I don’t think the story is perfectly clear right now. But suppose it becomes clear. Suppose that we find that Covid-19 was ( for sure) the accidental product of virologists working in a Wuhan lab, funded by the US government.
What would happen?
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West Hunter 
very likely created in a lab in winnepeg and shipped over in full knowledge of the canadian government , big coverup and quick exit of secret employees
Probably the same thing that happened to Iraq War backers: they’ll get promoted, cushy NGO gigs, blue checkmarks on twitter, and continue to be respectable cited sources in mainstream corporate media. They’ll die fat and happy.
Agreed. Probably it will stay a low-profile news anyway: Managing the end of covid is much more pressing and tricky, as the narrative to justify what has been done until now and which measures and vaccination scheme will be pushed in 2022 become crucial. Do it wrong and you can face pitchforks if public perception of covid dangerosity change quickly, which may happen end of winter…
That seems to be standard procedure in dealing with massive screw-ups by our betters.
I had this exact same thought. Modern society punishes people who murder one or a few dozen, but if you murder thousands, you’re rewarded for it.
I think that what is actually coming is an extreme melt-down regarding the confidence inspired by agencies like the CDC by anyone with half a brain. The “authorities” will deny the obvious forever because they will think that is the best way to save their own skins even at the (extreme) costs to the institutions in which they spent their careers.
A limited hangout, blame rogue elements in the NIH conspiring with China, Fauci would definitely have to go under the bus.
I’m not sure how much more clear the story can get. I can’t imagine the Chinese releasing the records of the Wuhan lab. Credible people working in the field seem convinced it was manufactured.
Lots of people suspected this from the beginning, at least the part about it escaping from a lab in Wuhan. Bret Weinstein and his wife Heather Heying discussed it on Youtube,
I did not hear that Fauci funding this gain-of-function research in Wuhan until recently.
Did it escape or was it released.
Remember the tardiness in closing down air traffic?
Coincidence or cover up?
If it was released on purpose it was an extremely stupid idea. It’s cost them dearly.
I can’t see it being released deliberately. What’s the point?
It isn’t deadly enough to do real harm. It mostly kills sick and old people, which isn’t going to harm the West much long term. Trump and Biden both responded badly, in different ways, but could the ChiComs count on that?
And deliberately releasing it in Wuhan, without taking information offline first, without a cover story? This is just too wacky for me.
Indeed. Covid is the worst biowarfare weapon ever.
Now, if you say it was PART of a bioweapons program, and they were using a relatively low-harm virus as the vehicle to learn how to make things that are very infectious, but it just got away from them, that I could believe. But as a deliberate attack on the West and the rest of the world, no.
I agree: it can’t get clearer. But the media appear to be ignoring the story. I’m not sure why exactly.
at least in Germany the media does not ignore the story. There are regularly articles in big newspapers describing it as the most likely answer to question of the origin of Covid. Also I think the situation is not clear at all. There are still also leading experts who doubt the lab-leaks theory.
That’s interesting. One might say the US media don’t want to get into anything controversial involving Fauci, although it’s not totally obvious why. I assumed that with his known funding of Chinese research into gain-of-function for human viruses, it wasn’t a safe topic in an election year.
But this doesn’t explain why media in other English-speaking countries (AFAIK this includes the UK, Canada and New Zealand) are also avoiding the topic.
“There are still also leading experts who doubt the lab-leaks theory.” Initially there were leading experts who said they doubted the theory – indeed, rejected the theory. We now know they were lying. So why should we believe these further experts?
The story will never become clear, I think that is a pretty good guess, considering it’s China and China 100 percent of the time covers up fuck ups.
Yea well perfectly clear ain’t happening. But here is a podcast that paints a picture that incompetence was responsible for the outbreak. Lex Fridman podcast number 247. Jaime Metzl lab link theory. It sure as hell could have leaked from a lab that was built in a very shoddy way. But we won’t ever know. Lex has a bunch of great thought provoking podcasts, go forth and multiply your perspectives.
If it becomes clearly established, Dazsak will be toast, Fauci will go under a bus, and Alina Chan will win the Nobel Prize for being a Smart Arse.
But it won’t.
This will contribute to the crumbling of trust in social and government institutions in the US. History shows that decaying societies can survive solely on historical inertia for quite a while but not forever. The final collapse is difficult to predict but when it comes it may be very rapid. Nobody in France at the beginning of the year 1789 thought that the monarchy would be gone in an historical blink of an eye.
Given Dazsak’s attempt to fund illegal gain-of-function research through DARPA, and then successfully through Fauci, the whole development was intentional, and at least one major university was on board a year before the outbreak…They all, including executives at Pfizer et al, belong in prison…
Precisely nothing.
Oh and congratulations on being right on the Epstein-Barr thing, hopefully a non-leaky traditional vaccine will become available soon.
Yes, seconded, I expect to end my career as a doctor with MS no longer a real concern because of universal, early, EBV vaccination; that is great and vindicates your (Greg’s) perspective.
The lab leak hypothesis: I almost admire the effrontery with which top dog science bureaucrats conspired to accuse others of being conspiracy theorists.
In a sane world they’d be hanged from lampposts: in our nambly-pamby society they’ll escape unscathed.
“In a sane world they’d be hanged from lampposts: in our nambly-pamby society they’ll escape unscathed.”
Ditto the instigators of the war in Iraq. A sane society would’ve painted the streets of DC with their guts, and I am not speaking metaphorically. Instead they all got promotions.
I agree. I never understood why anyone outside government and the armaments industry supported that wicked war.
People will believe anything.
There were several reasons for supporting the war.
Saddam was challenging the U.S. and its more-or-less allies repeatedly.
Saddam was trying to convince people he DID have weapons of mass destruction.
Saddam was interfering with the inspections that would show whether he did or did not have weapons of mass destruction, or at least research programs to create them.
Saddam was definitely supporting terrorist acts against the West.
Eventually, he succeeded in goading the govts. involved into being fed up with him.
You think it’s OK to go to war because you feel somewhat irritated?
Surely not even the US federal government was stupid enough to believe its own propaganda.
First, learn to read MORE CAREFULLY. I didn’t say anything about what is OK. I just talked about the motivations of those in power.
Second, learn not to make assumptions. You ass/u/me that because the Coalition didn’t find any WMDs, there weren’t any, there was no program to recreate them, that the intelligence agencies knew this, and that the U.S. govt. just made up a lie and spread it. Consider that all four assumptions may be wrong.
The British intelligence services concluded that the case for the attack was bogus. Blair got them to withdraw the conclusion and tell him what he wanted to be told. The Chief Intelligence Liar in the affair got the promotion he presumably wanted. All this was uncovered by a judicial enquiry some years later. I conclude that it’s entirely reasonable to conclude that fedgov lied. Britgov did and it was under much more scrutiny than the elected monarch is in the USA.
Funny, I never saw any document that said British intelligence concluded that Saddam had no WMDs before the attack. I did see the minutes of the meeting where the upcoming attack was being discussed, and the British chiefs were worried about chemical attacks on the British troops. But I suppose that was deliberately inserted to justify the attack?
Paranoid thinking is so much fun.
“the document stated that at the time of the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Saddam Hussein did not pose an urgent threat to British interests, that intelligence regarding weapons of mass destruction was presented with unwarranted certainty, that peaceful alternatives to war had not been exhausted, that the United Kingdom and the United States had undermined the authority of the United Nations Security Council, that the process of identifying the legal basis was “far from satisfactory”, and that a war was unnecessary.”
That’s the WKPD summary of the Chilcot report. That, in the usual British mode of understatement, is pretty much a sneering rejection of the sort of rubbish you are pushing.
