Well where's that sign again?  You know.... this one?

I ain't got no PhD in virology or immunology, but I certainly can read and I've read a hell of a lot of medical papers over the last three years and done a lot of background research.  Thus, I'll take a crack at translating this one into common-fold speak as the original is pretty thick with jargon and big words along with concepts that might not be immediately clear.  Errors in such translation are mine, if there are any -- so let's see how I do.

A key feature of therapeutic IVT mRNAs is that they contain modified ribonucleotides, which have been shown to decrease innate immunogenicity and can additionally increase mRNA stability, both of which are favourable characteristics for mRNA therapies

Translation from med-speak: The protein encodings that the body uses, in some cases, would cause the body's immune system to identify the shot as "foreign" and destroy the contents of the injection before it could do anything.  Therefore the mRNA jabs changed one of those protein encodings slightly so as to evade the immune system's identification of them as "foreign", thus permitting the shot to do what was intended without being destroyed.

We investigated how 5-methoxyuridine (5-methoxyU), 5-methylC and 1-methylΨ affect translation of IVT mRNA. 5-methoxyU, 5-methylC and 1-methylΨ have been utilized in IVT mRNAs to attempt to increase recombinant protein synthesis in vitro, and for preclinical proof of concept for IVT mRNA-based therapies

Specifically, uridine has been replaced with pseudo-uridine, a thing that does not exist in nature but allegedly works the same way in the cell when it comes to encoding proteins; this was identified as the reason the immune system destroyed previous attempts to use this technique and this is how the various firms got around that problem.

Despite their widespread use, surprisingly little is known about how ribonucleotide modification affects protein synthesis, particularly for translation of therapeutic IVT mRNAs. 

Despite their widespread use nobody bothered to take the time to figure out exactly what happens when we do this, other than that the immune system doesn't go after the mRNA before it can get into the cells.  That is, this was done without a full understanding, or really much of an understanding at all, of the impact of using this technique.

Pseudouridine (Ψ) is known to increase misreading of mRNA stop codons in eukaryotes, and can affect misreading during prokaryotic mRNA translation16,17,18. 1-methylΨ does not seem to affect codon misreading, but has been shown to affect protein synthesis rates and ribosome density on mRNAs, suggesting a direct effect on mRNA translation

We do, however, know from prior work that doing this might cause the cell to incorrectly read the encoding that was intended.  In other words we knew, before this was done, that using this technique would increase the error rate in the cells compared to what was intended to occur.

Those who used this technique, in short, knew it was unstable.

1-methylΨ is also used in clinically approved SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccines3,4. As 1-methylΨ increased +1 ribosome frameshifting during translation in vitro, we investigated whether this occurs in vivo for BNT162b2, a SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccine containing 1-methylΨ. We reasoned that +1 ribosomal frameshifting during recombinant antigen mRNA translation could lead to presentation of +1 frameshifted products to T cells, and elicit off-target cellular immune responses

This material is in the Covid mRNA jabs.  Since it was known this was problematic in a test tube (in vitro) they decided to see if it was also a problem in the body ("in vivo.") They therefore looked to see if in the Covid jab formulation this problem presented itself as bogus production compared with either infection (which obviously produces the "real" products) or ChAdOx (the adenovirus vector formulated jab which does not use mRNA.)

These data suggest that +1 frameshifted products encoded in BNT162b2 spike mRNA are T cell antigens for inbred mice, to which off-target immunity can be detected following vaccination.

What they found is that in fact off-target immune production occurred in that specific formulation when it was given to mice.

It was determined, in short, that this incorrect production happens using the specific formulation in the mRNA Covid jabs in an animal, not just in a test tube.

Then, having proved that, they looked at people rather than a laboratory environment mouse.  None had "noted" adverse effects so you would expect to find no material set of differentiated findings -- that is, they expected to find nothing different other than possibly frame-shifted products (if the body ignored them as meaningless -- and thus harmless.)

