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EU places export controls on coronavirus vaccines


Germany is urging the European Commission to launch a joint purchase of Russia's Sputnik V vaccine for the EU, a German official said Wednesday.

"We have asked the Commission" to launch a procurement procedure for Sputnik, the official told reporters at a briefing in Berlin, adding that "we are seeing now that the Commission is in the process of launching this procedure."

The official said the Commission must first test the waters among EU capitals to see which countries are interested in buying the Russian shot before launching contract negotiations over the number of doses. After that contract is settled, EU countries could potentially buy Sputnik doses via the EU contract, the German official said.

More in the link.

Also

Authorizing the Russian jab at the EU level is controversial for some countries. Lithuania's Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė warned last month that "Sputnik comes packed with many layers of propaganda and even not-hidden ambition to divide the EU countries and their partners in the south and in the east."

And of course one of the Baltic nations makes a exaggerated drama out of this. With more the usual pack to follow.


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Though, it's not as if Russia's production capabilities would make much of a difference, while the propaganda part is pretty obvious to anyone who isn't drinking RT's Kool-Aid.
 
Like a lot of Russia's propaganda successes, most of it is the West playing itself. One way of handling it could have been: if you have a vaccine, let's test it and put with the others, kthxbai. Because the vast disparity in production capacity would have put things in their place automatically, the media had every opportunity to let it remain a molehill. The EU could have made some positive propaganda by demonstrating how magnanimous and fair-minded they are by formally getting Sputnik V but simply out-bidding all production capacity for it, or some such. They didn't take it.

Instead, they decided to run hit pieces every step on the way, putting all their bets that it would fail, with the US especially pressuring countries not to allow it. And when it didn't fail, that inflated Russia's media winnings by an order of magnitude than they would have been. An overwhelming majority of people wouldn't have given a crap and wouldn't think it particularly divisive without it blaring from every corner that it the vaccine origin is super-important and couldn't possibly come from the wrong sort of country. With Russian propagandists all the more happy for it, because most of the work identifying success of Sputnik medically with success of Russia politically is already done for them.

Let's take a role reversal as a litmus test: imagine some Russian talking head explaining that medicine developed in the US, UK, and Sweden cannot be allowed inside because it is packed with layers of NATO propaganda made to divide ODKB and CIS. Things like that don't happen; that crap wouldn't fly because their audience would immediately understand that they're dealing with a sociopathic freak. What I find interesting is that Western talking heads can say such things to their audiences, and hardly anyone bats an eye.

Maybe I just don't get it, in which case please someone explain it to me, but refraining from any grand narratives, the most proximate reason for this is probably the media: it's divisive mostly because people get repeatedly told that it should be divisive; it's political mostly because people get repeatedly told it should be political.
 
Maybe I just don't get it, in which case please someone explain it to me, but refraining from any grand narratives, the most proximate reason for this is probably the media: it's divisive mostly because people get repeatedly told that it should be divisive; it's political mostly because people get repeatedly told it should be political.
I think this was discussed before, perhaps on SB. It's simple, western audiences are much more trusting towards their media. 'Trusting' being a nice word, I could think of some more fitting ones... And then we get some absurd situations, like here in Slovakia. The last 3 months everyone was bitching at our PM for not starting mass vaccination, because there was no vaccine available in any reasonable numbers, AZ being the absolute and utter failure that it is, in absolutely every possible aspect and half of the government being categorically against buying Sputnik without EMA giving its blessing (cowardly pile of crap and not politicians). Then our PM goes behind their backs and buys 2 million doses of Sputnik V, deliverable in the next 4 months - that can vaccinate 20% of our population! And - then our government collapses, because... because it's Sputnik, you'd say? No. Because this action has the potential to significantly raise our PM's popularity, and make fools of those politicians who opposed him before. Not opposition politicians, mind you, they're all in the ruling coalition. So they rather start throwing temper tantrums than allowing our PM to finalize his triumph and actually start mass vaccinating people. Those pieces of s**t play political games, while around 60 people die every day (in a small country of 5 million that's a lot) and there's actuall good, proven, safe and effective vaccine in storage here, waiting for the government to stop bickering and giving the go to use it. I could have been vaccinated by now if those sad excuses for human beings had even a tiny bit of responsibility in them.
No Kremlin propagandist could orchestrate this fiasco even if every single member of our government was an SVR asset. This requires genuine EU-grown talent.
 
Got to remember that the US parachuted and ideologically verified many politicians in the 90s into Central and Eastern Europe. These guys are literally fellate to everything America-senpai says. Right now they are in a state of cognitive dissonance because everyone in the west is flailing about. It is still an open question whether vaccinations alone will stave off Covid or simply mitigate it enough that it is tolerable. Not that the latter is a bad thing.
 
Right now they are in a state of cognitive dissonance
Oh I wish, that would indicate that they have at least some critical thinking. We have this kind in the government, mainly from the party 'Za ludi' (For the People... what beautiful irony, they have no problem letting us all kick the bucket waiting for the right, properly liberal and democratic vaccine). They're easy to spot if you listen to them speak - they spout a lot of buzzwords and phrases, without including practically any substance. Hell, even my wife, who is totally apolitical, noticed this and can tell who is a NGO-constructed bot and who is a real person. I bet not even Germany buying Sputnik V by the millions won't give them a pause, they just won't see it. They have some very powerful reality filters installed.
 
