thedebrief |In an exclusive feature for The Debrief,
U.S. military and intelligence officials, as well as Pentagon emails,
offer an unprecedented glimpse behind the scenes of what’s currently
going on with The Pentagon’s investigation into UFOs, or as they term
them, “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena” (UAP).
For the last two years, the
Department of Defense’s newly revamped “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena
Task Force” (or UAPTF) has been busy briefing lawmakers, Intelligence
Community stakeholders, and the highest levels of the U.S. military on
encounters with what they say are mysterious airborne objects that defy
conventional explanations.
Along with classified briefings,
multiple senior U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the matter say
two classified intelligence reports on UAP have been widely distributed
to the U.S. Intelligence Community. Numerous sources from various
government agencies told The Debrief
that these reports include clear photographic evidence of UAP. The
reports also explicitly state that the Task Force is considering the
possibility that these unidentified objects could, as stated by one
source from the U.S. Intelligence Community said, be operated by
“intelligences of unknown origin.”
Significantly, a retired U.S. Air
Force brigadier general and head of RAND corporation’s Space Enterprise
Initiative has—for the first time—gone on record to discuss some of the
most likely explanations for UAP.
His responses were surprising.
Overwhelmingly, everyone The Debrief
spoke with said the most striking feature of the recently released
UAPTF intelligence position report was the inclusion of new and
“extremely clear” photograph of an unidentifiable triangular aircraft.
The photograph, which is said to
have also been taken from inside the cockpit of a military fighter jet,
depicted an apparent aerospace vehicle described as a large equilateral
triangle with rounded or “blunted” edges and large, perfectly spherical
white “lights” in each corner. Officials who had seen it said the image
was captured in 2019 by an F/A-18 fighter pilot.
Two officials that received the
report said the photo was taken after the triangular craft emerged from
the ocean and began to ascend straight upwards at a 90-degree angle. It
was indicated that this event occurred off the eastern coast of the
United States. Several other sources confirmed the photo’s existence;
however, they declined to provide any further specifics of the
incident.
Regarding the overall theme of the
recent report, officials who read it say the report primarily focused
on “Unidentified Submersible Phenomena,” or unidentified “transmedium”
vehicles capable of operating both under water and in the air.
The three officials we spoke with
said the report suggested the UAP Task Force appears to be concerned
that the objects being termed as UAP may be originating from within the
world’s oceans. Strange as this may sound, the idea of “USOs” or
“unidentified submersible objects” is not something exclusive to the
current UAPTF.
We
have several active Freedom of Information Act requests with the
Department of Navy to pursue more information related to the research
that led to these patents. As those are being processed, we've continued
to dig through the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's (USPTO) Public
Patent Application Information Retrieval database to get as much context
for these patents as possible.
In doing so, we came across documents that seem to suggest, at least
by the Navy's own claims, that two highly peculiar Navy patents, the room temperature superconductor (RTSC) and the high-energy electromagnetic field generator (HEEMFG),
may in fact already be in operation in some manner. The inventor of the
Navy's most bizarre patent, the straight-out-of-science
fiction-sounding hybrid aerospace/underwater craft, describes that craft
as leveraging the same room temperature superconductor technology and
high energy electromagnetic fields to enable its unbelievable speed and maneuverability.
If those two technologies are already operable as the Navy claims,
could this mean the hybrid craft may also already operable or close to
operable? Or is this just more evidence that the whole exotic 'UFO'
patent endeavor on the Navy's behalf is some sort of ruse or even gross
mismanagement of resources?
At the heart of these questions is the term “operable.” In most
patent applications, applicants must assert proof of a patent’s or
invention’s “enablement,” or the extent to which a patent is described
in such a way that any person who is familiar with similar technologies
or techniques would be able to understand it, and theoretically
reproduce it.
However, in these patent documents, the inventor
Salvatore Pais, Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division's (NAWCAD)
patent attorney Mark O. Glut, and the U.S. Naval Aviation Enterprise's
Chief Technology Officer Dr. James Sheehy, all assert that these
inventions are not only enabled, but operable. To help me understand what that term may mean in these contexts, I reached out to Peter Mlynek, a patent attorney.
