Archive for the ‘Secular Religions’ Category

More Clips of Joe Biden Showing Obvious Symptoms of Senile Dementia

March 9, 2020 6 comments

Here are a couple of YouTube clips about how most mainstream corporate media presstitutes are trying to cover up for Joe Biden’s obvious decline into overt Senile Dementia. Also a couple of the latest Biden brainfarts.. assuming he has one left: Link 1 and Link 2.

Clip # 1: Saagar Enjeti and Ryan Grim talking about Joe Biden’s Dementia.

But this situation is starting to change as Joe Biden has become the choice of the democratic establishment.

Clip # 2: The Jimmy Dore Show about how Fox is starting to attack Joe Biden’s brain “issues”.

What do you think? Comments?

Joe Biden is Displaying Very Obvious Symptoms of Senile Dementia

March 7, 2020 6 comments

As I mentioned in a recent post, any sane person who has been watching the very few, short and carefully stage-managed public appearances of Joe Biden cannot ignore that he is showing very obvious symptoms of early-stage senile dementia. While we could spend a lot of time speculating about why supposedly “smart” people such as Obama came up with the “brilliant” brainfart of anointing him as the establishment’s choice in the ongoing 2020 party presidential primary- that is best reserved for another post. Instead, let us talk about another aspect of this clusterfuck- one which I briefly wrote about in my previous post. As some of you might know, the Trump re-election campaign and Trump have now started hinting at Joe Biden’s rapidly diminishing mental capability. But more importantly an increasing number of people on the left have started focusing on it ever since Obummer tried to pull of a nomination coup. To make a long story short, Biden’s dementia is soon going to become a topic of public discussion regardless of whether spineless Bernie or his official surrogates raise that issue or not.

Take a look at this very recent clip from Joe Rogan’s show in which he openly says that Biden has senile dementia and is not fit to run for public office. Party zealots such as MikeCA should expect clips like these and weekly compilations of Biden’s so-called “gaffes” to start making the rounds on social media sites. I am sure that democratic party establishment will keep dismissing Biden’s neurological meltdowns as “gaffes” caused by his childhood stuttering issues. But it is obvious to average people watching them that Biden’s neurological issues are much worse than stuttering. I mean, the guy often does not know where he is, which office he is running for, mixes up his wife and sister, cannot often recall the name of the president he served under, can’t remember basic phrases from 4th grade civics curricula and the list goes on. Any other man of his age with his medical history and showing these symptoms would have been diagnosed with senile dementia a long time ago, but Joe Biden has a pretty good chance of being the democratic party nominee for president. Even Reagan didn’t start displaying noticeable symptoms until his second term.

Some more clips of Biden displaying obvious symptoms of dementia: link 1, link 2 and link 3.

And here is one Twitter Meme on that topic

and here is another one..

What do you think? Comments?

Thoughts on Recent Developments in the 2020 Democratic Primaries: 3

March 3, 2020 14 comments

In the previous post of this series, I promised to write about how the results of South Carolina’s democrat primary would be used by the party establishment to try and push the candidacy of an old guy with vascular dementia aka Joe Biden. Yes, you heard that right- it is my opinion that Joe Biden displays symptoms consistent with cerebrovascular dementia. In case you didn’t know, this is a sub-type of senile dementia in which neuronal dysfunction and death is largely caused by micro- and macro- vascular dysfunction in the brain, rather than pathological changes associated with Alzheimer’s Disease. It should be noted that most patients with senile dementia have some combination of cerebrovascular dysfunction and pathological changes seen in Alzheimer’s disease. So what makes me think that Joe Biden’s obvious dementia is of the vascular type?

Well.. due to his medical history. Patients with the more classical version of Alzheimer’s tend to be female and in their late 70s or older. Vascular dementia type pathology, on the other hand, is more common in men- especially those with a history of previous vascular dysfunction, a history of previous traumatic brain injury or prior neurosurgery. As some of you might know, Biden had a couple of surgeries in the late 1980s to repair two particularly nasty aneurysms in his brain. While those surgeries saved his life, it should be noted that somebody with multiple aneurysms (even after repair) is far more likely to develop other cerebrovascular issues later on in their life than somebody who never had them. To quickly summarize, Biden rapid and obvious cognitive decline since 2012-2015 is most likely the result of (predominantly) vascular dementia.

But why does this matter and what does it have to do with future of democratic primary? As it turns out a lot. Let me explain. See.. Biden has gone down in the polls since his entry into the race for two main reasons. Firstly, the Bernie’s campaign cleverly dug up his long record of support for cuts to Social Security and Medicare. But even more importantly, because Biden’s staff kept his media or public appearances to a bare minimum because they rightly understood that he was displaying too many symptoms of dementia for potential voters to look the other way. This is also why rich donors were willing to put far more money behind other turncoat candidates such as McKinsey Buttboy and Lying Liz. This is why DNC’s original plan to deny Bernie the nomination- which was based on flooding the field with many candidates who were expected to take votes away from Bernie- but not Biden backfired, spectacularly.

To be fair, Bloomberg’s unanticipated entry into the race and his spending over 500 million on advertising to project himself as the centrist alternative was the killer blow for Biden- which is ironic since Bloomberg was trying to stop Bernie, not Biden. I could write multiple posts on why McKinsey Buttboy and Amy Binderthrower got steamrolled in the primaries, but they are no longer relevant. The very short version is that the number of partisan democrats who want 90s-style centrists is declining as more babyboomers keep dying. You might have seen the grifting piece of shit aka Barack Obama was able to get Buttboy and Binderthrower to drop out yesterday and endorse Biden. As I have written in the past Obama is the political equivalent of Bill Cosby and his presidency was a disaster for establishment democrats, which makes their continued worship of him even more pathetic. I am sure MikeCA will disagree with this assessment.

Since we cannot change the past, so let us talk about the future- specifically my predictions about how the democratic primary will evolve. FYI- I am not concerned about the results of Super Tuesday voting since Obama’s last minute scam does not change the overall direction of this contest. Having said that it changes something further down the line. Let me explain..

1] Any person who is not an establishment democrat or partisan worshiper (MikeCA?) will tell you that the party has experienced a pretty steep decline in many parts of the country within the past decade. To be fair it has been on a generally downward path for the past twenty years, but it is undeniable that this slow-motion collapse sped up after Obama took office in early-2009. But why? Well.. the short answer is that Obama got elected by pretending to a populist reformer, but ended up continuing and intensifying neoliberal policies once in office. There is a reason why it took the incredible ineptitude of Trump for democrats, in 2018, to even partially reverse their decade-long streak of losses. However, thus far, no political figure of any fame has openly said that Obama was a shitty president and the proximal cause of Trump’s rise.

Even Bernie Sanders, whose private critique of Obama is well known, has so far not criticized the later openly. However the dumb meddling that Obama pulled off yesterday is almost certain to make Bernie’s campaign reconsider their previous reticence to criticize him. This is especially likely since they now understand that older black voters in the south are not going to vote for a Jew under any condition. Also, after Super Tuesday there are no big states full of older black voters coming up for some time- if at all. So expect the Bernie campaign, especially surrogates to start going after the many problematic legacies of Obama’s presidency. While Bernie would have had to do this at a later stage anyway, Obama’s meddling in the primary removes the one reason they had not done so till now.

