Arkhip Kuindzhi Red Sunset on the Dnieper 1905-8 (see story below)
We chose a clown
What Ukrainians really think of their comedian President in the green sweatshirt, unfiltered…pic.twitter.com/kxFUkt7mm6
— Patrick Henningsen (@21WIRE) February 9, 2023
Multiple people wonder why Hersh left the UK role out of his article.
• What’s Wrong With The Hersh Report On The Nord Stream Attacks (Helmer)
Seymour Hersh’s report on President Joseph Biden’s decision to destroy the Nord Stream gas pipelines on the Baltic seabed on September 26, 2022, and the involvement of the US Navy in preparing the explosives, has been based on a single anonymous US source with what Hersh calls “direct knowledge of the process”. From the full text of the Hersh report, it appears that neither the source nor Hersh has “direct knowledge” of the history of US-led operations to sabotage and destroy the pipelines which became public more than a year before; they directly involved the Polish government and the Danish government. In fact, by error of omission Hersh and his man are ignorant of those operations and of that history.
Also, the two of them are ignorant of the British government’s role in this history, and in the final destruction, which was revealed publicly by then-Prime Minister Elizabeth Truss to Secretary of State Antony Blinken sixty seconds after the detonation; and by the Russian government when it announced its knowledge of the British involvement. The source and the reporter appear to be equally oblivious of the role German government officials played in the operation, and of the history of German warfighting operations against Russia stretching back to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s engagement in the NATO plan for military intervention in eastern Ukraine, following the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 on July 17, 2014. That attack was costlier in lives and in the US warfighting strategy against Russia than the Nord Stream operation.
In terms of cost, the US attack seizing more than $300 billion in Russian Central Bank reserves, announced on February 28, 2022, was much greater. Hersh implies, without identifying his source at all, that there were “US promises to minimize direct conflict with Russia”; that because the Nord Stream attack plan violated those “promises”, they were in the source’s opinion either illegal in US law, or violations of US intelligence and military operation standards, or breaches of international undertakings the US has given its NATO allies or its Russian targets. Without explanation, Hersh omitted to ask Russian officials or others with “direct knowledge of the process” to confirm these claims or deny them. Hersh and his man dismiss the Germans with the same disdain. They report that “after some wobbling [Chancellor Olaf Scholtz] was now firmly on the American team” in January 2022, when the Nord Stream attack plan had already been under way, Hersh reports, for at least a month. Hersh omitted to ask any German source — active official, army general, navy admiral or retiree – to confirm or clarify.
Different opinions on Article 51. Lauria doesn’t think it’s valid…
• On the Legal Question of Russia’s Military Intervention (Lauria)
The U.N. Charter has something to say about the legal use of military force. It allows it in two cases: when it is authorized by the Security Council and when it is legitimately used in self-defense. Council authorization for force is contained in Chapter VII, Article 42: “Should the Security Council consider that measures provided for in Article 41 [economic sanctions] would be inadequate or have proved to be inadequate, it may take such action by air, sea, or land forces as may be necessary to maintain or restore international peace and security. Such action may include demonstrations, blockade, and other operations by air, sea, or land forces of Members of the United Nations.” The second instance allowing armed force is in self-defense, explained in Chapter VII, Article 51:
“Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defence shall be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security.” So, on these narrow legal grounds, the U.N. Charter only permits the use of force after authorization by the Security Council or in self defense by a “member state.”
Russia entered the eight-year Ukrainian civil war on Feb. 24, 2022 to defend against attacks against the majority-ethnic Russian oblasts of Donetsk and Luhansk, which had declared independence from Ukraine in 2014. Russia only recognized their independence on Feb. 21, 2022, three days before its intervention. It intervened without authorization from the Security Council, where the U.S., Britain and probably France would have vetoed it. As the self-defense article pertains only to U.N. member states, it could not apply to Donetsk and Luhansk. Russia is a member state but the article says “if an armed attack occurs” against it, and there was at the time no armed attack against Russia. sSo according to the U.N. Charter, Russia’s military intervention was not legally authorized.
