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Republicans Had Higher Death Rate Than Democrats During Pand
Republicans suffered from a significantly higher COVID-19 excess death rate during the pandemic than Democrats, according to a new study.
For much of the early phase of the pandemic, voters from the two parties endured a somewhat comparable excess death rate, with Republicans sustaining about 22% higher excess deaths. However, when the pandemic shifted into the vaccine phase, a much more drastic dichotomy between the two parties emerged, with Republicans sustaining 76% more excess deaths than Democrats, the study found.
"Overall, the excess death rate for Republicans was 5.4 percentage points (pp), or 76%, higher than the excess death rate for Democrats," the study said. "The gap in excess death rates between Republicans and Democrats is concentrated in counties with low vaccination rates and only materializes after vaccines became widely available."
The excess death rate gap between Republicans and Democrats jumped from 1.6 percentage points to 10.4 percentage points after vaccines became available, according to the study.
"This sharp contrast in the excess death rate gap before and after vaccines were available suggests that vaccine take-up likely played an important role," the NBER study explained. "Data on vaccine take-up by party is limited and unavailable in our dataset, but there is evidence of differences in vaccination attitudes and reported uptake based on political party affiliation."
The NBER study noted it was able to obtain voting data from Florida and Ohio but that it was not able to receive information on a person’s vaccination status.
Other studies and polling found that Democrats were more likely to receive a COVID-19 vaccine or undergo more stringent pandemic prevention measures than Democrats. For example, a recent Morning Consult poll found that only 64% of Republicans were vaccinated or planned to get vaccinated compared to 87% of Democrats.
In Florida, 69.3% of residents are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, while 59.6% of Ohioans are fully vaccinated against the virus, according to Our World In Data. The national average is 68.4% fully vaccinated for COVID-19.
Justice Department Demands Trump Return More Classified Docs
Justice Department demands Trump return more classified documents:
Trump still has classified documents in his possession and must return them, the Justice Department demands.
In numerous court filings, prosecutors indicated they had concerns that classified records were possibly still missing. For instance, the Justice Department described the need to determine if other classified records still hadn't been collected, and pointed to the empty envelopes with classified banners that were seized in the August Mar-a-Lago search. ...
Late last week, the Biden administration was tight-lipped on whether Trump had turned over all of the records.
"With respect to the second issue concerning whether former President Trump has surrendered all presidential records, we respectfully refer you to the Department of Justice in light of its ongoing investigation," the National Archives told the House Oversight Committee, which had raised the question.
Post-Putin Russia?
Post-Putin - the way I see it today, Putin is "gambling for resurrection". Shortest way to put it:
"Strength is the only source of Putin's legitimacy," Abbas Gallyamov, a former speechwriter for Putin, told The New York Times. "And in a situation in which it turns out that he has no strength, his legitimacy will start dropping toward zero."
Dead man walking, as it comes - even if it comes with the "Don't write Putin off as yet" caveat - indulge me as the starting hypothesis for the rest of my post.
---
The interesting question: and then... what?
1. Russia without a Putin successor - even without one for just some time (i.e. as a transient period)
You know, the power vacuum is not a supersized cleaning implement.
Such a Russia will start as a chaotic gathering of "republics" (each one with its own constitution or charter, legislation head, a parliament, and a constitutional court), with various level of "territorial control" over WMD arsenals (nukes, yes, but don't dismiss the bio- and chem- variants). Now, a "Russia without a Putin successor" is a "Russia without controlled army (if there'd be an army at all)" and I shudder at the though of some of such republics going "terrorist state with access to WMD".
Follow up questions:
- what's the new plan (Stan, you can't just slip out the back, Jack) to fill the power vacuum until Russia stabilizes?
- is the rest of this world even able to agree on a plan (any plan), or any attempt to put one up will just ensue another kind of chaos (in the rest of this world and/or just Russia)?
2. Russia with a Putin successor
2.a Authoritarian successor
Most of the today's candidates would be willing to continue the "gamble for resurrection" with Ukraine. If so, they'll be short lived - Russia's weaknesses are systemic and one can't just fix a mechanism while is hurling down and losing parts in the process - so the question will arise again.
An "enlightened despot"? Able to swallow the defeat, fight off the aggressive contenders, with enough authority over at least the Russian secret service and with enough trust in the population to allow her/him the "new start" chance? I really don't see any candidate for the moment, do you?
2.b.Democratic successor - restarting the democracy engine in Russia after the damage Putin inflicted during his "reign".
Like:
- cleaning up the "corruption grease" to actually allow for informed elections?
- candidates? The ones you'd like are the ones who kept mum their opposition to Putin (and, thus, are able to stand for election by the simple virtue of being still alive), but then how do the Russians get to know enough about to trust them?
- electoral campaign in a country where the Putin's opposition was stripped of their media access/assets?
Alternatives
How about just let Putin live but find something to offer him to save his face in this stupid war he started? What Ukraine could or be willing to offer him (other than just exploding American missiles, even if the giving is justified)?
Linkies:
- https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/sep/27/putin-regime-fall-ukraine-west-negotiate
- https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/sep/30/those-desiring-regime-change-in-russia-should-be-careful-what-they-wish-for
- https://carnegieendowment.org/politika/87633 - shortlist of possible successors (Mikhail Mishustin sounds, to me and today, like the "smallest evil" on that list)
- https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-09-27/russia-ukraine-post-war-planning/101473304 - the need of "planning for post-war"
- https://news.yahoo.com/putin-claims-wants-resume-negotiations-123310998.html - Putin would be (allegedly) willing to negotiate with Ukraine...
- https://news.yahoo.com/ukraine-ready-negotiations-russia-not-141227088.html ... but Zelenskyy doesn't want to negotiate with Putin.
- https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/04/zelenskiy-hits-back-as-elon-musk-sets-up-twitter-poll-on-annexed-areas - outrageous as it may seem to many (to Ukraine at least), Elon Musk on the "alternative" track (what, you got tired nobody was talking about you for some time, Elon?) It may have some merits, considering the alternatives tabled so far.
