The re-opening of England’s pubs has rendered me, ahem, unable to do a proper update today but will do one tomorrow.
In the meantime, here is a post from regular contributor Guy de la Bédoyère that will, I imagine, strike a chord with many.
Sky News this morning featured another of those bizarro-world reports the broadcast media seems to be fixated about pushing out. This one, by Alex Crawford in Houston, was about the dramatic increase in infections in Texas. It was straight back to the Good Old Days of Covid Death Porn – except that there didn’t seem to be much death. But Ms Crawford had clearly been watching back through the Death Porn archives to make sure it ticked all the boxes. But somehow it just didn’t work out like that.
Needless to say, the item began with a patient having a tube stuffed down his nose – the usual opening scene in any self-respecting Covid hospital report. “The awful reality of Coronavirus,” said Alex Crawford, who moved on to a hospitalised patient whom she reported as saying that “Coronavirus kills you”. That he seemed to be alive, conscious and on the way to recovery had apparently passed both him and Crawford by.
“Even survival feels like death,” Crawford opined, perhaps frustrated by the lack of body bags on hand. This was a faintly peculiar thing to say since it appeared to suggest it isn’t worth surviving the virus anyway.
Crawford hunted on through the wards. We were treated to another victim who had a mask on but was otherwise sitting up and able to bang on about the governor’s irresponsibility for lifting the lockdown. Crawford added the revelation and dark warning “it only takes one infected person” to catch the virus. She’s obviously been reading the Noddy in Toyland Guide to Epidemiology.
The numbers of cases have “tripled” (no numbers provided). The doctors are “frantic” about how they’ll be able to cope. One told Crawford “if you go out on July 4th you have the potential of dying or killing someone else”.
I’m not sure why that makes this year’s July 4th especially or unusually dangerous since unless I’m missing something there’s been no July 4th in history in which zero risk was an option, either from a car crash, catching an infection or being mugged, or not going out and falling downstairs.
“There’s no shortage of protective equipment here,” said Crawford, which seemed to suggest along with the systems in placed that everything was under control. Nonetheless the doctor in charge of the unit shook his head and said there were still some people out there and he just didn’t know how they could still be alive. How indeed?
But it turned out that a cocktail of steroids, vitamins and anti-coagulants costing $100 per day per patient has resulted in a 96% success rate of those hospitalised. “The infections in Texas have spiked but the mortality rate is much lower… and they’re getting results.”
Crawford was quick to quash any sense that might be good news.
Crawford interviewed a nurse who was keen to warn her “that a lot of people are going to die being ignorant and ignorance is never a defence… and they’re going to be an example to the rest of the country” as well as countries like Britain. “If they don’t take this serious [sic] they’re gonna die… point blank.” Then bizarrely the nurse added “and they’re gone get sick”, but presumably not necessarily in that order prior to the inevitable death she was promising, apparently not being aware of the 96% survival rate of those who were bad enough to go to hospital in the first place.
Just in case you hadn’t realized how serious she was she threw in “and it’s gonna be bad”.
For good measure the piece finished up with a nurse who had been infected because after all no hospital piece is complete without a health worker hero hanging off the barbed wire in No-Man’s Land. She too was sitting up in bed and was able to warn anyone who had mistaken her for someone still alive, conscious and in a reasonable state, that if you didn’t hug your loved ones they you might never do so again.
The entire premise of the piece seemed to be that catching COVID-19 is invariably a catastrophe and that death follows as night follows day. That this was not corroborated by any of the content of the piece did not bother the fearless reporter or the people she spoke to. Nor did it match the news that the surge in infections in Texas seems to be partly due to much younger people getting COVID-19 who, as we all know, are far less likely either to get sick or to die.
Presumably even now the BBC’s battle-seasoned Covid hacks are on their way to Texas for a slice of the action.
Theme Tune Suggestions From Readers
One suggestion today: “Compete Control” by the Clash.
Small Businesses That Have Re-Opened
A few weeks ago, Lockdown Sceptics launched a searchable directory of open businesses across the UK. The idea is to celebrate those retail and hospitality businesses that have re-opened, as well as help people find out what has opened in their area. But we need your help to build it, so we’ve created a form you can fill out to tell us about those businesses that have opened near you. Now that non-essential shops have re-opened – or most of them, anyway – we’re now focusing on pubs, bars, clubs and restaurants, as well as other social venues. As of July 4th, many of them have re-opened too, but not all. Please visit the page and let us know about those brave folk who are doing their bit to get our country back on its feet. Don’t worry if your entries don’t show up immediately – we need to approve them once you’ve entered the data.
