Tears in the Rain: Voices From Wuhan

Prometheus Shrugged: https://prometheusshrugged.substack.com/p/tears-in-rain-vol-i-voices-from-wuhan

Tears in Rain, Vol I: Voices from Wuhan [updated]

Many of those who tried to warn us of COVID-19 have disappeared; their words are all that’s left. To honor them, the world must listen.

Charles Rixey, MA, MBA (c)4 hr ago

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Tears in Rain – & those who sacrificed themselves to share the truth with the rest of us

In 1982’s classic science-fiction thriller Blade Runner, Harrison Ford hunts down escaped ‘Replicants’ in a future Los Angeles; replicants were AI/human cloned synthetic beings used as slave labor for off-world mining. A group of replicants revolted and fled to Earth after killing the humans overseeing their work, with the hope of experiencing ‘normal’ human life and understanding their own origins. Shortly after learning that his system was set to shut down within days, he is confronted by Ford and ultimately saves him from death, despite the carnage that led to that scene.

The brief soliloquy that followed [from Rutger Hauer, playing the replicant] is one of the most famous scenes in movie history. In it, he explains his frustrated struggle for meaning in a world that doesn’t accept his emotions as ‘real;’ the incredible experiences he’s had will die with him, as if ‘tears in rain,’ as there is no legacy through which they can be passed down to others.

The mural that greets passengers at the Temple stop of the #2 line of the Wuhan subway – the stop nearest to the Wuhan Institute of Virology

There are an incredible number of lessons to learn & analogies that can be drawn with our post-modern world, but the COVID-19 pandemic has led to one that is especially tragic – and it comes from Wuhan, the epicenter of what has now killed more than 4.2 million people.

It was in Wuhan where the extent of China’s surveillance state was brutally applied, with the same intensity as the physical lock-down measures – and yet the very nature of that brutality has meant that very few records remain of what took place in Wuhan over a 4-6 month period. It’s very easy to write-off the void as a victim of vast cultural differences, but the silence that emerged from Wuhan must be viewed within its demographic context to be fully appreciated and understood.

Even though few people in the West had ever heard of Wuhan, it would be the 3rd largest city in the US, with more than 11 million people hugging the banks of the Yangtze River. Consider what the outbreak in Wuhan would look like if we simply replaced ‘Wuhan’ with ‘Los Angeles:’

  • A deadly outbreak begins in Los Angeles on 12/1, and by 1/1/20, 174 people are sick [but authorities wait a year before releasing the full number, and 100,000 scientific articles are written based upon a figure of 44 cases for that period.
  • On 12/30, Dr. Ai Fen sends out a text message [below] warning of a possible SARS case after seeing a lab confirmation [next bullet]; an optometrist [Li Wenliang] shares that text more broadly, and is punished for that action 4 days later. Li later becomes one of the first health care workers to die from COVID-19, early on 2/7.Dr. Ai Fen’s text message from 12/30/19, showing the positive test result for a SARS-like coronavirus, as well as the patient’s CT scan of their lungs
Dr. Ai Fen’s text message from 12/30/19, showing the positive test result for a SARS-like coronavirus, as well as the patient’s CT scan of their lungs
  • Although a lab reports that a SARS-like coronavirus (CoV) has been found in early patients on 12/30, and a world-famous scientist [Zheng-Li Shi, or ‘Batwoman’] sequences the full virus genome on 1/2, officials do not confirm human-to-human transmission until 1/20.
    • Which is odd, since all known CoV’s that affect humans are respiratory viruses. Only after 1 patient infects 15 doctors/nurses does the public health office confirm the obvious.The message that warned doctors not to keep repeating the ‘rumor’ from Li Wenliang [1/2/20]
The message that warned doctors not to keep repeating the ‘rumor’ from Li Wenliang [1/2/20]
  • *The world-famous scientist doesn’t release her sequence until another lab does so on 1/11. By then, at least 5 other LA labs have come to the same conclusion. The central government, however, has already ordered the destruction of those samples.
  • LA implements a full lock-down on 1/23, almost a month after the first lab finds evidence of a CoV. 5 million people leave Los Angeles in the two weeks prior to the lock-down, infecting 6 continents [&, eventually, Antarctica too]
  • Rapidly, virtually all communication out of LA ceases; most social media posts are erased, all info questioning the origins of the pandemic cease to exist. Some large proportion of 11 million residents remains stuck in the city, bearing witness to untold numbers of people randomly collapsing [likely due to poor oxygen levels in their blood], overcome in the midst of their daily routines . One can imagine that sick people were aware of how futile going to hospitals would be, with hundreds of people filling the halls [another video]:
Coming across another body, unsure if they were unconscious or dead
A nurse gets as close as she can to her husband. The early shifts were brutal

Given that Hollywood is part of LA, it’s impossible to imagine such an information blockade here in America, even for 24 hours. All of the following snapshots from Wuhan were captured before 4.2 million people died-before COVID-19 even had a name. Yet, if not for the efforts of those who’ve ‘disappeared,’ most of the meager images I’ve placed below would also have ceased to exist – lost, like tears in rain.

Not all tears have been lost

Tears in Wuhan

Evidence without context can be easily misinterpreted [or manipulated] to fit in with expected results. China’s extensive efforts to withhold/destroy samples & erase websites/files [and often fabricate new ones] ultimately cause context to fade away – as my pic above shows. What follows is a collection of memories gleaned from sources whose original links [for the most part] were deleted by Chinese censors

A compilation of now-deleted news stories from Chinese media outlets, about conditions early in the pandemic, was created by The Nation, and the list has been preserved on Google Docs [‘mainland news outlets coverage’].

The Sierra Nevada ‘MACE-PAI’ report was quickly dismissed by the Daily Beast last May, 2020 but is actually growing in credibility today. It depicts cell phone and internet usage changes in Wuhan, and especially in the area around the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

A pile of cell phones gathered from COVID-19 victims, from a hospital morgue. It’s important to note that the ‘official’ death toll in Wuhan was 3,869.