2] While Lying Liz has pretended to be a progressive, nobody with half-a-brain and even a brief overview of her career believed that lie. However, Bernie foolishly refrained from criticizing her once the election campaign began. Given her actions since then, especially in the past month- I am guessing that many in his campaign were eager to tear her a new one. Now that she has publicly admitted her role as a DNC-appointed spoiler for progressive voters- expect the Bernie campaign to go after her. And they will have to, because there is no realistic option to that course of action. Of course, Bernie could be stupid (or cynical) enough to not challenge her bullshit- but realistically we are all going to gothere, whether he likes it or not.

3] Bernie has also refrained from any attacks on Joe Biden’s cognitive ability or talking about how the Biden family enriched themselves because of the various political offices he held. While this was kinda acceptable when Biden was slowly sinking in the polls and the centrist vote was split, they just cannot afford to do this now. While it is far more likely that most of the attacking on these issues will be done by Bernie surrogates, sooner or later things will reach a point when Biden’s obvious dementia will be an issue for open public discussion. Once again, even if Bernie does not want to there- he has no recourse. More importantly, his second-order surrogates are already going after Biden’s cognitive status. And you can bet that Trump is going to push those two narratives on a massive scale, even if Bernie does not. One way or the other, both issues will enter the domain of political campaigning in a big way. The general direction, as they say, is set.

It is of course possible that Bernie does not do any of this and ends up losing like he did in 2016. However doing so in 2020 carries very different implications from doing it four years ago. In the first campaign, he was the relatively unknown newcomer who was talking about ideas that were popular but almost never mentioned by other politicians. 2020 is likely the last time he will run for the nomination and presidency. To put it another way, if he is not seen as putting everything in this campaign, he will lose the following he has built and have no legacy- at least of the type he seems to crave. He has no option but to go on the offensive now..

I am curious to see how Bloomberg performs in the Super Tuesday states today. Will he keep sucking votes from Biden? Will he stay in the race after tomorrow. Who knows? Will write about my analysis of today’s primaries in the next part.

What do you think? Comments?

Some Thoughts About the Ongoing Worldwide Coronavirus Outbreak

March 1, 2020 5 comments

Most readers might have read my previous posts (link 1, link 2) about the ongoing Coronavirus outbreak in China. Since then the outbreak has become a bigger issue outside China than within it. The growth in numbers of diagnosed, and suspected, international patients have surpassed those within China. So, ironically it is supposedly “authoritarian” China rather than the allegedly “free and competent” West that has done a much better job of controlling the outbreak. And you know something, this outcome is not surprising because the Chinese system actually gives a fuck about its own people as opposed to the western “free market” system which only care about the quarterly profit of corporations. As of today, the official government policy is still to test as few people as possible that way, they can pretend the outbreak is not a problem in this country. Of course, this would be hard to conceal once people start dying by the hundreds- but till then they can use a combination of incompetence and malice to pretend that there are no problem.

Now some of you might say- “didn’t you also write that this virus was far less serious than many were saying in the first few weeks of the outbreak”?. And to that I say- well, that is still correct from a medical and population statistics point of view. There are however two, or three, issues which will make this outbreak especially problematic in USA. Firstly, there are far more old people in assisted living facilities in this country than in China or most other Asian countries. In case you don’t know, these places are staffed with poorly paid precariat labor and known breeding grounds for all sorts of outbreaks- especially of respiratory and gastrointestinal pathogens. I can bet that people working in such facilities, who are usually young and poorly paid, are not going to call in sick if they have a ‘mild case of the flu’. Guess what, this scenario has already played out in Washington State. Did I mention that this cluster of infections was community acquired.

In case you are wondering, epidemics become hard to control once the microorganism starts circulating in the general population rather than being restricted to easily identified travelers and other high-risk groups. So far countries where community acquired infections account for the majority of cases include South Korea, Japan, Iran and Italy. While I can predict with reasonable certainty that these countries will be able to control them (Yes, even Iran), the same cannot be said about USA. A system which prioritizes the infliction of precarity on the masses over anything approaching rationality is bound to become a hotbed of community-acquired spread of COVID-19. Given that super-spreaders play an important role in the dissemination of this virus, imagine what all those poorly-paid people who work in restaurants and fast-food outlets could do for the spread of COVID-19 in USA. While I am not a sadist, there is something to be said for a country with almost no paid sick-leave policies getting fucked over because of them.

Another important issue, which has been still neglected by countries other than Japan (at this moment) is the role of children in spreading the virus. We know from available Chinese medical statistics that children under 10 and youth under 20 account for an unusually small percentage of cases who show symptoms (fever etc) or require medical intervention. Given that these are the two groups most likely to get community-acquired upper respiratory infections, it is odd that they are so poorly represented in the statistics for COVID-19. We cannot, therefore, rule out of the possibility that a far higher number of children and young adults infected with COVID-19 either experience an asymptomatic infection or one with minimal symptoms and then go on to recover completely, but are capable of infecting others just as readily as those with serious symptoms. So far, Japan is the only country to recognize this issue and close schools– though I suspect South Korea might follow soon. USA is unlikely to do this until it is too late.

One of the other unanswered questions about COVID-19 concerns why it seems to cause serious illness in old people with cardiovascular disease. While this has not been shown beyond doubt, having heart disease increases the risk of death even more than having pre-existing respiratory illness. If that is holds true, why? Also, what is the most common proximal cause of death in those who die. Is it respiratory failure, cardiovascular dysfunction, secondary infection from prolonged hospitalization or something else? Do any of the antiviral drugs shown to have activity against similar viruses in animal models effective in human beings? So far, initial reports suggest that Favipiravir has some therapeutic effect in patients with COVID-19. Remdesivir is another drug which has known efficacy in animal models of coronaviral infections. But, as of right now, we still don’t know how much these drugs affect the course of illness, morbidity, mortality and ability to infect others. Hopefully, this state of affairs will change soon.

Then there is the effect on global supply chain- with two major potential consequences. Firstly, could such a disruption have serious effects on the availability of essentials such a drugs, which are usually synthesized from ingredient chemicals made in China. While some disruption is inevitable, the post-1980 tendency of american companies to maintain “lean inventories” is likely to bite them (and all of us) in the behind. We also have to consider the effects of such disruption on the broader economy in an election year. Almost all of Trump’s re-election campaign is based on the narrative that he has not destroyed the economy. But what if the downstream effects of COVID-19 on the supply chain of almost every single industrial sector in USA cause an actual recession, rather than just a partial stock market crash. If this were to occur, the orange buffoon would find himself in a very bad position and likely lose the presidential election. Of course, I am sure that the democrat establishment will try to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Another interesting question is whether a widespread outbreak of COVID-19 in USA, with all of its attendant morbidity and morality might make Bernie Sander’s plan for ‘Medicare for All’ plan an even more popular idea than it is right now. It would certainly make a lot of idiots who support the present system think twice about supporting the status quo.

What do you think? Comments?

