The view from Egypt. BLUF: Arab world in continual crisis with extra help from would-be hegemonies Iran and Turkey, Israel continues being mean to the Palestinians despite the Abraham Accords (No Palestine, no peace), OMG Climate Change and drought(!!!).
[AlAhram] After years of turmoil and transition, can the Arab region recover its footing?
Text by Russian federation ambassador Anatoly Antonov:
[ColonelCassad] On the results of the telephone conversations between Putin and Biden, held at Putin's initiative on the situation in Ukraine and the threat of war.
The main thing following the talks between Putin and Biden, according to Russian Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov:
The situation in the RF-NATO relations is extremely dangerous, no one should have any doubts about the determination of the Russian Federation to defend its security.
Russian draft agreements on security guarantees do not infringe on the security of the United States and NATO
For the Russian Federation, the military development of Ukraine by NATO member states is an existential threat.
The main thing from the telephone conversation between Putin and Biden, according to the Kremlin press service:
Biden clearly stated that the United States does not intend to deploy offensive strike weapons in Ukraine;
Putin told Biden that Russia would behave the way the United States would behave in matters of its security;
Biden warned about sanctions, Putin replied that in this case, a break in relations could follow;
Biden stressed on several occasions the inadmissibility of starting a nuclear war;
The leaders agreed to continue the dialogue after the New Year.
The main version of the press service of the White House:
Biden urged to reduce tensions over Ukraine.
US will continue to monitor Russian forces and preparing for "any Putin's decision on Ukraine."
Biden said the US will negotiate with allies and partners, Putin expressed understanding.
Biden said about strengthening NATO forces and additional assistance to Ukraine in case of escalation.
Commentary by Russian military journalist Boris Rozhin:
In fact, in the absence of framework agreements, which the Russian Federation insists on, such negotiations are constantly accompanied by an exchange of threats, which they no longer hide.
The severance of diplomatic relations is the penultimate step on the escalation path, then the war, in one form or another, is not necessarily direct. Discussion of the inadmissibility of a nuclear war is an eloquent marker showing how degraded the situation in relations between the United States and the Russian Federation is, approaching the level of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the crisis of 1983.
#4
Oct 18, 2021. Russia says it will suspend the operations of its mission at NATO headquarters in Brussels in response to the Western security alliance's move to expel eight members of Russia's mission earlier this month. In a move marking another blow to East-West ties that are already near Cold War lows, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on October 18 that operations will be suspended as of November 1, and that those at the NATO military mission in Moscow will have their accreditation stripped the same day.
#5
Putin is "stewing in his own juices" over Biden not engaging with him after his threats manipulating internal public opinion. The U.S. should continue to stand firm with NATO and the EU, walking softly and carrying it's big stick! Putin knows the U.S. doesn't have 175,000 troops massed on Mexico's border, and should he try to 'tit for tat' by wanting to put missiles in Central America, the U.S. strategy of applying Murphy's golden rule "whoever has the gold, makes the rules" would be used!
Posted by: Bertie Spawn of the Trolls9333 ||
01/01/2022 9:53 Comments ||
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#6
Sir Thomas More, at his trial, to Richard Rich: "Why Richard, it profit a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world. . . but for Wales!" - Robert Bolt's play
Substitute Ukraine for Wales in More's formulation. Ukraine: A Shithole's shithole.
Also 8,000 miles from our shores. Nearly surrounded by Russia and the heart of Ancient Rus. Is Ukraine really worth pushing us to the brink of nuclear war?
#11
The shame of it is we are driving Putin into the arms of Xi Jinping when he should be our ally. Yes, he's a ruthless and ambitious dictator but we need all the friends we can get to counter Xi. We certainly don't need the two of them allied against us.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
01/01/2022 14:01 Comments ||
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#12
1980s:
- USSR has Warsaw Pact nations in its orbit
- US plays China card v USSR, which collapses
2020's:
- USSA has the ex-Warsaw Pact nations in its orbit
- Russia plays China card v USSA, which is beginning to collapse
#13
the shame of it is we are driving Putin into the arms of Xi Jinping when he should be our ally.