However, states are not prohibited by the Charter to request the presence of foreign forces on their territory. There is no language in the Charter about it. Officially inviting foreign forces onto one’s territory would not be considered an illegal occupation. Article 42 of the 1907 Hague Convention says: “Territory is considered occupied when it is actually placed under the authority of the hostile army.” The Russian army is certainly not seen as hostile in Donetsk and Luhansk. The murkiness of the legal issue arises then on the question of whether Donetsk and Luhansk were independent states in February of last year — states that could invite foreign forces onto its territory — or were they at the time still part of Ukraine?
… but Whitney does.
• Stuff You Should Know About Ukraine (Mike Whitney)
So, has anyone in the western media reported on the fact that Putin invoked UN Article 51 before he launched the Special Military Operation? No, they haven’t, because to do so, would be an admission that Putin’s military operation complies with international law. Instead, the media continues to spread the fiction that ‘Hitler-Putin is trying to rebuild the Soviet empire’, a claim for which there is not a scintilla of evidence. Keep in mind, Putin’s operation does not involve the toppling of a foreign government to install a Moscow-backed stooge, or the arming and training a foreign military that will be used as proxies to fight a geopolitical rival, or the stuffing a country with state-of-the-art weaponry to achieve his own narrow strategic objectives, or perpetrating terrorist acts of industrial sabotage (Nord-Stream 2) to prevent the economic integration of Asia and Europe.
No, Putin hasn’t engaged in any of these things. But Washington certainly has, because Washington isn’t constrained by international law. In Washington’s eyes, international law is merely an inconvenience that is dismissively shrugged off whenever unilateral action is required. But Putin is not nearly as cavalier about such matters, in fact, he has a long history of playing by the rules because he believes the rules help to strengthen everyone’s security. And, he’s right; they do. And that’s why he invoked Article 51 before he sent the troops to help the people in the Donbas. He felt he had a moral obligation to lend them his assistance but wanted his actions to comply with international law. We think he achieved both.
Here’s something else you will never see in the western media. You’ll never see the actual text of Putin’s security demands that were made a full 2 months before the war broke out. And, the reason you won’t see them, is because his demands were legitimate, reasonable and necessary. All Putin wanted was basic assurances that NATO was not planning to put its bases, armies and missile sites on Russia’s border. In other words, he was doing the same thing that all responsible leaders do to defend the safety and security of their own people.
“..the so-called ‘Chinese Spy Balloon’, the US has now reportedly briefed the diplomats of 40 countries about the supposed threat..”
• The US Takes The Scandal Global And Turns It Into A Tool (Fomenko)
After the outburst of paranoia triggered by the so-called ‘Chinese Spy Balloon’, the US has now reportedly briefed the diplomats of 40 countries about the supposed threat. Washington has apparently sent American missions around the world information about the incident and presented to foreign diplomats gathered in Beijing information to demonstrate that it was indeed an espionage aircraft, and not a weather-monitoring balloon as China claims. In addition to the domestic political motivations for Washington to whip up a frenzy about the Chinese balloon, we now see the US deliberately weaponizing the story to attack China on a global scale, aiming to instill greater fear, suspicion and paranoia of Beijing worldwide. The incident itself might be nothing more than hot air, but Washington is willing to gaslight its allies and “partners” into greater alignment with American goals and preferences.
The American foreign policy machine is a master of a process known as ‘manufacturing consent’, the term famously coined by Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman. The US uses an array of aligned think tanks and cherry-picked experts, as well as a monopoly over information and press access, in order to perfectly craft a narrative which promotes their goals and preferences. Simply speaking, the topics, areas of interest and points of view which the US government focuses on are given funding (often from government departments), press access and regular airtime. Those it does not care for are simply ignored. As a key example of how this works: Earlier this week, the Washington Post ran a story that cited unnamed US officials to confirm the Chinese balloon was indeed used by Beijing’s military for spying and was part of a wider aerial surveillance effort.