Thoughts on Recent Developments in the 2020 Democratic Primaries: 2

February 28, 2020 6 comments

In the previous post of this series, I wrote about the ongoing shitshow of Iowa’s 2020 democratic primary caucus and the better-run New Hampshire primary. I also wrote a bit about the future- specifically how only Bernie, Biden and Bloomberg have any future prospects after Nevada and South Carolina. Since then, a few things have happened. Firstly, the Iowa’s shitshow still hasn’t been resolved. Yes, you is correct- it is still going on. Many of you might also know that Bernie won a resounding victory in the Nevada Caucus and ended up getting almost twice the number of votes as his nearest opponent- as well as the majority of delegates from that state. We also had the pleasure of watching mini-Mike Bloomberg implode in front of a large national audience in his first appearance at a debate. And he did not show any signs of improvement in his more recent second appearance. Of course, he is still spending dozens of million dollars per day on TV and web advertisements- which I guess is good news for the people he is currently employing.

So let us begin by talking about Bloomberg. In my opinion, he has no realistic chance of winning the presidential election against Trump. Here is why.. For starters, he has zero public presence and he just cannot help coming across as an out of touch elitist billionaire with serious personal insecurities. Even the character of Mr. Burns in ‘The Simpsons’ is far more likable that Bloomberg. In contrast, even though Trump might be worth only a couple of billion, he has a much better understanding of how average people, live, think and most importantly- want to see. It does not help that Mike Bloomberg has as many skeletons in his closet as Trump, and nowhere near the charm of Trump to let potential voters ignore them. Here is an example to help you understand what I am getting at. Ever wonder why Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby ended up in jail for what they did to women over these years, but equally lecherous but handsome or otherwise desirable male actors and musicians almost always get a free pass.

Yes, the public will accept and forgive people who are assholes if they are charming and open about their behavior. Many of you might remember how democrat idiots thought that the release of that “pussy grab” tape would sink Trump’s 2016 campaign. But it did not and was pretty easy to understand why- if you were not a credentialed incestuous circle-jerker. But in case a few of you don’t, let me explain. See.. the personal morality of politicians was an issue only as long as most people had a prosperous and stable life. That is why the Monica Lewinsky scandal could have only become a big issue in the late 1990s- and even then it did not hurt Bill Clinton’s image to any appreciable extent. More importantly, people stop caring about that sort of bullshit once socio-economic conditions start deteriorating. I bet you that people would have looked the other way had Obama openly cheated on his wife with multiple white women, IF he had delivered on economically populist policies. Most people care far more about outcomes than image.

Don’t believe me? Obama got 69.5 million votes in 2008, but only 65.9 million in 2012- in spite of the population of USA increasing by a few million during that time-span. And you know why.. because he failed to deliver on the populist stuff he vaguely hinted at during the 2008 electoral campaign. Even though MikeCA won’t like to hear this, the rise of Trump is best understood as the logical consequence of the unwillingness and inability of Obama to deliver on his pre-election populist promises. In fact, Obama would have lost the 2012 election if Republicans had fielded even a moderately populist candidate instead of a smug corporate asshole aka Mitt Romney. To make a long story short, corporatist candidates such as Bloomberg and even Biden (let alone Warren and Buttboy) will lose to a fake populist such as Trump in the general election.

Of course, this hasn’t stopped the incompetent democratic establishment from hatching ever more hilarious plans to stop Sanders via procedural bullshit. And mark my words, they will try to pull of such a stupid scheme even if Sanders wins over 50% of the delegates. Yes.. I am serious about that scenario and to understand why, please read the linked article above to see the incredible amount of magical thinking these idiots are capable of. One noteworthy example include recruiting Obama’s wife and some no-name senator who did not even participate in this primary as the unity nominees. At this stage, I would not be surprised if they tried to rope in Hillary Clinton and her forgettable VP candidate from 2016 as the nominees. To put it another way, they would rather have four more years of Trump than a democratic nominee who is not “centrist”, in spite of the failure of candidates such as Al Gore, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton in the past few presidential elections.

I am sure that MikeCA will jump in to tell us how this is all wrong and that the democratic establishment actually cares about the plight of average voters. Newsflash- it does not, and has not given a fuck about non-professional class voters since the mid 1970s. Since we are already close to a thousand words, I will wrap this post now. In the next part, I will talk about the results of the South Caroline primary, Joe Biden’s cognitive status and why Bernie towing the line of democratic establishment on cultural issues is such a bad idea.

What do you think? Comments?

Identity Politics is the Western Equivalent of Caste Politics In India

February 23, 2020 35 comments

Most regular readers are aware that I detest SJW, wokeism and everything else associated with identity politics. While some reasons behind my contempt of this performative bullshit scam are common to most other critics, one of them is distinctly unique- and is summarized in the title of this post. As some of you might rember, I wrote a series about why the caste system was, and still is, so damaging to Indians. For the purposes of this post, the gist is as follows: The caste or ‘jati’ system created so many stupid divisions in Indian society that it has become almost totally dysfunctional for the past 1,500 years. It also created a mindset which lacks the capability for critical thought and reason. To make a long story short, much of what is wrong with that country today can be traced back to the ‘jati’ system.

And this brings us to a question which I did not tackle in that series- namely, what explains the persistence of such a stupid and shitty social system? How can a system which disadvantages the majority of its followers, in a multitude of ways, still remain popular among them? To be fair, this issue is not unique to the caste system since a similar argument can be made about any other religion. In my opinion, it comes down to how the caste or ‘jati’ system shapes power- or more precisely, how it reproduces itself at societal level. See.. one of central tenet of the ‘jati’ system is that only somebody of your own ‘jati’ can be trusted to represent your interests. In other words, only somebody of your own caste or ‘jati’ can be your leader and since there are hundreds (if not thousands) of ‘jatis’ there can also never be a broadly recognized leader or group of leaders.

Sure.. you can have national figureheads who are reasonably popular among the majority, but they simply do not command the power and reach of their equivalents in, say, China or USA. But why does this matter and how is any of this related to contemporary identity politics in the west. For starters, many of you must have realized by now that the core tenet of identity politics is that only somebody from your own ‘group’ can ever be a legitimate leader of people from said group. According to them, only a woman can truly represent the interests of women, a gay man of gay men, a “trans woman” of “trans women” etc. The corollary of this belief is that no society can have a legitimate leader and leadership acceptable to most people in it. But why is this belief so problematic? Wouldn’t people be best represented by others who are “like” them?

Well.. let us have a look at this issue by analyzing the one example of identity politics which is well established in USA. It is no secret that almost every single black politician who has been elected to any office in this country has achieved that position because of the strong support of black voters. Ya, sure.. there are some major historical reasons for why this is the case. But let me ask you another question- can you think of a single major black political figure who has done anything other than ignore his or her constituents once elected to office. A few, such as Obama, have actually championed policies which preferentially immiserated their most ardent supporters. Instead, the vast majority of black politicians do nothing beyond using their position for enriching themselves and their friends and relatives while acting as the ‘help’ for white politicians who want to maintain the shitty status quo.

Funny thing.. this is exactly how caste-based politics plays out in India. All the idiots who vote for politicians from their own castes get nothing worthwhile in return, while those elected to office go on to amass millions and billions through graft and scams in addition to preferential treatment of relatives and friends. Their supporters then get angry and frequently vote them out in the next election cycle by selecting a new bunch of scammers through the same thought process- if you can call it that. Guess what, the same thing happens again and the voters go back to the previous bunch of scammers. And the cycle goes on.. And now you know why China can get everything done properly on time while India can’t seem to get anything important done, let alone on time. My point is that identity politics is a recipe for stagnation, decay and ultimately, chaos.