This video contains the testimony of one particular resident, who noticed on 12/31/19 that a very large number of ambulances were arriving at the nearest hospital [the PLA hospital in Wuchang, the location of the very first patients] – many of which came from Jiangxia, the district where the new BSL-4 lab had been built, even though there were closer hospitals between the lab and Wuchang [about 10 miles/16 km apart]. The unknown informant assumed that there were too many sick people to be contained at hospitals further south, which is odd as the WHO report showed less than 5 of the pre-2020 cases as from south of Wuchang:

Here is a American’s narrative of life back with her family, stuck in Wuhan after the lockdown:

Dr. Ai Fen went missing after being one of the early, consistent voices about the COVID-19 threat; from her personal experience [she ultimately reappeared, but it was her tweet that was translated into Elvish and other languages above]:

A heartbreaking video of a dr. who so exhausted himself treating patients in Wuhan in early January that he collapsed, unconscious, twice during the walk to his car:

The top photo: consoling siblings en route to picking up ashes.

The bottom photo: Overcome at the destination – a makeshift mass graveyard

And lastly, the doctors & nurses enduring the restrictions on the front lines:

I’ve now spent more than 7 months solely researching the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic; approximately half of that time has been focused on the tragedy that was erased in Wuhan. The largest single project [still in progress] involves cataloguing the details of 9-1-1-type requests, with the hope of gaining a clear picture of how the outbreak unfolded. I must be honest and admit that it has been heartbreaking to scroll endlessly through descriptions of families desperately searching for help, and often being turned away by full hospitals anyway. This is even more stunning when one considers that tens of thousands of doctors and nurses were mobilized and sent to Wuhan from all across China.

One of the longest sufferers finally leaves the hospital in the waning days of the lockdown

The brutality of the Wuhan lockdown is largely unknown to the rest of the world. Residents were ultimately restricted to their own neighborhood; most of the city’s population lives in 1 of 7,000+ such neighborhoods, and anyone who was found outside that perimeter without approval was ‘harshly’ punished. Often, barricades were set up to prevent unauthorized exits. Citizens were forced to sign death certificates that listed something other than the COVID-19 they’d watched kill their loved ones. Many were paid and/or forced to wait months to retrieve the ashes of their dead relatives, to limit the number of people who showed up at the traditional times of the month to honor the dead.

But, in the midst of scenes that almost seemed medieval, I’ve also found beautiful examples of compassion, courage and defiance. I’ve discovered heroes, martyrs and saints.

I’ve seen just how much like us the Chinese people are, and it’s that realization – far more than any other – that strengthens my resolve to keep looking for evidence and answers. When the outbreak ended, they were still as locked down in spirit by their brutal government as every other day of my lifetime.

We cannot right every wrong for them, but we can seek some measure of justice for them, and the rest of us. We have no excuse to be less resilient; as dark as the last year and a half has been, or how painful the rest of this pandemic might be, we have more light to look forward to.

We must follow the example of the unknown doctor below who, in the darkest days of a brutal lockdown enforced by a potentially complicit regime, cared enough to wheel a dying man out into the empty street, simply to give the gift of a final sunrise. He didn’t wait for the WHO or the CCP to lead by example to show compassion in the midst of tragedy.

And neither should we

~Rixey

Econophysics2020 Postscript: ~4 million dead to date from a release (deliberate or not) of a gain-of-function research project substantially funded by US taxpayers unknown to the Congress and hidden from two Presidents (Obama and Trump).

Invasion and Suppression

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John Whitehead: https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/a_new_state_of_segregation_vaccine_cards_are_just_the_beginning

“The things we were worried would happen are happening.”—Angus Johnston, professor at the City University of New York

Imagine it: a national classification system that not only categorizes you according to your health status but also allows the government to sort you in a hundred other ways: by gender, orientation, wealth, medical condition, religious beliefs, political viewpoint, legal status, etc.

This is the slippery slope upon which we are embarking, one that begins with vaccine passports and ends with a national system of segregation.

It has already begun.

With every passing day, more and more private businesses and government agencies on both the state and federal level are requiring proof of a COVID-19 vaccination in order for individuals to work, travel, shop, attend school, and generally participate in the life of the country.

No matter what one’s views may be regarding the government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, this is an unnerving proposition for a country that claims to prize the rights of the individual and whose Bill of Rights was written in such a way as to favor the rights of the minority.

By allowing government agents to establish a litmus test for individuals to be able to engage in commerce, movement and any other right that corresponds to life in a supposedly free society, it lays the groundwork for a “show me your papers” society in which you are required to identify yourself at any time to any government worker who demands it for any reason.

Such tactics can quickly escalate into a power-grab that empowers government agents to force anyone and everyone to prove they are in compliance with every statute and regulation on the books. Mind you, there are thousands of statutes and regulations on the books. Indeed, in this era of overcriminalization, it is estimated that the average American unknowingly breaks at least three laws a day.

This is also how the right to move about freely has been undermined, overtaken and rewritten into a privilege granted by the government to those citizens who are prepared to toe the line.

It used to be that “we the people” had the right to come and go as we please without the fear of being stopped, questioned by police or forced to identify ourselves. In other words, unless police had a reasonable suspicion that a person was guilty of wrongdoing, they had no legal authority to stop the person and require identification.

Unfortunately, in this age of COVID-19, that unrestricted right to move about freely is being pitted against the government’s power to lock down communities at a moment’s notice. And in this tug-of-war between individual freedoms and government power, “we the people” have been on the losing end of the deal.

Now vaccine passports, vaccine admission requirements, and travel restrictions may seem like small, necessary steps in winning the war against the COVID-19 virus, but that’s just so much propaganda. They’re only necessary to the police state in its efforts to further brainwash the populace into believing that the government legitimately has the power to enforce such blatant acts of authoritarianism.

This is how you imprison a populace and lock down a nation.

It makes no difference if such police state tactics are carried out in the name of national security or protecting America’s borders or making America healthy again: the philosophy remains the same, and it is a mindset that is not friendly to freedom.

You can’t have it both ways.

You can’t live in a constitutional republic if you allow the government to act like a police state.

You can’t claim to value freedom if you allow the government to operate like a dictatorship.

You can’t expect to have your rights respected if you allow the government to treat whomever it pleases with disrespect and an utter disregard for the rule of law.

If you’re tempted to justify these draconian measures for whatever reason—for the sake of health concerns, the economy, or national security—beware: there’s always a boomerang effect.

Whatever dangerous practices you allow the government to carry out now, rest assured, these same practices can and will be used against you when the government decides to set its sights on you.

