alanjjohnstone
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Scientists and politicians “probably killed hundreds of thousands of people” by damaging the reputation of the AstraZeneca vaccine, according to an Oxford scientist who worked on the jab.
Prof John Bell said: “They have damaged the reputation of the vaccine in a way that echoes around the rest of the world.”
“I think bad behaviour from scientists and from politicians has probably killed hundreds of thousands of people – and they cannot be proud of that,”
New greenfield housing developments are locking residents into car dependency, making everyday journeys impossible without a vehicle, a new report has found. Meanwhile, pledges for walking, cycling and public transport are often left unfulfilled.
Greenfield sites were often far from shops and amenities, without public transport, cycling links or even pavements, and the homes themselves were seemingly designed around car parking.
Surface transport is responsible for 22% of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions.
Steve Chambers, a campaigner at TfNH, told the Guardian: “We have found places where you can’t do anything without getting into a car; you literally cannot do anything. There is nothing within walking distance, there’s nothing within safe cycling distance, and for work, for going to the shop; for everything you can imagine, you need to get in the car.
“The impact of that is that houses are being designed around two and three parking spaces with tiny back gardens, no front gardens whatsoever, and that poor design obviously crowds out walking, cycling, and basically good homes.”
“There isn’t even the most basic public transport in a lot of places. There isn’t even a bus route, which is clearly an issue.”
Another COP fail
A look back in the posts and you will find i m no fan of pet ownership.
Here is another reason
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/07/dog-pee-and-poo-harming-nature-reserves-study
There is a fringe of raving rightists who want to destroy it but I don’t think that either the Republican leaders or the vast majority of those who vote for them want this. So we are talking hypotheticals here.
There has always been an argument that voting for the lesser evil has the effect of shifting the centre further and further to the right.
We witness the consequences of decades of such politics.
This is not on the fringes.
They are no longer Reaganite Republicans. Not even the Tea Party (remember those)
Can I quote one Republican I interacted with? He does not consider himself an extremist or supporter of the Proud Boys or whatever but an ordinary Trump supporter.
1.) Dump woke.
2.) The government needs to live within its means.
3.) More prisons. Put criminals in the prisons.
4.) Shut down illegal immigration.
5.) Photo ID when you vote.
6.) Slash regulations and taxes.
7.) Parental control of the schools.
8.) Bring our industrial base back home from China.
9.) Build up the military and fire the woke generals.
10.) Drill baby, drill.He doesn’t consider these and the underlying rationale for them as radical. The US military command are not patriots
Racism is black racism and I quote another I have had exchanges with
“…just came across this example of why leftists sources, like the ones Alan is constantly referring to, cannot be trusted in the least when it comes to supplying any meaningful or honest information to the public. They outright lie, or spin information or just don
t acknowledge information that runs contrary to the narrative they are trying to create. The topic is anti-Asian hate, and it is a narrative the media tried to give legs to until it became clear that blacks were responsible for much of this violence. So, of course to get around this some leftists saw the need to "reinvent" the data, which means spinning information, lying and making bogus criteria that counts certain incidents differently than others. A white guy who says "Hurry up with my food you gook" is a hate crime, a black guy pummeling an Asian woman if a slur wasnt used, or a slur is allowed when it is used by an oppressed group (which is everyone but white males). Alans data on the BLM RIOTS is like this, biased with the purpose of the "study" to come to the conclusion that they werent that bad at all……Who would trust the Anti-Defamation League on anything? They couldn`t find a single case of left wing political violence during the BLM rioting
From someone who argues that the Warren Commission got it right and the Conspiracists deny facts. Academic research is simply jettisoned when it comes to contemporary politics
Another person on the forum applauds the Republican strategy
“The infrastructure bill passed even though it was loaded with lots of progressive goodies. I would hardly call Build Back Better a reform, mild or otherwise. As long as the GOP wins back the House, they can block any of the really crazy stuff the progressives want, even if they manage to keep the Senate. We are looking at two years of gridlock which from my perspective is a good thing. The less Congress and the President can agree on, the better the country will be. What I would like to see is a massive rollback of programs that have been enacted in the last six days but neither party has the will to do that. I’ll settle for gridlock. You will see citizens arming themselves to protect themselves and their property if the government won’t do it. The trend by Democrat governors and mayors to have the police stand down and Democrat prosecutors not to prosecute criminals will leave them no choice. If the government abdicates its responsibility to protect law abiding citizens, vigilantism will fill the void. [yes more Rittenhouses -ajj]
…I’m not worried about democracy as long as the progressives don’t get their way…We have that many from the far left already in the House of Representatives… the takeover of the Democrat Party by the far left.The Democrat centrists have been intimidated into going along with the far left agenda for fear of being primaried. The RINOs are gutless wonders…The left’s idea of compromise is for the right to cave in to their demands. Fortunately Manchin and Sinema have blocked the extremists from getting their way.The underlying “problem” is the far left thought that having control of both houses of Congress and the White House would give them a free hand to enact the most radical agenda ever foisted on the American people. They hadn’t counted on two moderates in
the Senate spoiling their party. They were able to intimidate the moderates in the House into going along with their program but thankfully we had Manchin and Sinema stand their ground. Now the moderates in the House are going to pay the political price for having kowtowed to the radical left. Instead of being primaried, they are going to lose their seats in the general election. [yes, AOC and Omar hold such power!)