... Then our PM goes behind their backs and buys 2 million doses of Sputnik V, deliverable in the next 4 months - that can vaccinate 20% of our population!
I heard about this on Ukrainian news a while back because your PM said in an interview that he traded Transcarpathian Ukraine for the vaccine (LULZ).

Now I hear he's being called to resign because the purchase supposedly undermines Slovakia's commitment to the West, among other reasons. An interesting question to ponder is why the location where one gets medicine became such an important marker for geopolitical alignment and a precondition for demonstration of loyalty. Ironically, all three of {USUK, Russia, China} seem to have at least something to gain from adopting such a bizarre framing, though perhaps some more than others. But the common European only loses, at least as far as I can see. One more way you guys are getting screwed in these circumstances, I guess.
 
But the common European only loses
Great, so I'm not the only one who sees this. Man, we can't win in this war of vaccines for the global market, and while the whole world is part of it, the EU leadership (the collective Brussels) seems to be too weak and indecisive to be able to protect us. This epidemic was a serious blow for my Euro-optimism. I still like EU, but am angry as f**k at those useless bureaucrats in Brussels and IMO we need a completely new Commission. Ursula and her gang are useless.

I heard about this on Ukrainian news a while back because your PM said in an interview that he traded Transcarpathian Ukraine for the vaccine (LULZ).
Yeah, that guy really knows how to stomp on a mine. He had to apologize for that one. A journalist asked him literally "what did you have to promise to the Russians (so they would sell you such a large amount of vaccines) ?" It was pretty provocative, basically accusing him of treason, so our PM lashed out with the T.U. remark. It's a low point for a guy who made his political career by standing in front of cameras and accusing the other guys of all the bad stuff back to the first apple.

Now I hear he's being called to resign because the purchase supposedly undermines Slovakia's commitment to the West, among other reasons.
If it were this, I could understand it. They're morons, but at least they're loyal morons. But IMO the origin of the vaccine is largely an excuse. They have to know they can't sell this reason to the people, most common Slovaks like Russia more than they like the US, or NATO for that matter. I think it's because we are very suspicious and react badly to propaganda and hypocrisy. Back in the commie regime we didn't like the USSR and loved America, now we don't like America and while we don't love Russia, it's the lesser evil to many here. So, the politicians opposing the use of Sputnik know they go against the popular opinion here, but they also know that after months criticizing the PM for being a useless and sometimes outright harmful (with his Twitter-fueled egomania), if they now let him start Sputnik vaccination his ratings will shoot up - and since they all fight for the same voter, they're toast. Some of them are even now within the margin of statistical error regarding the 5% threshold for the parliament. So they went as far as paralyzing the government, just so there's nobody who could give a go for using Sputnik. Right in the middle of the 3rd wave...
There are other funny moments, like two coalition parties uniting against our PM, and when one of them actually committed to getting out of the coalition, the other (the ones with 5.2% rating) reversed and started to look for reasons to stay... the circus is epic, and beyond sad by now.
 
Oh I wish, that would indicate that they have at least some critical thinking. We have this kind in the government, mainly from the party 'Za ludi' (For the People... what beautiful irony, they have no problem letting us all kick the bucket waiting for the right, properly liberal and democratic vaccine). They're easy to spot if you listen to them speak - they spout a lot of buzzwords and phrases, without including practically any substance. Hell, even my wife, who is totally apolitical, noticed this and can tell who is a NGO-constructed bot and who is a real person. I bet not even Germany buying Sputnik V by the millions won't give them a pause, they just won't see it. They have some very powerful reality filters installed.


Part of the problem is that the West has created literally a class of grifters and virtue signalers whose only purpose is to virtue signal and and they don't know anything fucking else so that's all they can do. Literally. They would be fucking out of the job otherwise. So now they are doing what they are fucking paid to do and virtue signal, as if that is a substitute for good policy making.
 
Part of the problem is that the West has created literally a class of grifters and virtue signalers whose only purpose is to virtue signal and and they don't know anything fucking else so that's all they can do. Literally. They would be fucking out of the job otherwise. So now they are doing what they are fucking paid to do and virtue signal, as if that is a substitute for good policy making.
It's hilarious how exact a copy this is of a class of people back in the commie regime. They also couldn't do one useful thing, but because they knew to say all the right phrases they were able to get pretty high in the political apparatus. The phrases were different and we didn't know the term 'virtue signaling' but the principle is the same :)
 
It's hilarious how exact a copy this is of a class of people back in the commie regime. They also couldn't do one useful thing, but because they knew to say all the right phrases they were able to get pretty high in the political apparatus. The phrases were different and we didn't know the term 'virtue signaling' but the principle is the same :)


The less than generous term for these people is "cock suckers". :ROFLMAO: But yeah, these people are everywhere, irrespective of the political system. Sure Democracy gives people a bigger say on affairs but it doesn't preclude the existence of idiots and sometimes for reasons beyond anyone, they still get elected.
 
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