Note to the Good Folk Below the Line
I enjoy reading all your comments and I’m glad I’ve created a “safe space” for lockdown sceptics to share their frustrations and keep each other’s spirits up. But please don’t copy and paste whole articles from papers that are behind paywalls in the comments. I work for some of those papers and if they don’t charge for premium content they won’t survive.
Shameless Begging Bit
Thanks as always to those of you who made a donation in the last 24 hours to pay for the upkeep of this site. It usually takes me several hours to do these updates (although not today), which doesn’t leave much time for other work. If you feel like donating, however small the amount, please click here. And if you want to flag up any stories or links I should include in future updates, email me here. (Please don’t email me at any other address.) I’ll try and get another update done on Saturday.
And Finally…
Can I ask for advice regarding the Young family holiday? We want to go to Venice and then on to the Dolemites in the last week of July or thereabouts and have found some nice places to stay. However, I’m worried about booking an airline ticket, only for the flight to be cancelled. How risky do people think that is? Are some airlines more reliable than others? And if they think it’s very risky, would they recommend going by train instead? Please email me here with any advice. Thank you.
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“...it would be completely mad for Ukraine to deliberately kill its own civilians...”
Isn’t this how it all started in the first place though, Mr Rons? Wasn’t Ukraine already ‘completely mad’ because it was killing its own civilians from 2014 onwards? I’m not saying the Russians didn’t blow the dam – who knows, maybe they did to deny the Ukrainians irrigation or to lower morale – but you have to agree that a high degree of madness exists in that failed state and amongst its lowest moments was the deliberate campaign against its ethnic Russian community.
Agree. Makes little sense for the Russians to do this. Given the US 51rst state’s recent activity, it seems more credible that the US proxy is at fault, though in all honesty no one really knows including Ian who seems intent on drinking the propaganda kool aid spooned out by the CIA et al.
What do you mean by 51st state, exactly? Ukraine itself?
Rons is a mono-maniac – rationality is wasted on it.
Got it in one (that is intended to be a play on “mono”).
In addition to the matters described, a report on Al Jazeera came up with a rough financial guesstimate for the loss of revenue due to reduced export of agricultural products, e.g. wheat. Can’t remember the numbers exactly, but it was in $billions.
Ian Rons is single handedly making subscribers question their continued payments to The Daily Sceptic.
I am forced to assume that he pays for the column inches.
I now look upon it as humorous relief in the fiction department.
Yes I said to my husband this morning I would be out if another pro Ukraine piece appeared. Maybe they did blow it up, maybe Russia did, but the point of DS is to be sceptical not to present a one sided view of a foreign war.
We’re here on The Daily Sceptic to get away from all the lies, propaganda and omissions in the main stream media NOT to have them reinforced by the establishment leaning articles by Ian Rons.
I like to read a range of views, not just those that I already agree with. I don’t want to pay to be in an echo chamber.
I don’t want to pay to read Ian Rons ridiculous establishment views that I can read in the main stream media for free.
I want The Daily Sceptic to inform us with different versions to government and their vested interests mantras.
There is nothing wrong with The Daily Sceptic being an “echo chamber” of dissent.
I cannot understand the criticisms of this post. It is detailed well argued case. That should be enough by itself to justify taking it seriously.
It is also very convincing. It is incredibly far fetched to suppose Ukraine had a motive but the clincher is that they didn’t have the kit to do it and Ian has shown this in detail. What Ian might have explored more is whether it was approved at the highest level by Russia, whether whoever did it anticipated how awful it would be, or whether it was an accident based on the explosives Russia had in place.
Perhaps you ought to consider why the Ukrainians left the taps turned on full upstream so that the reservoir filled, literally, to overflowing, ensuring maximum pressure on a dam already weakened by previous Uke artillery and missile attacks, and then turned them off once the dam was breached to ensure the reservoir drained as quickly as possible. The Russians certainly had no hand in either action.
I don’t understand – what “taps” are these? In any case the water level was under Russian control as all they had to was open the floodgates a bit more to lower it.
The “taps” are the flow controls on the dam by the Dieper power station in Ukrainian controlled Dnieperpetrovsk. Normally the water flows through the generation turbines, but the Ukrainians gave up making electricity in return for opening their sluice gates to achieve maximum water flow for the first time in living memory. Most normal people would wonder why
I have scoured the internet but cannot find an reference to this story. Do you have one?
Opinion is not evidence. It argues opinion – not the evidence which the author said was abundant but doesn’t mention.