Mlynek
informed me that the terms “operable” or “operability” are not common
in patent applications, but that there is little doubt that the use of
the term is meant to assert to the USPTO that these inventions actually
work:
counterpunch | The notion that the COVID-19 pandemic was ‘the great equalizer’
should be dead and buried by now. If anything, the lethal disease is
another terrible reminder of the deep divisions and inequalities in our
societies. That said, the treatment of the disease should not be a
repeat of the same shameful scenario.
For an entire year, wealthy celebrities and government officials have
been reminding us that “we are in this together”, that “we are on the
same boat”, with the likes of US singer, Madonna, speaking from her
mansion while submerged in a “milky bath sprinkled with rose petals,”
telling us that the pandemic has proved to be the “great equalizer”.
AAA estimates that the average cost of maintaining a vehicle in the United States is $706 per month. https://t.co/WfD7POPMix
“Like I used to say at the end of ‘Human Nature’ every night, we are
all in the same boat,” she said. “And if the ship goes down, we’re all
going down together,” CNN reported at the time.
Such statements, like that of Madonna, and Ellen DeGeneres
as well, have generated much media attention not just because they are
both famous people with a massive social media following but also
because of the obvious hypocrisy in their empty rhetoric. In truth,
however, they were only repeating the standard procedure followed by
governments, celebrities and wealthy ‘influencers’ worldwide.
But are we, really, “all in this together”? With unemployment
rates skyrocketing across the globe, hundreds of millions scraping by
to feed their children, multitudes of nameless and hapless families
chugging along without access to proper healthcare, subsisting on hope
and a prayer so that they may survive the scourges of poverty – let
alone the pandemic – one cannot, with a clear conscience, make such
outrageous claims.
Not only are we not “on the same boat” but, certainly, we have never
been. According to World Bank data, nearly half of the world lives
on less than $5.5 a day. This dismal statistic is part of a remarkable
trajectory of inequality that has afflicted humanity for a long time.
WaPo | The
beachside dance floor was packed. The pulse of electronic music
throbbed. In the middle of the pandemic, in the crowd of maskless
dancers, some tourists commented to each other: "Tulum is back."
“It
felt like covid was over. The borders are open. The world is back to
normal. Let’s just have fun,” said Alexandra Karpova, 31, a public
relations executive who flew from New York to attend the November
festival, called Art With Me, on Mexico’s Riviera Maya on the Caribbean
coast.
But in the days after the festival, dozens of attendees tested positive for the coronavirus. Some brought it back to the United States.
The
incident prompted a question at the heart of Mexico’s economic
recovery: Is the country — with among the highest coronavirus caseloads
in the world — taking too many risks to re-energize its lucrative tourism sector?
Remarkably,
the number of American tourists visiting the state of Quintana Roo,
where Tulum and Cancun are located, has increased by 23 percent compared
with 2019. With Europe closed to most Americans, Mexico has
successfully marketed itself as a desirable alternative. Roughly 100
flights from the United States are now landing in Quintana Roo every
day.
Many
tourists are coming to stay at coastal resorts, where masks are
mandatory in public places. Others are going on scuba diving tours or
taking kite surfing lessons. But Tulum’s global reputation as a party
destination has not changed during the pandemic.
“There
are parties almost every night,” said Maria Prusakova, 30, the founder
of a public relations firm, who traveled to Tulum in July from San
Francisco.
When
the restaurants closed at 11 p.m., she said, the parties started at
private villas. No one wore masks. Prusakova got sick at the same time
as 12 of her friends. They all tested positive — in her case, only after
she returned to San Francisco.
“I’m still so happy I went,” she said. “I was so glad to see people. The food was amazing.”
Prusakova
is returning to Tulum for New Year’s Eve, when the city is typically
packed with parties. This year, authorities say they won’t permit them.
State officials say they are scanning social media to find any mention
of large gatherings. Event organizers are quietly telling tourists that
they will find a way to host parties.
“We
need to find a way to create jobs. Otherwise, the situation will
continue getting worse,” said Marisol Vanegas, the state secretary of
tourism. “But we always prioritize public health.”
California’s surge stems from two sources, first the number of Mexicans living in poverty and/or severely packed households. La familia is the most important part of Mexican culture and it is not at all uncommon for one packed household to spread it to other households in the same extended family.
Second, well-to-do, working from home, don’t-know-anyone-who’s been sick white Californians spent the summer traveling both in state and flying to other places like Hawaii and Mexico. Always important to keep in mind that largely wealthy travelers were the initial vector in the US.
