Miwagi Forum Posts (1,753)

RE: Angela Merkel & A Fourth Term

Beggar-Thy-Neighbor was new to me, but yes it is a good description.

RE: Confused and tensed :(

Didn't realize they had universities in Canada.

RE: Yes, Baby

RE: Happy St Patrick’s Day

What is rugby/ Some sort of carpet game?

RE: I'm Trying A New Look This Year

Is that really you in the photo?

RE: What is the REAL AGENDA ? The Refugee Migration Crisis to Build the New World Order ?

This is all fascinating history to me. As far as I know it goes completely untaught in our schools here, with the possible exception of a few specialized university courses. Probably less than 5% of US citizens know about the history in that part of the world. Probably over half of the college student today couldn't even tell you who the US fought in WWII, and I have seen that proven many time when they go around asking the students basic questions. Which is pretty much what Dr. Bill Warner was saying in the video posted by DoubleF. So your work in posting this information has not been in vain. I hope a lot of others are enjoying it too. I will borrow from this thread and past it on to others who are interested. So thank you very much rainbow.

RE: Draining the swamp

Looks like he got fired.

Cats have it really, really bad in Vietnam. Warning graphic

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RE: How has the Russian spy been poisoned?

Continued

Treating Novichok poisoning is also “practically impossible,” according to the Handbook of Toxicology of Chemical Warfare Agents. For other nerve agents, the treatment is usually diazepam or Valium to stave off seizures, and atropine, which helps dry up the secretions that could choke or drown a nerve gas victim, Chai tells The Verge. That buys a little time for another drug called pralidoxime, or 2-PAM, to prevent the nerve agent from permanently shutting off that key enzyme. But Novichok agents might have more ways of harming people, according to the Handbook: “Consequently, conventional nerve agent antidotes may not work.”

“IT DOESN’T TAKE VERY MUCH OF A NERVE AGENT TO BE FATAL.”
It’s surprising to see Novichok surface in 2018, not least because Russia was supposed to have destroyed its 39,967 metric tons of chemical weapons by September 2017, according to the international organization that oversees the chemical weapons ban. The British prime minister has demanded that Moscow release information about the Novichok program, so it’s possible that we could soon learn more about these nerve agents.

Bishop, however, says not to bet on it: “The Russians are really good at keeping secrets.”

RE: How has the Russian spy been poisoned?

Why the nerve agent that poisoned the ex-Russian spy is so mysterious
8
The group of chemical weapons collectively known as Novichok originated in a secret Cold-War era weapons program
By Rachel Becker@RA_Becks Mar 14, 2018, 2:57pm EDT

On March 4th, former Russian double-agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found unconscious in Salisbury, England. They were the victims of an apparent poisoning. The poison was identified this week as a nerve agent called Novichok, part of a group of chemical weapons said to be extremely potent that we know very little about.

Even before the lab results were out, it looked like the Skripals were the victims of a nerve agent: Yulia Skripal was unconscious, seizing, vomiting, and had lost control of her bodily functions, the BBC reports; Sergei Skripal had gone rigid and immobile, according to CBS News. (Neither has died, but both are hospitalized in critical condition.) Since the Novichok nerve agents were developed in the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War, British Prime Minister Theresa May blamed Russia for the poisoning. Though Moscow denies any involvement, the attack stokes Cold War-era tensions — heightened by the fact that this deadly chemical weapon is so mysterious.

“The U.S.S.R. is the only country to have developed and produced these agents,” Jean Pascal Zanders, formerly a senior research fellow at the European Union Institute for Security Studies, told Mark Peplow at Chemical & Engineering News. “It’s almost as though the Russians are sending a message to the West that they can reach anywhere, whenever they like.”

THE ATTACK STOKES COLD WAR-ERA TENSIONS
The Novichok agents were created under a clandestine program that continued despite international negotiations for a chemical weapons ban, according to former Soviet scientist and defector Vil Mirzayanov. That secrecy is why we still don’t know their exact chemical makeup. What we do know is that Novichok, Russian for “newcomer,” is actually a collection of chemical weapons that only become lethal after two, somewhat less deadly ingredients are mixed. These so-called binary nerve agents are thought to be safer to store, Mirzayanov wrote in 1995. But they’re also easier to hide from inspectors, especially if those two ingredients could masquerade as components of fertilizer or pesticides.