We detected a significantly higher IFNγ response to +1 frameshifted antigen in the BNT162b2 vaccine group, compared to ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 (Fig. 2d). There was no association between T cell responses to +1 frameshifted antigen and age, sex or HLA subtype (Supplementary Table 1 and Extended Data Figs. 2 and 3). Both ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 and BNT162b2 vaccination produced ELISpot responses to in-frame SARS-CoV-2 spike, but responses to +1 frameshifted products were observed only in individuals vaccinated with BNT162b2 

However, that shifted, incorrect antigen produced a materially-elevated inflammatory response and both the frame-shifted products and the elevated response were found only in the mRNA vaccinated persons.

In other words the body didn't ignore the bad transcription, it was attacked and since the products are made by your cells it was your body that in fact was attacked by itself, not the mRNA injected material.

They then go on to describe how they eliminated the possibility of error by random chance, which of course can always happen in any organism, to try to nail down whether or not what they were seeing was distinctly from this use.

They found it was, and they also figured out why.

Although there is no evidence that frameshifted products in humans generated from BNT162b2 vaccination are associated with adverse outcomes

You mean, other than the significantly-increased inflammatory response, which is incidentally systemic since we're talking about an injection here and we already know the mRNA goes everywhere, including as documented by the studies submitted to the Japanese Government, the ovaries?

The paper then goes on to put forth a theorem for how to reduce this problem, which might or might not work -- that's yet to be determined.  That, of course, does exactly nothing for the couple of billion people worldwide who already took this crap.

Yes, they claim in the paper that there's "no evidence" of adverse outcomes.  Yeah, ok, if you don't believe the materially-higher IFNγ response, denoting an immune attack on the body, never mind that this is a pathway that involves various disease processes including cancer, is enough to call a full stop until and unless that can be localized and proved not to impact anything important over a long period of time (decades) -- like your heart or, in a woman, her ovaries, to be specific about two rather important examples of places where you don't want your body to attack itself.

We haven't seen anything like, oh, myocarditis (inflammation of the heart) and elevation of cancer rates post-introduction, have we?  Nor have women reported problems with ovulation and their periods?  Oh wait, all that has been reported and it is consistent with what these researchers found, strongly implying that the precise causal pathway, and that it was known to be potentially problematic yet used anyway, may now be known.

The unanswered question (these folks apparently didn't go that far) is whether this IFNγ response is transient in the body or persistent, and for how long it persists.

Yahoo has an article up claiming that "using the original" uridine resolves the problem . Well, it might resolve that problem, but the reason pseudo-uridine was used in the first place was to avoid the immune system tagging the injected material as "foreign" immediately and destroying it before it could get into your cells.

They didn't make this substitution, in short, for grins and giggles.

They did it because they had to in order to get the mRNA to survive long enough to be taken up by the body's cells.

How many of you saw Star Trek II and III?  David, Kirk's son, cheats.  He uses a known-dangerous and unstable substance in his Genesis device, proto-matter, which was, as he put it, "the only way to solve certain problems" and if he had not used it "it might have been years, or never" for him to be able to find alternatives that worked.  The result is that the planet that ultimately gets "generated" with said "wonderful" invention is unstable and shortly destroys itself.

The same thing appears to have happened here; Moderna has been trying to make mRNA work for over 10 years with the original targeting being for cancer.  None of the previous trials worked.  All the mRNA shot makers substituted pseudo-uridine for uridine because with the "natural" encoding in previous attempts the immune system immediately identified the mRNA material as foreign and destroyed it before it could produce the desired result.

It appears that in order to prevent what had previously looked like a dead end, in short, they cheated despite knowing their "solution" was unstable. Oh, and they got themselves shielded from any legal consequences in advance -- how convenient.

So no, I ain't buying -- without further and extremely strong evidence -- that this is fixable.  Nor am I going to accept any excuses from anyone involved in developing or promoting this crap since, by this paper, it was known within the profession that making this substitution had a propensity to produce replication errors.

This paper puts forward an entirely-plausible explanation for inflammatory adverse effects in people who took the jabs, including specifically but certainly not only myocarditis, which is in fact inflammation of the heart.

This is what happens when you shove a drug into a bunch of people without properly testing it first particularly when you know up front, which it appears was known, that what you're planning to do will result in an increased risk of misreading the "instructions" you encoded in the shot.