The Chilcot report was issued years after the invasion. It states that Blair fucked up, and the intelligence services fucked up. But I don’t see anywhere that it says ‘The intelligence services knew Saddam had no WMDs’, nor do I see anywhere that it says that Blair knew that. Nor do I see anywhere that it says the U.S. intelligence services, or the Bush administration, knew that Saddam had no WMDs.
This is the key point that keeps getting obfuscated. It’s the difference between “incorrectly believed Saddam was a threat” and “knew that Saddam was NOT a threat.”
Saddam was trying to convince people that he had weapons of mass destruction – by saying he did not.
He said he had no WMDs, but continually refused to comply with the inspections that would have shown he had no WMDs, if he in fact didn’t have them. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Saddam was the WMD ,himself
A series of articles by that right wing mouthpiece THE NEW YORK TIMES, reporting on U.S. soldiers in Iraq wounded by ‘non-existent’ Iraqi chemical weapons, may be found at https://archive.is/vYbSi
And Saddam was telling the truth. That article is about the remnants of stuff from the Iran-Iraq war. Belgian farmers still find WWI gas shells from time to time today. So what?
There was a contingent motivated by how horrible Saddam was to Iraq, especially the Kurds. Saddam wasn’t just another middle east leader. Even in that neighborhood he stood out for brutality, See Kanan Makiya, he wrote about it.
But it turned out there was no good replacement and the place just fell apart. Only the Kurds were happy with the outcome. Although the Shiites, overall, also did not miss him at all. But their leaders despised the USA. The Kurds were willing to take a chance on the US.
He had planes spraying poison gas on the Kurds.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Saddam_Hussein%27s_Iraq
What would happen is the opposite of what I think was wanted, there will be a widespread loss of faith in government in people who now have that faith (I am not one of them). This will mean that when a really dangerous virus emerges there will be more millions that reject offered vaccines.
I think it is clear that government is trying to prepare for future viruses, but they have botched this one so badly that they have shot themselves in the foot by trying to bring a new technology out wholesale before it was ready.
Ironically, even if they perfect the technology, more people will reject it.
People don’t put enough thought into what might happen if a pathogen crosses the species barrier in a lab. I work with SIV fairly regularly and, if my scalpel slipped in just the wrong moment, there’s a small but very real chance I could be infected. The virus that survived in my body would then be known as HIV-3.
The lab-leak hypothesis is not tinfoil conspiratard nonsense. And I say this as a passionate supporter (and participant) of biomedical research.
I agree, except you are very unlikely to transmit that SIV further. Wasn’t it that single-use of needles weren’t mandated 50 ago in Africa?
I’m not a member of any of the high-risk demographics and I don’t mix bodily fluids with any of them, either. It’s pretty likely that if I were the first case of HIV-3, I could also be the last. That’d be an interesting story: “the epidemic that wasn’t.”
Still, who wants to take that risk?
It’s a hard life. You follow BSL-4 precautions for 20 years and no one cares, but when you fuck one monkey…
There are few workplaces in this world where there are not one, but two ways of being fired for spanking the monkey.
But to be fair it really was an incredibly sexy monkey.
That monkey was asking for it.
Let’s be honest: that chance is incredibly small. So small that the number of lab accidents is simply not large enough to make it realistic. E.g., rhesus B, from which a few humans have actually died, is not exactly a real problem. Nor any veterinarian ever got infected by a canine coronavirus. And so on.
Depends on the species of virus. Whenever Herpes B crosses the species barrier, we notice it because it gets people so sick, and we observe that it doesn’t spread much. One researcher did manage to get his wife infected with it, but that was the only known case of human-to-human transmission.
SIV has crossed the species barrier into humans at least 3 times and successfully spread as a human illness at least twice (now known as HIV-1 and HIV-2). HIV-1 is also able to replicate in chimpanzees (crossing a second species barrier). The strain we use (SIVmac239) is a close relative of HIV-2 and successfully crossed from the sooty mangabey to the rhesus macaque (and has successfully been used for research in cynomolgus macaque as well, showing another crossing of the barrier). Some scientists will even knock HIV genes into SIV (“SHIV”).
All that being the case, it shouldn’t surprise us that the scenario I was conjecturing about… has actually happened at least once. The virus isolated from this lab worker has been dubbed “SIVhu,” but the only reason we don’t call it HIV-3 is that we don’t see thousands of people who now have it.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199401203300304
We would be foolish to assume that this virus can’t do what we already know it can do. HIV-3 will eventually exist, and it could very well come from a lab.
Have any of Nicholas Wade’s very valid questions ever been addressed?
What questions? Example please.
Would it even be possible at this stage to demonstrate that Covid was bioengineered or was naturally evolved? The implication I’ve picked up from various sources is that neither position is falsifiable with current knowledge–and that either the cooperation of the relevant operators or the discovery of a closely related virus in an animal host would be necessary, at a minimum, for adequate knowledge. Even if it wasn’t a lab leak, it clearly could have been given the risks regularly taken in viral research. The operators–American and Chinese–have every incentive to do a cover-up. They have a parallel incentive to produce the appearance a natural origin. If possible, they might try to infect some obscure species with what could be interpreted as a Covid precursor. Why not take the earliest available sample of Covid, bioengineer it in a way that brings it closer to the structure of a similar virus known to exist in bats/pangolins/whatevers, then infect the chosen species, and, finally, serendipitously, (pre)capture one of these special creatures–thus proving a natural origin? There are some challenges–making sure the new virus is infectious and doesn’t kill the bats (too quickly), ensuring secrecy. But, they’ve had over 2 years to jump these technical hurdles. This kind of project might sound evil on the surface, but consider the risk to the anti-racist movement or the Official Science lobby if the general public comes to believe the wrong theory about the Wuhan virus.
My limited understanding is that if the virus was engineered (through CRISPR or whatever), we would be able to see it. There would be obvious splice sites and insertion of transposons.
Creating the virus through selection isn’t realistic. The closest wild relative is RaTG-13, a bat virus with only 96% simularity. That’s a big distance to cross with a virus that only generates 2 mutations a month. “Passaging” RaTG-13 into SARS-COV-2 would have taken several decades.
For what purpose would it have been engineered? Who would create a bioweapon with a 99.6 per cent survival rate? One that mostly kills strategically worthless targets (elderly, infirm civilians) while sparing young healthy soldiers?
Most people I trust say the virus had a zoonotic origin. A lab-leak scenario might have been involved.
Almost everything in your reply has nothing to do with the lab-leak or zoonotic question. Which is interesting.
Maybe the virus was manufactured for the purpose of making GMOs. Isnt a firus necessary in the final step?
The lab in Wuhan has been putting out papers for 5 years or so describing their quest to make bat corona virus infectious in humans by splicing on new spike proteins. Those papers now have an addendum across the top saying “But this could not possibly have led to COVID 19 because we were careful.”
Peter Daszak, their main cheer-leader, is on utube from 2016 bragging about making “killer viruses” in Wuhan.
Daszak was the point guy for organizing that letter in Lancet denouncing even the possibility of a killer virus coming out of the lab in Wuhan.
What if? By looking at neocon FP after Iraq and bankers after the GFC, I’m thinking “not much”, tbh. How many of those people really ended up in jail? Very few. Neocons have really become less powerful now, two decades later, at least, it seems that way; bankers didn’t notice any persecution.
The only big political event that caused some spanking by the elites was the Trump presidency and its election brouhaha aftermath. And even that wasn’t world shattering, they only took out influential rightist accounts from social media and jailed a bunch of prole nobodies who joined the Jan 6th riot.