But the article is packed with evidence! You can dispute it but it is certainly there.
No evidence of anything….just opinion and the usual one-sided propaganda and I happily dispute it…..all of this is based on Ukrainian or anti-Russian analysis…there isn’t a single Russian or independent person or publication mentioned throughout…It might convince you but I’d just ask..what do you think the Ukrainians WOULD say LOL!
Really Ian I can’t be bothered with you anymore after you embarrassed yourself commenting on your last work of fiction, and this doesn’t get any closer to engineering sense, despite your reference to an ex RE, who by looking at his Twitter feed is hardly likely to have a balanced view on Ukrainian issues.
Thanks for another interesting post, Ian Rons. I’m a DS subscriber and really appreciate them.
Love the irony.
PS I am sceptical about the Welsh too, after 3 years at a Welsh uni.
I don’t even know why people try to use their judgment in regard to analysis of such events. There are no standards to assess anything by in a rapidly moving situation and to pretend that you can understand it from an armchair is absurd. As long as you are aware of the the Anglo-American schtick and all that follows from it then you don’t really need to ask any further questions.
I don’t mean to criticise anyone but I do feel that is in a sense unseemly to talk about overseas wars and more than that it is the opposite of what we are fighting for. Believe me in the next six months western support among the general populace will collapse. But unfortunately the Yanks have opened up their big storage sites in the desert and they are taking everything out of storage, thousands of aircraft. This is a huge operaton costing about $1 million dollars per plane and several weeks work. Just be aware that the next stage, an aerial war, won’t be as abstract and faraway as it has been.
Let me know if I have summarised your article correctly, Ian:
‘Destroying the dam with missiles is difficult for Ukraine, therefore somehow Russia destroyed it.’
Could the downvoters please explain where I have gone wrong with my attempt to summarise Ian’s article?
They´re paid 77th.
You know who did it cut the crap we all know who did it. If youj want me to lay it out in triplivate I can give you details of Ukrainan threats on this site and previous reports of missile strikes on this site.This isn’t rocket science we know who did it.
Just atacking sites and destroying people’s lives for the sake of some dead political battle. And then to be used by the West as some sort of last ditch attempt to keep things going. Avoid these forces. A time is coming where a man’s word will be his bond.
Biden owes Ukraine a lot, the funding isn’t going to stop.
All this report needed to say was:
1
the power of explosive device(s) needed for an outside attack was not available to Ukraine and possibly not even the Wedt
2
Russia benefits at least in the short term from the damage. At no stage does it benefit Ukraine.
enough said.
(OT)
To be fair Ian (re. James Delingpole “mad” over satanists controlling global weather theory) I actually took issue with a Delingpole theory in the comments of the recent London Calling episode (Town v. Country living), namely that an all meat diet (and certainly an all cooked meat diet) is a good idea as salad and fruit and raw food is genuinely beneficial (together with a proportion of meat/fish/eggs) as part of a balanced diet (see Phillip Day).
I love the sheer comical irony and bathos of the “We don’t come to this explicitly free-speech orientated site to hear views we don’t agree with. Shut up or we’re going to take our money elsewhere’ type comments (and their upticks) on this and similar threads.
Mind you it would be astonishing if those who support the neo-fascist invasion of an independent country for daring to try and maintain multi-party liberal-democratic institutions and values would feel any genuine affinity with the free-speech principles of The Daily Sceptic – as opposed to simply seeing it as a relatively undefended platform to be captured for propagandist purposes.
And again it’s quite funny watching tyranny trying to impose itself over freedom when it doesn’t have any of the usual intimidatory mechanisms (eg gun-totting police and troops) to back it up, just verbal tantrums and attempts at financial blackmail based on tiny amounts of cash.
Anybody who believes the USA and its lackey states are supporting Ukraine because of their commitment to national independence and multi-party liberal-democratic institutions is, at best, desperately naive.
I’m going with ‘simple-minded’..it’s about the kindest….
let’s face it..to get to that conclusion you have to ignore years of history and politics and precedent…..
Just like a child, boil it down to only good v evil..where you know which is which..and everyone else is wrong and tainted by association..it’s the same argument with the climate..LGB+ etc…as it was with Convid…..if you don’t follow the ‘official propaganda’ you are the enemy..and there is no room for neutrality….
Luckily I truly believe the vast majority of the people in the World see the Western hypocrisy for what it is..along with a good amount of people who actually live in the West.
They have to keep this manufactured good/bad thing going because it’s all they have got..and even they know it’s rubbish….
Lies and pretence take too much time and effort..eventually people see through it…this will be no different…..