Moving back to the situation in USA and west in general.. How has, for example, selecting more women as CEOs of large corporations improved the overall quality of lives for most women? Has it increased their paycheck, given them better job security, a longer paid maternity leaves or otherwise improved the quality of their children’s lives etc? It hasn’t! The only thing it has achieved is the elevation of a minuscule number of women to positions where they can be as greedy and asshole-ish as the very few men they replaced. The same is true, perhaps even more so, for black politicians and black “business leaders”, whose much publicized rise has not resulted in any worthwhile improvement in the conditions of the constituency they allegedly represent.

This also applies for gay politicians and “business leaders”. Has Apple suddenly started making better products because their current CEO is gay or has it somehow improved the material conditions for gay men in USA? The same is true for efforts to promote a few token lesbians, latinos and other ethnic minorities. Putting a few more non-white or non-straight people in positions of power, while simultaneously maintaining the previous status quo, is a scam- and an especially dangerous one. Letting the ‘alphabet people’ aka the LGBTQ..whatever enlarge this scam will only make things worse. Have a look at the political scene, aka the chaos, in India- where nothing of importance or significance gets done, but everyone in politics is constantly shouting at each other andaccusing everybody else of “corruption”- while wearing ridiculous headgear to show their caste credentials. It does makes for good theater though..

In summary, identity politics is a dangerous scam and should be seen as the contemporary western equivalent of caste politics in India. Though it is being currently promoted by elites to maintain the status quo, it will metamorphose into something far more uncontrollable- which in turn will end up creating a highly fragmented, polarized and dysfunctional society.

What do you think? Comments?

A Very Clever Deepfake and Crosscut of ‘The Matrix’ and ‘Office Space’

February 20, 2020 3 comments

A couple of days ago, I came across a very clever deepfake and crosscut clip of two iconic movies from 1999- namely, ‘Office Space’ and ‘The Matrix’. Curiously they were released about 5 weeks from each other- first one on February 19, 1999 and the second on March 31, 1999. The premise of this clip is as follows: What if Neo took the blue pill instead of the red pill?

What makes this clip amazing is the makers correctly point out that the main protagonists in both movies work as software developers in impersonal corporations. Even their cubicles looks very similar and both are surrounded by other cubicles filled with mostly irritating coworkers. The jokes in this YouTube clip are amazingly meta, and correctly describe the blue pill mindset.

What do you think? Comments?

More Observations about the Ongoing Coronavirus Outbreak in China

February 17, 2020 4 comments

A few days ago, I wrote a post about the ongoing coronavirus epidemic in China. In that post, I wrote that the current mortality figures (especially outside Wuhan) strongly suggest that it is far less deadly than many white racist idiots are claiming. I also hinted at the possibility that a large percentage of people exposed to the virus probably don’t develop clinical illness or are only mildly symptomatic. As it turn out, subsequent developments have validated my predictions. With a few hundred confirmed cases (based on lab tests) outside China, there have been only two additional deaths, the latest one being a 80-year-old Chinese man who was on a visit to France. And then I came across a few tweets with some new and interesting information about the broader mortality and morbidity patterns of this outbreak.

Have a look at the first table containing data, which is now already a couple of weeks old, from the main hospitals in Wuhan. The first thing you will notice almost immediately is that the death rate for males (4.45 %) is significantly higher than for females (1.25 %). But there is something even more interesting in this table. Have a look at the death rate for patients under 60 years (1.43 %) versus those above 60 years (5.3 %). It turn out that being male and old significantly increases the risk of death from 2019-nCov. But why? So far, the best explanation for differences in mortality rates between males and females is as follows: Smoking is much more common among men in China than women and seems to increase the expression of a protein which this virus uses to enter cells in respiratory tract. In other words, smoking makes you far more likely to develop more severe forms of this disease.

Now let look at another table containing even more recent and comprehensive statistics about mortality and morbidity due to 2019-nCov. You will immediately notice that the death rate is below 0.5% for those under 50 years and barely over 1% for those between 50 and 60, but goes up pretty steeply for patients above 60, reaching almost 15 % for those above 80. Interestingly children under 10 seem to be somehow protected from developing severe forms of this illness. Also note that the difference between mortality rates in males and females is now smaller, though the later still fare better than the former- in spite of patient numbers in both categories being roughly similar. And yes, the occupation category with highest death rate are retirees- validating the data from previous table. The low case numbers for patients between 0-20 years is also odd.

To summarize, I am even more convinced that 2019-nCov causes only a mildly symptomatic to asymptomatic infection in most people infected by it. This is why the number of those infected was so large before the virus was initially identified. Since older and very ill patients were highly represented among those who ended up in hospitals at beginning of this outbreak, the mortality rate initially seemed much higher than it turned out. To be clear, 2019-nCov is definitely a bigger problem than your average influenza strain- but, as things stand today, it is not the apocalyptic epidemic which many white idiots were hoping for. Based on what we know about microbial evolution, this virus will most likely evolve into even less lethal version- eventually approaching the level of an average Influenza A strain.

What do you think? Comments?

Future of One Ethno-Religious Group in USA is Not Looking Bright: 3

February 14, 2020 15 comments

In the previous part of this series, I talked about how the obsessions of a certain ethno-religious group with maintaining their public image while often behaving like assholes and mixing religion with nationalism is guaranteed to end badly. Let us now talk about why the conflation of religio-cultural identity with nationalism has a tendency to end badly and why secondary and tertiary downstream effects of such a disaster are much bigger than most people realize- especially for the group in question. But before we go there, let us quickly talk about the origins of modern nationalism and the many problems it caused in the 20th century, including a bit about how older empires and countries managed to function remarkably well (in many cases for centuries at a time) without even a hint of nationalism.

Contrary to what some of you might believe, nationalism as we understand it today is a recent phenomenon that came into being after modern nation-states came into existence. Prior to that, you could have large stable empires and even countries but without the nationalism we associate with such entities. So, an entity such as the roman empire was far more decentralized than most people today can imagine. Sure.. it did have a common set of basic laws and rules, architectural plans, lots of intra-empire trade etc. But the people within that empire (roman and non-roman) did not see themselves as part of a single nation. Rather they saw themselves as as subjects of the same empire and had considerable freedom to follow their old gods and maintain their social structures as long as they did not claim that their ways were the only correct ones.

This is why empires such as the Roman and Ottoman or the many Chinese dynasties which lasted for hundreds of years even though their populations (even in China) were much more ethnically heterogeneous than many modern nation states. To put it another way, systems of governance where there are some uniform laws and a degree of administrative commonality can function very nicely even if there is a pretty high degree of ethno-cultural heterogeneity. Which brings us to the real reason why modern nation states (after 1850s) tried to sell the scam of nationalism to their populations. It comes down to raising large armies of conscripted soldiers for fighting large wars and help expand their respective empires- something which was seen as necessary in that era. That is why nationalism, as we know it today, arose in the colonial states of western Europe and the apartheid country of USA. Yes.. that is why.