So, I’m not holding my breath for Daszak, Farrar, Fauci, etc., or prominent GoF researchers like Ron Fouchier & the Chinese batcave researcher getting jail time or serious negative mainstream press. I don’t think the death count matters a lot, although it should; maybe in the further future ahead?
The media are not interested in this story. They’re only interested in one thing: ensuring continuing leadership – if you can call it that – by Democrats. They’ll stop at nothing. Comparing January 6 to .Pearl Harbor and 9/11? It’s ludicrous but that’s the story line.
The last thing they want is some kind of scandal involving Fauci. Or even the Chinese. The story about Fauci funding gain-of-function research is receiving zero coverage.
Poking around regarding the responsibility of Chinese is also receiving zero coverage. .The whole thing is too volatile. Who knows where it might lead?
When 6/1 happened, I remembered this by Greg:
Frankly, it would do Nancy Pelosi a power of good if she had to clean a homeless guy’s shit off her desk from time to time. Our politicians need to learn nostalgie de la boue.
Hilarious and spot on!
It depends on what “clear” means. If by “clear” you mean “the evidence makes it unreasonable to deny the lab leak hypothesis”, then maybe what is happening now would happen: a bunch of right-wingers would say Fauci, et al. should be hanged, while a bunch of left-wingers just ignore it. That said, if Republicans get in power again (seems likely) and decide they want to make an issue of this, then interesting things could happen. The left would be unable to ignore it, and would have to come up with a story: either they would have to let Fauci, et al., slide under the bus, or they would have to blame Republicans (that would be the first attempt) and then China (that would be the second attempt). If one of those convinced their supporters, then they’d stick with that, and to the extent that Republicans actually punished the people involved, much of the media world would condemn those Republicans as having put a black stain on liberal democracy. As for what would happen five years after that, well, that’s more interesting, but also much darker. My guess: 90% of people would either forget about it or not care about it anymore, and even progressives who were forced by their occupations to know about these sorts of things would admit–if pressed–that Fauci, et al., did pretty rotten things.
If by “clear” you mean “pretty much everyone agrees that there was a lab leak, etc.”, well, I don’t see how that could happen. I mean, God could make it happen, but given people’s psychologies, it seems to be a quite distant possible world. There would have to be video. (I mean, for goodness sake, beagle-gate did nothing to dent Fauci’s popularity!)
Interesting that you split opinion along right / left lines,
It’s my experience that nothing has split the conventional political categories like the pandemic.
I can’t predict where my friends, relatives and acquaintances will fall until they explicitly make it clear.
It is partly explained if one assumes that some people are more afraid of catching Covid than others. This is probably inborn.
Then there’s those who are afraid of the vaccines. They are worried about things like long term side effects.
There’s a camp that are outraged about vaccine mandates. A majority of them are not afraid of Covid. Another camp sees mandates as perfectly reasonable. They tend not to fear the vaccines.
There’s also a split along age lines, Older people are – sensibly – more fearful of Covid than young people.
It’s still not universal though. A friend of mine described her step-daughter’s young husband as incapacitated by a strong fear of both the disease and the vaccine.
I have found in my social circle most of those who are pro vaccine are on the left and those who don’t trust them are on the right
My analysis assumes the variant is Delta.
Omicron has changed things. The current vaccines at best provide modest help.
The mildness of Omicron has also changed things.
It’s early yet but just going by friends, relatives and acquaintances, some people have grown more fearful due to its highly contagious nature.
We are told that we are all going catch it sooner or later.
But this is all so new that people haven’t switched gears yet,
I have opened a bookmarks folder for people who do switch gears. I’ve called it “Bedwetters in retreat”.
The Republicans? Make an issue of it? Surely you jest.
Is it even in question that it wasn’t from the lab at this point?! You’d think the deleted database would have been the biggest clue…
Surprised you weren’t onto this much, much sooner, Greg. Seemed like something right up your alley.
Interested on your thoughts on GoF research more generally.
Also, as some other comments here have said: I bet the rest of the world does nothing.
China has a multi-pronged defence of screaming ‘RaCisM!’ (they know our retarded priorities well), state-sponsored obfuscation propaganda, counter accusations via ‘wolf warrior diplomacy’, etc. Not to mention legions of useful idiots willing to turn a blind eye or even sell their grandmother’s eye to please China in any way – politicians, businessmen (‘The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them!), even NBA players.
Could we get your take on Ukraine/Russia — how stupid have we been?
Old Cockie can speak for himself, but I enjoyed this take.
I went over to Unz Review just to see their crazy opinions on the Ukraine and I wasn’t disappointed. Meaner, nuttier, and chock full of one sided rants more than ever. If Cochran was to post his take on the Ukraine all it would do is attract flies. Putin is a smart man. If he attacks a foreign country where the overwhelming majority of people strongly dislike Russia see if you can guess the result. Putin can. My guess is he just wants a guarantee that Ukraine will never join NATO and a few other concessions, but I could be wrong.
I was wrong. I though Putin would be smart enough to see that invading Ukraine was a no win situation. It wasn’t just a no win situation it was the mother of all FUBARs.
Why do think it’s no-win?
Item: There was a long article in the Financial Times, describing Putin being completely paranoid about catching Covid. Foreign visitors must sit at one end of a very long table. Apparently anyone who ventures near him must be tested repeatedly and quarantined.
Macho man Putin. What a joke.
Russia is engaged in three kinds of major disasters. One would be enough to make this a no win situation. The outcome for Russia is an economic, political, and military disaster. I guess Putin honestly believed Ukrainians would welcome his tanks with parades rather than javelin missiles. What a fool.
You may not know that immediately prior to invading Ukraine, Putin signed a sweeping agreement with China. They’re agreeing to be strong allies, China needs some support before they launch their own invasion of Taiwan (During the Communist takeover of China in the late 1940s, the non-Communist forces under Chiang Kai-Shek retreated to Taiwan, Communist China has been obsessed with taking Taiwan ever since. I’m not saying they’re planning an invasion right away, but they are definitely planning it.)
So Russia is not alone. Russia likely did not think he’d be welcome in Ukraine (outside the areas he already controls). He did underestimate their willingness to fight back plus the European and American support. Whether that support is enough to chase the Russians out is not clear at present.
Just a note on Ukraine. Forget about being informed by the MSM on the latest developments on the war in Ukraine. I have found that when I follow recognized experts on military logistics, military tactics, and the Ukraine over at Twitter I find I am far better informed. But in doing so I know I am being fed a strongly biased Ukrainian point of view. The TV talking heads have almost no idea what they are talking about (but they pretend to be) but the the most respected twitter commentators are often times true experts in the specific subjects they are talking about.
@Dave I am not referring Ukrainian techniques on fighting, but on China’s political influence. It’s not a secret.
Depending on how successful the State Department will be in inciting further violence, it may not be that bad of a move.
Invasions can have an even stronger psychological effect – often a negative one – than PR.
Here’s an opinion:
<
blockquote>Russia’s initial offensive was based on an exaggeration of its ability to send armoured forces racing into Ukraine to occupy Kyiv. This grossly underestimated Ukraine’s determination to resist. Then the Russians neglected logistics and failed to protect mechanised units with infantry and air power. West Point would flunk a cadet for producing such a plan.
https://www.ft.com/content/eb3f3853-ab37-41f5-9cd2-bf5dfeee0dfb?segmentId=3f81fe28-ba5d-8a93-616e-4859191fabd8
I read earlier today that Putin is hiring Syrians who have had experience in urban fighting.
