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In concentrating on forging an alliance with China, Putin has neglected to address domestic problems. This is not good. The upside is that while China might conceivably consolidate Siberia it will acquire far less political and economic capital than it would if Russia remained intact.

Oh dear there I go pointedly highlighting the benefits of a collapse….

Lord Curzon wrote:

“... it would be an appalling catastrophe that would lead to a myriad of nuclear mini-fascist fiefdoms spread out across Eurasia”

Amen.

Recalling the Russian Civil War after the Bolshevik Revolution, just imagine warlords like the Atamen Semyenov, Baron Ungern von Sternberg and Makhno the Anarchist with ten megaton bombs.

Well, the hundred megaton blockbusters are kind of old—I’m sure they are still around since the Russians never scrap anything—but their upkeep would require some sophisticated resources

Can you imagine all of Russia looking like Central Asia does today? I am not even sure what the United States or the EU could do to prevent this collapse. We live in interesting times.

Yes I have Dan. I’m translating Christine Maggiore’s website into Chinese right now. The 1984 and after media and government attitude toward pubic health problems has been, say it’s a virus first, then look for the virus later. The problem with HIV is that it’s already been 21 years, and no one has found it in fresh blood (all those other pictures and models are related to something that is created from human blood in a laboratory). The new virus hoaxes all use the same test, the Western Blot test, to prove the existence of actual virus. So the problem arises, do those crazy British cows have mad cow disease, hepatitis C, SARS, or HIV? They all use the same test. A documentary made by Ms. Maggiore’s husband very aptly states all the logical problems with the HIV theory, and it gives equal time to both sides of the debate. The website is http://www.theothersideofaids.com . I live in China where the government is also becoming heavily influenced by pharmaceuticals (now the fastest growning sector in the Chinese economy). There are billboards all over Nanjing with pictures of men saying, “Be a responsible man, get an HIV test.” Russia is probably under the same kind of propaganda assualt.

Heirabbit is probably correct in saying that all modern tests for viruses use Western Blots, but they are certainly not all the same in their particulars, and there is no cross-reactivity between the different tests. In short, there is no possibility of confusing HIV and SARS.

Typical screening for AIDS/HIV begins with an ELISA test [Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay] . This is a test for circulating antibodies to HIV proteins in the patient’s blood. It is relatively quick and inexpensive, but prone to false positives, so positive results are “always” tested by Western Blotting . This is essentially the reverse test – it uses known antibodies to see if HIV proteins are in the patient’s blood. [For biochemists, the name is part of an involved joke, which is explained on Wikipedia]

HIV/AIDS testing is not trivial, so I share your concern that numbers about disease incidence in Russia or sub-Saharan Africa are very questionable. Let’s hope the picture isn’t as bleak as it seems at face value…..

I read something recently which does seem wierd and very little believable is a bit interesting. They apparently made a study in the Baranov medical center surveying about 700 people of various ethnicities to test their being prone to the aids virus. Basicly there are approximately 1-2% people in the world who have the Skr5 or Ckr5 gene defect on both gens which lower or eliminates their ability to contract the virus. They basicly state that the highest % of people who have this are poles with about 27% of the population then russia about 25% and english with approximately 22%. (I think its a bit of bs but I remember this guy on Howard Stern who was examined by the NYU medical center and was discovered with this gene defect so you never know).

heirabbit I m not arguing with you. Maybe you are right and it isn’t virus at all but an immune defficiency syndrome. Since it itself is not detectable but the effects are ergo lowered immune response until it cannot protect the person any longer. My prior post still holds some water (if the study cited has merit). My thoughts are that AIDS might be a destabilization of the immune system. It might be a catalyst that creates a chain reaction whereby the immune system is purged.

Mutant frog: you’re looking at data from the analysis of various (and irregular) particles created with chemical stimulants in a laboratory. This is why American, British and French scientists don’t agree on what the HIV genome actually consists of. Again, these results are not taken from research on fresh blood and therefore do not satisfy the scientific requirements for proving the existence of an infectious virus. What is so unbelieveable about the scenario you propose is that HIV has yet to be discovered in a human being, and even if it were, that still wouldn’t be proof that it is at all infectious. Before calling them retroviruses in the eighties, this type of particle was called an oncogen. In the seventies Gallo spent his time trying to prove that cancer was contagious. But retroviruses aren’t standard viruses, and few have ever been proven to have ill effect on the human body.

In the 1990’s, scientists became very used to discovering new retroviruses, and have proven that they are in fact extremely prevalent in the human body. So the HIV theory is also an anachronism from the days when they thought these particles were strange, to today when they are seen as commonplace.

I’m certainly not coming from a conspiracy theorist’s point of view, just pointing out some inconsistencies and failures in modern medicine.