The war on drugs turned out to be a war on the American people, waged with SWAT teams and militarized police. The war on terror turned out to be a war on the American people, waged with warrantless surveillance and indefinite detention for those who dare to disagree.

The war on immigration turned out to be a war on the American people, waged with roving government agents demanding “papers, please.”

This war on COVID-19 is turning out to be yet another war on the American people, waged with all of the surveillance weaponry and tracking mechanisms at the government’s disposal. You see, when you talk about empowering government agents to screen the populace in order to control and prevent spread of this virus, what you’re really talking about is creating a society in which ID cards, round ups, checkpoints and detention centers become routine weapons used by the government to control and suppress the populace, no matter the threat.

No one is safe.

No one is immune.

And as I illustrate in my new novel, The Erik Blair Diaries, no one gets spared the anguish, fear and heartache of living in a police state.

That’s the message being broadcast 24/7 with every new piece of government propaganda, every new law that criminalizes otherwise lawful activity, every new policeman on the beat, every new surveillance camera casting a watchful eye, every sensationalist news story that titillates and distracts, every new prison or detention center built to house troublemakers and other undesirables, every new court ruling that gives government agents a green light to strip and steal and rape and ravage the citizenry, every school that opts to indoctrinate rather than educate, and every new justification for why Americans should comply with the government’s attempts to trample the Constitution underfoot.

Yes, COVID-19 has taken a significant toll on the nation emotionally, physically, and economically, but there are still greater dangers on the horizon.

As long as “we the people” continue to allow the government to trample our rights in the so-called name of national security, things will get worse, not better.

It’s already worse.

We’ve been having this same debate about the perils of government overreach for the past 50-plus years, and still we don’t seem to learn, or if we learn, we learn too late.

Curiously enough, these COVID-19 mandates, restrictions and vaccine card requirements dovetail conveniently with a national timeline for states to comply with the Real ID Act, which imposes federal standards on identity documents such as state drivers’ licenses, a prelude to a national identification system.

Talk about a perfect storm for bringing about a national ID card, the ultimate human tracking device.

In the absence of a national ID card, which would make the police state’s task of monitoring, tracking and singling out individual suspects far simpler, “we the people” are already being  tracked in a myriad of ways: through our state driver’s licenses, Social Security numbers, bank accounts, purchases and electronic transactions; biometrics; by way of our correspondence and communication devices (email, phone calls and mobile phones); through chips implanted in our vehicles, identification documents, even our clothing.

Add to this the fact that businesses, schools and other facilities are relying more and more on fingerprints and facial recognition to identify us. All the while, data companies such as Acxiom are capturing vast caches of personal information to help airports, retailers, police and other government authorities instantly determine whether someone is the person he or she claims to be.

This informational glut—used to great advantage by both the government and corporate sectors—has converged into a mandate for “an internal passport,” a.k.a., a national ID card that would store information as basic as a person’s name, birth date and place of birth, as well as private information, including a Social Security number, fingerprint, retinal scan and personal, criminal and financial records.

A federalized, computerized, cross-referenced, databased system of identification policed by government agents would be the final nail in the coffin for privacy (not to mention a logistical security nightmare that would leave Americans even more vulnerable to every hacker in the cybersphere).

Americans have always resisted adopting a national ID card for good reason: National ID card systems have been used before, by other oppressive governments, in the name of national security, invariably with horrifying results. After all, such a system gives the government and its agents the ultimate power to target, track and terrorize the populace according to the government’s own nefarious purposes.

For instance, in Germany, the Nazis required all Jews to carry special stamped ID cards for travel within the country. A prelude to the yellow Star of David badges, these stamped cards were instrumental in identifying Jews for deportation to death camps in Poland.

Author Raul Hilberg summarizes the impact that such a system had on the Jews:

The whole identification system, with its personal documents, specially assigned names, and conspicuous tagging in public, was a powerful weapon in the hands of the police. First, the system was an auxiliary device that facilitated the enforcement of residence and movement restrictions. Second, it was an independent control measure in that it enabled the police to pick up any Jew, anywhere, anytime. Third, and perhaps most important, identification had a paralyzing effect on its victims.

In South Africa during apartheid, pass books were used to regulate the movement of black citizens and segregate the population. The Pass Laws Act of 1952 stipulated where, when and for how long a black African could remain in certain areas. Any government employee could strike out entries, which cancelled the permission to remain in an area. A pass book that did not have a valid entry resulted in the arrest and imprisonment of the bearer.

Identity cards played a crucial role in the genocide of the Tutsis in the central African country of Rwanda. The assault, carried out by extremist Hutu militia groups, lasted around 100 days and resulted in close to a million deaths. While the ID cards were not a precondition to the genocide, they were a facilitating factor. Once the genocide began, the production of an identity card with the designation “Tutsi” spelled a death sentence at any roadblock.

Identity cards have also helped oppressive regimes carry out eliminationist policies such as mass expulsion, forced relocation and group denationalization. Through the use of identity cards, Ethiopian authorities were able to identify people with Eritrean affiliation during the mass expulsion of 1998. The Vietnamese government was able to locate ethnic Chinese more easily during their 1978-79 expulsion. The USSR used identity cards to force the relocation of ethnic Koreans (1937), Volga Germans (1941), Kamyks and Karachai (1943), Crimean Tartars, Meshkhetian Turks, Chechens, Ingush and Balkars (1944) and ethnic Greeks (1949). And ethnic Vietnamese were identified for group denationalization through identity cards in Cambodia in 1993, as were the Kurds in Syria in 1962.

And in the United States, post-9/11, more than 750 Muslim men were rounded up on the basis of their religion and ethnicity and detained for up to eight months. Their experiences echo those of 120,000 Japanese-Americans who were similarly detained 75 years ago following the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Despite a belated apology and monetary issuance by the U.S. government, the U.S. Supreme Court has yet to declare such a practice illegal. Moreover, laws such as the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) empower the government to arrest and detain indefinitely anyone they “suspect” of being an enemy of the state.

So you see, you may be innocent of wrongdoing now, but when the standard for innocence is set by the government, no one is safe.

Everyone is a suspect.

And anyone can be a criminal when it’s the government determining what is a crime.

It’s no longer a matter of if, but when.

Remember, the police state does not discriminate.