Meanwhile, several thousand men (from the US for the most part) have volunteered, a sort of foreign legion. There might Canadians too as we have a lot of people of Ukrainian descent. Also, there’s a contingent from Latvia.
sorry about the typo for the blockquote. I wish WordPress had a preview feature.
With the newly leaked emails, what evidence could plausibly be revealed at this point that has not already been found? The CCP will not release their lab records. With all the evidence, that should be taken as additional strong evidence of Wuhan lab origin. Should we not all be calling it the ‘CCP virus’? I lived in China for 10 years. The hygiene is bad, sometimes astonishingly bad, like no-soap-in-public hospital-restrooms bad, rule culture is lax, people accede to authority no matter how incompetent. Despite all this, the people are smart. If you wanted to find a country where a virus could be expertly manipulated and then accidentally leaked, you probably could not do better than China.
I just came across this from Tim Tyler (whom I’m surprised doesn’t seem to have commented here):
http://on-memetics.blogspot.com/2021/10/male-homosexuality.html
It got me wondering about the topic of his 2017 post. Does Greg think there are such things as “cultural pathogens”?
The problem with the “gay people literally have a virus” theory is that we would have already found the virus.
Only around two hundred viruses infect humans. The rate of discovery is slowing down (suggesting all the easy fruit is gone). Most new ones seem to be animal viruses that recently made the jump.
It’s not plausible that a virus could exist worldwide, infect a hundred million men, and remain undetected.
Greg’s idea was more like an immune system overreaction that zaps some neurons in childhood – he used narcolepsy as his model. If this is true, we would only have fleeting contact with the “gay germ”. It might not infect us at all.
I think your clip certainly represents what could happen
– if we’re lucky.
The advocates of such a theory will be denounced as Confederate flag-waving kooks and the media will make absolutely zero inquiry into the fact that the CDC regularly flies rapid-response teams to China to investigate outbreaks of exotic avian, swine and other flus.
“It’s not plausible that a virus could exist worldwide, infect a hundred million men, and remain undetected.”
And then there’s H. Pylori, (admittedly a bacterium rather than a virus) which took literally decades between detection and its role in stomach ulcers to be accepted – and that was with something that was not nearly as much of a political hot potato.
Is research into this even possible today?
There might easily be viruses that we haven’t found especially if they don’t cause much of a sickness.
But I’ve always wondered how a virus could cause homosexuality. No other known human virus has such a huge side effect.
Unrelated but there is a stupid new article in Nature which claims to have uncovered an evolutionary explanation for homosexuality: https://sci-hub.se/https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-021-01168-8
Of course it’s the usual suspects, Brendan Zietsch (a dumb psychologist from Australia) and Abdel Abdellaoui, an HBD denier and popular behaviour geneticist on Twitter.
Does not appear stupid on its face, but there may be other problems with the paper. I don’t have the competence to analyze.
Here’s the abstract:
Human same-sex sexual behaviour (SSB) is heritable, confers no immediately obvious direct reproductive or survival benefit and can divert mating effort from reproductive opportunities. This presents a Darwinian paradox: why has SSB been maintained despite apparent selection against it? We show that genetic effects associated with SSB may, in individuals who only engage in opposite-sex sexual behaviour (OSB individuals), confer a mating advantage. Using results from a recent genome-wide association study of SSB and a new genome-wide association study on number of opposite-sex sexual partners in 358,426 individuals, we show that, among OSB individuals, genetic effects associated with SSB are associated with having more opposite-sex sexual partners. Computer simulations suggest that such a mating advantage for alleles associated with SSB could help explain how it has been evolutionarily maintained. Caveats include the cultural specificity of our UK and US samples, the societal regulation of sexual behaviour in these populations, the difficulty of measuring mating success and the fact that measured variants capture a minority of the total genetic variation in the traits.
A Grand Unified Theory of gay men and Prince.
Also off-topic: chimpanzees appear to apply insects as medicine on open wounds:
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/942193
We do not yet know if chimpanzee medicine is as harmful as that of their human relatives.
Here’s an interesting article. It’s about a pandemic in 1889. Researchers are to find a possible specimen that may be in a museum or something like it,
Some think that it was a coronavirus that continues to circulate as one strain of the common cold.
Maybe the common cold is relatively recent. Same for influenza.
Dr Cochran, I listened to your latest interview at Future Strategist. In that interview, you expressed doubt as to whether or not the average Russian knows about the Golden Horde.
I’m here to assure you that the average Russian most definitely knows about the Golden Horde, as it is part and parcel of most of Russian myths and tales about its bogatyrs: Ilya Muromets, Alyosha Popovitch, Dobrinya Nikitich, Dunay Ivanovitch etc. Russian kids absorb this early on. Also, early Russian history (including Kievan Rus’) is taught in schools, as part of mandatory curriculum, at least since late 90s.
As to not understanding what Putin’s motivations are for invading the Ukraine (the name itself means “periphery,” with their old name being “Malorossiya” — “little/subset Russia”): Putin has explained his motivations; There is probably room for Ukraine as an independent state, but it doesn’t seem that Eastern Ukraine and Crimea will be part of it. And whatever independent state will remain, will probably not be in the orbit of NATO.
In the view of most Russians, United States is being the aggressor here. It also seems to many, that the State Department has been playing the game of spreading gay and women “rights,” all over the world, as well as shoving its facade of “inclusive democracy” (ie anarchy) into the throats of various populaces.
I suspect, Putin has seen enough of what the “good guys” have done in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Egypt etc. He knows quite well what happened during “Orange Revolution” and where the arming that began in 2017 has been going. The Russian government has expressed the idea that the American government is not agreement capable. https://steemit.com/news/@roguemoney/the-not-agreement-capable-americans-and-the-great-rt-russian-facebook-ads-panic
In other words, Putin thinks that America is even more rotten than his own corrupt country, its elites are batshit crazy and have been becoming dumber and more degenerate, and he does not trust American assurances any more than he would trust assurances of a kid or a woman.
Perhaps, he has miscalculated, but it is hard to blame him, given what he has expressed before. No one really listened though.
The fact that you two were joking (haha, funny) about importing Russian women into the West is part of what’s wrong with the American “good guy” motivations and why the Taliban kicked American asses out. (For which, naturally, the “good guys” have been starving them to death.) Godspeed to anyone resisting the aggression and perversion of the so-called “good guys.”
In other words, this war is a Fuck You from Putin. And I’m afraid he might actually use nukes, because he’s just in that kind of mood right now.
The part I’m not looking forward to is the impact of Russia revealing how utterly incompetent its conventional forces are.
We’re going to have to protect you, the way Britain and France had to protect the Ottomans.
This video explains a lot: the army is low status, treated very poorly. Guess they haven’t any hordes since WW2.
This, actually, was interesting. I’ve always known about the low status of conscripts and the prevailing dedovshina, including the robbing within ranks, but didn’t know that the organized crime groups were directly involved in milking soldiers, even veterans. If so, the situation is dire indeed for Russia’s military.
@gcochran9: re: “protect you.” As a born member of the rootless cosmopolitan race, and a non-citizen of the USSR since at least 6 years of age, I take some umbrage to this, good Sire. Am well-protected already, thank you for the care.
As to Russia being divvied up, this most likely is the biggest fear of Putin. Will Russia exist in its current form in the next 15-30 years, should the Ukrainian operation fail? This is the main question. I’m pretty sure he would have preferred, instead, to have a long-term arrangement with the US, to guarantee the status quo. But not seeing the US being able (or willing) to give any kind of guarantee. So, he acted. It looks like a miscalculation, but he felt cornered.