Full transcript of Putin's annexation speech
I wanted to read it in full, couldn't find it that easy. In any case, from MirageNews (to my surprise, the Wayback machine excludes it). In any case, the over 30 mins of Putin's speech is behind the spoiler (if you want to read what The Grauniad calls Putin’s annexation speech: more angry taxi driver than head of state. Seconded)
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday presided over a ceremony at the Kremlin to annex four Ukrainian regions partly occupied by his forces. Below is the full text transcript of his speech:
Dear citizens of Russia, citizens of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, residents of the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions, deputies of the State Duma, and senators of the Russian Federation!
As you know, referendums took place in the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, Zaporozhye and Kherson regions. Their results have been summed up, the results are known. People made their choice, a clear choice.
Today we are signing agreements on the admission of the Donetsk People’s Republic, the Luhansk People’s Republic, the Zaporizhia Region and the Kherson Region to Russia. I am sure that the Federal Assembly will support the constitutional laws on the adoption and formation in Russia of four new regions, four new subjects of the Russian Federation, because this is the will of millions of people.
(Applause)
And this, of course, is their right, their inalienable right, which is enshrined in the first article of the UN Charter, which directly speaks of the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples.
I repeat: this is an inalienable right of people, it is based on historical unity, in the name of which the generations of our ancestors won, those who from the origins of Ancient Russia for centuries created and defended Russia. Here, in Novorossia, Rumyantsev, Suvorov and Ushakov fought, Catherine II and Potemkin founded new cities. Here our grandfathers and great-grandfathers stood to death during the Great Patriotic War.
We will always remember the heroes of the “Russian spring”, those who did not come to terms with the neo-Nazi coup d’état in Ukraine in 2014, all those who died for the right to speak their native language, preserve their culture, traditions, faith, for the right to live. These are the warriors of Donbass, the martyrs of the “Odessa Khatyn”, the victims of inhuman terrorist attacks staged by the Kyiv regime. These are volunteers and militias, these are civilians, children, women, old people, Russians, Ukrainians, people of various nationalities. This is the real people’s leader of Donetsk Alexander Zakharchenko, these are military commanders Arsen Pavlov and Vladimir Zhoga, Olga Kochura and Alexei Mozgovoy, this is the prosecutor of the Luhansk Republic Sergey Gorenko. This is paratrooper Nurmagomed Gadzhimagomedov and all our soldiers and officers who died the death of the brave during a special military operation. They are heroes. (Applause)
Heroes of Great Russia. And I ask you to honor their memory with a moment of silence.
(Moment of silence.)
Thank you.
Behind the choice of millions of residents in the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, in the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions is our common destiny and a thousand-year history. This spiritual connection people passed on to their children and grandchildren. Despite all the trials, they carried through the years love for Russia. And no one can destroy this feeling in us. That is why both the older generations and the youth, those who were born after the tragedy of the collapse of the Soviet Union, voted for our unity, for our common future.
In 1991, in Belovezhskaya Pushcha, without asking the will of ordinary citizens, representatives of the then party elites decided to collapse the USSR, and people suddenly found themselves cut off from their homeland. This tore apart, dismembered our people’s community, turned into a national catastrophe. As once after the revolution the borders of the union republics were cut behind the scenes, so the last leaders of the Soviet Union, contrary to the direct expression of the will of the majority of people in the 1991 referendum, ruined our great country, simply confronted the peoples with a fact.
I admit that they did not even fully understand what they were doing and what consequences this would inevitably lead to in the end. But that doesn’t matter anymore. There is no Soviet Union, the past cannot be returned. Yes, and Russia today does not need it anymore, we are not striving for this. But there is nothing stronger than the determination of millions of people who, by their culture, faith, traditions, language, consider themselves part of Russia, whose ancestors lived in a single state for centuries. There is nothing stronger than the determination of these people to return to their true, historical Fatherland.
For a long eight years, people in the Donbass were subjected to genocide, shelling and blockade, and in Kherson and Zaporozhye they tried to criminally cultivate hatred for Russia, for everything Russian. Now, already during the referendums, the Kyiv regime threatened with violence, death to school teachers, women who worked in election commissions, intimidated millions of people who came to express their will with repressions. But the unbroken people of Donbass, Zaporozhye and Kherson had their say.
I want the Kyiv authorities and their real masters in the West to hear me, so that everyone remembers this: people living in Lugansk and Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporozhye become our citizens forever. (Applause)
We call on the Kyiv regime to immediately cease fire, all hostilities, the war that it unleashed back in 2014, and return to the negotiating table. We are ready for this, it has been said more than once. But we will not discuss the choice of the people in Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporozhye and Kherson, it has been made, Russia will not betray it. (Applause)
And today’s Kiev authorities should treat this free will of the people with respect, and nothing else. This is the only way to peace.
We will protect our land with all the forces and means at our disposal and will do everything to ensure the safe life of our people. This is the great liberation mission of our people.
We will definitely rebuild destroyed cities and towns, housing, schools, hospitals, theaters and museums, restore and develop industrial enterprises, factories, infrastructure, social security, pensions, healthcare and education systems.
Of course, we will work to improve the security level. Together we will make sure that citizens in the new regions feel the support of the entire people of Russia, the entire country, all the republics, all territories and regions of our vast Motherland. (Applause)
Dear friends, colleagues!
Today I want to address the soldiers and officers who are participating in a special military operation, the soldiers of Donbass and Novorossia, those who, after the decree on partial mobilization, join the ranks of the Armed Forces, fulfilling their patriotic duty, who, at the call of their hearts, come to the military registration and enlistment offices. I would like to turn to their parents, wives, and children, to tell them what our people are fighting for, what enemy is opposing us, who is throwing the world into new wars and crises, deriving their bloody profit from this tragedy.