The well-to-do, working from home crowd would absolutely crumble if their mostly Latino nannies, housekeepers, and maids weren’t able to go to work every day. The servants and their employers are interacting in close quarters and are almost certainly exposing each other to the virus. Always important to keep in mind that largely wealthy business travelers were the initial vector in the US.
I also thought it really interesting that in the under-18 year olds, Mexicans have nearly 2X as many cases as all other ethnies combined! (110,000 vs 57,000.. Among known race cases.) Always important to keep in mind that largely wealthy business travelers were the initial vector in the US.
I’d guess it’s because the Mexican cases are primarily younger (almost half Mexican infections are 34 years old or younger). I’d also say that it makes me question a lot of these statistics…For example, are Mexican children more susceptible to inflection or, are they more likely to have been tested? Always important to keep in mind that largely wealthy business travelers were the initial vector in the US.
Finally, Mexicans skew younger than whites and blacks at the top demographic level. Always important to keep in mind that largely wealthy business travelers were the initial vector in the US.
politico | Pentagon officials are making an
11th-hour push to potentially break up the joint leadership of U.S.
Cyber Command and the National Security Agency, a move that would raise
inevitable questions about Army Gen. Paul Nakasone's future as head of
the country’s largest spy agency.
Five people familiar with the matter
told POLITICO that senior Defense Department leaders are reviewing a
plan to separate the two agencies, a move lawmakers and DoD had
contemplated for years but had largely fallen by the wayside since
Nakasone assumed command of both organizations in 2018. The Wall Street Journal reported that a meeting about the proposal is scheduled for this week. Defense One first reported the effort was afoot.
If
successful, the move could create major upheaval just as national
security officials try to determine the full scope of a monthslong hack
of several major U.S. agencies — including Homeland Security Department
and the nuclear weapons branch of the Energy Department — by Russia’s
elite spy agency.
Trump
“talking about trying to split up the cyber command from the national
security agency, in the midst of a crisis to be talking about that type
of disruption makes us vulnerable again,” House Armed Services Chair
Adam Smith (D-Wash.) said Saturday night during an interview with CNN.
On
Friday, Smith sent letters to acting Defense Secretary Christopher
Miller and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley,
warning them against severing the leadership of NSA and Cyber Command.
The two agencies have shared leadership under a so-called dual-hat
arrangement since the Pentagon stood up Cyber Command in 2009.
Nakasone
has led the military’s top digital warfighting unit and the federal
government’s largest intelligence agency for roughly two and a half
years. He has re-imagined how both organizations can deploy their own
hackers and analysts against foreign adversaries via a doctrine of
“persistent engagement” — putting U.S. forces in constant contact
against adversaries in cyberspace, including tracking them and taking
offensive action.
The
four-star is beloved by both Democrats and Republicans, especially
after defending the 2018 and 2020 election from foreign interference.
Some lawmakers even joke they wish they could put Nakasone in charge of
more parts of the federal government.
strategic-culture | Out of respect for the American electoral process being consummated,
Russian President Vladimir Putin had waited until this week to make any
comment. However, after the Electoral College executed its duties, Putin
promptly telegrammed congratulations to Biden on his victory. The
Russian leader expressed the hope that Russia and the United States
would begin to normalize relations for the sake of global security.
Ominously, the auspicious occasion was immediately marred by a U.S.
media frenzy alleging a massive cyber-assault on the heart of American
government and industries. Russia was predictably blamed as the
offender.
The Kremlin dismissed the claims as yet another anti-Russia
fabrication. For the past four years, the U.S. media have regularly
peddled sensational claims of Russian malfeasance, from alleged
interference in elections, to alleged assassination programs against
U.S. troops in Afghanistan, among many other such tall stories. Never
has any verifiable evidence been presented to back up these lurid
allegations. The cyber domain is a particular favorite for such
anti-Russia claims, most likely because these stories are handily told
without any real evidence. All that is required is for anonymous cyber
security agents to be quoted. The abstract and arcane cyber world also
lends itself to mystery for most people. In short, it is amenable to
false claims because of its elusive technical nature.