Putin was an idiot. While I was wrong in forgetting some details about you. Substitute “Mother Russia” for ‘you’ in my last comment.
Speaking of, how are you doing?
My beloved grandmother passed away, 2 months ago. Growing up, she replaced me a mother and, thereafter, also became a close friend. She had loved unconditionally and never bragged of all the good things she had done, never expected anything back. Until her very passing she would always inquire whether I had eaten (she cooked until the last year of her life, when her health took a steep dive). She was a very good human, all the while being a high-achiever, and liked by most people who she crossed paths with.
Other than the above and some other, related unpleasantness it has been a bearable year.
Here’s to hoping that the coming many years will be much better!
Really appreciate your interest. And how have you been?
Who was threatening to invade Russia? No one. Not even now. He’s paranoid.
Ask citizens of Donbass why they wanted Putin to help them. I recommend you look at this situation in a broader manner.
Ilya: “In other words, Putin thinks that America is even more rotten than his own corrupt country, its elites are batshit crazy and have been becoming dumber and more degenerate….”
So Putin and I have come to the same conclusion.
I too think America has some terrible problems. Then I look elsewhere and am reminded it could be a lot worse. Russia is a hopeless mess, the corruption is unbelievably bad. The government is a kleptocracy and the economy is a Ponzi scheme. The wealthy get the hell out taking the nations wealth with them, and Putin is a delusional old fool staring at his maps in his office, dreaming of empires past and empires future rebuilt by the great and powerful Putin.
@dave chamberlin: up until you mentioned Putin, this was the precise description of many places in Eastern Europe. Ukraine is definitely one of them. Likely, in worse position than Russia, since there’s less to steal and less talent to develop. All the actually smart ethnic Ukrainians (non-Jewish) that I personally know, who’re under 40 year of age, are in the West. Ukraine: the foremost exporter of wheat, corn, sunflower seeds, and prostitutes. Crimeans, overall, have been living better under Putin’s kleptocracy than the Ukrainian one. Jus’ sayin’.
All in all, thievery is a deeply ingrained cultural trait. “Lazha Ukraini” 🙂
I’m worried about the long-term quality of prostitutes, however. All the good-looking ones are streaming West… but they run the risk of succumbing to woke doctrines in the West and will fail to reproduce or reproduce with the Acqwons, producing Obaminations (who might yet become presidents, hmm).
That goes back to the joke that Prof. Miller (who organizes the Future Strategist podcast) made about importing Russian women, as part of his “creative” punishment package against Russia. I think it is a true travesty that American wokeness has so utterly permeated and destroyed the morality and ethics of the academic establishment of this country that an otherwise successful, TENURED professor of a female-only college can no longer date and marry his own female students. This is being looked down upon as “exploitation” and he would risk losing his livelihood, if he were to let one of those nubile chicks pursue him. On the other hand, the culture encourages these chicks to go out and experiment and, at the end of it all, naturally, turn themselves into angry blue haired lesbian dog-moms. I wonder if the blue hair color is done to signify solidarity with the blue balls of the good male professors who approve of this phenomenon. Like Prof. Miller himself, perhaps?
THIS is what we could all be joking about!
I wondered about this too: that the Ukraine is just as screwed up as Russia. Why wouldn’t they be?
How dare you question the narrative that the Ukraine is on the path to a civically minded, Western style democracy?! 🙂
The victim gets the sympathy in the Western countries. Have you not noticed how quickly people are to be classified as victims, normally something people avoided. The grievance industry is based on this.
But legitimately, after “respectable” countries gave up war (after WW1) there’s been a big shift in attitudes towards war.
The US would seem to be an exception, but it really isn’t. The US couldn’t ignore 9/11. They had to do something. That dragged them into the Middle East, a place to be avoided.
If the US invaded Canada or Mexico: that would comparable to Putin. And it’s not going to happen.
(Maybe now something like 9/11 would be ignored. A lot has changed in 20 years.)
And, so, everyone competes to be a victim. This is what so-called “Intersectionality” is all about. As Oprah famously said: “You get to be a victim, and YOU get to be a victim… Everyone gets to be a VICTIM!”
The Iraq war was a farcical tragicomedy. Iraqis had nothing to do with 9/11. The CIA lied about weapons of mass destruction. And yet Bush, a war criminal, is still being invited talk shows. Not sure Putin (“Putler”) will be so lucky.
I disagree with your comparison with contemporary Mexico or Canada. Every situation is unique, of course, but if I must choose, then, no, the Russian invasion of the Ukraine is more like pissed off Mexico invading Tejas in mid 19th century, because the US had been messing around, leading to Tejas seceding and, eventually, joining the US as Texas. It did actually happen!
By the way, more than half century prior, the Americans did invade the Canadiens, attempting to take Quebec. But the Canadiens were not swayed to believe in the American Revolution romantic lie of “no taxation without representation” and nonsense about “liberation” (https://www.historynet.com/debunking-boston-tea-party-myths/) So, the Brits bloodied Washington’s nose, and he was unsuccessful in his invasion of actually peace loving, practical Canadiens.
By the way, I happened to be in Vancouver, BC, during the 150th Anniversary of Confederation. Beautiful memories.
Hmm… Maybe I should put a Canadian flag as my photo tag on Facebook? “I’m with the people of Canada! Slava Canade!”
My wife is first generation Polish-Ukrainian. I’ve learned a lot from her side of the family about the disfunction from that part of the world that continues to this day. The saying they had in Poland during the communist times really nails it. “They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work.”
I admit that the onset of Wokeness is now threatening even a country as wealthy & powerful as the US. (I’m in Canada where we have a crackpot woke leader, Trudeau.)
I might have been more optimistic about Russia until Putin started a war.
Insane. Russia can shoot a hypersonic missile in a battle but they can’t feed their troops. A 20 million dollar anti aircraft vehicle broke down and was abandoned because ii was driving on cheap rotted Chinese tires. People are surprised that disinformation can be so effective in Russia while it is here. The supposed second best army in the world is actually the second best in Ukraine.
“The supposed second best army in the world is actually the second best in Ukraine.”
I don’t know whether that it is true but it is well said.
The Ukraine is like a big underdog in sports that slipped in a bunch of ringers to make their team better. Now that the Ukraine has a huge array of Javalins, Stingers missiles, bomb dropping drones, and the top notch weaponry from all the NATO nations and as a result they have an all star lineup. Too much is made of Ukrainian courage and Russian cowardice, high tech wins, last war weapons land tactics lose. BUT, keeping with the sports analogy talk the Russian incompetence smacks of throwing the game.
Private Ranov, Officer Fragged, Colonel Crushed, and General Kaput went on a three day hunting trip to the Ukraine. Little did they know the wildlife had fire and forget weapons. and would cheat by hiding. They forgot to bring food, they ran out of gas, and got lost in the woods. Then they got stuck in the mud during the day and froze their ass off at night because somebody forgot to bring the camping gear. When they finally got to town they were given the opposite of the parade they were expecting. We don’t yet know the end of the story but the unlucky ones decided to stay and grow sunflowers.
Beautiful!
You know, the thing is, the ultimate reason (as per Mearsheimer) for “the unlucky ones” ending up growing sunflowers, was that Uncle Sam was as culpable as the Bear. The Bear who sent these stooges to bring the Bear his food. By goading the Bear to hunt in the Ukraine, and later supplying those fire and forget weapons, Uncle Sam set up a magnificent trap and, thus, shrewdly won.