Our compatriots, our brothers and sisters in Ukraine – the native part of our united people – saw with their own eyes what the ruling circles of the so-called West are preparing for all mankind. Here they, in fact, just threw off their masks, showed their true insides.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the West decided that the world, all of us, would forever have to put up with its dictates. Then, in 1991, the West expected that Russia would not recover from such shocks and would fall apart on its own. Yes, it almost happened – we remember the 90s, the terrible 90s, hungry, cold and hopeless. But Russia resisted, revived, strengthened, again took its rightful place in the world.
At the same time, the West has been looking all this time and continues to look for a new chance to hit us, weaken and destroy Russia, which they have always dreamed of, split our state, pit peoples against each other, doom them to poverty and extinction. They are simply haunted by the fact that there is such a great, huge country in the world with its territory, natural wealth, resources, with a people who do not know how and will never live according to someone else’s orders.
The West is ready to step over everything in order to preserve the neo-colonial system that allows it to parasitize, in fact, to plunder the world at the expense of the power of the dollar and technological dictates, to collect real tribute from humanity, to extract the main source of unearned prosperity, the rent of the hegemon. The maintenance of this rent is their key, genuine and absolutely self-serving motive. That is why total desovereignization is in their interests. Hence their aggression towards independent states, towards traditional values and original cultures, attempts to undermine international and integration processes beyond their control, new world currencies and centers of technological development. It is critical for them that all countries surrender their sovereignty to the United States.
The ruling elites of some states voluntarily agree to do this, voluntarily agree to become vassals; others are bribed, intimidated. And if it doesn’t work out, they destroy entire states, leaving behind humanitarian catastrophes, disasters, ruins, millions of ruined, mangled human destinies, terrorist enclaves, social disaster zones, protectorates, colonies and semi-colonies. They don’t care as long as they get their own benefit.
I want to emphasize once again: it is precisely in greed, in the intention to maintain its unlimited power, that there are the real reasons for the hybrid war that the “collective West” is waging against Russia. They do not wish us freedom, but they want to see us as a colony. They do not want equal cooperation, but robbery. They want to see us not as a free society, but as a crowd of soulless slaves.
For them, a direct threat is our thought and philosophy, and therefore they encroach on our philosophers. Our culture and art are a danger to them, so they are trying to ban them. Our development and prosperity is also a threat to them – competition is growing. They don’t need Russia at all, we need it. (Applause)
I want to remind you that the claims to world domination in the past have been shattered more than once by the courage and steadfastness of our people. Russia will always be Russia. We will continue to defend both our values and our Motherland.
The West is counting on impunity, on getting away with everything. In fact, everything has gotten away with it so far. Agreements in the field of strategic security go to the wastebasket; agreements reached at the highest political level are declared false; firm promises not to expand NATO to the east, as soon as our former leaders bought into them, turned into a dirty deceit; treaties on anti-missile defense and intermediate- and shorter-range missiles have been unilaterally broken under far-fetched pretexts.
All we hear from all sides is that the West stands for order based on rules. Where did they come from? Who even saw these rules? Who agreed? Listen, this is just some kind of nonsense, sheer deception, double or already triple standards! It’s just designed for fools.
Russia is a great millennial power, a country-civilization, and will not live by such rigged, false rules. (Applause)
It is the so-called West that has trampled on the principle of the inviolability of borders, and now, at its own discretion, decides who has the right to self-determination and who does not, who is not worthy of it. Why they decide so, who gave them such a right is not clear. To themselves.
That is why the choice of people in the Crimea, in Sevastopol, in Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporozhye and Kherson causes wild anger in them. This West has no moral right to evaluate it, even to stutter about the freedom of democracy. No, and never was!
Western elites deny not only national sovereignty and international law. Their hegemony has a pronounced character of totalitarianism, despotism and apartheid. They brazenly divide the world into their vassals, into the so-called civilized countries and into all the rest, who, according to the plan of today’s Western racists, should add to the list of barbarians and savages. False labels – “rogue country”, “authoritarian regime” – are already ready, they stigmatize entire peoples and states, and there is nothing new in this. There is nothing new in this: the Western elites are what they were, and have remained so – colonialist. They discriminate, divide peoples into the first and other grades.
We have never accepted and will never accept such political nationalism and racism. And what, if not racism, is Russophobia, which is now spreading all over the world? What, if not racism, is the peremptory conviction of the West that its civilization, neoliberal culture is an indisputable model for the whole world? “He who is not with us is against us.” It even sounds strange.
Even the repentance for their own historical crimes is being shifted by the Western elites to everyone else, demanding both the citizens of their countries and other peoples to confess for what they have nothing to do with at all, for example, for the period of colonial conquests.
It is worth reminding the West that it began its colonial policy back in the Middle Ages, and then followed the global slave trade, the genocide of Indian tribes in America, the plunder of India, Africa, the wars of England and France against China, as a result of which it was forced to open its ports for trade opium. What they did was put entire nations on drugs, purposefully exterminated entire ethnic groups for the sake of land and resources, staged a real hunt for people like animals. This is contrary to the very nature of man, truth, freedom and justice.
And we – we are proud that in the 20th century it was our country that led the anti-colonial movement, which opened up opportunities for many peoples of the world to develop in order to reduce poverty and inequality, to overcome hunger and disease.
I emphasize that one of the reasons for the centuries-old Russophobia, the undisguised malice of these Western elites towards Russia is precisely that we did not allow ourselves to be robbed during the period of colonial conquests, we forced the Europeans to trade for mutual benefit. This was achieved by creating a strong centralized state in Russia, which developed and strengthened itself on the great moral values of Orthodoxy, Islam, Judaism and Buddhism, on Russian culture and the Russian word open to all.
It is known that plans for interventions in Russia were repeatedly made, they tried to use the Time of Troubles at the beginning of the 17th century, and the period of upheavals after 1917 failed. The West nevertheless managed to seize the wealth of Russia at the end of the 20th century, when the state was destroyed. Then we were called both friends and partners, but in fact they treated us like a colony – trillions of dollars were siphoned out of the country under a variety of schemes. We all remember everything, we have not forgotten anything.
