Zoraptor

I'd have far rather had a different vaccine than Pfizer for exactly those reasons. The funniest people* are those defending its cost- now the most expensive- as being due to all the research Pfizer had to do. The research was done by BionTech, and paid for by the fine volk of Deutschland. All Pfizer did was... license the design. I do rather like to pretend that all the people worshipping Pfizer are paid to do so, but facts have to faced: a lot are just stupid enough to fanboy an utterly morally bankrupt multi billion dollar company, for free. It's not even the best vaccine, half the reason boosters are needed is because its efficacy drops so steeply- considerably more so than Moderna's. Given it's Pfizer you might expect that being great short term and crap longer term is entirely by design, but as above they didn't actually design it so I guess that at least can't be blamed on wanting windfall profits. *OTOH the worst thing was slandering the cheaper alternatives, aided by useful idiots like von der Leyen desperate to throw poo at the UK for having the temerity to leave their club.

The Afghans had ~7bn USD in gold and foreign currency (USD) reserves, held in the US (at the New York Federal Reserve); but starting at the latest in 2017, ie 5 years ago. So it's certainly not from recent donations. The ultimate source probably was aid though, as Afghanistan had few ways to accumulate cash otherwise, eg less than 1bn in exports. It was definitively Aghanistan's money legally though, you can't get more formal than held by its central bank. Main lesson: don't use the US to store your cash.

I really couldn't care less about what politicians wear, unless it's actively stupid. Unfortunately Truss's outfit was. I do very much enjoy the annual APEC silly shirt competition though. And very occasionally you get an outfit I'd 100% unironically wear.

Boba Fett was always a stupid idea for a Disney series. "No disintegrations"; from Darth Vader? You were never going to get the same character, so to many it would be automatic disappointment. It required far too much santisation and let's be frank, removes any mystique and mystery from the character while doing so, so it's a double whammy of bad. Thus you end up with the weird spectacle of a ruthless bounty hunter running a criminal syndicate that is... extraordinarily tame, and pretty frequently looking like a putz while doing it because you need some sort of tension. It's the sort of thing that looks great on paper but when you come to actually put it on screen you find that the reasons that Boba Fett was 'cool' are exactly the same reasons he can't work on screen as a Disney lead.

My booster gave me a dead arm. The 2nd shot was worse, since that actually made me feel outright ill for a day. I almost always get some odd immediate interactions from injections too, with the booster I got a feeling as if my hand was wrapped in ice for a couple of minutes. Having had 'long flu' before though any minor inconveniences from vaccines are just that. A sore arm and a bit of a headache is nothing compared to that mass of completely random ailments; 'favourite' being the random feeling that my skin was shrinking that I got for literally months on end. You knew perfectly well it wasn't, but that didn't stop the feeling of it. Oh yeah, and my caffeine tolerance got randomly reset so even as single cup of coffee could have me bouncing off the walls. Needless to say I've had a flu jab every year since except the last one as there was no flu in NZ last year.

The articles deal with that fine, really- on the British side it was always intended as political theatre and not as constructive diplomacy; and quite possibly even intended to be actively destructive to attempts at diplomacy. She was always going there with the explicit purpose of looking tough. Hence cosplaying Thatcher despite it being comparatively bikini weather (with apologies to anyone now imagining Maggie in a bikini). It mostly failed at looking tough because it got overshadowed by her looking stupid, at least for the publications that published her looking stupid (which it has to be said many didn't for some reason). The British approach has always been to pour oil on the flames- there was also that ludicrous incident with the RN destroyer months ago and them panicking about reports from the bbc and daily fail they'd run away from warning shots. If you're in a domestic crisis you always have the option to wag the dog. As with the bombing of that aid worker and his children* in Kabul it was pretty obvious from the start that the US version was at best... selective. *Hmm. Wonder whether that guy's family will get a 3.5bn slush fund for compensation? I'll offer, hmm, 3.5bn to 1 odds, and feel a bit dirty taking the $1. Probably, as the US does not accept Russian sovereignty over the southern Kurils. Indeed, they don't actually recognise anyone's sovereignty over two of them. Which may be a hold back to Truman's demand that the Soviets hand one of the Kurils over to the US for basing rights...