At some point, it will not matter whether your skin is black or yellow or brown or white. It will not matter whether you’re an immigrant or a citizen. It will not matter whether you’re rich or poor. It won’t even matter whether you’ve been properly medicated, vaccinated or indoctrinated.

Government jails will hold you just as easily whether you’ve obeyed every law or broken a dozen. Government bullets will kill you just as easily whether you’re complying with a police officer’s order or questioning his tactics. And whether or not you’ve done anything wrong, government agents will treat you like a suspect simply because they have been trained to view and treat everyone like potential criminals.

Hard to Admit But Give the Man His Due – McConnell Was Right about Garland

Here’s the absolutely hilarious money quote:

“Readers may recall the intense media pressure in 2016 to let President Barack Obama fill the vacancy created by the death of the great Justice Antonin Scalia. Much of the press corps adopted the Obama line that Merrick Garland, then an appellate judge, was a moderate and the even more preposterous Obama contention that senators had a constitutional duty to hold a Garland vote.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/thanks-to-mitch-mcconnell-11627938477?mod=opinion_lead_pos11

And, here’s the piece – it even has Charley Rose, the aging leftist sexual predator:

A recent Journal editorial urged Attorney General Merrick Garland to abandon his partisan challenge to Georgia’s new duly enacted voting law, given that a recent Supreme Court decision makes his case even more likely to fail. But the AG is not only sticking with his political campaign against Georgia. Now he’s inviting leftist lawyers at the Justice Department to seek political advantage for Democrats in other states, too.

Attorney General Garland’s Justice Department released new guidance last week on voting statutes affecting voting methods. It reads:

Since the 2020 election, some States have responded by permanently adopting their COVID-19 modifications; by contrast, other States have barred continued use of those practices or have imposed additional restrictions on voting by mail or early voting. In view of these developments, guidance concerning federal statutes affecting methods of voting is appropriate.

The Department’s enforcement policy does not consider a jurisdiction’s re-adoption of prior voting laws or procedures to be presumptively lawful; instead, the Department will review a jurisdiction’s changes in voting laws or procedures for compliance with all federal laws regarding elections, as the facts and circumstances warrant.

Speaking of presumptions, a casual reader can quickly glean that the Garland Justice Department presumes Covid-related changes to be positive. Justice should forgive readers who presume a political motive when the department suggests that laws that existed until early 2020 are not necessarily legal. The natural question is why were such laws not successfully challenged before Covid? Or is there something about Covid that changes the definition of voting rights under statute and court precedent?

What certainly has changed lately is the pressure from progressive leftists to use the federal government to conform state voting laws to the preferences of Democrats.

Instead of inviting his attorneys to challenge policies not enacted between March and November of 2020, Mr Garland ought to be urging a new spirit of restraint before launching another partisan attack on state laws. Last month Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich wrote in the Journal about his state’s 6-3 Supreme Court victory over the Democratic National Committee in a case with some similarities to Justice’s case against Georgia:

The irony is that the DNC chose to attack Arizona, a state that offers some of the most convenient ways to vote. You can vote early in-person, vote on Election Day, or request a no-excuse absentee ballot. Don’t want to get out of the car? We also have drive-through ballot drop-off sites. Contrast that with other jurisdictions such as Delaware, Connecticut and New York, which require bureaucrats to approve your reason for absentee voting. Why are those requirements not being challenged? It’s clear that the DNC prefers to pursue its partisan power plays in what it deems to be battleground states.

Very few media folk warned that AG Garland would be such a partisan combatant. But at least he’s not serving a lifetime tenure on the Supreme Court, and Americans can thank Sen. Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) for that.

Readers may recall the intense media pressure in 2016 to let President Barack Obama fill the vacancy created by the death of the great Justice Antonin Scalia. Much of the press corps adopted the Obama line that Merrick Garland, then an appellate judge, was a moderate and the even more preposterous Obama contention that senators had a constitutional duty to hold a Garland vote.

Mr. McConnell, then the Senate majority leader, pointed out that traditionally the Senate majority did not act on Supreme Court nominees in an election year when the White House was held by the other party, and that tradition would be upheld.

But President Obama went ahead and announced the Garland nomination anyway on March 16, 2016, and also presumed to announce the start of a Senate confirmation process:

Tomorrow, Judge Garland will travel to the Hill to begin meeting with senators one-on-one. I simply ask Republicans in the Senate to give him a fair hearing and then an up-or-down vote. If you don’t, then it will not only be an abdication of the Senate’s constitutional duty, it will indicate a process for nominating and confirming judges that is beyond repair.

That afternoon, the Associated Press reported:

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has told President Barack Obama ‘s nominee to the Supreme Court that the Senate won’t consider his nomination.

McConnell spokesman Don Stewart says the Senate’s majority leader spoke to nominee Merrick Garland by phone on Wednesday. Stewart says McConnell repeated his long-held position that the Senate won’t consider a nominee for the high court until the next president nominates one…

Stewart says McConnell felt it was more considerate of Garland to talk by phone, and not subject him to “more unnecessary political routines orchestrated by the White House.”

Stewart says McConnell wished Garland well in the Wednesday afternoon call, which the spokesman says did not last long.

That was just about that, but of course many media folk were not ready to quit the Garland campaign. Mr. McConnell appeared on a PBS program in June for an interview with Charlie Rose. It’s worth noting Mr. McConnell’s prescient remarks about the man who is now U.S. Attorney General:

CHARLIE ROSE: If Garland was nominated by Hillary Clinton, president- elect, to be a Supreme Court justice, would you support it?

MITCH MCCONNELL: Here`s the deal. We`re in the middle of a presidential election here. You would have to go back 80 years to find the last time a vacancy created in a presidential election year was filled. You have to go all the way back to Grover Cleveland to find the last time a Supreme Court [nominee for a] vacancy occurring in a presidential election year was confirmed by a senate of the opposite party. Let`s go back to 1992, Joe Biden was chairman of the judiciary committee… It wasn`t a vacancy, but he said gratuitously, … if there is a vacancy that occurs this year, he wouldn`t fill it. Chuck Schumer said 18 months before the end of George Bush, 43: If a vacancy occurred, they wouldn`t fill it. So what is everybody saying here? If you are in the middle of an election year for president, a vacancy on the Supreme Court will not be filled. And it is not about Merrick Garland personally, although the president calling him a moderate doesn`t make him a moderate. But it`s not about him personally.