Not only is this a direct official-to-media report, but no evidence or facts were given, neither was any possible agenda behind the story highlighted or scrutinized, nor any ‘alternative’ point of view presented. Of course, these are beyond the scope of a simple news story – and we don’t get anything other than this news story, sourced from US officials, speaking to the media on condition of anonymity but most likely with the direction of their superiors. This is how the US government shapes the narrative and manufactures consent through the media. So what’s the agenda behind the US raising the ‘spy balloon’ alarm internationally? It’s one thing to make it a scandal at home, trading some political points over who is the most hard-line on China, but to publicize it internationally like that, there must be a bigger goal behind it.
By claiming that the balloon was being used for military and espionage purposes, and therefore constitutes a ‘national security threat’, the US is clearly eyeing up an opportunity to impose new sanctions against Chinese firms. It has been a running theme of US sanctions against China to blacklist a company, either from receiving US technology exports, or from US investment, by claiming that it is owned or operated on behalf of the Chinese military, even when it isn’t. This has been a key part of Washington’s growing technology war against Beijing. These assumptions are made on insinuations and ‘guilt by association’ logic, rather than clear-cut proof. Therefore, the US could be preparing to blacklist the companies involved in constructing the balloon, claiming they are a military threat. In addition to that, it should be noted that the US is also trying to push G7 to collectively sanction China for “supporting” the Russian offensive in Ukraine, which would also involve blacklisting Chinese firms.
“The perpetually-vacationing Leader of the Free World has apparently made America great again..”
• A Star is Born! (Jim Kunstler)
Weird, a little bit. A sane person in a sane world would call sabotaging the Nord Stream pipelines an act-of-war against a friendly nation, since the result was to virtually destroy the basis of Germany’s industry, not to mention the domestic comfort of German citizens. Now, thanks to 85-year-old Seymour Hersh, the independent investigator who uncovered the My Lai Massacre in 1969 and reported on the depraved antics of American jailers at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in 2004, we have a pretty good idea how the Nord Stream caper went down. For a year before the op, “Joe Biden” and Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland — architect of the 2014 Maidan Coup in Ukraine, which kicked-off the present fiasco there — blabbed about “ending” the Nord Streams. Curiously, the Germans said nothing.
Meanwhile, the US made a deal to beef up military bases in Norway, an original NATO signatory (1949), for staging the Nord Stream sabotage op. Of course, Norway, being Western Europe’s remaining sole oil-and-gas exporter, had an interest in eliminating its competition. In June of 2022, under cover of an annual NATO naval exercise in the Baltic Sea, US Navy divers attached mines to the Nord Stream pipelines. The mines had triggers that could be activated remotely at any time of choosing, and that moment came on September 26… kaboom. Ms. Nuland and Secretary of State Antony Blinken gloated publicly. Naturally, the US blamed Russia. America’s news media — catamite of the Intel Community — amplified the charge, despite the absurdity of Russia blowing up its most lucrative source of export revenue.
The New York Times has so far made no mention of Mr. Hersh’s recent update of the Nord Stream sabotage. Germany, too, hardly made a peep, nor did the rest of Western Europe, which now faces a future that looks, energy-wise, like a return to the Fourteenth Century. Maybe they’re all jaded with modern life, all that tiresome bathing and malingering in the brightly-lit cafes. Under the sagacious guidance of the WEF they were all going “green,” anyway — but was that green like the heart-shaped leaves of the linden tree or green like the moldy veins in Roquefort cheese? I guess they’ll find out.
Luckily, America had the Chinese balloon to distract them, and then “Joe B’s” State-of-the-Union extravaganza where the nation learned that we are living in the most extraordinary economic boom since the days of Babe Ruth and Charlie Chaplin. The perpetually-vacationing Leader of the Free World has apparently made America great again, despite the dastardly plots and ongoing insurrections of his far-right, white supremacist adversaries. Did the annual SOTU smell a little bit like a reelection pitch, though? I hope so.