But Joe Biden said the ground would freeze in February... Though that reminds me of one of the more obscure funny things from Liz Truss's visit to Moscow. She deliberately dressed up like Maggie Thatcher did, as if it was -20. It was actually a toasty 3 degrees, and she must have absolutely broiled herself. If anyone wants an actual illustration of just how stupid the New Zealand economy is at the moment, our Prime Minister already has one of the highest pay rates in the OECD (strangely enough there's always money to give politicians salary and benefit increases, otherwise their, haha, "quality might drop"). She made more money, tax free, from her house appreciating last year than from her salary- 8 times the median household income. "There will never be a capital gains tax so long as I am PM" says woman who would have to pay extra 125k in tax if there were. Oh yeah, and the alternative leader owns no less than 7 properties...

Meh, they still don't have enough troops. Indeed, the propaganda about that has been pretty ludicrous. Enough for an "imminent" invasion, supposedly spend another couple of weeks adding troops and readiness was... down to 70%? Guess it's the old anxiety habituation in action, ie you can't tell people they're in immediate danger too long or they start to ignore it. Now we're back to 'imminent', just avoid mentioning the word itself. At least Pentagon spox or whoever it was got to the meat of the issue- making NATO relevant again. Didn't see if he mentioned the attempts to get Europe to buy overpriced US gas, but he didn't really need to. Nothing braindead about that. Every increase in energy price helps out all the massively overexposed shale operations that were in trouble with the low energy prices of the early pandemic phase. Bad news for ordinary americans, but big stragetic advantage to the US, and neither party cares about poor people anyway. Not a US only phenomenon, of course, we've got reports coming out about how historic high inflation disproportionately effect... the rich. The logic being, if you're poor and spending all your money anyway you don't spend extra when prices go up because you have no extra money to spend, so there's zero impact. OTOH, rich people pay more for the Jaguar or Cayenne, so are effected. This is mostly to run interference for the entire $50bn stimulus package that caused a a lot of the inflation going to rich people who bought houses, leading to a completely unpredictable 30% (no typo, thirty percent, and yes that's annual) appreciation in house prices. The average household would now have to save every cent- ie spend literally nothing- for 14 years to afford a house at current prices. Problem being, of course, that by the time that 14 years has elapsed on historic trends the house prices will have trebled again while wages will have gone up ~15%. Coincidentally, the average NZ member of parliament owns 3 houses... Wonder how many shares in defence production and energy US politicians have?

The British FM Liz Truss and Russian FM Lavrov had a meeting today. It was... interesting, apparently*. I'd say it was pretty much exactly what you'd expect when one of the more experienced international diplomats meets, well, an idiot trying to look tough for domestic brownie points. Most of the damage done was self inflicted. Truss didn't know how translators worked, and spent the first part of the meeting speaking over them before being told to shut up and be patient. How you can be a FM and not know that basic level of etiquette is difficult to understand. It's not even a power move, it just makes you look stupid, and as if you simply couldn't be bothered with even the basics. Which was kind of a recurring theme. She also managed to say that Britain would never recognise Russian sovereignty over Rostov and Voronezh. Which are internationally recognised parts of Russia; again a sign of being hopelessly underprepared and worse, it plays perfectly into the Russian narrative. She had to be corrected by the British ambassador, and it wasn't even a trap question since the context was pretty obviously whether Russia was allowed to move troops around Russia. That she apparently thought they were regions of Ukraine was indicative of being hopelessly underprepared but also kind of irrelevant, if you have any pretensions towards competence as a diplomat you always use a generic non answer like "We recognise Russian sovereignty on Russia, but not on Ukraine" for such questions since getting them wrong doesn't make you look tough, but like a moron. It also makes it hard for other diplomats to take you seriously. (Not her first rodeo, she also somehow managed to say that Baltic Nations were on the Black Sea) *there's a more detailed take from the FT, which I'd have used but thought would be be paywalled when it isn't.

We have a similar protest here which is labeled as being alt right etc, but the 2nd most popular flag there is actually the Maori Sovereignty flag; not exactly a staple with neo nazis and the like. Does get rather amusing constantly being told that it's all alt right imported american conspiracy theories from Steve B*nnon and his coterie of trumptards- and there is a lot of MAGA stuff, to be fair- when every shot has a uniquely local flag being waved enthusiastically by decidedly brown people. The most amusing in absolute terms though? Could be the guy who thinks face masks cause lung cancer, and that the media deliberately make them look stupid? Or maybe the South Island convoy forgetting that Wellington is located in the cunningly named 'North Island' and that they couldn't simply drive across Cook Strait; leading to them trying to organise a Dunkirk type operation on short notice...

