Usually at this point I would rant about McKinsey’s advice to US companies to offshore and outsource production to cut costs and so “increase shareholder value.” China is the greatest, though not the only beneficiary of this largesse. China’s economy now rivals that of the US. As a European friend once asked me when I told him of my experience riding a 300 km/hr Maglev train in Shanghai: “how many Maglev trains does the United States have?
A certain Big 4 accounting firm had a client who wanted a cat-catcher license in the Canal Zone, a jurisdiction no longer in existence. Big 4 would also work on the matter. I didn’t bother to vette the client because Big 4, who presumably had done their accounting, was along for the ride. The client soon discovered that getting a cat-catching license in the Canal Zone is no trivial matter. You must show that you are experienced and have books, manuals and appropriate guidelines in place, like a “Know Your Breed” (KYB) procedure. When they said they had no manuals–after Big 4 asked me to prepare them and then denied they did–I knew a) the cat-catching applicant was full of merde and b) the Ministry of Feline Affairs would never give them a license. $25k of work in, Big 4 informed me, “too bad” because they were still at Phase I and had forgotten to include a ‘kill fee’ in the contract in case the project were abandoned. The license application wasn’t abandoned–to avoid paying, the applicant simply stopped doing anything. Big 4 didn’t get paid either.
—as told by Col. Justiano von Schlossberg
The Thai Prime Minister, Prayut Chan o Cha, visited Riyadh on Tuesday, January 25th. Following his visit, the two countries announced the re-establishment of diplomatic relations. What caused the breach? Thirty years ago, a Thai gardener stole 100 kilograms of gems from Prince Faisal, son of the then king, King Fahd. Among these was a rare, fifty-carat blue diamond. The Thai police quickly found the culprit and recovered the gems. But the stones they returned to Saudi Arabia were fake. Three Saudi diplomats sent to Thailand were murdered. The real gems ended up in the possession of high-ranking police officers.
Saudi Arabia viewed Thai official behavior as adding insult to injury and broke off diplomatic relations. For thirty years, the two countries only spoke to each other unofficially.
In 2014, a whistleblower in the Thai police broke ranks and accused his superiors of masterminding the murder. He claimed to have burnt the body of one of the victims in a rusty, 55-gallon drum. A ring was still on the hand of a severed arm, which was later recognized as belonging to one of the victims. The case was nevertheless dismissed by a Thai judge because no Saudi witnesses appeared to testify in court.
The rapprochement was supposedly brokered by the king of Bahrain. There’s more to the story. Supposedly the blue diamond itself is in the possession of the former queen of Thailand, the mother of the current king. She was urged to return it to Saudi Arabia, but refused. Whether that is true or just gossip, no one really knows.
The blue diamond was never recovered.
More: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-60133105
Still more: elibrary.law.psu.edu/jlia/vol1/iss1…
Freedom from responsibility. America’s freedoms have been boiled down to one issue: “do they make you wear a mask?” Maybe this should be added to the Bill of Rights.
“Arrive on vacation, leave on probation.”
The MSM has pushed Ivermectin as a horse dewormer, and anyone who attempts to contradict this dogma runs the risk of censure and deplatforming. But now there’s this:
This implies that 89% of the participants benefited from taking Ivermectin as a form of preexposure chemoprophylaxis. Ivermectin has a significant clinical benefit as a preventive drug against COVID-19 for hospital personnel in settings with limited resources.
Following a crash involving a dump truck, three macaques escaped from their cages while being transported to a CDC-approved quarantine center. The macaques had just arrived from Africa; the breed can carry the Ebola virus and in the past has transmitted it to humans.
After a brief monkey hunt, the escaped macaques were captured by police and euthanized. As none of the other monkeys were euthanized, it is unlikely that the CIDC has provided the whole story.
Again.