Of course, one interesting side-effect of creating bullshit national identities is that they facilitate armed conflict. There is a reason why WW1, WW2, the Armenian Genocide, Greek Genocide in Turkey, Holocaust and a ton of other wars in Eastern Europe occurred in the narrow time-span from 1890 to 1950. It is also why post-WW2 Europe is a far less nationalistic place than in it used to be between 1870-1945.But what does any of this have to do with the dim future of a certain ethno-religious group in USA? What can history teach about the results of nationalism, especially ethno-religious nationalism? Well.. for starters, the side that is numerically inferior will always get walloped by the numerically superior side- even if it takes some time and a few false starts. And this makes perfect sense once you realize that nationalism was always a tool for winning wars and conquering new territories. But it gets worse from here..

The numerically smaller side will not only be ultimately defeated, but will also lose a lot of the territory it used to hold. While technology can stave off the day of reckoning for a few decades, its spread ultimately dooms the numerically inferior side. Israel has not been able to decisively win a land war since the mid 1980s- something it could do with ease a decade before that. We known how their little 2006 misadventure in Lebanon ended. Or take the example of Armenia, whose present area is a faction of what used to Armenian-majority regions used to be prior to WW1. Or look at all the lands lost by Serbians since the dissolution of Yugoslavia. Unlike most people who will tell you whatever you want to hear, I will tell you stuff you don’t like to hear. But what is the relevance of any of this to the future of one enthno-religious group in USA?

Well.. it comes down to who they, or the more visible and vocal members of their group, identify with. Prior to 1945, the majority of this group in USA (and some other western countries) did identify with their religion or culture- more of the later than former. However the vast majority of them did not associate their identity with a physical nation or land area. But how does associating yourself with a specific area of land change anything. Well.. as it turns out, going from an almost purely ethno-religious group to one increasingly defined by association with a piece of land makes other see you as a nation. Now this is not a bad idea if there are hundreds of millions others such as yourself on an area with a decent amount of natural resources. But what if there are only a few million of you and people like yourself have not been historically a liked group?

To make a long story short, it is not advantageous for a historically disliked group with a small population size to become their own nation. It might work OK in the short term, but everything we know about nationalism and especially how it creates and intensifies conflict between groups tells us that the numerically smaller group will always lose in the end- even if it has nuclear weapons. But how does this connect with the future of that group in USA? Let me put it this way.. in prior decades people of that group supported that nation because they felt a kinship with their persecuted co-religionists. However they never stopped seeing themselves as part of the country in which they were born. Over the past twenty to thirty years, an increasing number of that group (especially the visible and vocal types) see themselves as a separate nation within USA.

More importantly, this trend has been noticed by a large percentage of people who do not belong to said ethno-religious group. It also does not help that, today, the group in question is over-represented in the category of greedy assholes. Some of you might be aware that in the past this greedy asshole category used to be full of people with WASPish surnames. Today it is.. well.. different. The guy currently trying to buy the presidency is an asshole billionaire called Michael Bloomberg. One of the most egregious examples of sexual abuse in Hollywood was allegedly committed by somebody known as Harvey Weinstein. One of the biggest financial backers for Donald Trump during 2016 is a billionaire known as Sheldon Adelson. The ex-CEO of Goldman-Sachs, whose company was behind some of the worst shenanigans which resulted in global financial Crisis of 2008, is a charming person known as Lloyd Blankfein.. the same guy who is on record as saying that his company did god’s work. I could go on..

My point is that pulling off this shit in a system which is already experiencing rapid terminal decline (USA) when you are both a small minority as well as increasingly seen by others as an actual nation within a nation might not end well. Since I do not belong to one of the monotheistic religions or believe in any other religion, I have no dog in this fight. Just making an observation based on what I can observe and my understanding of history. Might write more on topic based on responses. Have a feeling there may be a few..

What do you think? Comments?

Thoughts on Recent Developments in the 2020 Democratic Primaries: 1

February 13, 2020 8 comments

Regular readers of my blog might remember that I wrote a few posts in 2015 and 2016 about my thoughts on the 2016 presidential election- party primaries as well as actual electoral campaign. Not to toot my horn too much (again), but I correctly predicted that Trump would win republican party nomination within a few weeks of entering the race and how he would defeat Hilary in the general election as early as February 2016. More importantly, I never changed my opinion about both outcomes based on the latest bullshit narratives and lies pumped out by decrepit and dying corporate media outlets such as NYT, WP, CNN, MSNBC etc. As it turned out, my assessment was more correct than every single one of those incestuous presstitutes.. also known as “credentialed journalists”.. who were (and still are) each paid millions of dollars per year by those outlets. I can sense that MikeCA will get triggered by this paragraph as I am writing it.. lol.

I initially considered not writing about this quadrennial election cycle, because I know it is going to be a much bigger shitshow than the previous one. But after some more thought, and one small trial balloon, have decided to write about it. I will, however, not focus on every shitshow and fake controversy along the way because there will be tons of them. Furthermore, I write as a hobby and despite of what MikeCA might want to believe, I have not made a single cent out of writing this blog or any other. With that out of the way, let me recommend a new and interesting article by Matt Taibbi which summarizes a possibility which I also increasingly see as being very likely. The very short version of that article is as follows: Bernie will win the party nomination outright or get a plurality of delegates in 2020 for the same reasons Trump did in 2016. This is likely since Bernie, like Trump, has a very devoted and significant core of voter support while those opposing him are competing against each other to win the votes of those who are fine with the status quo.

Readers might have noticed how dying corporate media outlets have been busy pumping up each establishment candidate in succession only to see them deflate in a spectacular fashion and then move on to the next one. First they were trying to sell the inevitability of Biden, then it was the summer of Liz Warren, the fall of McKinsey Buttboy and now the rise of that woman who abuses her staff. As things stand today, Biden’s primary campaign, like the candidate, is rapidly falling apart after getting walloped in Iowa and New Hampshire. Lying Harvard lady.. I mean, Elizabeth Warren.. is doing no better, especially given the time and money she invested in both states. McKinsey Buttboy is trying to pull a Juan Guaido even though he has close to zero support among non-white and non-affluent white voters. Did I mention that Pyscho boss-lady has no realistic path beyond New Hampshire. And we haven’t even talked about the effect of the two billionaires aka Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg’s campaigns in later states.

Let us first talk about the recent Iowa primary.. well, the parts other than the purposely botched caucus and McKinsey Buttboy declaring victory before even a single partial result was declared. You might have heard that the aggregate turnout at that state caucus this year was lower than 2020. Well, the total turnout this year was higher than 2016 but lower than 2008. The turnout of youth voters (as a percentage of total) was however slightly higher than 2008 and much higher than 2016. While this is not especially good, it is certainly not bad- especially for a party which has blown so much political capital because of their obsession with the bullshit RussiaGate and UkraineGate investigations and predictably unsuccessful attempt at removing Trump through impeachment. I mean.. you cannot seriously expect record-breaking turnout at the primary of a party whose establishment is pushing nonsense that many of their potential voters don’t give a flying fuck about. And they kept changing the caucus site locations till the day before primary.