PS: There aren't any other mRNA-based trials underway by chance.... are there?

There's plenty that Elon does that I don't agree with.  He's a grifter and has been when it comes to everything "green" -- Tesla, Solar City, etc.  I'm not convinced (by a lot) that in reality he's any smarter (and that's not saying much) than Trump.  His money was made originally by being in the right place but not being "the dude who did it" and then by tax farming, which ought not work -- ever -- because it is theft-at-gunpoint from you, I, and everyone else.

But, like Trump, he has a large degree of "don't give a fuck" about him.  And when it comes to "X" (Twitter) and advertisers, IMHO he has the correct perspective.

"Oh, you wish to blackmail me?  Go fuck yourself."

Why?

Well, first and foremost because once you say "yes" -- even once -- you're forevermore going to be blackmailed.  Over, and over, and over again.

Second, this levels the field.  Oh, they think they can destroy you?  Well, perhaps.

But they have to bet the company to make the attempt.

Let's face reality here: Targeted advertising is exactly that.  The entire point is for an advertiser to be able to choose what they display their ads against -- or not.  Therefore it is arguably extortion, a criminal felony, to try to force a platform to not display something you don't like at all -- not just in relationship to your brand.  If you do that in collusion with others, whether directly or via so-called "justice organizations" (e.g. SPLC, ACLU, Media Matters, etc.) that's Racketeering with extortion as the predicate felony and ought to get everyone involved thrown in prison for decades.

Further, there are two judges: The ones in a courtroom, and the 330 million odd Americans.  You might corrupt the one, but you can't corrupt the other and if you bet wrong on the second you're dead.

The virtue of being "the boss" is that you can't be fired.  I used to enjoy this; someone would be abusing one of my staff members, they'd run out of patience, there was a key on all the phones that was asshole key.  Press it, the call gets transferred back into my office, and it rings on a key that is, well, the asshole key so I know why the customer is there.

If the customer was right, well, they're right.  But if they're being a dick, "I demand to talk to your boss" got nothing more than a chuckle out of me -- because I was the boss.  The beginning, the end, the judge, the jury, and there was no appeal above me.  I was it, and if you came at me like a bull in the China shop instead of raising a legitimate argument you better be right because if you weren't I could push a button and say "bye-bye" and that was that.

Oh sure, that wasn't to be done without contemplation.  Sometimes the decision was easy, and sometimes tougher.  But never is the correct answer to kowtow to blackmail or extortion, because the first time you say yes its the first of a never-ending chain.

You never say yes.

You always say "Go fuck yourself."

They want to play this game?  They can.  But they have to bet the company to do it.

Is it worth it?

No.

That doesn't mean they won't, but it does mean that if they do it the directors and officers, including the CEO, are exposed personally because its not "just business" its personal and deliberate, which means your D&O insurance is void.

For Musk he doesn't care since nobody can sue him.

For Disney, and the rest, that's not true; plenty of shareholders can sue them if they go down this road and lose.

It's about damn time.

I'm sure you've heard the "news" out of China of a "persistent and nasty" lung-based infection, largely in kids, that appears not to be viral.

There's also something going on with dogs, although the two are most-likely unrelated.

So what's going on?

Well, we're not sure.  But I can put forward a few theories, none of which I can prove and most of which nobody wants to go chase because if they're true there's very serious trouble afoot and we caused it.

First, the "lung thing" is likely bacterial.  This is both good and bad. Since its not viral its not related to Covid -- at least not directly.

The bad is that it may be covid vaccine-related, and specifically since its showing up in China, where they used a whole-protein vaccine, it may be especially nasty -- although that does not preclude us from getting hammered here.

I remind you that former attempts to vaccinate against coronaviruses had all failed at the animal trial stage.  Most failed with the animals exhibiting signs of ADE -- that is, the vaccine made them more-susceptible rather than less as the virus mutated organically.  This is very bad, and its why those trials were stopped.  The use of only the "S" protein was thought to prevent this.

Maybe.