The West doesn’t have ammo for three months once Russia gets serious.
• Wagner Boss Estimates Ukraine Conflict Could Last Three More Years (RT)
The ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine will likely continue for up to three more years, depending on the goals Moscow actually pursues in it, Wagner private military group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin has said. The businessman made the remarks in an exclusive interview with Semyon Pegov of the independent WarGonzo project on Friday. “If we need to cover the DPR and LPR, then we need to work for at least another year and a half or two,” Prigozhin stated, referring to the territories of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, which were recently incorporated into Russia. Should Russia seek to “go toward the Dnepr,” a major river separating Ukraine into roughly two halves, the conflict will last even longer and drag on for up to three more years, Prigozhin suggested.
At the same time, the founder of the private military group noted that in any conflict, the destruction of the enemy’s army must be the priority, rather than a desire to seize territories from the adversary. Prigozhin also revealed, apparently jokingly, that should Moscow also seek to reach all across Europe toward the English Channel, he already has a perfect plan for such an endeavor. To achieve that goal, everyone in Russia must drop any leisure activity, put on their “working suits,” and work tirelessly. Some spoils of the campaign, however, including “France, Italy, Bulgaria and something else,” should be ceded afterwards to Ukrainians, since they are set to “suffer here with us” much more.
Founded in 2014, Wagner has mainly operated as a security contractor in Africa and the Middle East until now. The precise details of its deployments have not been made public, while Prigozhin denied his ties to the group and its very existence until last year. The group has been an active participant in the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, scoring several victories against the Ukrainian troops. The achievements have also earned the company wide international attention, with the US declaring Wagner a “transnational criminal organization” last month.
“..upcoming Ramstein format meeting on February 14..”
• Kiev Sounds Alarm Over Ammo (RT)
Intense fighting in Ukraine means that its military is running out of ammunition, with stocks not being replenished in time, Igor Zhovkva, chief diplomatic adviser to President Vladimir Zelensky, has told media. The official also called on the West to provide Kiev with long-range artillery systems, tanks and fighter jets. In an interview with Bloomberg on Thursday, Zhovkva lamented that “now we are having like almost zero ammunition,” – a situation that makes it harder for the Ukrainian military to respond to Russian shelling. “We are running [out] of the ammunition very quickly because the fights are intensive,” he went on to explain, adding that Russia has more firepower.
Zelensky’s adviser also noted that Kiev needs long-range missiles to “de-occupy Ukrainian territory,” as opposed to hitting targets inside Russia. According to the official, this type of weaponry would be crucial to launch a counteroffensive against Moscow’s forces. On the subject of fighter jets, Zhovkva named several reasons why Ukraine is seeking to get hold of them. He pointed out that, among other things, such aircraft are “very good in intercepting the ballistic missiles.” He expressed hope that the upcoming Ramstein format meeting on February 14 will see Kiev’s Western backers pledge more weapons, adding that “it’s high time” they stopped caring about Moscow’s reaction to such deliveries.
Commenting on the military aid already provided by the West, Zhovkva said that it was “too late, too little, and too slow.” On Thursday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov reacted to the news of the British government possibly considering donating some of its warplanes to Ukraine, by warning that the UK and several other European nations are becoming increasingly involved in the conflict. “The line between indirect and direct involvement is gradually disappearing,” he stressed, adding that this fuels further escalation. Peskov pointed out, however, that while unnecessarily prolonging the fighting, Western arms shipments will not be able to change the outcome of the conflict or prevent Russia from achieving its goals.
China wants answers too.