The nVidia purchase of ARM officially dead having looked like it was pining for the fjords for at least the last few months. Reuters has Softbank floating ARM as an IPO instead.

While ISIS certainly doesn't like them Taliban and Qatar/ AJ are best buds*. One of the more funny accusations made against Qatar in the western press as part of the publicity campaign for the planned Saudi invasion** was that they were supporting the Taliban as the Taliban had an embassy there. The funny thing being that the US asked Qatar to set that embassy up, in order to have somewhere/ someone to hold the ongoing negotiations that eventually became the agreement Trump made with them and led to the US withdrawal of last year. *some may have seen former AJ journalist Charlotte Bellis running publicity for the Taliban lately using the contacts she developed at AJ. Pretty funny watching an organised disinformation campaign as the target of it rather than from the outside. **seriously, the whole idea was to take over Qatar's massive gas fields. Qatar has a tiny population of actual Qataris, like the Emirates most people there aren't Qatari. Someone had to point out to Trump that the largest US base in the ME was there, including CENTCOM's forward command centre.

'Funny'* thing is that half of the world leaders who have turned up to the opening ceremony are... muslim. Literally, 10 out of 20 of the leaders there are muslim. In contrast the only muslim 'country' in the diplomatic boycott is Kosovo, which doesn't even have an independent foreign policy. It's deeply ironic that when you get an actual and genuine case of muslims being persecuted muslim 'champions' like MbS or MbZ kiss the ring and muslim little b brotherhood be damned. And you have those with similar supposed sentiments who didn't turn up- one Recep Tayyip Erdogan, for example; since he's in the prelims of an election race and the optics wouldn't be good- sending Uighurs back to China despite all their talk. *For something I actually found funny, the country with the 3rd most contestants in the Olympics is listed as ROC- which is, of course, the abbreviation for Republic of China, ie Taiwan. Sadly, in this case it actually stands for Russian Olympic Committee...

There are a couple more capable neighboring states than Ukraine. Poland. Japan. Arguably Finland and Norway too, despite having far lower population. Ukraine really isn't very capable at all. And, well, the US. After all Sarah Palin could see Russia from her house*, and that's pretty much the definition of neighboring. The problem for Russia is not Ukraine's capability, it's that the next round of 'Russian threats' post Ukraine accession would have purely defensive NATO troops, planes and missiles 100km from Smolensk, Belgorod and Rostov; and no natural defense lines before Moscow. *yes, I know.

The damage to the house was definitely not caused just by a suicide belt and is from casual inspection far more consistent with a missile strike. There are alternative explanations for the damage that don't involve missiles though. A missile is what some of the locals say as well, though all agree there were ground troops present their and the US accounts differ very significantly. Hard to reconcile the locals' accounts of a two hour gun battle with the US implying a surgical/ precise in and out with minimal fighting (plus losing a helicopter, albeit helicopters are fundamentally unreliable), and though the locals are not trustworthy enough to take at their word the bulk of supplementary evidence does support their version. Civilian casualties (10, from the pro Turkey/ HTS White Helmets or 7 from the more anti Turkey/ HTS SOHR) observed on the ground and from the US recounting do not reconcile at all as they say Qurayshi only killed 2 children and his wife in the blast. That leaves either 7 or 4 civilian deaths, and one or four unexplained potential fighter deaths which is only really consistent with and compatible to the locals' account. Has to be said, there's at least one pretty recent examples of local accounts being 100% accurate and the US ones being... somewhat unreliable.

ISIS have lost another 'Caliph'- in very similar circumstances to Baghdadi. Also hits all the stereotypical points from the conflict. Major ISIS figure found in Syria right next to the Turkish border and in an area of Turkish influence/ protection if not outright control. Controlled by the 'reformed' jihadis of Jabhat al Nusra Hayat Tahrir al Sham. Blows himself up rather than be captured. Like Baghdadi (and a significant and literal majority of senior ISIS leaders) was captured and held by the US at Camp Bucca before being released. I'm always slightly amused when someone choosing to blow themselves up rather than be captured is described as 'cowardly'. If it had been an ISIS raid and a US soldier choosing to blow himself up rather than be captured it would be the height of heroism. Just because you don't like them doesn't make them a coward.