And these days, people in Donetsk and Luhansk, in Kherson and Zaporizhia have spoken out in favor of restoring our historical unity. Thank you! (Applause)
Western countries have been repeating for centuries that they bring freedom and democracy to other peoples. Everything is exactly the opposite: instead of democracy – suppression and exploitation; instead of freedom – enslavement and violence. The entire unipolar world order is inherently anti-democratic and not free, it is deceitful and hypocritical through and through.
The United States is the only country in the world to use nuclear weapons twice, destroying the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. By the way, they set a precedent.
Let me also remind you that the United States, together with the British, turned Dresden, Hamburg, Cologne and many other German cities into ruins without any military necessity during World War II. And this was done defiantly, without any, I repeat, military necessity. There was only one goal: just as in the case of the nuclear bombings in Japan, to intimidate both our country and the whole world.
The United States left a terrible mark on the memory of the peoples of Korea and Vietnam with barbaric “carpet” bombing, the use of napalm and chemical weapons.
Until now, they actually occupy Germany, Japan, the Republic of Korea and other countries, and at the same time cynically call them equal allies. Listen, I wonder what kind of alliance is this? The whole world knows that the leaders of these countries are being watched, the first persons of these states are being installed listening devices not only in office, but also in residential premises. This is a real shame. A shame both for those who do this and for those who, like a slave, silently and meekly swallow this rudeness.
They call orders and rude, insulting shouts at the address of their vassals Euro-Atlantic solidarity, the development of biological weapons, experiments on living people, including in Ukraine, noble medical research.
It is with their destructive policy, wars, and robbery that they provoked today’s colossal surge in migration flows. Millions of people suffer deprivation, abuse, die by the thousands, trying to get to the same Europe.
Now they are exporting bread from Ukraine. Where is he going under the pretext of “providing food security for the world’s poorest countries”? Where is it going? Everything goes to the same European countries. There, five percent only went to the poorest countries in the world. Again, another swindle and outright deception.
The American elite, in fact, uses the tragedy of these people to weaken their competitors, to destroy nation states. This also applies to Europe, this also applies to the identity of France, Italy, Spain and other countries with a long history.
Washington is demanding more and more sanctions against Russia, and most European politicians meekly agree with this. They clearly understand that the United States, pushing through the EU’s complete renunciation of Russian energy carriers and other resources, is practically leading to the de-industrialization of Europe, to completely taking over the European market – they understand everything, these elites are European, they understand everything, but prefer to serve the interests of others. This is no longer servility, but a direct betrayal of their peoples. But God bless them, that’s their business.
But sanctions are not enough for the Anglo-Saxons, they switched to sabotage – unbelievable, but true – having organized explosions on the international gas pipelines of the Nord Stream, which run along the bottom of the Baltic Sea, they actually began to destroy the pan-European energy infrastructure. It is clear to everyone who benefits from this. Who benefits, he did, of course.
The US dictate is based on brute force, on fist law. Sometimes beautifully wrapped, sometimes without any wrapper, but the essence is the same – fist law. Hence the deployment and maintenance of hundreds of military bases in all corners of the world, the expansion of NATO, attempts to put together new military alliances such as AUKUS and the like. Active work is also underway to create a military-political link between Washington-Seoul-Tokyo. All those states that possess or seek to possess genuine strategic sovereignty and are capable of challenging Western hegemony are automatically included in the category of enemies.
It is on these principles that the US and NATO military doctrines are built, requiring nothing less than total domination. The Western elites present their neo-colonial plans in the same hypocritical way, even with a pretense of peacefulness, they talk about some kind of containment, and such a crafty word wanders from one strategy to another, but, in fact, means only one thing: undermining any sovereign centers of development.
We have already heard about the containment of Russia, China, Iran. I believe that other countries of Asia, Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, as well as current partners and allies of the United States, are next in line. We know that whatever they don’t like, they also impose sanctions against their allies – first against one bank, then against another; now against one company, now against another. This is the same practice, and will expand. They target everyone, including our closest neighbors – the CIS countries.
At the same time, the West has clearly and has long been wishful thinking. So, starting a sanctions blitzkrieg against Russia, they believed that they would once again be able to build the whole world on their command. But, as it turned out, such a rosy prospect excites far from everyone – perhaps complete political masochists and admirers of other non-traditional forms of international relations. Most states refuse to salute, and choose a reasonable path of cooperation with Russia.
The West clearly did not expect such disobedience from them. They just got used to acting according to a template, to take everything impudently, blackmail, bribery, intimidation, and convince themselves that these methods will work forever, as if they were ossified and frozen in the past.
Such self-confidence is a direct product not only of the notorious concept of one’s own exclusivity – although this, of course, is simply surprising – but also of a real hunger for information in the West. They drowned the truth in an ocean of myths, illusions and fakes, using extremely aggressive propaganda, lying recklessly, like Goebbels. The more incredible the lie, the faster they will believe in it – that’s how they act, according to this principle.
But people cannot be fed with printed dollars and euros. It is impossible to feed with these pieces of paper, and it is impossible to heat a home with the virtual, inflated capitalization of Western social networks. All this is important, what I’m talking about, but what was just said is no less important: you can’t feed anyone with paper money – you need food, and you won’t warm anyone with these inflated capitalizations – you need energy.
Therefore, politicians in the same Europe have to convince their fellow citizens to eat less, wash less often, and dress warmer at home. And those who begin to ask fair questions “actually, why is that so?” – are immediately declared enemies, extremists and radicals. They switch arrows to Russia, they say: here, they say, who is the source of all your troubles. They lie again.
What do I want to highlight in particular? There is every reason to believe that the Western elites are not going to look for constructive ways out of the global food and energy crisis, which arose through their fault, precisely through their fault, as a result of their many years of policy long before our special military operation in Ukraine, in the Donbass. They do not intend to solve the problems of injustice and inequality. There is a fear that they are ready to use other recipes that are familiar to them.