But we also know that IgG4 class-switching has shown up in those inoculated with mRNA jabs and that was neither predicted or expected.  I don't know if this has been demonstrated in non-mRNA based shots, but it definitely has in the mRNA ones.  Anyone who took those shots literally played guinea pig with themselves, as is always the case with a new medication that doesn't have a decade or more of close follow-up and clinical experience.

The implication of class-switching is not yet clear, but IgG4 typically results in an organism tolerating an infection rather than killing it.  This is the mechanism deliberately used to try to attenuate allergic responses through repeated low-level exposure, for example.  But whether that response in this case is limited to Covid or even just all coronaviruses is not known, and its quite-important because there is only so much capacity within the immune system and if you overwhelm it then you're far-more likely to get screwed.

As an example I got hammered with Delta while my daughter felt like crap for a few days, even though we were both in excellent physical condition.  Why?  Because a couple of days earlier I got swarmed by yellow jackets and stung a couple hundred times.  My immune system was rather busy, as you might expect, dealing with that.  Did that factor into why I got hammered and she did not?  Probably -- but I can't prove it.

What I do know is that in early 2020 I also overloaded my immune system over the 2019 holidays because I was being a very bad boy both house-shopping and partying far more than I should have, and was not taking any care to either get outside (and thus get Vitamin D exposure) nor taking a supplement.  The first week of 2020 I got hammered with the worst flu in at least a decade, and maybe in my lifetime experience -- and I deserved it.

So what happens if you get IgG4 expression and then, as a result, you become chronically infected with covid?  Would it be logical to expect that an opportunistic infective agent that usually would not bother you and be easily dealt with might make you very sick?

YES.

Is that's what is going on here?  That's unknown but if it is then anyone who has managed to get IgG4 class-switching, and I remind you that at this point that appears to be a long-term problem and might be permanent, is at heightened risk of being screwed by all manner of other things.  (Incidentally, although I'll save the detail for another time, that includes cancer, which might be the worst aspect of it.)

That's VERY BAD and since at this point it appears this class-switching does not go away those who are hit by it are likely screwed forever and will always be at heightened risk of severe infections from various pathogens that most people either get a mild respiratory cold out of -- or shake off without any symptoms at all.

What's equally bad in the context of bacterial infections, which this appears to be, is that antibiotics by their mere use result in resistance.  No, its not taking them when you don't have a bacterial infection; that is a bullshit trope run by people to scare you in that in order to promote resistance the bacteria must come into contact with the drug.  Obviously, if you don't have the infection that doesn't happen and a resistant strain cannot magically appear out of thin air.  But every time you actually use antibiotics to knock down a bacterial infection there is a risk that some of the bacteria will evade being destroyed because they have or acquire a random mutation that makes them resistant.  If those that evade being destroyed -- which are resistant -- manage to get into some other organism you now have resistance that has spread, and the new victim doesn't respond to the treatment.  Worse, since that infection is more-likely to be severe and last longer, thus is more-likely to be transmitted to someone else, over time these strains become dominant in the population.

There's absolutely nothing you can do about this either.  From the first time we discovered antibiotics we inevitably, through their use in saving people from serious outcomes or death from said infections, took the risk in each and every case that resistant bacterium would by random chance be present (that is, its DNA was such that it wasn't killed) and it both survived and got into another host.  Since bacteria are complete organisms and do not need a host to live that this would -- and has -- happen is inevitable.

In short all such drugs have a "use by" that we cannot reasonably predict in advance but that it will happen given enough time is absolutely certain.

Now combine these two things: People who have acquired IgG4 "blocking" of their immune response, which has the potential to stretch across more than just the one organism if by no other mechanism than simply keeping the immune system "busy" and thus running it out of capacity, and the inevitable outcome of bacterial resistance to antibiotics and you have a problem on your hands.

Is that what's going on here?

I don't know.

But its a plausible theory, and given China's mandatory covid vaccination programs its entirely possible.

If this is what's going on it will eventually show up here in those with abnormally-high IgG4 titers.