In the 90’s, a shipment of macaques arrived at Miami International. All of them were dead in their cages. Seeking to avoid panic, the CIDC said, “nothing to see here, move along.” Since it is very likely that Covid-19 escaped from a lab in Wuhan, this macaque escape is also in the nature of the lab breach. It would be nice if the same transparency we demand from the Chinese government were shown by our own agencies.
(25 January 2022)
CNN, at least in this instance, has stopped calling Ivermectin a veterinary medicine and more accurately states,
𝙸𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚖𝚎𝚌𝚝𝚒𝚗 𝚒𝚜 𝚞𝚜𝚎𝚍 𝚝𝚘 𝚝𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚝 𝚙𝚊𝚛𝚊𝚜𝚒𝚝𝚎𝚜 𝚜𝚞𝚌𝚑 𝚊𝚜 𝚠𝚘𝚛𝚖𝚜 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚕𝚒𝚌𝚎 𝚒𝚗 𝚑𝚞𝚖𝚊𝚗𝚜 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚒𝚝 𝚒𝚜 𝚊𝚕𝚜𝚘 𝚞𝚜𝚎𝚍 𝚋𝚢 𝚟𝚎𝚝𝚎𝚛𝚒𝚗𝚊𝚛𝚒𝚊𝚗𝚜 𝚝𝚘 𝚍𝚎𝚠𝚘𝚛𝚖 𝚕𝚊𝚛𝚐𝚎 𝚊𝚗𝚒𝚖𝚊𝚕𝚜.
Finally.
The last time I flew on an A-380 was in business class returning to Dubai from Munich. Today I am flying economy and the aircraft is configured for maximum capacity in a 3-4-3 configuration. The flight is completely full. I am on the aisle and suffer pushes, knocks, bumps and bruises inflicted.by everyone who walks by. Though I have an aisle seat on my left there is an elderly Iranian couple who believe themselves to be on mask compliance and control, they reported me to a flight attendant when I removed my mask to blow my nose.
I thought that we would fly the northern route over the Atlantic but this is not the case. Instead, we flew north from Dubai, passing Dubai and flying over central Russia. Six hours later we cleared theRussian land mass and were heading over the North Pole. We will enter North America when we clear the polar area. I know what time it is at the destination, local time isn’t helpful because of all the time zone changes. Perhaps the time as shown on my wrist, the time aboard the aircraft.
I must have fallen asleep for take-off; next thing I recall was our nearing Azerbaijan on the map. My SAVAK seat mates were the last to board; all during the boarding process I tried not to let myself get too excited about the possibility of having two empty seats next to me all the way to Los Angeles.
The passengers are all a motley crew. The global reduction in air traffic means that few have flown much in the past two years, it is as if all of them have forgotten civility and the protocols of flight. Everyone is a special case, everyone believes that they are entitled and so seek special treatment. At least a third of the passengers of this flight are Desi; Dubai is an Indian city,Mumbai and the rest of the subcontinent is only three and a half hours away by air.
India was one of the hotspots for the Delta variant and many countries simply closed their borders to India for much of the pandemic. This group is making up for their exclusion with a vengeance. I have never heard anyone ask for an “extra” meal during a flight before; now I have.
This nightmare torture flight will be over in nine hours or so and I will be happy to have save one or two thousand dollars. I think. Actually, if I do return to the Middle East I will risk penury by upgrading to premium economy. Or business.
I have a feeling that Omicron might complicate my return. Cases are surging world-wide and there is no general consensus concerning whether or not it is as lethal as the other variants.
Two years ago, there was no treatment for the Sickness; in that context I predicted that the pandemic would go away once an effective treatment was available. Yet here we are, two years later, with many treatments on offer and the world still frightened; going to Yellow Alert because of Omicron and speaking already of renewed lockdowns.
Here are a few treatments:
Notice that none of these were recommended by Donald Trump. Such a recommendation would remove the recommended medication from the list even if it were 100% effective and worked instantly with no side effects because that is the state in which we find ourselves.