And here it is worth recalling that the West emerged from the contradictions of the early 20th century through the First World War. The profits from World War II allowed the United States to finally overcome the consequences of the Great Depression and become the largest economy in the world, to impose on the planet the power of the dollar as a global reserve currency. And the overdue crisis of the 80s – and in the 80s of the last century the crisis also aggravated – the West largely overcame by appropriating the legacy and resources of the Soviet Union that was collapsing and collapsed in the end. It is a fact.
Now, in order to extricate themselves from yet another tangle of contradictions, they need to break Russia and other states that choose the sovereign path of development at all costs in order to plunder other people’s wealth even more and at this expense close and plug their own holes. If this does not happen, I do not rule out that they will try to completely bring the system to a collapse, on which everything can be blamed, or, God forbid, they will decide to use the well-known formula “the war will write everything off”.
Russia understands its responsibility to the world community and will do everything to bring such hotheads to their senses.
It is clear that the current neo-colonial model is ultimately doomed. But I repeat that her real owners will cling to her to the end. They simply have nothing to offer the world, except for the preservation of the same system of robberies and racketeering.
In fact, they spit on the natural right of billions of people, most of humanity, to freedom and justice, to determine their own future on their own. Now they have completely moved to a radical denial of moral norms, religion, and family.
Let’s answer some very simple questions for ourselves. I now want to return to what I said, I want to address all the citizens of the country – not only to those colleagues who are in the hall – to all the citizens of Russia: do we want to have, here, in our country, in Russia, parent number one, number two, number three instead of mom and dad – have they gone made out there? Do we really want perversions that lead to degradation and extinction to be imposed on children in our schools from the primary grades? To be drummed into them that there are various supposed genders besides women and men, and to be offered a sex change operation? Do we want all this for our country and our children? For us, all this is unacceptable, we have a different future, our own future
I repeat, the dictatorship of the Western elites is directed against all societies, including the peoples of the Western countries themselves. This is a challenge for everyone. Such a complete denial of man, the overthrow of faith and traditional values, the suppression of freedom acquiring the features of a “reverse religion” [the opposite of what the religion is] – outright Satanism. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus Christ, denouncing the false prophets, says: By their fruits you shall know them. And these poisonous fruits are already obvious to people – not only in our country, in all countries, including many people in the West itself.
The world has entered a period of revolutionary transformations, they are of a fundamental nature. New development centers are being formed, they represent the majority – the majority! – of the world community and are ready not only to declare their interests, but also to protect them, and see multipolarity as an opportunity to strengthen their sovereignty, which means to gain true freedom, a historical perspective, their right to independent, creative, original development, to a harmonious process.
All over the world, including in Europe and the United States, as I said, we have many like-minded people, and we feel, we see their support. A liberation, anti-colonial movement against unipolar hegemony is already developing within the most diverse countries and societies. His subjectivity will only grow. It is this force that will determine the future geopolitical reality.
Dear friends!
Today we are fighting for a just and free path, first of all for ourselves, for Russia, for diktat, despotism to remain forever in the past. I am convinced that countries and peoples understand that a policy based on the exclusivity of anyone, on the suppression of other cultures and peoples, is inherently criminal, that we must turn this shameful page. The collapse of Western hegemony that has begun is irreversible. And I repeat again: it will not be the same as before.
The battlefield to which fate and history have called us is the battlefield for our people, for great historical Russia. (Applause)
For a great historical Russia, for future generations, for our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. We must protect them from enslavement, from monstrous experiments that are aimed at crippling their minds and souls.
Today we are fighting so that it would never occur to anyone that Russia, our people, our language, our culture can be taken and erased from history. Today, we need the consolidation of the entire society, and such cohesion can only be based on sovereignty, freedom, creation, and justice. Our values are humanity, mercy and compassion.
And I want to end my speech with the words of a true patriot Ivan Alexandrovich Ilyin: “If I consider Russia my Motherland, then this means that I love in Russian, contemplate and think, sing and speak Russian; that I believe in the spiritual strength of the Russian people. His spirit is my spirit; his fate is my fate; his suffering is my grief; its flowering is my joy.”
Behind these words is a great spiritual choice, which for more than a thousand years of Russian statehood was followed by many generations of our ancestors. Today we are making this choice, the citizens of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, the residents of Zaporozhye and Kherson regions have made this choice. They made the choice to be with their people, to be with the Motherland, to live its destiny, to win together with it.
Behind us is the truth, behind us is Russia!
(Applause)
Public service announcement - Calis will dry one year more
Aussie BoM confirms third consecutive La Niña year
Aussies will have crocodiles on their driveway again.
As per usual, the Cauliflornians will likely look at blue dry skies and the Israeli laser satellites will start forest fire unimpeded (that is, assuming there are still forests in California, I haven't checked recently).
"The problem with a triple La Niña is that the ground is very wet already, our rivers are quite high, our creeks are full and our dams are quite full," according to Dr Margaret Cook, environmental historian and lecturer at the University of the Sunshine Coast and researcher at Griffith University.
...
But with catchments already sodden, it wont take much for the creeks and rivers to rise again this summer and La Niña is not the only driver out there pushing us towards rain.We are currently in the positive phase of the Southern Annular Mode and negative phases of the Indian Ocean Dipole.
"All these phases, negative Indian Ocean Dipole, positive Southern Annular Mode and La Niña, all tend to promote increased rainfall across parts of Australia in various seasons," Dr Gillett said.
The Super-Rich 'Preppers' Planning to Save Themselves
The super-rich 'preppers' planning to save themselves from the apocalypse:
Tech billionaires are buying up luxurious bunkers and hiring military security to survive a societal collapse they helped create, but like everything they do, it has unintended consequences
As a humanist who writes about the impact of digital technology on our lives, I am often mistaken for a futurist. The people most interested in hiring me for my opinions about technology are usually less concerned with building tools that help people live better lives in the present than they are in identifying the Next Big Thing through which to dominate them in the future. I don't usually respond to their inquiries. Why help these guys ruin what's left of the internet, much less civilisation?