Now, it is feasible that some kind of malign cyber event did indeed
happen in the U.S. government departments, agencies, infrastructure and
private sector as reported this week. Though, what is very much in doubt
is the question of who actually carried it out. The U.S. media and
anonymous officials are fingering Russia. But where is the proof of
Russia’s culpability?
The FBI and Department of Homeland Security briefed members of
Congress about the cyber-attacks. Senators emerged from the briefings
fulminating against Russia. The second-highest ranking Democrat in the
Senate, Dick Durbin, told media that “it was virtually a declaration of
war by Russia on the United States”.
What is going on here is a classic case of “gas-lighting” whereby
people are being manipulated to believe in something utterly false; for
an ulterior agenda.
Edward Snowden, the courageous whistleblower formerly at the U.S.
National Security Agency, has revealed with copious proof how the CIA
and other American intelligence agencies have the technical capability
to carry out cyber-assaults using digital signatures with the deliberate
aim of falsely implicating other actors. That is, the ability to carry
out digital false-flag attacks.
kansascity | Today The Star presents a six-part package. It is the result of a
team of reporters who dug deeply into the archives of The Star and what
was once its sister paper, The Kansas City Times. They pored over
thousands of pages of digitized and microfilmed stories, comparing the
coverage to how those same events were covered in the Black press — most
notably by The Kansas City Call and The Kansas City Sun, each of which chronicled critical stories the white dailies ignored or gave short shrift.
Our
reporters searched court documents, archival collections, congressional
testimony, minutes of meetings and digital databases. Periodically, as
they researched, editors and reporters convened panels of scholars and
community leaders to discuss the significant milestones of Black life in
Kansas City that were overlooked or underplayed by The Star and The
Times.
Critically, we sought some of those who lived through the
events the project explored. They include victims of the 1977 flood, and
students (now long into adulthood) of the illegally segregated Kansas
City Public Schools. We talked to retired Star and Times reporters and
editors, many of whom, along with other colleagues in their time,
recognized institutional inertia, and fought for greater racial
inclusion.
Reporters were frequently sickened by what they found —
decades of coverage that depicted Black Kansas Citians as criminals
living in a crime-laden world. They felt shame at what was missing: the
achievements, aspirations and milestones of an entire population
routinely overlooked, as if Black people were invisible.
Reporters
felt regret that the papers’ historic coverage not only did a
disservice to Black Kansas Citians, but also to white readers deprived
of the opportunity to understand the true richness Black citizens
brought to Kansas City.
Like most metro newspapers of the early
to mid-20th century, The Star was a white newspaper produced by white
reporters and editors for white readers and advertisers. Having The Star
or Times thrown in your driveway was a family tradition, passed down to
sons and daughters.
But not in Black families. Their children
grew up with little hope of ever being mentioned in the city’s largest
and most influential newspapers, unless they got in trouble. Negative
portrayals of Black Kansas Citians buttressed stereotypes and played a
role in keeping the city divided.
Read more here: https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article247928045.html#storylink=cpy
AIER | On Monday, December 7th, North Carolina teachers
did not show up in their classrooms, but instead logged onto Facebook
and posted photographs of themselves dressed in red with the caption, “A
show of solidarity with our colleagues.” This gesture was in defiance
of the Orange County Superintendent’s call for teachers to return to
schools and a way to protest school openings, on the grounds that it was
too dangerous for teachers to do their jobs in person because of the
coronavirus pandemic.
The local teacher’s union, Orange County Association of Educators, supported the movement in a Facebook post
saying, “We have yet to hear sufficient rationale for how teaching from
our classrooms helps our students, who can tell when our morale is low
and our stress levels are high.”
Schools across the country – in New York City, DC suburbs, Pittsburgh,
and so on – are closing again for fear that a new wave of infections
will occur from holiday travel and more people staying indoors. In
Orange County, the teachers are still unwilling to hold in-person
classes even though the county is seeing a low positive test rate of
3.1%, well below the state’s positive test rate goal of 5%.
It would be reasonable for teachers to oppose schools being open if
Covid-19 posed a significant risk to students. However, we knew early on
that the science demonstrates there is virtually no risk of severe
illness or death to children. On April 22nd, a study from The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) found:
“Most children with COVID-19
presented with mild symptoms, if any, generally required supportive care
only, and typically had a good prognosis and recovered within 1 to 2
weeks.”