The IgG4 status of everyone who acquires one of these "odd" infections should be checked and reported on to exclude the possibility that this is in fact in play.  There is a strong incentive for the so-called "public health" people to not do so, however, in that if the correlation is there not only does this immediately and unquestionably implicate them as the cause of this problem but much worse there's nothing any of the people who took these shots can do about it, and their enhanced susceptibility, at least at this point, appears to be permanent.

If so then the panoply of retribution owed all of these jab pushers and developers has just wildly-expanded in both depth and scope, and further if you were smart enough to refuse your market value in the workplace and society generally will accelerate dramatically in the coming months and years.

There's a little chestnut -- a fraud -- that nobody wishes to talk about that comes down to two words: Magic Dirt.

It is the premise that one can take the thug out of the hood and he will become not a thug.

It underlies most of the wildly-false beliefs that many run on immigration, for example.  Exceptions do not prove the rule; they are, in fact, exceptions.

Immigration from Western Europe mostly worked for America because Western Europeans and Americans share common values in large part.  That's largely because we were them before they came here, and while there are variation the basics are about the same when it comes to culture.  I'm talking about very basic things, such as, for example, the value of human life.

This didn't happen magically; it happened because that part of the world required it thousands of years ago or everyone would die.  There's this thing called "winter" and if you didn't cooperate with others to some degree and prepare for it you would not live through it.  The mortality rate of someone attempting "no contact, no community" living was extremely high and only a reasonable modicum of cooperation helped.

Thus it was over the space of thousands of years.

In sub-Saharan Africa -- not so much.  Ditto in many other parts of the world.  But this was not just about the environment; it was also about inculcation and it is true in most of the rest of the world by population.  Those who have never dealt with non-Western folks to any degree beyond perhaps a vacation overseas have no idea at all how these differences bear on how different groups of people think at very basic levels -- such as, for example once again, the value of human life.

Taking someone from one of those other parts of the world and transporting them here to America, or to Europe, does not change those core beliefs, values and inculcated behavior patterns.  There is no "magic dirt" that will do that and in fact, unless someone is a very young child, it may not even be possible to change that part of someone's psyche.

If you talk with people who have dealt with the horrors of war in Iraq or Afghanistan, for example, they'll tell you this.  The people there don't see killing you as a necessary part of a war effort -- they actually enjoy it and celebrate your death if they can pull it off.  The same is true in many other parts of the world.  Rwanda is a great example; they had a civil war and over a half-million civilians were slaughtered, and roughly as many women were raped, in a mere 100 days starting in April of 1994 with most of the killing conducted literally by hand with machetes.  It was an unspeakable and unbelievable level of brutality beyond anything you can, as a Western person, imagine -- and on a per-unit-of-time basis arguably one of the worst, if not the worst, mass-slaughter man has witnessed.

They thought nothing of it at all; the assassination of one of their leaders set it off but it had been planned in advance -- you don't exactly distribute huge numbers of machetes, way beyond what you need to tend crops, without thinking about their intended use in severing heads.

Mexican and other Central and South American gang members are of similar mindsets.  They have no respect for life whatsoever and never will.  Believing you can change this will simply get you killed and they will think nothing of it.  There is a decent argument that much of this is inherently in many of the people's blood from that part of the world and dates all the way back to before Cortez.  You're not going to change that in months or even years; it in fact hasn't changed in the 500 years since Cortez came to the Americas!

There is much debate about "nature .v. nurture" in human development but we know much less on the truths of that topic than we think we do.  The current Speaker of the House took in a black youth yet despite giving him a "good" upbringing he reverted back to criminal activity and association from others within his past and he was taken in before he had personally turned to crime as an adolescent.  His exposure to positive influence and nurture didn't change that.

People can certainly change but they have to want to and further that which is within you and is contrary to that desire has to be overcome. This doesn't mean some cannot find success in such an endeavor but if you're going to claim that you cannot treat all based on some percentage of the individuals then that has to apply the other way around too in that the presumption must not be that all are good when we know that across various parts of the world shared values and beliefs at a core level for many are absolutely incompatible with Western European and American society.

Look at what Germany is facing now.  They asked for this; they admitted into their nation huge numbers of people who did not share German values and in fact they always did and still do seek to overthrow the existing Constitutional government -- and if they can make enough offspring who they will inculcate with THEIR set of values they will do exactly that.