Dumb, sure, crappy, meh; she's arguably correct and it's mostly dumb because it was obviously going to get a negative reaction. Note: I absolutely loathe ethnicity and race as concepts, so bear that in mind... Hardly anyone knows what race and ethnicity mean and use the terms interchangeably. They're fundamentally stupid concepts as used now and since they reduce whole groups of people to a few traits as if that's all that is important fundamentally crappy even when used as intended. Race being based on physical differences and ethnicity being based on cultural ones is the distinction that should be in effect but people can't handle the idea that Idris Elba could be racially west African but also ethnically English (and not just the National Front types you might imagine; we also got the infamous BBC claim that Luther doesn't count as a black tv series lead because... he doesn't have black friends or eat Caribbean food or act 'black'. Doubly ironic because Idris Elba has nothing to do with the Caribbean, he's of direct west African extraction) Goldberg is arguably right because the Holocaust wasn't about race, but about ethnicity. Jews weren't separated based on physical traits as they are indistinguishable from general Europeans or Levantines with the stereotypical racist tropes of big nose and sallow skin being, well, stereotypical racist tropes. If you took me and Heinrich Himmler and asked a random person which had Jewish ancestry based on stereotypes 99% they'd pick Himmler, not me. Their genocide was perpetrated on cultural lines, not physical ones, and thus can most properly be said to based on ethnicity, not race, whatever the Nazis said. OTOH, the whole reason that the Rwandan Genocide could happen was because there were significant and apparent physical differences between Hutus- darker skinned, more robust build, central African appearance- and Tutsis with lighter skin, more gracile build and more of a north east African appearance. That's how you could get 400k people killed with machetes and sticks and who didn't have a cultural/ religious requirement to self identify; because they were easily identifiable by physical traits. But that is always labeled an ethnic genocide instead of a racial one, which it ought to be labeled as. This is my biennial tirade about how stupid the concepts of race and ethnicity are, set the calendar for February 2024.

If Turkey asked to join NATO she was always going to be allowed in- same if she wanted to join the Warsaw Pact for that matter. For either the strategic advantages outweighed any other considerations; it's a bridge from Europe to Asia and v/v, and from the Med to the Black Sea, and for NATO it was only their second direct border with the USSR after Norway. Indeed, without Turkey the Black Sea would have literally been a Soviet lake. Nice place to put nukes too, and then offer to withdraw them from in return for there being none in Cuba.

Sure, unlike Georgia Ukraine is within NATO's potential area. But if NATO's intention is to include everyone in Europe then that includes Russia too... Ultimately and fundamentally the idea of a military alliance is not to be self perpetuating, but to make itself irrelevant. Labeling any concessions as appeasement just means that you're doing exactly as I said: not recognising that anyone else has genuine security concerns except from NATO. From the Russian POV them making any more concessions just leads to more being demanded further down the line, ie it's appeasement as well. And they made nothing but concessions from 1992 to 2008, didn't get them anywhere except where we are now. You can label any agreement as appeasement if you want. Indeed, such labels are pretty much always a sign of taking a hard line position. Two groups of people labeled the JCPOA as appeasement, for example. Strongly Pro Israel/ anti Iran US politicians and commentators. Strongly anti Israel/ anti US Iranians.