But... Putin's corrupt -- unlike the Bidens, or the $150 million Clintons, or the $140 million Obamas, or $100 million Al Gore, or Nancy Pelosi the She-Wolf of Wall Street
But... Putin suppresses the media -- unlike the Democrats and their house organs' suppression of massive documented prima facie evidence of Biden's influence-peddling and corruption
But... Putin's unkind to Alphabet people and he's a white Christian leader of a white Christian nation! True dat. Clearly a Notsie Whi' S'premaciss. You win.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
01/01/2022 14:33 Comments ||
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#15
Putin is a thug, a gangster, and deserved to be imprisoned for his time in the KGB. He wants peace, then he shouldn't start wars.
He doesn't want peace. He wants to act like Russia is a world power, not a regional bully.
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
01/01/2022 15:53 Comments ||
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#16
he's a ruthless and ambitious dictator but we need all the friends we can get to counter Xi. We certainly don't need the two of them allied against us.
When our leaders were rational, back in the era beginning with Eisenhower and ending roughly when Kissinger stepped down as NSA, we were allied with dictators all over the planet. Franco. Salazar. Pinochet. Greek generals... on and on.
And then Nixon and Kissinger opened up to the biggest thug of all, Mao Tse-Tung.
Is Putin a bigger thug than the greatest butcher of the 20th century? Is Russia the greater threat today -- the one that requires us to make common cause with China ... oh wait: Russia and China are now aligned against us.
We Were Once Led By Intelligent Men. And Are Now Ruled By F--king Morons.
#17
I would be open to befriending Russia in order to stop China, if Russia, in its previous form as the Soviet Union, hadn’t befriended China first. And they still quietly support each other, while Russia looks at us as their hereditary enemy and competitor for world hegemon, while China looks at us as their slow-motion conquest — continuing the thirty year effort to weaken us economically and by corrupting our ruling class, while they work up to their quick, kinetic war in a decade or so.
So it doesn’t matter that we and Russia as Europe-derived Christian countries ought to be natural allies. It won’t happen because Russia cannot see us that way, but only as either a rival either beating them or neutralized.
#18
The Soviet Union has been developing the concept of machine-artillery divisions for its southeastern border with China since the 1920s.
Reading into the source material at the time (this was back in 1989) even back then the Russian worry in the east was with China and her huge population.
My personal theory: Russia doesn't want to be seen as cozying up with or even making deals with NATO mainly because of how Xi would react.
China has been transforming its ground forces into mobile armor units, the same way the Soviets did after 1945. A punitive operation from China in reaction to any favorable deal from the west would tie up Russian forces from all over. In order to protect his southeastern flank, I think Volodya would strip his western defenses bare (except for the Western Military District -- his capital, and his Air Defense network) to deal with China.
Also, one other thing: The thing that drove the 1917 October Revolution and afterwards was the population in the east, not the Bolshevik crazies in Petrograd or Moskva. Those ideologues in the east could easily convert to the Chinese communist governing model with little effort.
#20
In order to protect his southeastern flank, I think Volodya would strip his western defenses bare (except for the Western Military District -- his capital, and his Air Defense network) to deal with China.
OK, so the obvious calculation -- obvious to Nixon & Kissinger & any realist who understands the lay of the chessboard -- is for
1) the US to relieve pressure (from NATO) on Russia from the West , to enable
2) Russia to shore up its defenses against Chinese invasion-by-osmosis over the Amur River in Eastern Siberia, which forces
3) China to rethink its policies that are creating a Ring of Containment against China by (moving clockwise) Russia, Japan, Australia, and India
Casey Stengel, 1962: "Can anyone here play this game?"
[Boston Herald] Buenos dias, Francisco Solano-Godinez, today’s poster boy for the Biden administration’s insane open-borders policy.
Until January, it was routine to deport violent foreign criminals as soon as they finished their prison sentences. The feds slapped a detainer on the thugs and grabbed them up as they were released from custody.
It was standard operating procedure — common sense. What kind of nation allows foreign career criminals to remain in a civilized society?