• US ‘Lying’ About Nord Stream Expose – Moscow (RT)
Attempts by the US State Department to brush off Seymour Hersh’s article about the sabotage of Nord Stream pipelines as “nonsense” are overt lies that display shocking ignorance of American history, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told reporters on Friday. The veteran investigative journalist reported on Wednesday that the US was behind the destruction of the Baltic Sea pipelines in September 2022. American divers planted charges under the cover of a NATO exercise, and a Norwegian airplane detonated them remotely when the time came, Hersh wrote. “It would not be typical for us to engage allies and partners on something that is utter and complete nonsense,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said on Thursday, answering a question about Hersh’s article.
Zakharova said she was astonished by Price’s audacity to call “nonsense” what US President Joe Biden and Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland openly described as their preferred outcome. “The US is once again lying live on air, openly mocking journalists who asked fully justified questions,” Zakharova said. Washington also has a history of targeting civilian petrochemical infrastructure, Zakharova noted, citing the 1983 CIA sabotage of a pipeline in Nicaragua as an example. “You did this, you do this, and you will do this until you’re stopped,” the spokeswoman added. As for bringing allies and partners into “nonsense,” Zakharova argued that this was precisely what “trans-Atlantic solidarity” means in practice, referring to the 2003 invasion of Iraq as one example. “Twenty years ago, Secretary of State Colin Powell brought to the UN Security Council a vial of something, and called [on] allies and partners to invade a sovereign state, without any evidence, over claims that proved to be utter nonsense.
Ned, do you know your own department’s history?” Zakharova said. “I have no doubts that at the State Department they are bad with the history of their own country. That’s why we are where we are.” Explosions that damaged both Nord Stream pipelines near the Danish island of Bornholm cut off the flow of Russian natural gas to Germany. US officials tried to blame Russia for the blasts, while expressing delight at the destruction and calling it an “opportunity” for Europe. The White House has denounced Hersh’s report as “utterly false and complete fiction.” Zakharova noted that Denmark and Sweden had refused Russian offers to assist with the investigation, while Norway declined to provide aid citing EU sanctions, adding that this shows the three governments were not interested in finding out the truth, but rather covering it up.
Germany is not a serious country.
• German Defense Minster’s Remark About World Without Putin Inadmissible (TASS)
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius’s statement that the world would be a better place without Russian President Vladimir Putin is “absolutely inadmissible,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told a news briefing on Friday. “Defense Minister Pistorius hinted in very certain terms at the desirability of ousting the Russian leadership altogether. Such a statement is absolutely inadmissible for officials of any country that is a member of the international community,” she said. The West “in its reckless support for the Nazis in Kiev has trespassed all conceivable and inconceivable boundaries,” Zakharova stressed.
She recalled German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock’s remark that the West was waging war against Russia. “[Germany] is not some fictional country. It is a state that is officially a member of the UN. These people represent not some private office, but those who elected them,” Zakharova stressed. Against the background of such speeches by official representatives Berlin still dares position itself “as a champion of international law and human rights,” Zakharova said. Earlier, Pistorius, in an interview with the Bild newspaper during a visit to Kiev said that, in his opinion, the world would be better place without the Russian president.
“..countries in Eurasia, the Asia-Pacific Region, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America, which are guided primarily by their fundamental national interests..”
• West’s Threat To Russia’s National Security Nipped In The Bud – Lavrov (TASS)
The threat to Russia’s national security from the Western track will be robustly neutralized and the diplomatic service will do everything necessary to strengthen national sovereignty, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said at a special meeting on the occasion of Diplomatic Worker’s Day on Friday. “There can be no doubt that the threat to national security from the Western track will be firmly neutralized. The Russian army and navy have adequately met the challenge. For its part, our diplomatic service continues to do everything necessary to strengthen national sovereignty and neutralize external challenges when they are still far away,” he said.