Have you listened to/ read any of the rhetoric that has been spouted recently? What exactly do you think telling Russia to withdraw their troops is, apart from telling them where they can deploy on their own soil? It's most definitely seen that way by NATO when the situation is reversed, and NATO gets decidedly pissy when Russia tells them not to deploy close to her borders. Of course, those are purely defensive deployments due to Russian aggression, anything the Russians do in response to NATO actions is just more aggression... And if NATO had never invaded Serbia... Kosovo predates Crimea, and unlike Crimea had zero legality per international law. That was a conflict in which British troops were- literally literally- ordered to attack Russian ones by NATO Command, specifically by General Wesley Clark. Fortunately that beautiful fellow James Blunt ignored the order as being what it was- completely insane- and got backed up Sir Mike "I'm not going to start World War 3 for you" Jackson. But still, these are the sort of things Russia remembers; its allies are fine to partition- completely outside of international law too, the only argument was 'special case' not that it was actually legal- and its troops fine to attack. That will always be the case, whatever Russia's leadership. That was the case when the decidedly west friendly Yeltsin was in power too- that Pristina incident was while Yeltsin was President. And the Open Door policy that NATO holds so very dear never applied to Russia even when Yeltsin applied. Truth of the matter is, when Russia has weak leaders like Yeltsin NATO ignores her. When she has a strong leader like Putin they at least pay attention. Lesson learned. And in either case NATO has been persistently aggressive in both tone and conduct, more so than Russia by any objective measure. NATO is a military alliance, that's its entire raison d'être, and is localised to the North Atlantic. It gets nothing, indeed a proper détente with Russia literally makes it irrelevant. That doesn't matter at all though, unless the existence and necessity of NATO is itself an intrinsic justification, which it isn't. The countries that make up NATO get a decent amount though. Less military spending. Better leverage on China. A Russia less likely to stir trouble on the principle of the matter and a decent bit more.

INSTEX at least theoretically is up and running isn't it? That's what is meant to be used to trade with Iran so the Euros can say that they aren't abrogating the JCPOA. SWIFT really ought to go anyway*, since it's well known that its security is compromised; not something you want for an essential financial service. At the moment it's in no one's interests to make an issue of that because it's important to everyone, cut Russia off but it becomes a lot less important for her and some obvious confidence collapsing jiggery pokery visited on SWIFT would be a perfect parting shot. *or at least get a decent revision.

That plant will be pretty far from the cutting edge by the time its built, which is part of the problem really. 5nm is about to supplanted by 3nm, now, in 2 years time it will be 2 processes behind. If the US wants cutting edge fabs from foreign companies they'll have to cut down on the- as rampant as China's, if more subtle- industrial espionage and use of standover tactics to get trade secrets. Otherwise you'll get older tech taking advantages of the massive subsidies on offer while the real development stays in Asia.

Well yeah. If you actually do want to 'contain' China then you have to deal with Russia. If you want to deal with Russia you have to, well, deal with Russia. That means compromise, not dictating terms. The complete lack of any sense at all that Russia has genuine concerns- and such ludicrous spectacles as simultaneously saying that NATO forces can deploy anywhere they want, it's their right, but Russia cannot deploy troops in their own country if they're too close to a border- shows the diplomatic equivalence of sociopathy or is a deliberate policy to keep crises going. And let's be frank, since this current circus is a six monthly to annual affair every time an exercise is held it's the latter. There's plenty of mid term benefits for the US from stoking tensions with Russia though. As previous, it keeps the alliance they are head of at the forefront and gives it a purpose. Economically, a response would be shouldered in massive disproportion by economic rival Europe in such terms as losing 40% of their gas supply; to be replaced mostly by far more expensive US supplies, of course, and carried by ships that don't exist yet. The sanctions and threat of sanctions over Nord Stream 2 were designed entirely to keep Russia paying Ukraine for transit rights, keep veto over the supply and impose a further cost on everyone due to Ukraine stealing so much of it. And of course there's the perpetual threat of using- European run, not US run world standard- SWIFT as a weapon. Which would immediately, of course, make it not the world standard any more to anyone who isn't a US proxy. Militarily... well it isn't going to come to shooting, unless the Russians double the number of troops, but you still get a nice bump for US arms suppliers.

Dude, that's complete and utter bollocks, then and now. Go back and read the initial threads you quoted earlier for the then. For the now, and literally on this page. What's even the point of trying to gaslight when a complete counter is a mousescroll up?

Well sure in general, just not in the Med. They're not close to anything Russian except the forces in Syria, and transit of the Bosporus by carriers is literally proscribed by treaty. Guess the US could just abrogate Montreux as well, but that wouldn't even be popular in Turkey. Comparison to a Russian deployment to Hmeimem is pretty irrelevant. The US and its allies has contiguous airspace and supply capability all over western and central europe and over the entire Med (and Baltic for that matter). They can easily redeploy assets if needed. The Russians had to avoid Turkish and NATO airspace which meant a massive detour was required over the Caspian and approval from Iran and Iraq if they wanted to take an air route. Indeed, some of the planes refueled in Iran. Different nowadays, but that was 2015 and only a few months away from Turkey shooting down the slowest Su-24 ever built.