European countries’ decision to sanction Russia, their main energy supplier, has consistently been defended based on the principle that they must uphold the “rules-based international order”.
In a statement defending the sanctions in February of 2022, the German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock said that “this war is an attack against all the values of a rules-based international order” and that “we are standing up here for international law and international rules”.
In a communiqué defending the sanctions in May of 2022, G7 foreign ministers stated that “Russia has blatantly violated the rules-based international order, international law and humanitarian principles and it has breached universally agreed and legally binding fundamental principles”.
And in an article defending the sanctions in July of 2022, the EU’s foreign policy chief Joseph Borell noted that “allowing Russia to prevail would mean allowing it to destroy our democracies and the very basis of the international rules-based world order”.
Now, the “rules-based international order” is a rather slippery concept. One can distinguish two broad definitions: a charitable one, and a cynical one. The charitable definition is that it refers to the rules, norms and laws laid down by various multilateral organisations, such as the United Nations, the World Trade Organisation and the International Monetary Fund. The cynical definition is that it refers to U.S. global domination. (The truth is probably somewhere in between.)
Under the charitable definition, the International Criminal Court in the Hague represents a key element of the “rules-based international order”. It is therefore no surprise that European countries applauded the ICC’s decision to issue an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said the ICC is the “the right institution to investigate war crimes”, while the French government said “no one should escape justice”.
What is noteworthy is how France and Germany have responded to the ICC issuing an arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu.
After initially stating that it would implement the court’s ruling, France subsequently backtracked, arguing that Netanyahu has immunity because Israel is not a signatory to the Rome statute. (This backtracking apparently followed an angry call from Biden to Macron.) Of course, if Netanyahu has immunity, as France claims, then so does Putin – since Russia is not a signatory to the Rome statute either.
Germany’s response has been similarly muddled. A spokesman initially stated, “I find it hard to imagine that we would carry out arrests in Germany” because of the country’s “historical responsibility”. (Germany apparently has a “historical responsibility” in light of the Holocaust but does not have one in light of Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union, which killed about 20 million Russians.) However, Baerbock subsequently stated that “nobody is above the law”. Friedrich Merz, who is likely to be the next German Chancellor, has previously suggested he would not implement the ruling.
So on the one hand, France and Germany are willing to sabotage their own economies by sanctioning Europe’s main energy supplier in order to uphold the “rules-based international order”. Yet on the other, they are not willing to say they will implement a simple ICC ruling, even though there is no economic cost to doing so and their refusal undermines the court’s authority.
It seems that France and Germany are neither upholding international law nor pursuing national self-interest. What they are doing remains unclear. My best guess is: what the U.S. tells them.
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It is extraordinary, but we are in interesting times. But what about ‘research funding’ (not just ‘finding’)? If large numbers of us really were dealing with infections with hardly any noticeable symptoms (which is normal), it suggests that our immune systems are doing.a good job and don’t need certain products from their trade.
For sure. And totally agree with Toby on this too. The huge inconvenience for Big Pharma and TPTB generally is that the vast majority of the population has a perfectly functional immune system. The problem being that the vast amount of people seem to have forgotten what an immune system actually is. This is a big fat nothing burger for most. The more vulnerable members of society can do what they’ve always done to get by prior to 2020. Staying in crisis mode indefinitely is just not sane or feasible.
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Vaccine injured Dr Cartland witnessed two vaccine deaths in one afternoon in his surgery. He also knows doctors who won’t jab their own children but are happy to jab others.
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Why am I not surprised? I had ‘delta’ UnWaxed and it felt like a mild flu. Mind, I am in my 30’s fit and active. Take Zinc, Vit D and B12.
One thing I can’t understand is the continuing madness that countries like Spain, France and Germany want to impose on the unwaxed like myself. Still having to test etc. I do hope it’s not because they want me to submit to Blair’s digital ID tosh for the rest of my days.
If you ask me, avoid the wax, pay for stuff in cash, and get off social media and into the pub!
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A slip of the keyboard and someone put “unvaxed” instead of “unwaxed”? Don’t worry, it’s not like that here…
And then there’s those who believe viruses don’t exist at all…An interesting vid from Dr Sam Bailey dedicated to the career of Dr Stefan Lanka, who still has his €100,000 because nobody could prove to him the existence of the measles virus.