The collective West is waging a “total hybrid war” against Russia, in fact it is conducting a new eastward “crusade”, using “Ukrainian neo-Nazis” as its “advanced detachment.” However, today it can be argued that the West’s plans for isolating Russia and for encircling it with a sanitary cordon have “failed,” Lavrov stressed. “Despite the anti-Russian ballyhoo by Washington, London and Brussels, we keep strengthening neighborly relations in the broadest sense with the global majority – countries in Eurasia, the Asia-Pacific Region, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America, which are guided primarily by their fundamental national interests,” he continued.
Lavrov pointed out that Russia maintains dialogues with reasonable representatives from public and political business circles of European states who appreciate friendship with Russia. “All of us are united by a commitment to the democratization of interstate relations and firm rejection of the US-centric rules-based world order, with its inherent blackmail, threats, ultimatums and zero-sum games – in other words, precisely those utterly irrelevant tools of coercion for which there should be no place in the future diplomacy of the twenty-first century,” Lavrov said.
These numbers physically hurt.
• What Funeral Directors Know That You Don’t (Kirsch)
Ever since the vaccines rolled out, deaths are up, particularly among young people. I talked to the owner of many funeral homes across the US; collectively they handle over 3,000 funerals a year. He asked that his name be kept confidential for fear of retribution. Overall, their business is up by 50% after the vaccines rolled out and it’s not proportional… young people are a greater portion of the deaths. For example pilot deaths at Southwest Airlines are up six-fold after the vaccines were mandated. My source said that normally they’d see 1 stillbirth/month pre-vaccine. After the vaccines rolled out, they were seeing as many as 12 stillbirths a month. But they noted that many hospitals will dispose of these cases directly and NOT involve the funeral home, so they are only seeing a fraction of these deaths; the actual increase could be much larger than the 12X increase they observed.
In the 78 years they’ve been in business, they can’t recall ever having seen a 15-year old die from a heart attack. In December 2022, they had 1 a week for three weeks straight. A very experienced nurse I consulted had never even heard of a 15-year old with a heart attack in her entire career. Now, she hears of these cases on a regular basis. These funeral homes are also seeing the strange rubbery clots that they’ve never seen before. The medical examiner was called and verified it, but nobody is saying anything publicly for fear of being fired. Basically, ever since 2021, they have been seeing very strange things: stillbirths, number of “found dead,” healthy people having heart attacks and strokes, blood clots, etc. They’ve never seen anything like that before; it’s a “noticeable” difference.
Like most funeral homes, they don’t tally statistics but they remember the anecdotes. The most noticeable thing is that the events are happening disproportionally to younger people (i.e., people under 65). So if elderly deaths are only up by 15%, but younger age groups are increased by 100% or more, the overall all-cause mortality for all ages will only increase modestly (since younger people rarely die). Also, the CDC stats for 2022 say that the data is not fully reported due to reporting delays. This means checking with funeral directors is a way to estimate what is happening in real-time. Bottom line: everyone knows what is causing this, but they are all afraid to speak out. For the few who do speak out, their stories are never covered in the mainstream media.
From bad to worse.
• The CDC Lied: The mRNA Wasn’t Meant to “Stay in the Arm” (Kogon)
The CDC’s information page on Covid-19 vaccines contains the following bullet points on “How mRNA COVID-19 vaccines work:” First, mRNA COVID-19 vaccines are given in the upper arm muscle or upper thigh, depending on the age of who is getting vaccinated. After vaccination, the mRNA will enter the muscle cells. Once inside, they use the cells’ machinery to produce a harmless piece of what is called the spike protein…. After the protein piece is made, our cells break down the mRNA and remove it, leaving the body as waste. Or, in other words, as we have long been told, “it” – the mRNA – “stays in the arm.” And then, after having instructed the muscle cells to produce the spike, is disposed of. But look at the below picture from a recent presentation on mRNA vaccination at the European Parliament. The picture was posted on Twitter by Virginie Joron, a French member of the parliament. The speaker is no less an authority than Özlem Türeci, the Chief Medical Officer of BioNTech: the German biotech company that developed what has come to be known to most of the world as the “Pfizer” Covid-19 vaccine.