The very knowledgeable and entertaining (and definitely not simple minded) Jeffrey Sachs on The Duran…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkrQokUYMmY
Biden is in deep shit when Ukraine loses and his corruption is exposed, hence the funding will continue.
“neo-fascist invasion of an independent country for daring to try and maintain multi-party liberal-democratic institutions and values”
Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha
Your so funny.
1.The neo-fascist have run Ukraine since at least 2014
2.”independent” with Blackrock owning at least 30% of it.
3.”multi-party liberal-democratic institutions and values” that Zelensky has band.
Yes…if Ukraine is a multi party (Elenskyy banned them all..LOL) liberal democracy…I reckon Epstein was a youth outreach worker….
Yeh, right . . .
You underestimate the SBS.
NordStream was incontrovertibly blown up by the Russians, Ukrainians, Swedes, Poles, British and Americans, at the last count.
I will continue to believe nothing that comes out of either side..
It doesn’t sound like Incontrovertible, it sounds like we don’t know but it must have been because we don’t have any evidence. If “it would have been blatantly obvious to the RC-135 Rivet Joint surveillance aircraft operated by the U.S. and the U.K. which are in constant rotation near Ukraine,” surely these spy planes and satalites could have seen where the planes came from and where they went back to. The USA is not above such actions, having a long history of corruption in starting wars and working in the background fanning the flames.
there are so many uncontrolled assumptions and confounding variables in this assessment, it doesn’t even qualify for the adjective ‘forensic’.
It’s more reminiscent of religion.
‘Over the past week, much evidence has come to light which puts beyond reasonable doubt the conclusion that Russian forces occupying the Kakhovka Dam were responsible for its destruction…’
With so much ‘incontrovertible’ evidence coming to light, I was rather hoping you were going to share some of it with us.
Instead a lot of speculative waffle about how the Ukrainians couldn’t technically do it, whereas the Russians could.
You would have done better to stop at “for defensive purposes – as in this instance”, Ian! The article up to there is an interesting description of why Ukraine probably did not destroy the dam.
After that, though, you descend into suppositions, speculation and opinions. You state, for example, that it would have been “legitimate under the laws of war” for Ukraine to destroy sluice gates to hamper a Russian retreat, but imply that it is not legitimate for Russia to destroy the dam.
You cite without comment a “signal intercept” released by the SBU (Ukrainian intelligence) as evidence that Ukraine was not responsible.
You state that “the scale of the flooding does seem to have taken Russia by surprise”, without noting that this surely is at least some evidence that Russia was not responsible.
You state that Ukraine did not have a motive “given their adherence to the Geneva Conventions” – even if it were true that they are adhering to those conventions, I am not sure why that would affect whether they had a motive for blowing the dam.
You also state that “it would be completely mad for Ukraine to deliberately kill its own civilians by blowing the dam – citizens that they are in the process of liberating” – this is ridiculous since the same would obviously apply to the Russian side, especially as their own troops were among those affected.
And you say that “The loss of agricultural irrigation both in these regions and in Crimea (which was, in any case, without irrigation between 2014–22) is of little significance to Russia – they have almost no regard for the lives of their troops, and none for Ukrainian civilians.” This is a complete non sequitur – even if it were true that the Russians do not care about the lives of their troops (which I find extremely unlikely to be honest), why would that affect whether they cared about loss of irrigation, especially in Crimea?
You have produced a compelling case that the Russians blew the dam – and then wrecked it with a very silly second half of the article.
Increasingly the outflow of water is not the same as destroying a dam, causing a flood affecting civilian areas.
I said that it was “supposedly between Russian soldiers”, not that it was between Russian soldiers, and I also included a lot of other “chatter” – described as such – which goes toward making a circumstantial case.#
I don’t agree that it is evidence of that. There were different forecasts of what would happen if the dam were blown, and it was an inherently uncertain and risky undertaking. “You were only meant to blow the bloody doors off!”, etc.
Ukraine would have to have been crazy not to see the consequences, including from the very self-interested angle of Western support.
Nonsense. Russia is not “liberating” people it calls “kokhols”. You totally misunderstand what’s happening.
I don’t think you non sequitur means what you think it means. Perhaps you missed the phrase “…and none for Ukrainian civilians”. Obviously irrigation affects civilians living in Ukraine (which includes Crimea), but they don’t care about them. There are of course some Russians who’ve moved into Crimea, so perhaps I should have said they don’t care about them either.
One day we’ll all come to recognise Ian Rons as one of the true comedic geniuses of his generation.