But Uncle Sam was a perfectionist. He was never satisfied (addiction is a big problem for him). So he decided to just finally decapitate the dumb Bear’s sorry ass. And he was successful. While he celebrated victory, the dead Bear’s poop started sprawling beautiful bright mushrooms, which started growing all over the Ukraine, some of them even gushing their juicy spores all over neighboring mighty castles of Europe, spreading themselves yet further. They were so gorgeous and warm, those mushrooms, that Uncle Sam momentarily forgot to celebrate… But only for a short bit, as his tranny lover reminded him to continue the bacchanalia, with the disco music playing.
We don’t know much yet, indeed.
Btw, if anyone’s interested, I can give a name to Uncle Sam’s darling. It’s a bit grotesque, so don’t say I didn’t warn you.
How to destroy a Russian mechanized army on a budget. You need 1 all terrain vehicle, 1 commercial drone, and one box of tank busting grenades. You need an eye in the sky to tell you the GPS coordinates of where a Russian convoy is parked for the night and off you go. Drive within 5 miles of said convoy and park for the night. Once it’s dark the Russians can’t see the drone so it’s time to blow up a bunch of tanks. The drone can only carry one bomb at a time but it’s a quick trip back and forth for the drone so let the fun begin. The drone has night vision and lets go of the grenade when it is exactly overhead of said target. 8PM kablooey, 9PM blammo, 10PM boom, you get the picture. Gonna really suck for those Russians trying to stay warm on a sub zero night in their vehicles. One relatively cheap grenade dropped and one 4 million dollar tank blown up every hour. No wonder they abandoned all those tanks. Hello drones goodbye tank warfare.
This just in. Ordinary Mariupol resident says: “This shit is happening because of fucking Americans’ involvement. This is America’s shit, these fags.”
He doesn’t hate Russians or the Ukrainian army. He hates on the Americans — the so-called “good guys” — who have to instigate trouble and death all throughout the world.
This comes from https://twitter.com/PLnewstoday
‘He doesn’t hate Russians.” I would not expect a person speaking Russian to hate Russians. No surprise there.
“America is to blame.” Yeah I did it. I destroyed everything in Mariupol and cackled madly as I did it. Disinformation works, I should know. I am live in a hotbed of idiots believing disinformation. Trumpies believing ridiculous conspiracy theories are all around me.
Most Ukrainians speak Russian (including with each other), in the Eastern part of Ukraine. Also, my ethnic Ukrainian friends in CA (from Western Ukraine, originally) speak both languages in their family.
As to Americans are to blame, don’t be a smartass. Obviously, I meant the State Department, the CIA, and affiliated bodies and their NGOs.
And when I say “Ukrainians in Eastern Ukraine” I include actual ethnic Ukrainians. Russian is the conversational language there, for a overwhelming majority.
You really aren’t suggesting that the state department or the CIA are in part responsible for this horrible war are you? Did I read that right?
EuroMaidan was, in no small part, assisted by NGOs affiliated with the State Dept, yes.
Failing to facilitate and achieve compromise with Putin regarding Ukraine was another matter that led to this.
I am as critical as anybody about some of the past actions of the United States Government. We stick our nose where it doesn’t belong frequently and have been the culprits in numerous wars. But Ukraine 2022? Not at all. The Ukraine has repeatedly stated in very clear language that they want to be part of Europe and they want to be a democracy. That and that alone provoked the attack of Putin’s Russia. He believes colonial bullshit belonging in the 1850’s and it has no place in 2022. You heard the ridiculous explanations of why Putin attacked the Ukraine and you are too smart to buy any of it. Evil tendrils of the United States influence reaching ever close to Mother Russia and threatening her with missiles right on her borders is simply disinformation nonsense that masks the evil intentions of a delusional Putin. Ukraine just wants to be an independent Ukraine and join the modern world and be as prosperous as it’s capable people deserve. But that is shot to hell now.
I’m not a fan of Putin, on personal level. A corrupt ex-KGB member, ruthless and power-hungry. That said, the situation in Ukraine has been a complex one. Here is one example, from Ukrainian TV (maybe you could use your Ukrainian mother-in-law, to translate):
As it has become apparent, going into Kiev was a bad idea, but ridding Donbass of these degenerates was essential. It had become apparent, over the last 8 years, the government in Kiev was not doing enough about them or, perhaps even, was tacitly supporting their activities. What a shame.
I still don’t understand some things: if the Ukrainians wanted to be “part of Europe,” how could they expect to be accepted, if they never took serious actions against such groups? And why did they, instead of doing something normal — like the tolerant Dutch and the Swiss, who accept their multilingual situation as a norm — drove wedges between their own people, by forcing fellow citizens in completely different regions of the state, on penalty of fines, to speak Ukrainian? (Yes, it’s a bit nuanced than that, but still holds true).
And, no less importantly, how could Europeans ever think of accepting them? And promulgating these lies about “Western-style democracy” and “human rights” in the Ukraine made the Western nations, particularly the US, de facto complicit in what is happening now.
That, of course, just besides the other support that the has US has given, including — again — the Euromaidan itself (for one, guess who paid for all the hundreds of buses to deliver the protesters to Maidan?) — during which a democratically elected government was overthrown.
I don’t know what exactly was “mediated” between the US, Macron, Putin and Zelenskiy, in the months prior to the invasion, but the US State Dept was not likely to listen to the demands of Putin. I disagree with all the extant official propaganda and people like Zeihan, who claim that Putin’s plans — from the onset — were to go after Moldova, the Baltics etc, after the Ukraine. Putin gave a high “ask” about “new European arrangement,” but I don’t believe that a compromise was not possible to achieve, if the US truly wanted it. It did not. And neither, for that matter, the criminally corrupt and petty Ukrainian government. Oh, sorry, I should’ve been singing high praises to “Churchill-like” Zelenskiy (who, many suspect, is a cocaine addict — the signs are there and he also refused to take a drug test).
IMO, if Texas had the right to secede from Mexico and join the US, and Kosovo had the right to secede from Serbia (and maybe join Albania someday) — then Crimea, DPR and LPR have the right to nezalezhnost’ from nezalezhnaya Ukraine.
I’m done, this conversation has run it’s course. One thing I have to respond to. You speak of ridding the Ukraine of undesirables. Russians are good at that. My mother in law was a seven year old girl living on a Ukrainian farm in 1939. She and every person in her town was an undesirable in the eyes of the invading Russians. They were all thrown on boxcars and shipped to Siberia, a few percent did not starve. Long long history of hatred between these groups and either side can cherry pick the terrible deeds done by the other.
Your comment got me really really upset. I couldn’t even type in my name. You set me off when you talked about “ridding degenerates as essential.” Stella my mother in law was one fucked up person because Russians thought just like you. Huge swathes of the Ukraine were depopulated of unwanted Ukrainians and replaced by Russians. You don’t know that? My mother in law sure did.
Words spill from you but no kindness, fuck your perspective.
I’m sorry, I cannot create a safe space for you. I would not be here, on this blog, it such restriction was the case. All I can tell you, honestly, is that it brings me no pleasure at all to call things as they are or upset you. If doing such, brings you joy, I’m sorry to hear. I didn’t complain, however, when you were making jokes about “Officer Fragged” and talking about most efficient/cheap ways to kill Russian military personnel — yet it displeased me. While I’m 75% Ashkenazi Jewish, have never had Russian citizenship, and am only Russian, by blood, at 3/16, I often wonder how nice it would’ve been if my mostly Russian paternal grandmother’s brothers were to survive WW2. One was a captain and another a major in the Red Army. If they were to survive, I would have had second cousins, and I need all true family I can get, right now, in my life.