CHARLIE ROSE: Well, but he has been supported by the Republicans in the past…

MITCH MCCONNELL: For lower court appointments. This is the Supreme Court we`re talking about…

CHARLIE ROSE: But are you not rolling the dice? Because some will argue that if, in fact, Hillary Clinton is elected president and she may appoint someone more to the left of Judge Garland, and therefore you`ll get something more than you might have gotten if Judge Garland, who is a man of temperament…

MITCH MCCONNELL: Yeah. I heard that argument. He`s a nice man. We will not get anybody any more liberal than Merrick Garland.

CHARLIE ROSE: Oh, I wouldn`t say that…

MITCH MCCONNELL: I would.

CHARLIE ROSE: OK.

MITCH MCCONNELL: I`ve looked at his record very carefully.

“She Blinded Me With Science”

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Jeffrey Tucker: https://www.globalresearch.ca/cdc-threat-science/5751720

The CDC Is a Threat to Science

I’m still trying to wrap my brain around the astonishing shift from the CDC on Tuesday, July 27, 2021. It is not just that the CDC is re-recommending masks for people indoors in many parts of the country, which could include your neighborhood or not, and this could change tomorrow. (Hint: right now, it disportionately affects red states.) 

Whether and to what extent you “protect” yourself from disease with a paper strapped to your mouth and nose is now wholly contingent on data reporting and interpretation. It might feel like science but it has a better name: arbitrary power. Out with the Constitution. Out of traditions of law. Out with legislatures and the will of the people.

What’s even stranger was the rationale that the CDC cited to claim that the Delta variant renders the vaccines – the ones that have been hyped with unrelenting propaganda for many months, including stigmatization and demonization of those who refuse – substantially less effective for stopping infection than President Biden was touting just last week.

Our thinking on the subject is supposed to mutate at the same pace as the virus itself. It’s exhausting and triggers anyone’s BS detector. How in the world does the CDC expect anyone to believe anything it says in the future?

To be sure, the claim that breakthrough infections (PCR positives in vaccinated individuals) might be more common than thought could in fact be true. Indeed, I tend to think it is. It is a general principle of immunology that for viruses that mutate quickly, inoculation cannot always keep up as an infection preventive.

This is one reason that these fields have for the better part of 100 years observed that natural immunity is to be preferred if that is an option. It is safer and more globally effective for pathogens that are mild for most people, which is exactly what the science is (pointlessly) showing yet again now. Vaccines are glorious for stable viruses (measles, smallpox), but less comprehensively effective for flus and  coronaviruses – which is saying nothing controversial. I should add.

For example, a study from a Houston, Texas, hospital shows that the Delta variant is more transmissible than the wild type or other mutations. “Delta variants caused a significantly higher rate of vaccine breakthrough cases (19.7% compared to 5.8% for all other variants)” and yet there are fewer hospitalizations and deaths – which is another point for traditional virus theory: as a rule of thumb, variants of these pathogens are more prevalent but less severe. We’ve long known that – or did until 2020 when we decided to scrap a century’s worth of public health wisdom.

There is a rumor out there – that’s all it is – that the CDC is relying on some other study out of India that demonstrates that the Delta variant outwits the vaccine, but the study in question pertains to a vaccine not available in the US, has not been peer-reviewed, and was even withdrawn from preprint status so there is no way to check the findings or the data behind them. There are by now more than 100,000 pieces of science out there related to Covid, and they are public. But the one on which the CDC is rumored to follow is not available.

Where it gets interesting is that when a CDC spokesman was asked for the science behind the mandate – we aren’t talking about masking here, but the basic claim that the Delta tends to make an end-run around vaccines – the person said it wasn’t published, as if that were completely normal. What does this mean? Only Anthony Fauci, Rochelle Walensky, and some other big shots at the government agency have access? The millions of other scientists in the world cannot even have access to check out to make sure that the science is sound? And from the interpretation of a small cabal inside some bureaucracy comes the law of the land?

A critical principle of science is peer review, and that at least requires sharing study results that you claim to be definitive. If you don’t do that, people have every reason to dismiss your claims. In the decades since the internet, we’ve seen an ever more intense push to get those journals from behind paywalls and make them publicly available for greater accountability and a better scientific process.

In fact, open science works. A perfect example has been shown this past year when members of the public – including this writer – have enjoyed access to all the science pouring out daily, and happened to take notice of how completely screwed up policy has been in light of the actual evidence. There is zero evidence of a relationship between lockdowns and disease mitigation, zero credible evidence that masks cause a change in the virus trajectory, zero evidence that any of this wreckage of our liberties and rights has been worth it in any case, among many other revelations thanks to open science.

But now we have the CDC making a massive change in the lives of Americans – mandating a piece of clothing around our faces – but flat-out refusing to cite the science behind the claim; either about the variant, its effects, much less the sketchy claims that masks make any difference at all either way. They could have cited the Houston study but did not. Nope. The studies “have not been published yet,” the CDC spokesperson told the Epoch Times.

And we are just supposed to sit by, take our instructions, believe what they say about the science we’ve never seen and they will not share with other scientists, and not complain about it. To be sure, it could be correct that the vaccines are less effective than we have been told all these months, and that’s fine. Just give it to us straight. And yet even the Houston study showing this admits that Delta itself is less deadly.

Isn’t the whole point of this whole Covid kabuki dance to minimize severe outcomes – not cases, not infections, not exposure but hospitalization and death? One would suppose so. But the data games have enabled the disease planners for the better part of a year and a half to keep the shell game going, manipulating data, trends, and various other factors to remix the numbers in ways that fit whatever story they want to tell at the moment. So long as it generates a headline and a policy, we are good to go.

These days, the game is out in the open, brazen, completely undisguised. The science has been reduced to the status of pure diktat. They speak, you obey. If you question it, or even if you are correct too soon, you are toast. The fact-checkers will nail you and you will be body bagged as a subversive and an enemy of the people.

The unscientific nature of this game is summed up in the following realization. The Biden administration is toying with tactics and strategies for disease control that have utterly and completely failed for the 16 months they have been tried. Everwhere in the world! The science as we know it conclusively demonstrates the failure of every bit of the lockdown agenda. And yet here we are, threatened by another round on all sides.