Moving on to the New Hampshire democrat primary, the turnout this year was significantly higher than 2016 and will probably exceed 2008. Also, unlike the shitshow of Iowa’s primary the one in New Hampshire went well and results were available later that night. I probably do not have to tell you that Bernie got the most votes, just like he did in Iowa. Sure, the victory margin was less than 2016 because a field with over eight candidates (at least five major ones) has different dynamics than an election with just two. In my opinion, Elizabeth Warren was the biggest loser coming out of that primary since her two consecutive poor performances and tepid support in subsequent states ensures that her campaign (barring some Deus Ex Machina twist) is, for all practical purposes, dead. Even though Amy Klobuchar, aka Psycho boss-woman, did better than expected- her campaign is also dead since she has really poor numbers in upcoming states.

Moving on to McKinsey Buttboy, who was the corporate media darling before Pyscho boss-lady, his campaign will probably hand around till South Carolina or more likely super Tuesday- when it becomes glaringly obvious to his backers that he has no chance. While Biden has been utterly humiliated due to his poor showing in the first two primaries, I would not consider his campaign dead until he is defeated or flounders badly in Nevada and South Carolina. While it is true that his campaign does not have much money and big donors are increasingly skeptical of his chances, older Bill Cosby-worshiping blacks still haven’t deserted him en masse yet. We also have to factor in that bland neoliberal billionaires such as Tom Steyer are pretty competitive in the stupid.. I mean southern.. states. Did I mention that Bloomberg has also setup some committee which large donors can join for free if they pledge to not support any other candidates?

As some have already said, it increasingly appears that the democratic primary will be between Bernie and Bloomberg. Sure.. something totally unexpected can change this building trend but the simple fact is that Bernie has (by far) the largest grassroots support and capability to raise funds from them while Bloomberg is among the ten richest men in USA. One more thing.. the democratic party will lose 2020 presidential election if it is stupid enough to choose Bloomberg as their candidate for reasons I will explain in the next part.

What do you think? Comments?

Recent Iowa Democrat Caucus was the 737-MAX of Electoral Primaries

February 5, 2020 22 comments

By now, all of you might must have heard that the democrat party presidential primary caucus for 2020 in Iowa was an epic shitshow. At the time of writing this brief post, the “official” results had not even crossed the 75% mark (74.79% to be precise)– and it has been almost three days after the shitshow was over. It is clear to me that the Iowa democratic party (IDP) is trying to delay the final results as long as possible to make sociopathic Pete Buttboy look like the “winner”, even though it is obvious that Bernie Sanders won it. It goes without saying that dying and discredited corporate media outlets such as CNN and MSNBC are also fully into this scam. To that end, the DNC and its local people at the IDP are intentionally delaying announcing the results of specific large caucus locations known to be very favorable to Bernie Sanders.

Have a look at this post from the Intercept about how the last-minute “App” developed for official data collection in this state caucus was a product of democratic establishment insiders. Read about how the specific person behind the appropriately (and ironically) named ‘Shadow’ app was a controversial and very pro-establishment figure in the democratic party. Did I mention that this person, a certain Tara McGowan, was a big supporter of Pete Buttboy’s presidential campaign? It is also rather interesting that she is married to Michael Halle, a political consultant who worked as a lead organizer in Iowa for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and is a senior strategist for Pete Buttboy. Incompetent credentialed losers live and breathe in small incestuous circles, don’t they?

But it gets better. The team of incompetent credentialed insider losers who were responsible for this app were neither software experts or good at anything beyond deep-kissing establishment democrat ass. They were all part of Hillary Clinton’s unsuccessful 2016 presidential campaign.. you know, the one here she lost a election to a lecherous reality-show host. Of course, there has been no official explanation as to why a small team of incompetent political operatives were paid hundreds of thousands to develop an app that nobody needed and which was not tested under anything approaching real-life conditions- if at all. Oh.. and the backup phone-based system to communicate results to party headwaters was mysteriously not working properly on that day.

But it gets even better. Sociopath Pete Buttboy’s campaign was a very recent donor to the make-believe “corporation” which made the shitty app that was unnecessary and misreported numbers- if it even worked. While there are those who attribute this still ongoing shitshow to terminal institutional incompetence on the part of democratic establishment, it is my opinion that more than a little malice was also involved. Michael Tracey makes a very good argument that the Iowa Caucus results should be voided, since any results that come out of this epic clusterfuck with oodles of malice are unlikely to be trusted by most people- especially those voting in upcoming democratic primaries. Did I mention that Iowa caucus turnout was mediocre this year, though younger than previous years. Apparently, the Trump impeachment bullshit isn’t selling in Iowa.

The fact that democrat party establishment could screw up their own primary caucus in the same week as they failed to get Trump removed from office tells you all you need to know about the state of that party. Then again, what can you expect from a party which (just like its republican counterpart) is still living in a world that no longer exists. I am sure we will hear more about how this fiasco went down by this weekend and it likely wont be the last one in 2020.

What do you think? Comments?

Some Initial Thoughts about the Recent Coronavirus Outbreak in China

January 31, 2020 12 comments

More than one commentator on my previous post wanted me to write something about the recent Coronavirus outbreak in China, especially regarding how bad it really is or might become in the near future. Since useful and concrete information about this outbreak has been overshadowed by a lot of racist mental projections in the declining west, I thought it was a good idea to write down my initial thoughts about the situation. FYI, one of my degrees is in microbiology. So let us talk about about this outbreak, starting with what we know for sure about the virus in question.

1] The Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) behind this outbreak is fairly close in its sequence to one which caused the SARS outbreak in 2003. And yes, it is closer to some known bat coronaviruses, but not others. Also, both SARS and 2019-nCoV almost certainly jumped from bats to human hosts. The odd thing, though, is that most bat species in Wuhan are currently hibernating and the initial outbreak occurred at a seafood market, suggesting that another mammalian species acted as an intermediate host between bats and humans.. perhaps a sick cat, dog etc.

2] Initial sequence analysis of virus samples from multiple patients and comparing them to each other strongly suggests that the jump from bats to humans occurred very recently, mostly likely within the past 2-3 months. Interestingly it seems to bind to the same human protein (for entry into cells) as the coronavirus which caused SARS. Given the fairly high similarity in sequence, same protein used for entry into cells and similar clinical disease produced by 2019-nCov and SARS we can make an educated guess that many other characteristic (infectivity etc) are also similar. Think of 2019-nCOV as a sibling or cousin of SARS.

3] It therefore follows that 2019-nCov is likely to be similar in its infectivity to the one which caused SARS in 2003. While some preliminary analysis by western scientists pretend that the former is more infectious than the later, everything we know about viruses tells us that they are very similar viruses which use the same protein to gain entry into human cells. I do not expect 2019-nCov to be significantly harder to control than SARS. The key word is ‘harder’ as 2019-nCov might end up infecting more people than SARS- but ease of control will be similar.

4] So far, the percentages of 2019-nCov infections ending in death is around 10%, and is similar to what we saw over the entirety of SARS outbreak. It is well known that viral strains which cause severe infections and high rates of mortality evolve into ones that cause mild infections and low rates of mortality because the former burn themselves out due to lack of new hosts. We can therefore expect the mortality and morbidity rates due to this virus to drop over the course of time due to better quarantine (corrals more aggressive strains) and treatment (lower mortality). Some of you might have noticed that the increase in number of deaths is now far slower than the number of confirmed infections- which is a good sign.