We also don’t know how exactly Novichok kills. Other nerve agents — like the sarin gas used against civilians in Syria or the VX that killed Kim-Jong Nam, the half-brother of North Korea’s head of state Kim Jong-un — get into the body through breathing, eating, or through the skin. Once inside, they block an enzyme that’s key for healthy signaling between nerves and muscles. That leads to symptoms like drooling, seizures, and paralysis. “You’re tearing, you have a runny nose, you have fluid in your lungs, you have lots of diarrhea, you’re sweating, and these agents also slow your heart rate down,” says Peter Chai, a medical toxicologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. “You basically asphyxiate in your own secretions. So, it’s a horrible way to die.”

“IT’S A HORRIBLE WAY TO DIE.”
At the right doses, nerve agents can kill within five to 15 minutes, says chemical weapons expert Mark Bishop at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. But the Novichok agents are thought to be even more dangerous and deadly; Mirzayanov claims that Novichok-5, for example, can be five to eight times more potent than VX. So the fact that the Skripals are still alive means that “it must have been low dose, or impure, or not administered in a really efficient way,” Bishop tells The Verge. “Because it doesn’t take very much of a nerve agent to be fatal.”

RE: Organ donation

What ever happened to survival of the fittest for the long term health of the species?
Sure some people may have been injured and it should be case by case decision, but we are also trying to save people that nature has selected for culling. I think I'll pass.

RE: What is the REAL AGENDA ? The Refugee Migration Crisis to Build the New World Order ?

Contrast his with your account of the Israeli as butchers. It is from Wiki so who knows



Early life
Brigitte Gabriel was born in the Marjeyoun District of Lebanon to a Maronite Christian couple, a first and only child after over twenty years of marriage. She claims that during the Lebanese Civil War, Islamic militants launched an assault on a Lebanese military base near her family's house and destroyed her home. Gabriel, who was ten years old at the time, was injured by shrapnel in the attack. She says that she and her parents were forced to live underground in all that remained, an 8-by-10-foot (2.4 by 3.0 m) bomb shelter for seven years, with only a small kerosene heater, no sanitary systems, no electricity or running water, and little food. She says she had to crawl in a roadside ditch to a spring for water to evade Muslim snipers.

At one point in the spring of 1978, a bomb explosion caused her and her parents to become trapped in the shelter for two days. They were eventually rescued by three Christian militia fighters, one of whom befriended Gabriel but was later killed by a land mine.

Gabriel wrote that in 1978 a stranger warned her family of an impending attack by the Islamic militias on all Christians. She says that her life was saved when the Israeli army invaded Lebanon in Operation Litani. Later, when her mother was seriously injured and taken to an Israeli hospital, Gabriel was surprised by the humanity shown by the Israelis, in contrast to the constant propaganda against the Jews she saw as a child. She is quoted as saying of her experience:

I was amazed that the Israelis were providing medical treatment to Palestinian and Muslim gunmen...These Palestinians and Muslims were sworn, mortal enemies, dedicated to the destruction of Israel and the slaughter of Jews. Yet, Israeli doctors and nurses worked feverishly to save their lives. Each patient was treated solely according to the nature of his or her injury. The doctor treated my mother before he treated an Israeli soldier lying next to her because her injury was more severe than his. The Israelis did not see religion, political affiliation, or nationality. They saw only people in need, and they helped.

RE: What is the REAL AGENDA ? The Refugee Migration Crisis to Build the New World Order ?

This is what I was talking about. Is this news to you?

RE: What is the REAL AGENDA ? The Refugee Migration Crisis to Build the New World Order ?

Why don't you watch this video Cossack cat posted earlier and come back and point out the flaws for us.

RE: Draining the swamp

Care to enlighten us?

RE: Draining the swamp

Please point out where she said Trump would be doing the firing. I think Jeff Sessions will get to make that call.

