SHINGRIX vaccine,
as I just got a prescription and expect to have that
vaccine in the next few days.
A close family member just came down with shingles
and my next door neighbor just got over it.
I did a search and there are lots of articles about
a possible Covid link. Some articles implicate the covid vaccine,
others covid itself. Stay tuned, definitive answers are probably
years away.

Posted by: librul | Feb 19 2022 17:49 utc | 385

Hospitals and ICUs are no where near unduly stressed. Certainly, this is the case in Canada.
Posted by: Blue Dotterel | Feb 19 2022 7:59 utc | 305
Please stop spreading misinformation. Hospitalizations in Canada in the current wave have been double what they were in previous ones, covid patients in ICUs just as numerous, and the daily death rate has been equal to the two largest previous waves in May, 2020 and January, 2021.

Posted by: farm ecologist | Feb 19 2022 17:51 utc | 387

@c1ue | Feb 19 2022 17:38 utc | 384
It is politics from the usual suspects. The CAGW acronym (Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming) has been abandoned because there is nothing catastrophic about it, it isn’t man made and there is no measurable ‘global warming’ (temperature is a local intensity, and can’t be measured on a global basis). So they just call it ‘Climate Change’ instead and pretend the climate should be constant. And if you don’t subscribe to their view you become a ‘climate denier’.

Posted by: Norwegian | Feb 19 2022 18:01 utc | 389

To those who think that it would simply be a matter of Russia issuing a press release to counter US propaganda (ie. Why doesn’t Russia just point out the Ukrainian buildup on the Donbass border) think back to the fake chemical weapons attack in Douma.
The US/White Helmets issued a propaganda blitz, complete with a pile of dead bodies with a baby tossed haphazardly on top, which they assured us was a pile of people who had died from a chlorine gas attack (with the mother of the baby tossing it on top right before she died?). They also staged a scene with a little boy at an ER being hosed off by “doctors”.
Russia brought the star of the show, the little boy who had starred in the video, to the Hague, where he testified that there was no actual gas attack.
What happened? Did the western media publicize the testimony? Did it go out worldwide that the Mighty Wurlitzer had lied? Of course not. The western media ignored it, so it did not happen.
It is supremely naive to think that the media is some sort of “news” dispenser that publishes all the news that is fit to print. It is a propaganda arm of the western ruling class.
Therefore, it won’t matter that it is completely absurd to think that Russia would attack ethnic Russians in Donbass in order to provide an excuse for an invasion that Russia has repeatedly said they would not do.
Absurdity is what they sell and they do it well.
The vast majority of people fall for their absurdities, as we can see.
And the forced injections, internal passports and digital ID system being pushed with the propaganda of “deadly pandemic” is a similar operation.
We have a disease with a 99% survival rate being hyped to the simple-minded as a reason to give up long-standing medical ethics and the Nuremberg Code, as well as free speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press, etc.
We have people supporting the confiscation of money from dissidents, the taking of children, the killing of dogs, and the trampling of an elderly disabled Mohawk woman (called, of course, a “right wing domestic terrorist Trump supporter”). AND those same people out themselves as media slurpers by claiming that the protesters are being “coddled” and that the BLM/antifa riots of 2020 were much more harshly dealt with (a complete reversal of the truth).
That is the power of the media. I salute those who consistently reject the narratives presented when they are too absurd to be believed.

Posted by: wagelaborer | Feb 19 2022 18:10 utc | 391

Sun Tzu | 348

12 million tons of Potash per year by train

Those go right past my house. I could camp out on the tracks for a Freedumb protest, for 3 or 4 weeks. What do you think?

Posted by: Keith McClary | Feb 19 2022 18:21 utc | 393

To answer the hospital question.
As someone pointed out, the CARES Act, which was passed at the beginning of this operation, incentivizes the hospitals to produce covid numbers.
The government pays for a PCR test for everyone that enters the hospital. If the hospital can point to a positive test, there are bonuses, including a 20% bonus on the ENTIRE bill. Putting someone on a ventilator gives them a $39,000 bonus. The only treatment allowed is Remsdevir, which got an EUA for the purpose, although the drug had never before been approved because of its toxicity.
My friend has been in the hospital three times since last summer. The first two times, she tested negative, but the third time she tested positive, so she became a “covid patient”. So they told her (the third time) that she had a hiatal hernia and they were going to put her on a ventilator to reduce it. This is NOT any kind of normal medical treatment.
She was messaging me and a group of other friends the entire time until they put her on the vent and then she was unable to communicate due to sedation.
This is medical malpractice and it is common now, because there is big bucks in it for the hospitals. Any doctor who objects is fired and loses their medical license.
So the answer to the “would you go into the hospital” question is “only if you are suicidal and want to be killed”.
That ignores the implication underlying the question, of course. Too many people have been convinced that there are “worthy” and “unworthy” humans, (as defined by their overlords), and the “unworthy” should be ostracized, banned from society, starved out and denied medical treatment.
All in the name of the “public good”, of course.
The irony should be obvious to all, but I know it isn’t obvious to those whose brains have been washed, starched and ironed into compliance.

Posted by: wagelaborer | Feb 19 2022 18:24 utc | 395

Posted by: Kadath | Feb 19 2022 18:24 utc | 393
Thanks for your post. And yes, perhaps the health authorities should make it easier for everyone to get vaccinated.

Posted by: retiredmecheng | Feb 19 2022 18:28 utc | 397

@Posted by: librul | Feb 19 2022 18:28 utc | 397
Just made note of this. This suggests that the new kickback regime to hospitals started the very day before the November 2020 election.

The NCTAP, designed to mitigate potential financial disincentives for hospitals to provide new COVID-19 treatments, is effective from November 2, 2020, until the end of the COVID-19 public health emergency (PHE).

Further research would be useful.

Posted by: librul | Feb 19 2022 18:35 utc | 399