They have made clear they will not stop in their endeavor so other than by killing them or throwing them out what other options beyond surrender do you have?  You can choose to not take their threats seriously but that would be rather stupid, wouldn't it?

It would have been better to not let them in originally, don't you think?

Israel has established itself as a Jewish state.  They have no intention of allowing enough Muslims to be citizens who could, by "democratic process", remove the "Jewish State" status from their government and impose a Sharia-based government in its place.

Do you fault them for this position?

Are you willing to let something like that happen here in America?  I would hope not but if you think that America is endowed with some form of magic that will prevent it you're wrong.  Only by refusing to permit such a concentration to exist, and yes, that means exactly what you think it does, can such be prevented if there are those who you are willing to admit into the country that hold this set of beliefs.

Core beliefs -- culture, if you will -- matters.

All humans are not the same, and no, taking a human from one place to another does not change who they are.  If you do not insist that only those willing to assimilate into the existing culture, not change it to be what theirs is, are the only people you admit for residency and ultimately citizenship including any woman who can potentially bear and raise such a child, you are at risk of exactly what has been done all over the world throughout history and is being attempted right now in both Germany and Israel.

It can happen here and if it does everything you think of as America when it comes to our Constitution and Civil Rights is GONE.

Further, if you think this isn't at the core of the Israeli/Palestinian issue you're dead wrong.

That is first, foremost and all it is actually about and unless you want that sort of problem here you better recognize it and put a stop to admitting those into our nation who will not in fact become American, but wish to change America to suit their cultural desires and demands, and make clear that any who are currently here for other than tourism purposes yet refuse to become American and adopt our values must leave -- and mean it.

Merely being present here will not change a thing and if birthright citizenship is permitted then the only way to prevent this destruction is to absolutely bar from entry and immediately deport if already present those who have or display any indication of such an intent along with placing into law sufficient guards to prevent deception in this regard.

You may not like this and find it repugnant, but that you don't like it doesn't make it untrue.

It is true.

.... and I don't care.

Postulate: There are no rules of war.

Corollary: There are no "war crimes."

Oh, I know, the molly-coddling UN-style bullshit is that there are.  "Geneva Conventions" and all that.  429 "articles" of "law" related to war and every single one of them is self-serving bullshit.

War is Hell.  War is supposed to be Hell and anything that makes it less-Hell is Satanic in its implication, implementation and thought process because doing that incites more war.

War should be recoiled from, not embraced.  Papering over the horror of it with threats of "prosecution" is not only a joke its a trope and should get everyone involved hanged right here and now so as to prevent the next war.

Humanity and technology are largely responsible for this, incidentally, and that's really nobody's fault.  People have minds, they use them, this results in innovation and the consequence of that is detachment between action and result.  Its no different, really, than what goes on in my home or yours every single day.  You don't stoke a fire manually nor open and close windows to regulate the temperature in your house or apartment; you push a button or turn a dial and a machine takes care of it.

A hundred or so years ago it didn't work that way.  If it was cold you made a bigger fire in a fireplace or stove.  If it was hot you opened windows (and hoped there was a breeze.)  You did it, you paid attention to whether what you did was sufficient, and then you stopped when it was.  You learned over time, from infancy in fact, how to stoke and build said fire so it was sufficient but not 95 degrees in your house, and to keep the coals going overnight so in the morning you still had some residual heat and didn't have to light it again.  If you wanted light at night you lit a candle or oil lamp. When you were done you blew it out.  You didn't dare leave either unattended lest they burn your house down.  Today you flip a switch and all that happens if you leave it on is that you get a somewhat-higher bill from the power company.

Well, war was the same way.

If you wanted to kill people in size you had to go do it face-to-face. You had to see the horror of what you were doing. Plunge the sword or dirk into the other guy's body, feel it go in, see the expression on his face and watch him die.  Of course you had to do this while he was trying to do the same to you, which adds quite a bit to the drama, does it not?

Innovation seems to come with war first.  Go figure; nobody likes losing a war because historically it has meant losing your life.