I was curious how our home assistants have handled this newest turn of events that is going to land the nation’s kids in masks again this fall. I asked her. I got in return a tedious rendering of the same bland messaging from 5 different news sources, each nonchalantly telling us the new instructions from some unelected bureaucracy led by people with no experience or skin in the game.

I had the sudden sense that I was playing a bit part – the powerless man in a chair – in some dystopian science fiction movie. The point of the movie is to warn us against a future that we should all work to prevent – to know that such a nightmare would be possible and to therefore guard against any trend in that direction. Such movies exist to remind us how fragile freedom really is.

Sadly, the nightmare is here. It is everywhere. There is no more need for warnings. Now we have to deal with the reality of what we’ve become thanks to the people who once imagined that they could use the power of the state to outwit an enemy that neither we nor they could see or understand. Refusing to admit complete failure, they only double and triple down in a theater of the tragically absurd.

CDC Still Baffled People Are Paying Attention To Them

Babylon Bee: https://babylonbee.com/news/cdc-still-baffled-people-are-paying-attention-to-them

ATLANTA, GA—The CDC has once again changed course, recommending that people wear masks indoors, even those who have received the COVID-19 vaccination. Many people have reacted angrily to this decision—greatly confusing the CDC, which is used to being completely ignored.

“This whole pandemic has been bizarre for us,” said CDC spokesman Dexter Park. “Normally, we put out recommendations like only cook a steak well-done and only fry eggs over-hard, and people don’t even pay enough attention to make fun of us, so people acting like what we say during the pandemic matters is really confusing.”

The CDC is a group of bureaucrats used to working a 9-to-5 job of complete pointlessness, making lists of recommendations that are fated to be crumpled up and thrown in a wastepaper basket. Thus, the pandemic turning them into experts whose opinions matter has caught them completely by surprise.

“People keep saying our suggestions on masking are dumb and make no sense,” said CDC regulator Lyle Howell. “But that’s all of our suggestions on everything. We have to keep making recommendations, though, to justify our existence and get a budget. But no one listens to them—not even us. So can’t you all just go back to ignoring us and stop yelling at us? I’m just here until I get my pension.”

Discounting the Future

Steve Goldstein on living in the moment – literally: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/interest-rates-havent-been-this-low-in-5-000-years-11627644496?mod=home-page

Interest rates haven’t been this low in 5,000 years

Interest rates were considerably higher in Mesopotamian times. DAVID MCNEW/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

How is this for a historical comparison — interest rates are at a 5,000-year low.

That’s a finding in the latest Bank of America flow show report, which, in fairness, is a number that’s been trotted out before. It’s based on a 2005 book about the history of interest rates, but the chart is still incredible to examine.

“In the next 5,000 years, rates will rise, but no fear on Wall Street this happens anytime soon,” said David Jones, director of global investment strategy at Bank of America.

The Bank of America report pointed out there was a record weekly inflow to Treasury inflation-protected securities of $3.2 billion. The belief in low-rates also has inflows to tech stocks trending higher.

The 10-Year Treasury Inflation-Indexed security yielded a record low negative 1.15% on Thursday.

The 10-year yield TMUBMUSD10Y, 1.223% was 1.25%.

The S&P 500 index SPX, -0.54% closed Thursday as its second-highest level ever, though stock futures ES00, 0.46% pointed to a lower start on Friday.

Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia

Kurt Schliter: https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2021/07/29/imagine-if-they-hadnt-lied-to-us-for-the-last-18-months-n2593208

Imagine If They Hadn’t Lied To Us For The Last 18 Months

Everybody wrap something around your face again even though they said you wouldn’t need to if you got vaxxed! But they didn’t lie – no, apparently a bunch of people – and not just those evil white nationalist-Christian-gun-Jesus-flag people – are refusing to get the vaccine, and the reason is that they are moral defectives somehow in thrall to Tucker Carlson’s Svengali-like powers of persuasion. You see, the people who won’t get it are stupid people who hate science because they refuse to trust the people who have spent the last year-and-a-half lying to them.

I don’t blame those folks a bit. 

Let’s try a thought experiment. Let’s imagine our ruling class was not as utterly corrupt, dishonest, incompetent and downright stupid as it manifestly is. I know that’s hard, but go with me.

This weird new virus appears and starts spreading. Instead of leveraging it to take down Trump, the Democrats appear with the Republican president and GOP leadership to announce they are working together to solve the problem. Imagine that instead of shaming people, first about wearing masks, then about not wearing masks, then about not wearing two masks, then no masks, then masks again, they went with transparency. 

“We are not sure how much, if at all, masks work. We’re running test trials to see and we’ll tell you what we find as soon as we have the data. In the meantime, let’s all wear them just in case.” And then, when they ran the studies, they would tell us the answer. 

Have you seen any studies about masks? We get a lot of that fascist gnome and others telling us to wear masks (after initially telling us they were useless – remember that memory-holed narrative?) but where’s the actual science?

See, you have to believe the science, and believe them when they tell you what it is yet won’t show you. Obey!

But trust is earned, and these people act like it is their right to have our trust, that we owe them to take it on faith that whatever these people say is the Gospel. Except they are wrong all the time, and instead of owning up to it, they treat you like some sort of idiot for noticing. When you don’t trust people who are perpetually wrong, that’s not denying science. That is science – you are making observations, and drawing reasonable conclusions. In this case, the observation is that our establishment sucks, and that it can’t be trusted.

How far would a little humility gone? Very far. Imagine, and this will be hard, these masterminds getting up and saying, “America, we were wrong about something. We thought it was right, but we tested it and we found we were not right. Here is the data, and now that we have better information, we are changing our recommendation.”

What would we say? “Oh, okay. They were doing the best they can and being straight with us. People make mistakes. We need to learn from them. After all, it’s been a century since the last pandemic so we have a lot of lessons to re-learn. Let’s move forward.”

But no. No, there’s no humility. They make a mistake and they don’t stand up and admit it. Instead, they just change the narrative and act as if the narrative du jour was always the narrative. Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia. But we’re not blind or stupid for noticing.

They tell us the vaccine is going to make us immune from COVID. Then it turns out you can still get it, just not as bad. Yet when people notice this 180-degree spin, the smart set shrieks like Donald Sutherland at the end of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Just imagine if they had been honest and forthright. But that was not in the cards. The ruling caste’s conceit is that we are idiots, unable and unworthy to make simple decisions for ourselves. We must be guided, nudged, or intimidated, if necessary, into making the right choice. And we do not deserve explanations, because the last thing our elite wants is accountability. 