Although this stuff is all very compelling, these sorts of videos never seem to offer up an explanation as to what is causing people to get ill if its not a virus. For instance, if not measles etc, what were many kids coming down with in my school back in the ’80s, with our itchy spots covering our bodies and being stuck home with crap TV and a bottle of Lucozade? If not flu then what is causing people to get ill and present with various flu-like symptoms?
So unless somebody can give me an alternative explanation ( and I’m not prepared to believe stress is the cause for people presenting with a myriad of symptoms ) then I think I’ll remain on team virus, despite the fact I have huge respect for Dr Bailey and other doctors/scientists who believe the opposite. If highly intelligent and experienced doctors cannot agree if viruses exist then how is a layperson like me meant to choose a side? All very confusing as surely this should be an example of settled science by now. See what you think;
https://odysee.com/@drsambailey:c/Stefan-Lanka-Virus-Its-Time-To-Go:1
There’s no such thing as “settled science” – which I expect you know. I think you are using the term ironically? Science is never settled: it is constantly questioning, searching and finding new answers. But the answers are never settled, they are there to be questioned in their turn. The only “settled science” is in the worlds of the MSM, Big Pharma and the WEF.
I should have used these guys; “”, shouldn’t I?
I think the both the virus theory and the terrain theory can work hand in hand. I do think that a lot of the things that are attributed to viruses could be due to lifestyle factors instead, but I do still think contagious viruses do exist.
Two anecdotes…. I had a big night out with friends a few months back and had a little bit too much fun. Needless to say I did a number on my sinuses. Over the course of the next week my sinuses got really dry and painful and then ended up getting really really mucousy and congested. I had no other symptoms so I suspect that my sinuses just had to heal and get back to normal. I highly doubt there was a virus involved because my partner who always gets sick was perfectly fine. She also came out that night but didn’t have as much *fun* as I had.
A month or so ago my partner went away for the weekend for a work trip to go skiing while I stayed home. When she came back she was feeling mildly unwell. A few days later I developed a mild headache (unusual for me) and some tender skin. A week after that I was forced to do a covid PCR test because my work is still trying to mandate vaccines. Low and behold, I tested positive! The most likely explanation is that my partner caught covid and passed it to me.
I think taking lessons from both camps is the best path to good health.
The existence of some wild ideas are problematic to our cause, perhaps, but there is plenty of relatively modern history about the original discovery of viruses, and indeed how the nomenclature came about. E.g. https://www.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/blog/revealing-the-first-coronavirus/ , and many more if anyone wants to look it up. Note that the site mentioned above is quite old – there is no obvious date on it, but it’s probably some time towards the end of 2020.
The word “symbiosis” springs to mind. In a different field, bacteriology, we live happily with E Coli. Surprisingly many people have difficulty grasping that the total weight of bacteria in their gut is about 200 gm, say 200 teaspoons. It’s not only Mostly Harmless, but Almost Essential, in part because if it wasn’t there some far more dubious characters would squat there. Bacteria Lives Matter!
Having thoroughly researched the topic [OK skim-read Wiki], I am jolted into thinking this comment might not just be an analogy. It seems that “commensal” viruses (in addition to commensal bacteria like E. Coli) do exist, or are acknowledged as such. Perhaps this whole attitude, pushed by Pharma, that we are constant war with nasty bugs (be they bacteria or viruses) which need to be overcome, or at least managed, by medication is deeply flawed; instead we might cultivate the alternative heretical attitude that just possibly the existence of viruses in the gut and in the respiratory tract are entirely normal or even beneficial. With that attitude in mind, it is a small step to the attitude that Omicron is an “ally”, in that it harmless occupies a niche that would otherwise be harmfully occupied by earlier variants. One might even say (as Gates sort of did, IIRC) that the most effective “vaccine” against Covid is Omicron! I do tend to the view that a few million years of evolution of immune systems are a good match for six months of hasty research, development, marketing and weaponisation of a novel pharmaceutical product.
Apparently, even the common rhinovirus can boot the Covid virus out of our cells when attempting a co-infection. Yet another way that antisocial distancing and lockdowns made the pandemic worse.
Even the BBC reported that!
As did the Daily Fail, I think.
Indeed
You have to wonder if the results would be similar if they extensively tested every cold and flu varient that pops up during flu season.
They blame the asymptomatic-infected for Omicron’s huge infection rate, but there always was a high proportion of asymptomatic infections with Covid.