Still, sometimes a combination of morbid curiosity and cold hard cash is enough to get me on a stage in front of the tech elite, where I try to talk some sense into them about how their businesses are affecting our lives out here in the real world. That's how I found myself accepting an invitation to address a group mysteriously described as "ultra-wealthy stakeholders", out in the middle of the desert.
A limo was waiting for me at the airport. As the sun began to dip over the horizon, I realised I had been in the car for three hours. What sort of wealthy hedge-fund types would drive this far from the airport for a conference? Then I saw it. On a parallel path next to the highway, as if racing against us, a small jet was coming in for a landing on a private airfield. Of course.
The next morning, two men in matching Patagonia fleeces came for me in a golf cart and conveyed me through rocks and underbrush to a meeting hall. They left me to drink coffee and prepare in what I figured was serving as my green room. But instead of me being wired with a microphone or taken to a stage, my audience was brought in to me. They sat around the table and introduced themselves: five super-wealthy guys – yes, all men – from the upper echelon of the tech investing and hedge-fund world. At least two of them were billionaires. After a bit of small talk, I realised they had no interest in the speech I had prepared about the future of technology. They had come to ask questions.
They started out innocuously and predictably enough. Bitcoin or ethereum? Virtual reality or augmented reality? Who will get quantum computing first, China or Google? Eventually, they edged into their real topic of concern: New Zealand or Alaska? Which region would be less affected by the coming climate crisis? It only got worse from there. Which was the greater threat: global warming or biological warfare? How long should one plan to be able to survive with no outside help? Should a shelter have its own air supply? What was the likelihood of groundwater contamination? Finally, the CEO of a brokerage house explained that he had nearly completed building his own underground bunker system, and asked: "How do I maintain authority over my security force after the event?" The event. That was their euphemism for the environmental collapse, social unrest, nuclear explosion, solar storm, unstoppable virus, or malicious computer hack that takes everything down.
This single question occupied us for the rest of the hour. They knew armed guards would be required to protect their compounds from raiders as well as angry mobs. One had already secured a dozen Navy Seals to make their way to his compound if he gave them the right cue. But how would he pay the guards once even his crypto was worthless? What would stop the guards from eventually choosing their own leader?
The billionaires considered using special combination locks on the food supply that only they knew. Or making guards wear disciplinary collars of some kind in return for their survival. Or maybe building robots to serve as guards and workers – if that technology could be developed "in time".
I tried to reason with them. I made pro-social arguments for partnership and solidarity as the best approaches to our collective, long-term challenges. The way to get your guards to exhibit loyalty in the future was to treat them like friends right now, I explained. Don't just invest in ammo and electric fences, invest in people and relationships. They rolled their eyes at what must have sounded to them like hippy philosophy.
This was probably the wealthiest, most powerful group I had ever encountered. Yet here they were, asking a Marxist media theorist for advice on where and how to configure their doomsday bunkers. That's when it hit me: at least as far as these gentlemen were concerned, this was a talk about the future of technology.
Taking their cue from Tesla founder Elon Musk colonising Mars, Palantir's Peter Thiel reversing the ageing process, or artificial intelligence developers Sam Altman and Ray Kurzweil uploading their minds into supercomputers, they were preparing for a digital future that had less to do with making the world a better place than it did with transcending the human condition altogether. Their extreme wealth and privilege served only to make them obsessed with insulating themselves from the very real and present danger of climate change, rising sea levels, mass migrations, global pandemics, nativist panic and resource depletion. For them, the future of technology is about only one thing: escape from the rest of us.
These people once showered the world with madly optimistic business plans for how technology might benefit human society. Now they've reduced technological progress to a video game that one of them wins by finding the escape hatch. Will it be Jeff Bezos migrating to space, Thiel to his New Zealand compound, or Mark Zuckerberg to his virtual metaverse? And these catastrophising billionaires are the presumptive winners of the digital economy – the supposed champions of the survival-of-the-fittest business landscape that's fuelling most of this speculation to begin with.
What I came to realise was that these men are actually the losers. The billionaires who called me out to the desert to evaluate their bunker strategies are not the victors of the economic game so much as the victims of its perversely limited rules. More than anything, they have succumbed to a mindset where "winning" means earning enough money to insulate themselves from the damage they are creating by earning money in that way. It's as if they want to build a car that goes fast enough to escape from its own exhaust.
Yet this Silicon Valley escapism – let's call it The Mindset – encourages its adherents to believe that the winners can somehow leave the rest of us behind.
Never before have our society's most powerful players assumed that the primary impact of their own conquests would be to render the world itself unliveable for everyone else. Nor have they ever before had the technologies through which to programme their sensibilities into the very fabric of our society. The landscape is alive with algorithms and intelligences actively encouraging these selfish and isolationist outlooks. Those sociopathic enough to embrace them are rewarded with cash and control over the rest of us. It's a self-reinforcing feedback loop. This is new.
Amplified by digital technologies and the unprecedented wealth disparity they afford, The Mindset allows for the easy externalisation of harm to others, and inspires a corresponding longing for transcendence and separation from the people and places that have been abused.
Instead of just lording over us for ever, however, the billionaires at the top of these virtual pyramids actively seek the endgame. In fact, like the plot of a Marvel blockbuster, the very structure of The Mindset requires an endgame. Everything must resolve to a one or a zero, a winner or loser, the saved or the damned. Actual, imminent catastrophes from the climate emergency to mass migrations support the mythology, offering these would-be superheroes the opportunity to play out the finale in their own lifetimes. For The Mindset also includes a faith-based Silicon Valley certainty that they can develop a technology that will somehow break the laws of physics, economics and morality to offer them something even better than a way of saving the world: a means of escape from the apocalypse of their own making.
By the time I boarded my return flight to New York, my mind was reeling with the implications of The Mindset. What were its main tenets? Who were its true believers? What, if anything, could we do to resist it? Before I had even landed, I posted an article about my strange encounter – to surprising effect.