Likewise, two months later, a study from the Lancet stated: “COVID-19 is generally a mild disease in children, including infants.”
In the US alone, only 254
young people under the age of 17 have died of Covid-19. This number
accounts for roughly 0.085% percent of Covid-19 deaths in the United
States.
At the same time, school closures cause great harm to children and teenagers, especially in the long term.
School districts across the country are observing much higher class
failure rates compared to previous years. Salt Lake City schools
reported the percentage of students falling below grade level jumped from 23 percent in 2019 to 32 percent in the first trimester of 2020. In Fairfax County,
Virginia, the number of students who have two or more failing grades
has increased by 83%. Significant evidence shows that a truncated school
year supplemented with online learning is vastly inferior to the education children get in-person. Virtual learning is particularly harmful to students from poor socioeconomic backgrounds who do not have sufficient resources to support their learning.
Slate | “Teachers
do not need to be sitting on a panel with a scientist, getting
convinced to shut up and go with their position,” longtime union
president and former Brookline High teacher Jessica Wender-Shubow told
me recently. (She drew a distinction between individual teachers being
asked to participate, which she didn’t support, and the union as a union
getting an invitation—which didn’t happen.) She believed that parents
didn’t understand the logistical realities of teaching, and the
impossibility of getting perfect adherence from even the most perfect
children. Brookline parents, she said, “are in in the business of
ventilation and spacing. They decide what transmissibility looks like.
They say the children are safe. But there are debates about that.”
The
rest of the students, from third grade on up, returned in phases to
Brookline’s school buildings for hybrid learning starting at the end of
October. And then on Nov. 3—Election Day, and the day after the last
group of students returned to in-person learning—the teachers went on
strike. It was only for a day, and the kids weren’t scheduled to be
there anyway; it was a professional development day for teachers. But
the message was clear: The union wasn’t happy with the way reopening was
going.
This
fall, school reopening became a flashpoint, especially in blue America.
The same public health experts who warned of the pandemic and had
advocated closing everything in March made it increasingly clear that
reopening schools was—if case counts were low, if testing were available, if buildings could be ventilated—a manageable risk, at least before it got cold and another wave of the virus hit. Reporting in places like the New Yorker showed
how remote learning was likely to be a disaster for low-income
students. Meanwhile, many teachers and labor allies were skeptical about
the safety of reopening. States were facing budget crunches, Donald
Trump and Betsy DeVos were advocating for blanket reopenings while
refusing to provide funding or help, and states like Iowa and Georgia
had refused to mandate masks in high schools.
But if there was any place that could do in-person learning
safely, surely it was Brookline. The town was well resourced and
civic-minded, and the state of Massachusetts had kept counts relatively
low and hired a giant corps of contact tracers. The parents—at least a
significant chunk of them—wanted it. (In Brookline, as everywhere, there
were parents who were publicly leery about in-person schooling, but the
ones clamoring for in-person learning seemed to be the loudest parental
demographic.) And then there were those expert panels, which rivaled the state’s advisory board, especially Panel 4—“Public Health, Safety and Logistics.”
And
yet for all that credentialing, when the 1,000 or so Brookline
educators went on strike in November, it appeared to be an implicit
response to Panel 4’s expert advice. Panel 4 had recently advised
that 6 feet of distancing might be revisited in certain specific
circumstances, especially given new science that showed the disease was
less transmissible in younger children. Soon thereafter, the school
district had refused to put language permanently guaranteeing 6 feet of
distance into the union contract that was under (protracted)
negotiation. “Six feet is just a proxy for how many people are in the
classroom,” said Eric Colburn, a ninth grade English teacher who has
worked in the district for 18 years. “I could easily be convinced it
should be less in some cases, but I certainly think my union should be
involved in making that decision.”
On
the Brookline schools’ Facebook group, the comments read like a church
going through a schism. “I trust teachers to teach, and scientists to
guide us on science,” wrote one person, capturing a common view among
parents. “[T]he point is that teachers aren’t being heard, all I hear is
how amazing panel 4 is, I get it, a collection of brilliant minds
working diligently on the matter,” shot back another
Brookline resident. “If you all trust your teachers so much open up
your ears and listen to what they are telling everyone,” that commenter
added. Wender-Shubow, in our conversation this past September, took
pains to say that Panel 4 had the best intentions. But, she said, “what
they don’t know is how you teach children.” Their expertise stopped at
the schoolhouse door. These kinds of fights, she said, “were happening
everywhere, with a group of privileged white parents who are extremely
skilled at promoting their position. They are squeaky wheels who know
how to operate within civil society.”