5] It is highly unlikely that 2019-nCov was developed by China as a biological weapon for the simple reason that biological weapons are, for the lack of better words, stupid and dangerous. See.. unlike nuclear weapons (which China posses), biological weapons cannot be controlled once unleashed and are likely to kill as many on your side as the other side. This is especially so, if there is no readily available vaccine or decent drugs to treat that infection. Furthermore, modern scientific techniques allow us to track back their creation to a degree that was unimaginable in even as late as the 1980s. Being greedy is not the same as being stupid.

6] Most hype about 2019-nCov has a lot to do with the increasingly rapid decline of the dying west. To make matters worse, it is now obvious that the western system of corporation-controlled capitalism is vastly inferior to the Chinese system of state-controlled and directed “capitalism”. In case you think otherwise, tell me how people similar to Trump (fraudulent right-wing populists) are increasingly getting elected in western countries. Every white idiot (and non-white idiot from subservient countries) expressing public alarm about 2019-nCov outbreak is subconsciously or consciously driven to do so because of a combination of racism and the unspoken recognition that their own system is in terminal decline with no realistic hope of recovery.

7] To be clear, I am not minimizing the potential problems this outbreak could cause. Having said that, the Chinese system is probably the most capable of actually stopping such an outbreak. As mentioned above, having a state-controlled system of governance not beholden to corporations and other short-sighted moneyed interests allows you to get things done and devote resources in ways that are impossible for corporation-controlled “democracies” such as USA, not to mention semi-functional anarchies such as India. You can be certain that Chinese government will things done, regardless of the financial cost and suppression of worthless “human rights”.

What do you think? Comments?

The 1990s was Last Great Decade for People Living in USA and West: 1

January 26, 2020 15 comments

Here is a series I first contemplated writing about five years ago, though the core idea occurred to me a bit before that and in an unexpected place. See.. spending too much time looking at the less frequented parts of the internet often results in me noticing unusual correlations, trends and patterns which escape the attention of most people. About seven years ago, I was going through a newsgroup about new large architectural projects all over the world and noticed an odd trend. Increasingly the most interesting and large building projects in the world were in Asia, not North America or Europe. Some of you might attribute this to Asia finally catching up to the West, and initially considered that possibility. Then I noticed something else.. most of the few large building projects in the West were increasingly way over budget and took far longer than expected. More interestingly, the results were usually of poor quality and full of poor design choices.

And then I started noticing this same basic trend in many other areas, from drug discovery and computer technology to video games, movies and music. It was as if the past 15-20 years have been one continuous blur of stagnation if you were living in USA or any other western country. Some of you might say that smartphones, “machine learning” and other assorted bullshit is a sign of progress. But is it really? Think about it.. Pocket PCs running Windows Mobile could be used to browse the web, check email, play games, watch movie clips, take photos, utilize GPS and many more things almost 20 years ago. The biggest “advance” smartphones represent is that they are permanently connected to high-speed cellular networks because data rates are now very low. Has all that hype about “machine learning”, “deep learning” and “AI” translated into any worthwhile improvement in your quality of life? Can you think of a counter example?

While I would like to start this series by talking about how technology has stagnated, a better (more popular) place to start would be how cultural products has either stagnated gotten worse. While trends in music and video games will be addressed in subsequent posts, we will focus on trends in films and TV in this post. But before we go there, let us first define the 1990s. In my opinion, the 1990s began on December 26, 1991 and ended on September 11, 2001 though it kinda dragged on until August 31, 2005. The period between those dates was the last time the west (especially USA) was dominant and relatively prosperous. As you will see, these dates define that decade in many fields. It is as if this time-span was the last hurrah for the western socio-economic model including neo-liberalism (and neo-conservatism).

Now let us get back to the main focus of this post, namely the almost complete stagnation of creativity in western films and TV shows (including online offerings). Here is a question- Do you remember any film or TV show released within the past 15 years that was not a direct derivative of something released earlier? Do you remember anything financially successful or unsuccesful that was not a direct derivative of something from before 2006? But why does this matter? Well.. because almost decade in the century before 2006 witnessed multiple major new trends that were not a direct derivative of something from the past one. To be fair, some of it was due to technological advances and changes in social mores. But much of it was driven by people experimenting with new ways to present novel material. Confused? Let me explain..

Consider the 1920s, with german expressionist cinema (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Nosferatu, Pre-Code Hollywood movies, Russian Cinema (Battleship Potemkin, October). Can anybody deny that these represented new ways of making and editing films, not to mention the fact that they tackle hitherto untackled subject matter- at least in cinema. Or take the 1930s with its classic monster movies, Hollywood musicals, Disney Cartoons, Leni Riefenstahl’s documentaries etc. The 1940s had Film Noir and other memorable movies such as Citizen Kane, It’s a Wonderful Life, Casablanca etc. To be clear, I am not suggesting that previous decades were full of good, let alone original, movies. But it is clear that every decade in the century prior to 2006 saw the emergence of new and influential trends in cinema. However, we haven’t really seen anything similar occurring in the past 15 years.

The 1960s had tons of new trends, as did the 1970s. Even the 1980s had their new trends from low-budget horror movies to summer action blockbusters. There was much innovation in western cinema for a century before 2006. But the something, or more than one thing, happened western cinema became boring, repetitive and (most importantly) forgettable. I have briefly touched on some of these issues in my post about the current rash of film remakes, reboots, sequels and prequels and I sort of started talking about this topic in a post a few months ago– but never got around to building on it. And yes, I am aware that there are broader sociological trends at work. But whichever way you try to explain, it is hard to argue that the past fifteen years saw the alsmot total stagnation of creativity in western cinema and TV shows.

Don’t believe me? Well.. here are some facts. Most of the LOTR trilogy was filmed in New Zealand between October 11, 1999 and December 22, 2000, and the first movie in that series came out on November 20, 2001. The first X-men movie was released on July 14, 2000. The first film in the highly successful Spider Man franchise came out on May 3, 2002. The Matrix was released in 1999, as were the following important movies: Star Wars: Episode I, Office Space, Election, The Mummy, American Pie, The Blair Witch Project, The Sixth Sense, The Green Mile, Fight Club, American Beauty, Sleepy Hollow and many more. 1998 saw the release of important movies such as The Truman Show, Armageddon, Deep Impact, 1998 version of Godzilla, The Big Lebowski, Wild Things, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and many more.

The first Austin Powers movie came out in 1997, the first Jurassic Park in 1993. The first Scream movie came out in 1996 and the first I Know What You Did Last Summer in 1997. The first Toy Story came out in 1995 and the first Shrek movie in 2001. Can you think any equivalents in post 2005-era? Oh, and even the 40-year-old virgin came out in 2005. Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy came out in 2004. Superbad was filmed in 2006 and had been under development since 2000. Once again, I could keep going on and on- but you get my point. Pretty much every single major movie released in past 15 years can with very few exceptions directly trace its roots to the pre-2005 era. In the next part of this series, I will show how that the same is true for TV shows including their streaming variants. We will also start going into why this major socio-cultural-economic shift (aka stagnation) began in earnest around the mid-2000s.

What do you think? Comments?