The point of Europe staying united
https://www.eeas.europa.eu/eeas/european-forum-alpbach-keynote-speech-high-representativevice-president-josep-borrell-panel_en
But the big crisis is the triple crisis of financial crisis, energy crisis and food crisis. These three elements together will affect millions of people. The World Food Programme says that the index of food is at the highest price - 40% more expensive than two years ago. And for us, that we spend 15% of our budget for food, it is important. But if in your budget food represented 50%, then this 40% increase would be much more difficult. There are tens of millions of people, mainly in Africa, in a very dire situation because they cannot pay the higher prices for electricity – well electricity, some of them, they have never seen a lightbulb – energy, food and the financial crisis, which is blooming.
And there is a competition in the energy market. We, Europeans, can pay higher prices for gas because we can afford it. They cannot afford it and they blame us for taking the gas that otherwise would be used for them. And we take this gas because there is no Russian gas. Everything is connected around the world. But yes, this tsunami of this triple crisis in the next month, you will see, we will have to be very - not just worried - but taking care of what we can do, and we can do a lot of things.
Then, there is China emerging. China is unavoidably the next big power. What China has done in the last 40-50 years, it has never happened before in the history of mankind. It is an extraordinary success from the point of view of getting people out of poverty and developing a country which is now at the forefront of technology, economic growth, and is selling its political model. So, there is a battle of narrative on which model works best in order to satisfy the needs of the people - not only the political needs, not only to be able to choose your government which is quite important, but also from the point of view of economic well-being.
...
Third, what is our response to this troubled world? With China emerging, with a lot of crises everywhere, with this triple crisis looming. I think that Europeans, we should be less naïve to have a better understanding of the world that way it is. Because we believed that trading, creating economic interdependencies, and preaching the rule of law and human rights would be enough. And it has been a lot, but certainly not enough. We live in a world of power politics, we live in a world of the former empires. People who were an empire, centuries ago, want to become an empire again. This is the case of Russia, this is the case of China. We can say something about Turkey also, an old empire who comes and says, “I am a power. I want to play a regional, political important role”. And dependencies have become dangerous. Too much dependency becomes dangerous because you are weak, and because the other can abuse you.
...
Dependency is a weapon. Everything becomes a weapon. The weapons are not just tanks and cannons. The weapons are everything in which you can be affected by a power decision by someone else. So, we have to be more united. Tell, please, to Europeans, young and old: we are too small, we are only 5% of the world population. After the Second World War, we were 20% of the world population. It has been shrinking to 5% of the world population...
...
Take your responsibility, push for governments who want to build a united Europe because if we do not unite, we will not survive - as easy as this. 5% of the world population divided in 27 pieces with 27 armies is not fit for the 21st century. You know that altogether we have a double number of soldiers than the US and more than China, but are we considered a military power? We know that all together, we spend in arms four times what Russia spends. I would not say that the 27 European armies all together have the same fire capacity than the Russian army...
Global warming may make us fat
Is Our Food Becoming Less Nutritious?**
Yes.
Possibly because dilution by CO2 plant forcing: more carbohydrates less protein.
If the hypothesis is confirmed, cow and lambs are what we need - they are tuned to transform carbohydrates into protein (grin)
** (about 7 minutes of message). Some links in the clip description too.
Donald Trump Says FBI Agents Raided Mar-A-Lago
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
A “large group” of federal agents has entered Donald Trump’s Florida residence in an “unannounced raid”, the former US president said on his social media channel on Monday.
Officials from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) entered the property in a move that “was not necessary or appropriate”, Trump wrote in a statement.
The circumstances surrounding the raid were not clear.
Trump was not at Mar a Lago when the officers arrived. He was seen leaving Trump Tower in New York City on Monday, where he also has a home.
The search, which the FBI and Justice Department did not immediately confirm, marks a dramatic escalation in a months-long investigation into how classified documents ended up in more than a dozen boxes located at Mar-a-Lago earlier this year. It occurred amid a separate but intensifying investigation into efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and added to the potential legal peril for Trump as he prepares to run again for the presidency in 2024.
In February, classified materials were found in 15 boxes of official documents related to the Trump presidency that were retrieved at Mar-a-Lago by the US National Archives. Under US law, all communication regarding presidential duties has to be preserved. The National Archives had referred the incident to the US Justice Department.
Justice Department spokesperson Dena Iverson declined to comment on the raid, including about whether Attorney General Merrick Garland had personally authorised the search, the Associated Press reported.
Trump claimed his home, the Mar-a-Lago estate, was “under siege, raided and occupied” calling it a “weaponization of the Justice System” that could only happen in “broken, Third-World Countries”.
He alleged in his statement the FBI move was backed by Democrats who “desperately” do not want him to run for reelection in 2024.
“They even broke into my safe!,” he said.
Trump’s son Eric Trump told Fox News that the search was related to the documents sought by the National Archives.
Melanie Sloan, a former prosecutor and an expert in government ethics, told Al Jazeera it was difficult to know the reasons for the raid without a search warrant or affidavit, but she said the circumstances suggested it had to be “more than run of the mill”.
“He can be prosecuted for improperly taking and destroying documents,” she said. “That is not something that is prosecuted frequently and to prosecute the former president for it would be a very big deal so there must be some kind of issue about the content of these documents and what is in them that he is attempting to destroy.”
There are numerous federal laws in the US that govern the handling of classified records and sensitive government documents, including statutes that make it a crime to remove such material and retain it at an unauthorised location.
Although a search warrant does not suggest that criminal charges are near or even expected, to get the warrant officials must first convince a judge that they believe they will find evidence that a crime occurred.
“The FBI would not have sought a search warrant, (and) a judge would not have signed the search warrant if there weren’t probable cause for the FBI to search the premises for documents that would disclose a serious crime,” Richard Painter of the University of Minnesota Law School and a former ethics adviser to George W Bush, told Al Jazeera.