Furthermore, it has never been properly explored whether asymptomatic infections are even contagious — although there’s been plenty of hysteria about this (the whole idea around lockdowns was based on the premise of asymptomatic infections being contagious).
Indeed. And as the Swiss Doctor notes, even IF asymptomatic transmission somehow was the dominant mode of transmission, lockdowns would still be a bad and futile idea regardless, and masks still wouldn’t work. In fact, all NPIs would be even more futile.
Imagine if this was how life was before 2019. Have we been deluding ourselves that being alive is the most dangerous state for any of us to be in?
It’s must be nearly 2 years now since I introduced the concept of anchoring into the discussion (about the time Bojo got ill, or shortly after, from memory). These people will never move on from the idea that lots of people died and thus all future actions must stop any more deaths being added to that number.
I swear I had Omicron for a couple of days back in late January and early February this year. First it felt like a cold, then briefly like a mild flu, then back to a cold again, then it was gone. That was exactly two years after the first time I think I had the original strain, and my only symptom then was losing my sense of smell and taste for a day out of the blue.
COVID-19 has always been that weird disease which is extremely dangerous to everyone except those who have it. After all, if this had been otherwise, the recommended medical approach couldn’t possibly have been self-isolation aka house arrest as this would have killed loads and loads of people.
Naively, one would believe that people react to My neighbour got it and it was harmless to him with Ok, this means it’s going to be harmless for me, too. But that’s not how people’s minds work, at least not those of a sizable subset of people. This is because of something I hereby christen (Should I be mohammedizing it in the name of diversity?) the lottery phenomenon: The lottery works by collecting a relatively small amount of money from a real lot of people and distributing a subset of the resulting huge sum to a statistically non-existant set of winners determined based on a random number from a large set. People play the lottery because they believe that they had a chance to win because someone always wins. But for each individual, the chance to be among the set of winners is close enough to zero to be regared as zero for all practical purposes. All which needs to be done to keep this entirely unrealistic belief alive is to ensure that people know that someone won (and occasionally, who won).
This worked exactly in the same way with COVID. The powers who laugh about us took great pains to ensure that everyone knew someone had always recently died of it, occasionally reporting in more detail about particularly sensational deaths. Hence, the same people who believe they had a real chance to win the lottery despite the actually don’t also believed there was a real risk that they might die of COVID despite this wasn’t the case, either.
I was Susan Michie, I would now write a book about behavrioural insights based on this observation, get rich, famous and into all kinds of government roles I’m not qualified for and end up knighted and/or working for the UN. Da ich das aber nicht bin, hoffe ich wenigstens, ihr mal ein bißchen in die Suppe gespuckt zu haben.
[As I’m not her, I hope that I at least managed to throw up into her soup — German idiom for upset her cosy, little routines somewhat]
In other words, (yawn)
I am happy to say that I still don’t know, and have no particular desire to know, whether I have had any form of the nasty Winter bug (allegedly novel) “covid”. (at least Winter bug before they mucked up people’s immune systems).
So..I caught something and didn’t know I’d got it..meanwhile I gave it to you, even though I didn’t know I’d given it to you, because I didn’t know I’d got it… and you didn’t know I’d given it to you because you didn’t know you’d got it..then you passed it on, even though you couldn’t know, because you didn’t know you’d got it…from me, who didn’t know I’d got it……..ad infinitum…LOL!!!
Makes you wonder just how many other awful diseases we’re spreading every day that nobody even knows about, because they haven’t been discovered yet, doesn’t it?
I have no problem with “scientists” dreaming up hypotheses. Essential for science to advance. I’m fairly relaxed about our Beloved Leaders (arts grads almost to a man / woman / whatever.) suggesting that this new hypothesis should be investigated. Think Margaret Thatcher and Glowbull Warming.
But when gormless politicians seize on a hypothesis and annoint it as The Settled Science, refuse to debate or discuss with scientists with alternative hypotheses, pump billions of taxpayer’s money into “their” chosen “science”, then things are dangerously wrong.
Covid vaccines and Ruinable Energy are two monster examples.
It is long overdue that those who perpetrate and promote these scams, who refuse to debate, who fill their boots with brown envelopes, are held to account. Most severely.
This item seems to have missed the obvious benefit that the more people who have contracted Covid without bad effects, the more people who have gained natural immunity. As this immunity increases so the Covid problem reduces. Some scientists don’t want tp point this out because it damages the interests of their paymasters i.e. the big pharma industry