These soldiers and officers whose deaths you so casually (and very unkindly) joked about have (rather, had) mothers, fathers, grandparents, siblings, wives, and children. Many of them not ethnic Russian, but Bashkirs, Dagestanis etc. I feel sorry that they had to go and fight in this war, which I consider a tragedy for >99% involved. My position, again, is that the Western establishment, particularly American, shares the blame in no small part. Now they do the “Putin mad and evil” theatrics, but I consider this whole thing a bunch of mad, horrendous miscalculations and cynical thinking by all the parties involved.
Please, if you have time, listen to Arestovich’s interview, how “in the best” case, Russia would have war with Ukraine. Very cynical. A case of self-reinforcing prophecy. Talk to me about “unkindness” afterwards!
Back to crimes of Russia(ns): What you and your mother-in-law should be upset about are not so much the Russians as the Russian government. Anti-Ukrainian, anti-Jewish, anti-Tatar etc policies were mostly driven from top-down. And this started from a long time ago. Back in the 16th century, in fact, when Ivan the Terrible, Prince-cum-Tsar of Muscovy, took Kazan and began ethnic cleansing of the Tatars living along the Volga.
I’ve already talked for several hours to my friends’ very upset grandmother, a Ukrainian, who told me that, after this war, Ukrainians, even in the East will certainly like Russia even less. I have to agree with her, after having seen the video footage. All that has transpired, so far, has not helped Putin’s “unity” case.
Let’s not do hysterics, however. The video that I attached to my reply post to you showed evil people doing evil things. They’re murderers of their own fellow citizens, other Ukrainians in the eastern part of their own country. If the Ukrainian judicial system worked as it should’ve, they’d put an end to the kidnappings, tortures, murders, and other intimidations of ordinary citizens. But there was no serious effort to eradicate the problem. Part of it was because of lack of resources. But no small part was a cynical way to view this. These criminals were viewed, by some, as useful. And very few people in the West objected! Do you think that was kind?
Don’t shoot the messenger. Say hi to Stella, and tell her, I’m not her enemy.
Which tolerant Dutch are you speaking about? If it’s Dutch-speaking inhabitants of Netherland, Netherland is not a multilingual country: Dutch is the only official language. English is widely spoken, and regional dialects are recognized (at least they are increasingly so, in the past it was not always the case…like in many european countries, Netherland is really not a special case regarding language).
If its Dutch-speaking Belgians (Vlamingen/Flamands), then you have a great sense of humor to use Belgium as an example of multiple official languages living in perfect harmony. Not being around Brussels much I guess, and certainly not in the Fourons/Voeren 🙂
@greg kai: My bad, I did mean Belgium. I might’ve been giving more credit to its liberality than I should’ve. Superficial research online has confirmed that the situation there is not as open as I thought initially. Though it still appears more moderate than what’s described here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_policy_in_Ukraine
I have no doubt that, slowly but surely, as people live in urban areas, the prevalent language of the state tends to win out, naturally. Obviously, facilitating it with law and government policy can expedite this process, which takes generations, but one must thread carefully there.
Maybe you could give me more details?
I missed somehow the post on Belgium, unfortunate as I am Belgian. Looking at the description of Ukrainian language law, as a Belgian, it does not look so spectacular: French is regulated with exactly the same kind of tools in Flanders, especially in the regions where it counts because the proportion of French speaker in the officially-Dutch speaking territory is high or even above 50% (around Brussels mostly). Details will vary like % of things that must be broadcasted/published in the official language, but it is very similar.
About 40% of Belgians speak french, but French is obviously much larger than Dutch (spoken by a majority of Belgians) internationally (look at size of France vs Netherland to have a very conservative assessment).
Seems to me Ukrainian is similar, a (not overwhelming) majority language in Ukraine but much weaker than Russian from a global point of view, and this may be the recipe for the strongest language regulations, because the language itself is threatened while majority can easily pass protection laws.
Quebec French vs English is a little bit similar, although French is not bigger than English in Canada. Quebec have enough autonomy to pass linguistic laws though, so I am sure Ukrainian laws will not look especially shocking to our Quebec friends either.
As a French-speaking Belgian, Quebec is twighlight-zone-funny: familiar with a hint of strange reversal: Quebec is protecting French against the much bigger English, using tactics that probably seems extreme to Non-french speaking people. I also find them extreme even as a french speaking guy, because I see Dutch doing mostly the same against French here.
Still, as I say, no bombing, and not much violence right now although there were violent incident in the past and it may happen again in the future: Belgium is pacified because it’s (relatively) rich, made of aging population, and surrounded by like neighbors embedded in EU, not because we are especially wise or have great legislation/great institutions….
@greg kai: Thank you for your answer!
@greg kai: re Netherlands. It does seem, however, that Frisian is still considered the official language of Friesland, with protections entailed and no actual suppression. Again, feel free to fill in details.
Well, it’s a very small part of the Netherland, and I never heard of it for anything else than a tourist destination, not at all for any language tension. It’s indeed an official language, seems like the German part of Belgium, also small, also with very little if not zero conflict… But this is no typical example of what happen when there is a large part of a European country with language-based identity and some autonomy political goal. French/Dutch in Belgium for example, Basque regions in France and Spain, or in the not so distant past, French Bretagne. But imho, the number one example of language conflict in a western-european country is Catalonia in Spain…So tension around language usage and various attempts to limit/suppress a minority language use (at least for public matters and in school) is certainly not something that would single Ukraine appart from all european countries (although there is usually no bombing involved….or at least not from the government)
@Greg kai Factoid: “West Frisian, or simply Frisian (West Frisian: Frysk [frisk] or Westerlauwersk Frysk; Dutch: Fries [fris], also Westerlauwers Fries), is a West Germanic language spoken mostly in the province of Friesland (Fryslân) in the north of the Netherlands, mostly by those of Frisian ancestry. It is the most widely spoken of the Frisian languages.
“In the study of the evolution of English, West Frisian is notable as being the most closely related foreign tongue to the various dialects of Old English spoken across the Heptarchy, these being part of the Anglo-Frisian branch of the West Germanic family, and is therefore often considered to occupy a position between English and Dutch”
@greg kai: re: “usually no bombing involved”
1937:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Guernica
I”m just as verbal and smart and self centered as you. Let’s both shut up and practice kindness. `It works. I’m going there to help when the fighting stops, I am moved by the suffering.
Agreed on all your points. It will be very good of you to help there; stay safe.
David,
It is probably not a good idea to ever communicate with Ilya again. He has merely tried to broadcast official Russian propaganda about the savage aggression against Ukraine. What is sad is the fact that he apparently believes the propaganda even after the atrocities his former compadres committed in Bucha.
People like Ilya operate in a completely different moral universe inaccessible to more or less normal people. Moreover, Russia is populated by 81% of people like him according to the Levada opinion polls. Even I who had spent half of my life there did not have a clue that I had been surrounded by moral monsters.
It is possible to refute Ilya’s allegations point by point, but why bother ? He is as blind to facts and logic that do not fit his Russian imperial mindset like people who claim that sex is mutable.
I like to give people the benefit of the doubt but in hindsight you are probably right. Fortunately the Russian propaganda is so terrible as to be ridiculous. It’s not worth refuting. I’ll exit these lost words with better words than I can ever stitch together.
“We know they are lying. They know they are lying. We know they know we know they are lying, And still they continue to lie.”
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
My mother in law was a seven year old girl on a Ukrainian farm in 1939. She and a million plus Polish speaking inhabitants in eastern Ukraine were put on box cars and sent to Siberia to starve to death. Only about 10,000 survived. My mother in law made it because her mother was a cook for the Russian soldiers and she was given enough stolen food to survive. The west side of Ukraine had it even worse, 4 million plus Ukrainians starved to death during World War Two and were replaced by Russians. Is it any wonder that Ukrainians will choose to die rather than be occupied by Russians.