…. If the Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons could handle climate change, we should be able to do the same. The idiocy is in thinking we can stop it.Again, I want to emphasise that he is another who believes he is the average Republican and cannot recognise his extremism or imagine the results of it. They all distance themselves from the militias and consider themselves middle-of-the-road Republicans
The world’s biggest companies are failing to meet their own targets on tackling climate change, according to a study of 25 corporations. They also routinely exaggerate or misreport their progress, the New Climate Institute report says.
Study author Thomas Day said his team originally wanted to discover good practices in the corporate world, but they were “frankly surprised and disappointed at the overall integrity of the companies’ claims”.
Were socialists surprised?
Gazprom…
https://www.dw.com/en/why-the-eu-needs-russian-energy-giant-gazprom/a-60674774
43% of the natural gas consumed in the EU comes from Russia.
Germany draws about 55% of its gas from Russia.Surprisingly, US imported more oil from Russia than came fromSaudi Arabia.
Was COP26 worth it?
Holding the Philippines and other countries across Southeast Asia back from phasing out coal sooner is a rigid financing model that guarantees coal plants stay active for decades at a time.
Under power purchase agreements (PPAs), which are in widespread use across the region, utility companies pay coal plants to generate power for a 20 to 30 year period irrespective of external factors – a scenario known as a “coal lock-in”.
Ukraine downplayed a possible incursion by Russia on Sunday saying do not to believe “apocalyptic predictions”
The chances of finding a diplomatic solution to the crisis remained “substantially higher than the threat of further escalation”, added Ukraine’s presidency adviser Mykhailo Podolyak.
Canada protests mandates
Reminds me of the French yellow vest protests.
It seems that for American politicians interfering in another nation’s internal affairs is fully acceptable.
“Patriotic Texans donated to Canadian truckers’ worthy cause.”
The conservatives have their world all topsy-turvey and many believe in the irrational claims.
On Fridays’s Discord I mentioned the conspiracy theory held by the conservatives that the FBI, the Justice Department, even the judges, plus all the Democratic politicians and their policies have been captured by the influence of Left.
Even Abbott, Republican Texas governor was booed as being a RINO (Republican In Name Only) at a rally and the only way he could silence it was to repeatedly praise Trump.
Trump has tapped into this.
“These prosecutors are vicious, horrible people. They’re racists and they’re very sick, they’re mentally sick,” Trump said, before warning his audience: “In reality, they’re not after me. They’re after you.”
Trump, is using the politics of white grievance that Black people and other minorities are taking power, and that they will exact revenge on white people.
Many average normal conservatives accept the White Replacement Theory being promoted by white supremacists.
Republicans are changing electoral rules, re-drawing voting district boundaries, closing and re-locating election centres, all aimed at handicapping minorities from exercising their franchise.
When 2022 and 2024 result in Republican victories, the “insurrectionists” won’t be Trump supporters invading the Capitol but those genuinely deprived of their democratic rights.
And that will confirm and reinforce the white conservatives view of being the victims.
We have to find a political message that is not one of the lesser evil, but which acknowledges the real threat of losing the power of the vote.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Sunday that Russia could invade Ukraine “any day,” launching a conflict that would come at an “enormous human cost.”
It is true as ALB suggests that NATO and Russia do not seek an all-out war and certainly not any type of nuclear exchange. (However, an ominous sign is that an exercise of Russia’s strategic nuclear forces usually is held end of each year has been rescheduled for mid-February to March.)
But there is something called “mission creep”, an unintended and unplanned escalation. Did the Americans really want to have a half-million soldiers in Vietnam?
What is intended as a mere incursion across the borders could lead to a more intensive drawn-out conflict. They may pretend to be crystal ball readers, but generals and ministers of war can’t predict the future and do make mistakes.
The aftermath of the Iraq invasion was foreseen by many experts but advice ignored by the decision-makers.
My fear is that the two sides are digging themselves into a hole with their demands and soon neither will be able to back down without losing face.
We have on this forum one person saying that the end of civilisation is nigh due to global warming and another that it is nigh due to a coming nuclear war. Why do people find it easier to conceive of the end of the world than of the end of capitalism
The permanent solution to what can easily become existential threats to civilised societies (not necessarily the extinction of the human species) is socialism.
But socialism is not inevitable. We don’t accept a determinist interpretation and understand that humanity has a choice to make and as thinking animals, we expect that such decisions will be made intelligently and rationally. But we have no guarantee that it will be.
History and present times have shown that people can and will act against their own interests.
We are therefore left with the conclusion described by socialists such as Engels and Luxemburg – “Socialism or Barbarism”, to which Istvan Meszaros astutely added “If we are lucky”
Ukrainian nationalists rally in Khariv
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/2/5/in-kharkiv-near-border-ukrainians-protest-russian-threat
Russia has assembled about 70% of the military capability needed for a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in the coming weeks, US officials say.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60276342
The ground is expected to freeze and harden from mid-February, enabling Moscow to bring in more heavy equipment, the unnamed officials said.
The US officials did not provide evidence for their assessment.
Again we are to take their word on it from trust and have faith that they are being truthful.
Officials warned that a full Russian invasion could lead to the quick capture of Kyiv and potentially result in as many as 50,000 civilians killed or wounded, according to the New York Times and Washington Post.
A US official confirmed that estimate to the Associated Press but it is not clear how US agencies determined those numbers.
You more than likely conducted your own Google search but when I did I came across research papers that might be related
Thrombosis after covid vaccine
https://www.bmj.com/content/373/bmj.n958https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8666479/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8400504/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8412105/
https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/NG200