Far from “staying in the arm” and entering the muscle cells at the injection site, the injection site is only the point of departure for a journey that is supposed to take the mRNA rather to the lymph nodes. The subtitle of the slide is “Bringing mRNA to the right cells at the right places.” The deltoid is not the right place; the lymph nodes are. Once in the lymph nodes, a specific sort of cell, the dendritic cells, is supposed to manufacture the spike protein: here colorfully described as the “wanted poster” that will help the immune system to identify the SARS-CoV-2 virus in case of subsequent exposure. A passage from The Vaccine, the book that Türeci and her husband, BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin, wrote which journalist Joe Miller, explains why BioNTech’s platform specifically targets the lymph nodes:
“What Ugur learnt was that the location to which a vaccine delivers its ‘wanted poster’ really mattered. The reason for this, the couple’s team in Mainz later realised, was that not all dendritic cells … were created equal. The ones that resided in lymph nodes – of which the spleen is the largest – were particularly adept at capturing mRNA and making sure the instructions it carried were acted upon. These kidney-bean shaped organs, found under our armpits, in our groins, and at several other outposts in the body, are the information hubs of the immune system. (p. 98)” Indeed, Sahin and Türeci were so determined to get their mRNA into the lymph nodes that they had an earlier mRNA construct injected directly into the patient’s lymph nodes in the groin (p. 104).
Needless to say, such an approach was not likely to obtain wide acceptance as a vaccine! This is why the couple, as explained in their book, needed to package the mRNA in lipid nanoparticles, in order to ensure that mRNA administered by way of an intramuscular injection would, nonetheless, be widely distributed around the body and thus reach the lymph nodes.
Criminal.
• CDC Adds COVID-19 Vaccines to Child Immunization Schedule (ET)
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) added COVID-19 vaccines to its routine immunization schedule for children and adults on Thursday, attracting criticism for the decision. According to the CDC’s 2023 immunization schedule for children and adolescents, two or three doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been recommended beginning with infants who are just six months old. Children in the age group of 6 months to four years, and five years to 11 years are recommended COVID-19 vaccines from Moderna or Pfizer. Among children aged 12 to 18, Novavax vaccines are also recommended in addition to Pfizer and Moderna. In the list for adults, two or three doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been recommended from the age of 19 years.
The 2023 COVID-19 vaccine recommendation for kids and adults is included among other typically-recommended vaccines for measles, flu, rubella, and so on. Advisers to the CDC in 2022 recommended adding the vaccines to the schedule. Though the CDC has added COVID-19 vaccines to the recommended list, it has not mandated the vaccines. The agency does not have the authorization to do so, but local and state jurisdictions can, and many mandate most of the vaccines on the schedule. However, there are hardly any states that make flu vaccinations mandatory in public schools. Lawyers have said they’ll sue any state that requires COVID-19 vaccination to attend school and many officials have vowed not to implement such a requirement.
The CDC’s move to add COVID-19 vaccines to immunization schedules has attracted criticism online. “While I thought impossible for @CDCgov to lose anymore credibility—they decide to do this despite growing studies showing declining efficacy, no net benefit for majority of immunocompetent” individuals, anesthesiologist Megan Martin said in a Feb. 10 tweet.
Gitmo?!
• Righteous Tyrants (Julie Kelly)
James Baker, Vijaya Gadde, Yoel Roth, and Anika Collier Navaroli took the quasi-stand this week at a House Oversight Committee hearing to explain their roles in colluding with the government to suppress free speech during an election year, particularly related to the New York Post’s coverage of the Hunter Biden laptop story in October 2020. Baker, the former general counsel for the FBI when the bureau used fabricated political opposition research to defraud a secret federal court and obtain a warrant to spy on Donald Trump, was fired by Elon Musk as Twitter’s general counsel after it was discovered Baker was vetting company files made available to independent journalists.