Instead, they want unlimited power. Look at their arbitrary emergency rules and regulations. You could go to a strip club but not a church. Huh? And the courts, again, let us down initially by not enforcing the Constitution. It was an emergency, after all, and as we all know, in an emergency you need to rule by decree, say our betters. So, we got to watch idiots walking around in the sunshine with mouth thongs on while cops busted mommies for letting little Billy play on the slide. At no time did most of the establishment reconsider or change. No, it doubled down on failure. Yet we’re supposed to trust it?

And then there are the revelations about where it came from. They first blamed the innocent pangolin. But it looks like it was our elite’s buddies the Chi Coms, except when people raised that notion earlier, they got banned by social media. Our establishment limited our ability to speak about something true. Think about that. And they want to do it again.

And that’s where the vaccine hesitancy comes in. The smart set squanders its trust then is shocked to find that its trust has been squandered. People are seeing side effects from the vaccine. Those were always going to happen. But our elite is unwilling to level with people about them and let individuals manage their own risks. Instead, our garbage elite dismisses people with questions as “anti-vaxxers” instead of engaging with them and earning their trust. See, we peasants are unworthy of engagement. How dare we seek to choose for ourselves? The nerve of us serfs!

I got the vaccine. I also had the disease. I talked to conservative doctors I trusted about my unique situation and made my decision. You should do the same – you know your situation, and you should balance the risks. I don’t tell other people what to do because it’s not my business and I don’t know their story. I’ve had people get on me for mine, and they need to back off – they don’t know my situation and it’s none of their business. Similarly, theirs is none of mine.

The establishment has squandered its credibility, which is why its demand that everyone take the shot is getting shriller and the attempts to force people more punitive. Imagine if they had been honest from the beginning. Imagine if they had been held accountable. But to do that, you have to imagine having a ruling class that doesn’t suck. And that’s more imagination than anyone can muster.

Reverse Repo Madness

Is this the work of a serious artist?

And here’s Tyler showing you what’s ahead: https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/25-trillion-reverse-repo-year-end

RRP volume is quickly approaching $1 trillion a day, with today’s reverse repo usage hitting the second highest on record at $987.3 billion and just shy of $1 trillion.

And with QE still running at $120 billion a month, the Fed continues to inject liquidity into the markets, which then continues to recycle back to the Fed via the RRP facility.

So how big will the Fed’s reverse repo facility get? As Curvature’s Scott Skyrm calculates, assuming QE will not change between now and the end of the year, it is about to get much bigger.

During the month of April, RRP volume increased by $49 billion. $296 billion during the month of May, $362 billion* in June, and $124 billion in July. If RRP volume continues around the same pace, say $200 billion a month, RRP volume will reach $2 trillion by the end of the year.

Looking at the trendline, it puts RRP volume at $2.5 trillion by the end of the year. However, RRP volume at the end of the year will be a large number, meaning it could very well approach $3 trillion by year end.

A few rhetorical questions to conclude: what will be the impact of $2 trillion going into the RRP each day? How will this affect the markets? Will the Fed need to adjust the RRP rate again?

I’m finding the wisdom of Hunter Thompson’s view of life increasingly applicable to the “gonzo economics” that is our Federal Reserve and its evil twin, the Federal Government:

  • “In a closed society where everybody’s guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity.”
  • “We can’t stop here, this is bat country!”
  • “If asked if you care about the world’s problems, look deep into the eyes of he who asks, he will never ask you again.”
Fear And Loathing Quotes Bats. QuotesGram

A blood marker predicts who gets ‘breakthrough’ COVID

A woman in a facemask and glasses uses a syringe to extract vaccine from a vial.

It depends on post-vaccination antibody level.

Nature: doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-02096-3

People fully vaccinated against COVID-19 are less likely to become infected with the coronavirus if they have relatively high levels of virus-blocking antibodies, according to a study of thousands of health-care workers who received the Pfizer–BioNTech jab1.

The analysis adds to a growing body of evidence that a person’s levels of ‘neutralizing’ antibodies, which block SARS-CoV-2 from infecting cells, predict whether that person will become infected.

A robust predictive marker, known as a correlate of protection, could help regulators to approve new vaccines without requiring large clinical trials. It could also help them to assess the need for booster shots to guard against emerging viral variants. The study “is an important step in further validating the use of neutralization titre as a correlate of protection”, says Miles Davenport, an immunologist at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.

When SARS-CoV-2 breaks through

The study, published in The New England Journal of Medicine on 28 July, draws on data from almost 11,500 fully vaccinated health-care workers at Sheba Medical Center near Tel Aviv, Israel. Extensive testing between late January and late April 2021 identified 39 workers who had become infected with SARS-CoV-2 despite being fully vaccinated. All had mild symptoms or none at all, but 19% still had some symptoms 6 weeks after diagnosis.

For 22 of the 39 workers with ‘breakthrough’ infections, the authors were able to obtain antibody measurements taken either on the day the infections were detected or in the week before. The researchers also examined data from 104 fully vaccinated workers who matched infected workers for factors such as age but who did not get infected. Comparison showed that levels of neutralizing antibodies were lower among those who got infected — providing the first direct evidence of this effect, says Davenport.Six months of COVID vaccines: what 1.7 billion doses have taught scientists

The results bolster earlier data collected during clinical trials of the Oxford–AstraZeneca vaccine. Analysis of those data also showed a link between higher levels of neutralizing antibodies and a lower likelihood of breakthrough infection2. But the difference in antibody levels between trial participants who had breakthrough infections and those who didn’t was not statistically significant.

The latest study does have drawbacks. It is based on a small number of cases among young and healthy adults, which limits its application, says Andrew Fiore-Gartland, a biostatistician at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington. More studies from vaccine trials are expected soon, he says.

And the analysis does not provide a specific level of antibodies that is associated with protection, say researchers. Such a threshold of protection “is what the field really needs to move forward”, says Fiore-Gartland.

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-02096-3

References

  1. 1.Bergwerk, M. et al. N. Engl. J. Med. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMoa2109072 (2021).Article Google Scholar 
  2. 2.Feng, S. et al. Preprint at medRxiv https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.06.21.21258528 (2021).