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/01/2022 08:59 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11123 views]
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[ET] Pfizer’s antiviral oral drug developed to treat COVID-19 can cause severe or life-threatening effects when used with common medications including some anti-coagulants, some anti-depressants, and some cholesterol-lowering statins, according to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) (pdf).
FDA does not recommend Paxlovid for those with severe kidney or liver disease.
The FDA on Dec. 22 granted emergency use authorization (EUA) to Pfizer’s COVID-19 treatment pill as treatment for mild-to-moderate cases of COVID-19 in patients from 12 years of age.
Paxlovid was the first oral medication of its kind authorized by the FDA to treat COVID-19, with the aim of reducing the need for hospitalization before patients become too ill from the infection.
"This authorization provides a new tool to combat COVID-19 at a crucial time in the pandemic as new variants emerge and promises to make antiviral treatment more accessible to patients who are at high risk for progression to severe COVID-19," stated Patrizia Cavazzoni, director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research.
#3
FDA fact sheet for Paxlovid: https://www.fda.gov/media/155051/download
Posted by: Bubba Lover of the Faeries8843 ||
01/01/2022 1:30 Comments ||
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#4
Walmart finding aid for WM or Sam's Club pharmacies stocking Paxlovid: https://www.walmart.com/cp/authorized-covid-19-medication/2766660
Posted by: Bubba Lover of the Faeries8843 ||
01/01/2022 1:30 Comments ||
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#5
FDA fact sheet for molnupiravir, another oral anti-COVID drug: https://www.fda.gov/media/155055/download?ftag=MSF0951a18
Posted by: Bubba Lover of the Faeries8843 ||
01/01/2022 1:33 Comments ||
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#6
So. You have to decide if you are sick enough (probably a bit late by then). Then you need to know if it's contra-indicated by your other meds or health state. Then you need a piece of paper to go to the store with. Then you need a store that will dispense. You may well be out-of-pocket if your insured is woke and says "no." That's a lot of puzzle pieces that have to come together.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
01/01/2022 6:40 Comments ||
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#7
I meant insurance. It took five passes until I replaced everything the spam filter does not like.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
01/01/2022 6:41 Comments ||
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#8
"If you're in the 'kidney or liver disease' checkout lane, does it really matter ?"
So basically this is stuff you're not going to be allowed to take you've had Remdesivir in the past, which puts you in the kidney disease category.
I guess they're not going to allow actual treatments that don't have a poison pill...
#10
The response to this pandemic by our public health authorities will go down in history as the most disastrous in modern times. There will be a coordinated effort to rewrite history about these monumental errors. We have been told for 2 years that there are only 3 things that will help us; masks, lockdowns and novel therapies like these “vaccines”. You can not go a day without hearing hundreds of references to these 3 courses of action. Every time I turn in the radio it is an ad for the vaccines. Now we are being told these novel treatments, the antiviral pills at hundreds of dollars per course, may be the answer.
Clinicians who actually treat many Covid patients know there are dozens of cheap and effective agents that can help lessen the severity of the disease yet there is almost no effort to promote them. In fact, there has been a concerted effort to withhold availability of these and lie about them (like the Ivermectin is only for horses or HCQ is fish tank cleaner, etc)
Public health authorities have even gone to great lengths to make sure pharmacies take supplements like NAC or quinine off the shelves. And the big chain pharmacies won’t fill prescriptions for Ivermectin or HCQ. These “public health” authorities would rather people die than have them find solutions outside of there 3 mandates.
Don’t you ever wonder why in 2 years time there has been no effort, no radio ads or TV commercials or anything for that matter, that would help people prophylactically, or as early treatment at home in the early stages of the disease should they get it? Things like boosting your vitamin D, add in some zinc, protect the lungs from clotting with a low dose of aspirin if you get the disease, etc., etc., etc.
We could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives by promoting safe and simple immune boosting measures rather than the a sole focus on the 3, experimental “vaccines”, masks and lockdowns.
The public health authorities should be driven out in shame from their ivory towers.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Boston Herald] Buenos dias, Francisco Solano-Godinez, today’s poster boy for the Biden administration’s insane open-borders policy.
If you're in the 'kidney or liver disease' checkout lane, does it really matter ? 