Roth, Gadde, and Navaroli were considered the “custodians of the internet,” Roth boasted in a New York Times opinion column published in November, shortly after he resigned. “The work of online sanitation is unrelenting and contentious,” Twitter’s former head of “trust and safety” lamented. Roth then outlined a series of steps the government, private companies, and Big Tech oligarchs should pursue to rein in Musk. “In the longer term,” Roth warned, “the moderating influences of advertisers, regulators and, most critically of all, app stores may be welcome for those of us hoping to avoid an escalation in the volume of dangerous speech online.” That sort of hubris was on full display this week as the Twitter Four defended their crusade to censor users on the Right, including the suspension of Trump in January 2021.
Mace
HOLY $H!T… The former Twitter executives are F***ED, and so is the FBI. Rep. Nancy Mace may have just single-handedly sent them all to GITMO! #TwitterFiles #FBI #NancyMace pic.twitter.com/uz7X8HDVoR
— Matt Clark (@MattClarkReport) February 10, 2023
In the process, these self-proclaimed warriors of truth and integrity revealed themselves to be nothing short of petulant foot-stompers unfit for employment anywhere outside of Silicon Valley or the government. Further, all four were clearly guided by their hatred for Trump and his supporters, contrary to their solemn assurances that decisions were based on unbiased considerations to protect the site from insidious content. For example, Gadde retweeted a Nicholas Kristof piece in 2016, emphasizing Kristof’s conclusion that he had “never met a national politician in the U.S. who is so ill informed, evasive, puerile and deceptive as Trump.” She, like 98 percent of people working in Silicon Valley, is a generous contributor to Democratic Party officials and candidates. She reportedly cried when she learned Musk had acquired the company.
But Gadde’s attempts to hide her partisan stripes failed this week. In a nonsensical explanation only an Ivy Leaguer could love, Gadde told committee members about the inner workings of the social media giant. “Defending free expression and maintaining the health of the platform required difficult judgment calls,” claimed Gadde, who was largely responsible for the decision to ban Trump’s account after January 6, 2021. “Most applications of Twitter rules were fact-intensive, subject to internal debate, and needed to be made very quickly. We recognized that after applying those rules, we might learn that some of them did not work as we had imagined and that we would need to update them. At times, we also reversed course.”
Why? See painting at the top.
• US Museum Changes Russian Artist’s Nationality (RT)
Arkhip Kuindzhi, a 19th century Russian landscape painter, has been re-designated as a Ukrainian national, according to an update on the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art’s website. The news comes as a number of museums around the world are rebranding classical Russian artworks as Ukrainian amid the ongoing military conflict between Moscow and Kiev. In the description of Kuindzhi’s 1905 painting ‘Red Sunset on the Dnepr,’ the artist is now listed as “Ukrainian” with the added clarification that he was born in Mariupol “when the Ukrainian city was part of the Russian empire.” Previous versions of the webpage had designated him as “Russian.” In archived snapshots of the webpage, the Met even described Kuindzhi as “one of the most talented Russian landscape painters of his generation” and noted that his works are “celebrated in both Ukraine and Russia.”
The city of Mariupol was captured by Russian forces last spring amid the military operation in Ukraine. In September, the Donetsk People’s Republics, which incorporates Mariupol, along with Lugansk People’s Republic and Zaporozhye and Kherson regions, officially became part of the Russian Federation after holding public referendums. The rebranding of Kuindzhi comes after the Met, on demands from Ukrainian activists, also renamed the painting ‘Russian Dancer’ by French artist Edgar Degas into ‘Dancer in Ukrainian Dress.’ The UK’s National Gallery made a similar move last April when it also re-titled Degas’ ‘Russian Dancers’ into ‘Ukrainian Dancers,’ stating that the women in the painting were “almost certainly Ukrainian rather than Russian.”
Leo
https://twitter.com/i/status/1624316684461871106
Indian scops owl
Friends
https://twitter.com/i/status/1623931762526257153
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