Looks like my response to your message did not make it through ?
Ivan, you are a dumbass of sizable proportions. My father is a refusenik, and unlike many kolbasniki, we repatriated to Israel. We left Soviet Union back when Jews could barely trickle out, due to top-down Soviet antisemitism, and I have no relatives left in today’s Russia. All of my family is either in the US or Israel. Israel is where I lived in, before coming to the US. I have no special incentives to re-broadcast Russian propaganda, unless it has truth in it, which it often does, when it comes to this tragic invasion.
Since David so “assiduously” decided to retract his words, let me speak here of Nazis, Jews and the Ukraine (as I am a Jew myself). Jews were inflicted a terrible plight in the Ukraine. Particularly (but not restrictively) from 1910s to 1940s by Ukrainians. (And I don’t want to discuss the horrors of even farther past.), with hundreds of thousands of casualties:
Click to access 9781783747467.pdf
(Btw, David, does Stella know or even care about this? There were plenty of horrendous massacres considerably earlier than the Lvov pogrom. And, unlike Holodomor, which was the work of communists, the Ukrainian pogroms were more often chaotic massacres, done by ethnic Ukrainian people with genuine hatred for their neighbors. Were her parents involved? Really, it is my turn now to ask for my safe space, because I feel rather angry! In hindsight, I feel entitled to this rage!)
The Ukrainian government has never apologized or even admitted the history of murderous antisemitism of their people throughout the 20th century and earlier. The Babyi Yar massacre was just a “41-43 Nazi thing.” There has never been acknowledgment of the horrors preceding that, of which Babiy Yar was a logical inevitability.
Ever seen Marc Chagall’s painting “Ukrainian Family?” The title is misleading many well-wishing “Slava Ukraini” screaming Western idiots. The painting is of a young Jewish family escaping a pogrom of their burning shtetl, in the pre-40s Ukraine. Guess who are those who perpetrate that pogrom? (Hint for further research: Marc Chagall’s first name was, actually, Moishe)
Have you seen the recent central Kiev marches dedicated to Bandera, done every year, every January 1st, to publicly to commemorate him? Done any reading on Gehlen Org and the US support for “former” Nazis? The historic support for Ukrainian nationalist groups, in particular? Our dear host, Dr. Cochran, pointed out somewhere that the Soviets had no qualms about signing a pact with Hitler, when it suited their interests. But the US would do similarly, as the above — and other evidence — shows.
https://ips-dc.org/the_cias_worst-kept_secret_newly_declassified_files_confirm_united_states_collaboration_with_nazis
In retrospect, I should’ve presented it earlier, even though I have better things to do in my time.
Now, as to Bucha. It looks like an operation done by so-called “Special Forces Regiment SAFARI” — a Ukrainian neo-Nazi affiliated group, integrated into Ukrainian military police. I have a copy of a doc originally published by Ukrainians themselves on Azov’s website, then promptly removed. Also saw a video of how one (“boatswain”) of those from an affiliated group is asking whether he can shoot those who are not wearing blue (the response is “potom, blyad” — “later”). Look up “Boatsman Boys’ work in Bucha” video. The intent was to get rid of “collaborators” and “saboteurs.” Supposedly, those who traded fresh milk and eggs for Russians’ dry rations, while wearing white armbands were considered legitimate targets. Especially, if they forgot to change their armband color. There is the Ukrainian National Police’s announcement about “cleansing operation” on April 2nd. There is a video of Ukrainians entering Bucha, with no dead bodies in sight, except one body in camo.
And, finally, from the April videos, the dead bodies’ state of decomposition indicates that they were killed in the last two days or so. IF the alleged “March 19th satellite imagery evidence” of those bodies was true, the bodies would’ve been in advanced state of decomposition 2 weeks later, which they were not. And I believe that the US gov has much better satellite imagery, which it could release, to prove “Russian war crimes.” Why aren’t they doing this? Answer: because there’s none.
The Russians have been threading relatively carefully, during this war. By all measures, the Ukrainians — particularly the neo-Nazi affiliated groups — have been committing war crimes. And I’m not even talking about the torture of Russian POW (of which there is obvious and ample evidence). There are many interviews with Mariupol citizens who tell of their horrific experience of being used as human shields and other things done to them by Ukrainian forces, particularly the Azov “defenders.”
You’re the one spreading propaganda here. In either case, I believe Russia will prevail and get rid of the Nazis, as promised, God willing. Godspeed to Putin (on this one). The US has been spreading misery, by using weak, drug-addicted Zelenskiy as its stooge. It also, both directly and indirectly, has been helping the neo-Nazi groups, who now wield outsized influence on the internal affairs, even so far as to threaten the president (Zelenskiy) with hanging, should he give up (there is a video of that, too). The US State Dept is the one responsible for this tragedy, and they’re feeding it by supplying more weapons.
Go screw yourself, Ivan.
You’re nuts.
Dr. Cochran, I don’t doubt your intelligence, but you’re too full of yourself. You also don’t argue in good faith, as you don’t even bother to explain yourself. It’s your blog, you can do whatever you want, but you’re not adding anything informative here. Check out Patrick Lancaster’s Youtube channel, for clarification on the situation in Mariupol, right on the ground. All interviews with the locals are quite clear about the kinds of atrocities committed — pretty much all by Ukrainian side. Particularly, by Azov group. The locals are being used as human shields and are treated as trash by so called “defenders.”
I don’t know where you’re getting you info from, but I’m getting mine not just from CNN and NYTimes, but also Telegram channels (particularly, Donetsk-oriented) and analysts like Scott Ritter and former Colonel Douglas McGregor.
I suspect, you’re getting your info from Western sources only. Hence, why, to put it bluntly, you have your head up your ass, when it comes to this conflict.
I’m interested in a keeping a good predictive record – and I’m not worried at all.
Thank you. In that case, what is your prediction? Perhaps, if you make something concrete and I disagree, we can make a bet. It’ll be my honor, whatever the outcome.
For anyone who is still reading this near-dead comment thread (hopefully, other than the couple of virtue-signaling prima donnas I’ve previously interacted with), who wants to think critically and see the other side’s point of view, I’d like to leave a couple of links.
The articles here are in support the assertion that the US has been supporting Nazis (including Ukrainian ones) since a long time ago:
https://ips-dc.org/the_cias_worst-kept_secret_newly…/
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/06/10/fasc-j10.html
These articles cannot, however, explain why, in 2022, pre-invasion, Putin’s Russia was still being associated with the Communist regime of pre-90s USSR. Especially, since Putin himself openly dislikes communism, not anti-Semitic, and even wanted to join NATO, as early as 2008. Autocracy, by itself, is too widespread in the world to be the only explanation for American lunacy in persisting in its anti-Russian policy and even outright hatred. I suspect, the true explanation is some kind of weird confluence of imperialism and “progressivist cause” type of ideas. As per this interesting observation:
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2019/06/28/what-does-a-pride-parade-have-to-do-with-nato-more-than-you-might-think/
Hello, I’m a 74-year old stalinist from Sweden and I find CIA and nazis and their cooperation very offensive.
Can you tell me more about how they solicit? Do US intelligence services help ultranationalists start up or do they only invest in established fascist groups?
Asking for my detective novelist friend.
Hello, Esso. Perhaps, you could dig up Stalin’s ashes and munch on them till you get your answer. Have a wonderful time.