UFOs might be Robotic Interplanetary Probes from Other Star Systems

January 22, 2020 4 comments

About two years ago, I wrote a short series about my thoughts on the ‘ancient astronaut’ theory. To make a long story short, the vast majority of stuff attributed to visits by ancient astronauts is much easier to explain without such intervention. Around that time, I also wrote a a post about the continued popularity of “Ancient Aliens” type TV shows. Having said that, I am skeptical about the vast majority of UFO sightings, the key words being ‘vast majority’. See.. the thing is.. over the many years I have been an amateur astronomer, I have seen (on only a couple of occasions) objects in the sky which moved around in a manner that was incompatible with currently feasible propulsion technologies. In other words, they were UFOs by definition.

Over the past couple of years, many of you might have also heard about more than one video of UFOs shot from navy aircraft (link 1, link 2 , link 3). Without going into too much detail, over thee years there have been numerous instances of navy pilots witnessing objects which display speed and maneuverability characteristics that exceeds what any known aircraft and human pilots are capable of performing or tolerating. Moreover, these unidentified flying objects are clearly aware of the presence of human piloted aircraft in their vicinity. While it would be tempting to believe that these UFOs are proof of some secret government program, the objects in question exhibit speed, acceleration and maneuverability characteristics which preclude human operators and propulsion dependent on currently feasible technologies, which is a fancy way of saying they are unlikely to be made by humans. So what are they doing flying about in our atmosphere?

Well.. here is my theory. Imagine that you are a species which has reached the technological level to travel between stars. Now ask yourself a simple question- what would be the most optimal way to explore stellar systems within your reach? Would you visit each and every system that you could travel to in person OR would you send “unmanned” probes that were essentially autonomous to survey them- especially the less important ones. My point is that it is far more discreet and less resource intensive to use “unmanned” probes for surveying and keeping tabs on planets in most star systems. Visiting in person makes sense only if you are interacting with another species that is at a comparable level of technological development. Also anybody who can travel between stars can almost certainly pack a lot of intelligence within such probes.

The UFOs we see in our atmosphere are, therefore. most likely ‘daughter’ probes meant for close-up exploration of planets. They are likely carried near their destination by larger ‘mother’ probes which travel between star systems. This might explain the less frequent sightings of larger UFOs releasing and then collecting smaller UFOs that fly much closer to the surface. Of course, there is a chance that all of this is just part of a big hoax or coverup. However, everything we know about UFOs thus far, suggests that a very small percentage of them are real and not controlled and manufactured by humans. Think of them as extremely advanced and capable equivalents of the unnamed probes we ourselves use to explore planets within the solar system.

What do you think? Comments?

Some Updates on the Accuracy of Recent Ballistic Missile Strikes by Iran

January 16, 2020 14 comments

In past couple of weeks, I have written a few posts (link 1, link 2, link 3 and link 4) about recent development in the Middle-East, specifically the rapidly deteriorating relations between Iran and USA.. which are now deep in negative territory. To be fair, they have never been close to positive territory since the 1979 revolution which overthrew their american puppet ruler. However recent developments in that region, specifically the assassination of Qasem Soleimani have pushed the course of events into what is now an irreversible pathway which results in Iran acquiring nuclear weapons and ICBMs within next few years, at the very least. However too many retarded and old white american jingos are busy deluding themselves into believing that Trump had “contained” Iran or some other bullshit fantasies likely fueled by reading too much fantasy aka Tom Clancy novels. Meanwhile events in the real world are increasingly pointing to a very different outcome.

As many of you know, after the assassination of Soleimani, Iran launched over a dozen ballistic missiles at two (or three?) american bases in Iraq. The majority were directed at the Al Assad Airbase in Iraq, which was allegedly where the drone that targeted Soleimani was launched from. While many “objective” western commentators are busy pretending that the strikes were not effective or accurate. Most american jingos also seem to have swallowed that bullshit, largely because it appears to validate whatever delusion they want to believe. Let us face it, telling people lies they want to hear has always been a pathway to fame, money and respectability. In fact, that has always been the modus operandi for priests of every single traditional and secular religion throughout human history. But let us get back to topic at hand..

As it turns out, the Iranian SRBM (Short Range Ballistic Missile) strikes were far more accurate than almost all “credentialed experts” were willing to accept- especially in public. One Iranian missile obliterated a housing trailer at the Ain al-Assad air base. Another missile destroyed a dining facility, which had been closed on the night of the attack as a precautionary measure but would normally have been open at that time. Given that the base in question is fairly large, the fact that Iran was able to accurately hit specific individual buildings known to used by american personnel tells you a lot about how accurate their missiles are under real-life conditions. But why does it matter? Well for starters, it confirms what Iran has been telling the world about the capability of its ballistic missiles. And we already know from that attack on Saudi oil facilities in 2019, that their cruise missiles are also accurate enough to pick out building sized targets.

But what are the real-life implications of Iran having hundreds to thousands of missiles (ballistic and cruise) accurate and long-ranged enough to target individual buildings within a thousand or two thousand miles of the Iranian border? To understand that, let me ask you a question.. Do you know the difference between Combat Radius and Ferry Range for an aircraft? To summarize, combat radius is the maximum distance you can fly on a military mission with a standard combat payload and still expect to return to the airbase you took off from. In contrast, the ferry range measures how far an unladen aircraft with maximum fuel can fly in one direction with about 10% fuel left at the time of expected landing. As it turns out the vast majority of modern american combat aircraft have a combat radius of less than 800 miles (~ 1300 km). And this is not just an american thing, as similar aircraft from other countries have about the same combat range.

In other words, the ability to bomb Iran around the clock would require USA to station aircraft, crew, support staff and equipment within the range of Iranian missiles that are accurate enough to consistently destroy individual buildings at that distance. See.. in previous conflicts such as the two Iraq wars, their opponent simply did not have missiles accurate enough to blow up individual building-sized targets at that range. In contrast to that, Iran has thousands of missiles accurate enough to make it basically impossible for USA to safely use airbases within the combat radius of most aircraft in its inventory. Now some of you might say.. what about using B-52s or B-1s based in Diego Garcia with ALCMs. Well.. if you did that Iran would start targeting important buildings, power stations, water desalination plants and airports all over the Middle-East, including Israel.

As some of you might know, there are millions of expats (including westerners) living in Gulf States. Try to imagine the chaos that such missile hits could create in cities such as Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah, Riyadh, Jeddah, Dammam, Khobar etc. Heck, even if Iran hit a few major buildings in each city, there would be an exodus of millions who would want to flee those cities immediately. Given that all those cities are in countries which are basically arid deserts, even a limited escalation could cause a humanitarian catastrophe in that region- to say nothing about its effect on political stability in that region. And yes, it would totally disrupt the flow of oil and gas from those countries- even if the facilities themselves were not hit. To make a long story short, the USA will have to start providing large-scale humanitarian aid to gulf states starting the day after it attacks Iran. Then there is the small matter of global oil availability and prices.

But why does any of this matter again? Well.. because the current occupant of the white house is an orange buffoon under political stress due to the bullshit scam of impeachment who is advised by christian doomsday-types (Pompeo, Pence etc) and Zionist neocons (too many to name) whose grasp on reality is tenuous- at best. Also, wars often start in the most unexpected ways and cannot be controlled or moderated once unleashed. It could get ugly very quickly.

What do you think? Comments?