Russia’s Private Military Contractor Wagner in Ukraine
Russia's private military contractor Wagner comes out of the shadows in Ukraine war:
Russia's private military contractor Wagner comes out of the shadows in Ukraine war Wagner group recruitment poster in Yekaterinburg saying 'Orchestra Wagner waiting for you'. [The] Mercenary group does not officially exist but is playing a more public role and openly recruiting in Russia. Three billboards in the Ural city of Ekaterinburg shine a light on what was once one of Russia's most shadowy organisations, the private military contractor Wagner.
"Motherland, Honour, Blood, Bravery. WAGNER", one of the posters reads. Another, which locals said first appeared on the outskirts of the country's fourth largest city in early July, depicts three men in military uniform next to the words "Wagner2022.org".
The billboards, which can be seen in several Russian cities, are part of Wagner's efforts to recruit fighters to join its ranks in Ukraine.
They also serve as a testament to the transformation the group has undergone since Moscow launched its invasion over five months ago, from a secretive mercenary organisation shrouded in mystery to an increasingly public extension of Russia's military efforts in Ukraine.
"It looks like they have decided that they will no longer try to hide their existence. By now, everyone knows who they are," said Denis Korotkov, a former Novaya Gazeta journalist and longtime observer of Wagner.
Wagner was established in 2014 to support pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine. The US and others say it is funded by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a powerful businessman closely linked to Vladimir Putin who is under western sanctions. Prigozhin denies any links to the group.
The group has since played a prominent role fighting alongside the Russian army in support of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and has been spotted in several African nations – places in which Russia holds strategic and economic interests. It has been repeatedly accused of war crimes and human rights abuses.
Despite its global reach, much of the group's inner workings have remained a secret to the outside world.
On paper, it doesn't exist, with no company registration, tax returns or organisational chart to be found. Russia's senior leadership, including Vladimir Putin, has repeatedly denied any connections between Wagner and the state.
Private military companies are officially banned in Russia, and the semi-legal framework mercenaries operate under has also meant that family members of deceased Wagner operatives were often pressured into silence when seeking information about their loved ones.
And while Wagner has gradually embarked on a PR campaign, with companies linked to Prigozhin funding propaganda films that glorify the deeds of "military instructors" in Africa, any mention of the group remained largely taboo in the public sphere. Journalists like Korotkov who investigated the group have been harassed for their work.
Russia's war in Ukraine has, however, brought the group out of the dark.
At the end of March, British intelligence claimed that about 1,000 Wagner mercenaries had gone to Ukraine. The group's role in the war appears to have since grown significantly after Moscow refocused its efforts on the east following its failure to capture the capital, Kyiv.
Wagner is believed to have played a central part in the capture of Popasna in May and Lysychansk in June, two strategically important towns that Russia largely razed to the ground during their seizure of the eastern Luhansk region. On Wednesday, British intelligence said that Wagner played a role in the capture of the giant Vuhlehirsk power plant in Ukraine's east.
As Wagner's role in Ukraine grew, so did its public image at home. Wagner publicly boasted of its involvement in the war with a message on its website stating: "They have already liberated Popasna, join us to liberate the entire Donbas! Go on your first combat campaign with living industry legends!"
When the Guardian contacted the email address posted on Wagner's website, an individual claiming to represent the group said that it started its recruitment campaign because "we saw that the support for our company is colossal, and there are many who want to join".
"But nothing changes, there is no Wagner and never was, it's just a legend. There are only Robin Hoods who protect the poor who are oppressed by the rich," the person added in an email exchange that was characteristic of Wagner's tongue-in-cheek public stance.
The website has since been taken down by Hostinger, the Lithuania-based internet domain provider that hosted it. A Hostinger representative said it took action when it discovered that the site was "cloaking" itself with fake identities, VPNs and crypto payments.
Wagner also appears to have established regional recruitment centres in over 20 cities, posting the phone numbers of recruiters on popular social media channels linked to the group.
The ads say that Wagner offers soldiers over 240,000 roubles (£3,370) a month, several times more than regular soldiers' typical wages.
The Guardian contacted several of the recruiters whose numbers were listed. Some used the mercenary group's symbols as their profile pictures on WhatsApp and Telegram, and none denied their association with Wagner.
When asked about Wagner's mobilisation efforts, a recruiter from the Nizhny Novgorod region in central Russia, who declined to give his name, sent a list of the documents needed to join up, which included a passport from any country that "wasn't Nato or Ukraine" and several medical certificates.
The recruiter also sent a list of items to bring once accepted by Wagner, ranging from shower gel to tourniquets and other medical equipment.
"See you in Molkino", the message concluded, referring to the town in Russia's Krasnodar district where Wagner is believed to be headquartered near a major defence ministry base.
Military analysts have argued that Russia's reliance on groups like Wagner shows the extent to which the country's regular army, which has lost as much as a third of its combat strength, has struggled to achieve its goals in Ukraine.
"Wagner private military contractors have reportedly played a critical role in the fighting. Indeed, it is fair to ask whether some Wagner detachments ... are in fact more elite and capable than regular Russian motorised rifle units," wrote Michael Kofman and Rob Lee, two leading specialists on the Russian military, in a recent briefing for the website War on the Rocks.
The war in Ukraine and Russia's military failures appear to have also accelerated Wagner's cooperation with the defence ministry. Marat Gabidullin, a former Wagner commander, told the Guardian in an earlier interview that his troops worked closely with Russia's defence ministry when fighting in Syria.
That relationship appears to have deepened since the start of the war in Ukraine. According to an investigation by the independent Meduza outlet, the Russian ministry of defence has largely taken control of the networks that Wagner used to recruit new soldiers.
Korotkov, the Wagner expert, said it was hard to distinguish between soldiers fighting for Wagner and those in the regular army.
"The defence ministry has largely co-opted Wagner, and it now looks more like one coordinated group," Korotkov said, adding that such cooperation made it hard to estimate the number of Wagner soldiers in Ukraine.
And while Wagner's role in the invasion has made the group mainstream, some say its latest recruitment push threatens to diminish its overall military standards.