Punching Above Their Weight

Comfort, luxury, and air superiority can be yours at the low, low price of $30 million/copy

Strategic Culture Foundation: https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2021/07/27/what-week-did-russia-achieve-check-mate-with-its-latest-introduction-cutting-edge-weapon-systems/

Robert BridgeJuly 27, 2021

Russia has, in just one week, upped the military ante to such a degree that long-term peace in this part of the world is a very tempting thought.

While it remains a hypothetical question as to whether Russia has surpassed the rest of the world in terms of fighting preparedness, it would be hard to name another seven days in recent history when the country has unveiled more potential game changers.

If anything demonstrates once and for all that Russia has dusted off the cobwebs of its Soviet past and moved boldly into the future, it was to be found at the MAKS-2021 Air Show in Moscow, held from July 20-25.

The star attraction of the international aviation salon, which draws thousands of visitors annually, was not seen roaring in the skies overhead, but rather it was tucked away inside of a mocked up pavilion. Resembling a premier of the latest Hollywood action flick, visitors lined up almost half a kilometer to catch a glimpse of the Sukhoi Su-75 ‘CheckMate,’ the new stealth fighter that state-owned United Aircraft Corporation touted as superior to Lockheed Martin’s F-35 joint strike fighter. All things considered, it seemed only fair that Russian President Vladimir Putin got the first preview of the aircraft.

YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNDrTSDmaZY

The rollout of the Su-75 is critical for Moscow on several fronts. First, it simply proves that Russia, if there was any doubt about it before, has broken the mold on technological breakthroughs achieved during the communist period. Up until now, the Russian Air Force has been dependent on two-engine warhorses, like the Su-35 and the MiG-35, formidable in their own right but expensive to produce and maintain.

By comparison, the streamlined and lightweight single engine Su-75 costs just $30 million dollars per machine and will allow Russia to close the aviation gap with NATO, which has been able to make up for its technological inferiority with raw numbers.

To quote an article by The Saker: “Russia’s main weakness when compared to the U.S./NATO is primarily quantitative: while they are much inferior, U.S./NATO aircraft are produced in huge numbers the Russian industrial base and finances cannot match, at least not by producing very advanced but also very expensive aircraft a la Su-35S.

“The RAF needs many cheap but highly effective combat aircraft and the Su-75 might well be “the” dream machine for Russia.”

Some of the main technological features of this highly anticipated aircraft include:

–     Top speed of 2400 km/h (about 1500mph or just under Mach 2);

–     Capable of engaging 6 targets simultaneously;

–     1500 kilometer combat range (932 miles);

–     The fighter is “open architecture,” which means it can be adapted to specific needs;

–     $25-30 million apiece to produce, which will make it attractive on foreign markets.

Aside from giving Russia a fearsome addition to its already airtight air defense system, it will also allow smaller countries to punch far above their weight. Insiders say that prospective state buyers of the state-of-the-art aircraft could include Egypt, Iran, Belarus, Venezuela and Syria, which nearly disintegrated into another Libya as multiple NATO states descended upon the country in a muddled attempt to dislodge Islamic State from the territory. Only with the participation of Russian forces – much to the dismay of the Western military alliance, by the way, which seemed content to let the extremist forces overrun the legitimate Syrian government of President Bashar Assad – was the terrorist cancer ultimately removed with surgical strikes.

Speaking of Syria, just this week the country came under consecutive attack by the Israeli Air Force, which has made a habit over the years of conducting airstrikes inside of the Arab republic with the excuse of acting in self-defense against “Iranian” forces operating inside of the country.

According to reports by the Russian military, two Israeli F-16s launched four missiles from Lebanon airspace at Syria’s Homs province. All of the missiles were reportedly intercepted and destroyed by the Syrian Army using Russian-made ‘Buk’ air defense systems. Days earlier, Syrian air defenses, responding to yet another incursion, shot down seven of eight Israeli missiles during a July 19 raid. The missiles in that attack were launched over Syria proper, after the Israeli aircraft reportedly penetrated an area on the Jordanian border controlled by U.S. forces.

Coincidentally, just one day after the Israeli incursion into Syrian territory Russia released video of the new S-500 anti-aircraft system that is designed to shoot down fighter aircraft. The trials proved successful, with the missile seen obliterating a high-speed target as it streaked across the sky.

Earlier this month, Chief Commander of the Russian Aerospace Forces, Sergei Surovikin, said the new system will be capable of taking down enemy aircraft and even hypersonic weapons in “near-Earth space,” making the S-500 the first generation of such defensive weapons, RT reported.

According to the Ministry of Defense, “after completing all the assessments, there are plans to deliver the first of the S-500 systems to air defense-missile brigades near Moscow.”

Now as if all that were not enough, that same week of muscle-flexing saw the Russian Navy successfully test fire the Zircon missile, which hit a target in the White Sea at a distance of 350 kilometers while traveling at Mach 7, or seven times the speed of sound.

The test comes as competition in the Arctic is heating up, especially as climate change appears to be opening up the region to easier access to oil and gas deposits, as well as highly profitable shipping lanes.

In May, the Russian Ministry of Defense responded to increased U.S. and NATO activity in these frigid northern regions with the announcement that it would deploy a squadron of Su-34 fighter-bomber jets to an updated 14,000 sq. m military base located in the Franz Josef Land archipelago.

Whether or not the move will cool NATO’s engines in the region remains to be seen, but the newfound business and strategic potential in the Arctic remains simply too great for Russia to let down its guard.

On Sunday, July 25, the hyperactive week for the Russian military came to a festive close as Vladimir Putin formally kicked off the annual Navy Day parade in Saint Petersburg, where dozens of vessels – including the 186.4 meters (611 ft. 7 in.) cruiser Marshal Ustinov – sailed down the Neva River as huge crowds watched in awe from the banks.

“Today, Russia’s naval fleet has everything it needs for the guaranteed defense of the country, of our national interests,” the Russian leader proclaimed. “We can detect any enemy and, if necessary, carry out an unavoidable strike.”

Indeed, Russia has, in just one week, upped the military ante to such a degree that long-term peace in this part of the world is a very tempting thought. However, Russia’s long and turbulent history has taught it not to place too much hope on such elusive things. As the famous Russian proverb says, ‘Eternal peace lasts only until the next war.’