Pushing a button on a bombsight, mashing the FIRE button while staring at a radar scope or sniping someone from 1,000yds out is a whole different thing than going man-to-man (mounted or not) with swords, pikes or dirks.  Today we don't even look through the bombsight -- we program a GPS or IMU in the front of a missile, push a button, often from afar, and then from a satellite high above the earth watch the resulting wreckage.  We don't even see the dead bodies those acts generate most of the time.

I have no respect for anything in the Geneva Conventions or any other so-called "laws of war" and if you manage to incite me sufficiently that I decide to go to war there will be no rules whatsoever, except for me seeking to make you dead before you can make me dead.  So-called "rules" or "laws" of war are directly contrary to everyone's interest in not engaging in war in the first place and were enacted and put in place by assholes who never have to face the horrors of their own acts and are trying to sanitize them so you'll allow said assholes to commit more of them without turning on said leaders yourselves.  Every government official involved in that and in "respecting" same deserves to be forced onto the front line with nothing more than a dagger or bayonet; no ammunition, grenades or other similar things that will give them the ability to inflict death at a distance beyond the reach of their own hand.  If you really want or are willing to engage in war then do it hand-to-hand and deal with the horrors of blood running down your arms and legs -- and hope that is the other guy's, but it might quite-possibly be yours.

Let's think this through at a very-basic level: Does the prospect of your wife, daughter or son who decides to go fight being raped up the ass and then decapitated by the opposing party in a war make you more or less likely to engage in said war in the first place?

Duh.

In the context of the current mess over in Israel and Gaza I do not care if Israel flattens Gaza to a literal smoking ruin.  War sucks and like it or not that's what this is and Hamas made the decision to initiate hostilities, so the IDF may as well get on with it.  They gave fair warning to "uninvolved" civilians to get the Hell out of there.  They made that decision and I respect it.  It is a fact that derogating or outright ignoring everyone's right to self-defense and the defense of their loved ones is why the Hamas attacks were successful and why Hamas was operating in Gaza to begin with.  There were and have been two groups there over the last decades; those civilians who support Hamas and those who were defenseless as a direct result of government policy prohibiting "at will" arms ownership.  The former are complicit and the latter were prohibited from slaying the terrorists in advance of their operation and it was the Israeli government that did the prohibiting because they consider "Gazans" to be less-than-citizens.  Evidence?  They call those who live there "Gazans", not Israelis!  Does Israel call those people living in Jerusalem Jerusalans?

But in fact Israel's government effectively did disarm its own citizens because of this very position, that is unforgiveable and entirely and reasonably charged against the Knessset and Bibi himself.  Every single one of the dead is dead because they had no arms with which to resist and those not interested in such happening in Gaza had no way to effectively assault the attackers before they breached the lines from behind and it is the Israeli government that made it that way.  Going into a town to rape, kidnap, murder and plunder where everyone has a gun is a losing act; every window becomes an elevated platform from which you are shot at from all sides!

Unless, of course, there are no guns because they're illegal and everyone is a "nice, law-abiding citizen" -- except those who aren't really "citizens" so we can't actually let everyone buy and have all the guns they want because "some are lesser" and might use them to bad ends.

The problem with such niceties is that the invading horde, terrorists or those who are intent on "gimme dat!" don't give a wet crap about laws, any more than common criminals do.  A government thus can either let the people even the odds as they see fit, declaring that in fact everyone is equal in the most-basic of ways or it is a fact that said government deliberately posts up their citizens as shooting gallery targets.

Human history is full of brutality, like it or not, and so is nature. Not all animals kill only for food; the common housecat kills birds for both food and sport, and will do so even if well-fed at home.  We claim to be "superior" but we're not; we're animals, and the "superior" often is really nothing more than "kill it because it thinks differently than I do" in respect to religion, government structure or simply because someone thinks you're ugly -- or have a fat wallet.

Denying facts does not make them untrue and in the context of war it just makes you dead.

That which reduces the experience of the horror of war makes it more likely that you'll engage in war.

And if you don't think that's objectively bad, well, let me be the first to call you the monster.