RE: Remember When ?

This is really cool song about times gone by. He was on American Idol.

RE: NEWS : Physicist Sir Stephen Hawking has Died

So how extensive is your knowledge of black holes and the big bang theory. And what were his contributions to each? I'll admit it's beyond my comprehension.

Here is something I found on Time.com

Then there’s A Brief History of Time, Hawking’s mega-bestseller, first published in 1988. “I wanted the book to be read by millions of people around the world like a bestselling airport novel,” he says in the film. “I felt the mass market wanted to know how the universe began.” Fat chance, thought his agent and his publishers—but Brief History went on to sell millions upon millions of copies. The reason was that it explained some of the great mysteries of the cosmos in simple, digestible language. “It made this subject a topic of conversation among all walks of life,” says Caltech’s Thorne.

Surely you remember all those conversations. Or…maybe not. In fact, the book was nearly incomprehensible to people in all walks of life outside of theoretical physics. The real story, suggested Time book critic Paul Gray in a 2001 essay, is that “people buy a book for many reasons: either they want to read it, think they ought to read it, or want to impress people by making them think they have read it.” Whether they actually do read it is an entirely different question.

RE: NEWS : Physicist Sir Stephen Hawking has Died

I get that he was a smart man and all, but which of his theories have actually been proven?

Just finished the brilliant Doc Martin series.......are

the people in Port Isaac, Cornwall, England pretty much the way they are portrayed on the show?

RE: NEWS : Physicist Sir Stephen Hawking has Died

What was his greatest contribution to physics?

RE: Remember When ?

RE: Draining the swamp

Drain the swamp. Shoot the alligators.

RE: Organ donation

Not to worry. That can easily be remedied.

RE: How can most people here be online 24/7 ?

And probably half of non retirement age are on benefits.

RE: What is the REAL AGENDA ? The Refugee Migration Crisis to Build the New World Order ?

RE: Highly respected Rex Tillerson, dumped by Trump :(

Rex Tillerson’s Firing Was Necessary To National Security
It’s been hard to find anyone in the White House to say a bad word about the character or personality of Rex Tillerson or a good word about his leadership at State. The friction between the White House personnel shop and Tillerson’s chief of staff, Margaret Peterlin, is the worst-kept secret inside the Beltway, and the glacial pace of staffing up the political ranks has angered national security conservatives. Those foreign policy wonks tend to admire the director of policy planning, Brian Hook, but look in vain around the department for anyone else with anything resembling a theory of the world on which to operate the world’s link to the United States.

Other key jobs remain unfilled, including the undersecretary for arms control and international security affairs and the U.S. representative to the U.N. mission in Geneva; both jobs have much to do with holding Iran to account to the deal struck under the Obama administration. The undersecretary for management is another empty office, even though veterans of the bureaucracy from past Republican presidents remain available.

Tillerson has also failed to push nominees for crucial ambassador posts, such as Richard Grenell as ambassador to Germany, the most important non-nuclear power in the world. Other important embassies, such as those in South Korea, Turkey and South Africa, lack even a nominee, though numerous and very qualified candidates abound. The paperwork gridlock of an isolated and uninfluential secretary of state brought the conservative pro-Trumpers and career State Department staff together in agreement that the department was a massive shipwreck.

HUGH HEWITT Posted at 9:40 am on March 14, 2018

RE: What is the REAL AGENDA ? The Refugee Migration Crisis to Build the New World Order ?

It's a sobering truth stringman. If something doesn't change Europe as we know it is toast. I don't see how this ends well.

RE: What is the REAL AGENDA ? The Refugee Migration Crisis to Build the New World Order ?

Thanks to both of you for the history lesson, even if the facts are murky. All I know is somehow we got a whole bunch of Bosnians here in my town as a result of the conflict over there. And now we have two mosques that they started. We also have quite a few Muslims from Myanmar. They seem peaceful enough but they are still a small majority. There is not really a religious vacuum here though and we do cling to our guns.

RE: What is the REAL AGENDA ? The Refugee Migration Crisis to Build the New World Order ?

It wasn't the white man who bought violence to the Americas.