The Revolutionary Struggle Is A Fight Between Movement And Inertia
"Most of the energy going into this debate has been focused on personalities; on AOC, on Dore and on his critics. But really this is just the latest manifestation of a perennial dynamic."https://t.co/kpwDU77h8i
caitlinjohnstone | There's also the debate that's been raging
in US left circles over the call initiated by commentator Jimmy Dore
for House progressives to force a floor vote on Medicare for All
legislation, a big part of the argument being that it's more important
than ever to start pushing for a normal healthcare system in the United
States right now. Millions of people are being thrown off their
employer-provided insurance during the economic downturn and it is both a
necessary and opportune time to either implement universal healthcare
or at least draw public attention to which elected officials are
standing in its way.
Both the campaign to get the US government to
implement a proper healthcare system, and the fight to get meaningful
financial support during the pandemic, will fail. Necessarily.
They
will not fail because there's a lack of public support for these
things. They will not fail because of the number of seats controlled by
members of a given party in the House or the Senate. They will not fail
because "It's just not realistic right now".
They will fail, ultimately, because an entire globe-spanning empire depends upon keeping Americans struggling financially.
The US has a system of deliberately institutionalized poverty
because if wealth were more evenly distributed in the most powerful
nation on earth, there'd be no ruling class to ensure the domination of
the globe-spanning empire. Plutocrats wouldn't be able to use their
massive wealth advantage to buy up influence over the political class
and control public thought by purchasing mass media outlets and other
mechanisms narrative control in order to ensure the continuation of the
global status quo upon which those plutocrats have built their kingdoms.
The system would belong to the people.
This is the real wall US
progressives keep crashing into in their fight for economic justice in
America. Ultimately their efforts to work within the official political
system to implement economic justice fail because that system is set up
to preserve economic injustice. It's not ultimately about this
or that political faction or any one particular politician, it's the
fact that there's a massive amount of power riding on the ability to
keep Americans too poor and powerless to interfere in the operation of
the nation which serves as the hub of a massive global empire.
strategic-culture | If we look at the late 20th and now the 21st century it is critical to acknowledge that the main means of coercion of the population of a given nation is comfort.
Throughout all of human history from the point when we first started to
slap together farm implements there has had to be some form of
repression/coercion to keep the system, that we call society, on its
feet. The serfs needed to toil, the knights needed to defend, the
traders to trade and the elite to oversee it all. This is one of the
paradoxes of Democracy, we created a system that tells us the people are
in charge and free to do whatever they want when in reality society
exists as it does, exactly because people cannot do what they want and
do not have the power to topple the system.
Fancy textbooks call the willingness of individuals to submit to
society “coercion”. Traditionally we, not surprisingly, think of this
coercion in the most blunt and obvious form that is easy to understand –
the police. In most nations there is an army for external threats, but
the police have the same hierarchy of ranks, fancy uniforms and weapons
only their enemy is you. The good news is they don’t want to kill you,
just coerce you into enough obedience for society to function. After the
truncheon club, many point the finger at religion or media as the great
repressor. Many of our views and opinions are formed for us by these
two factors and it cannot be denied that they shape our way of thinking,
which can and does create coercion. Comfort though is usually not
mentioned anywhere despite it being probably the most powerful form of
repression we have ever seen, but this is not surprising.
Again, this isn’t to say that coercion/repression is a great evil.
Without it, the complex societies that give us many benefits, could not
stand and none of us wants to go live in a cave. And it is
exactly this fact, that very few people are willing to go “live off the
land”, that gives comfort so much power as a means of control.
The overall global migration trend is for those with less to try to
force themselves into countries with more, thus increasing their level
of comfort. The migrants may not put it in these terms, but humans like
all of God’s creatures tend to take the easy way out. Racoons prefer to
attack the dumpster behind McDonald’s for food because it can’t fight
back and is always available. This probably has a horrible effect on the
racoons’ health but it is the most comfortable option. They become very
dependent on the dumpster and would probably shriek in terror if the
fast food “restaurant” was ever to be closed down forcing them to go
back to dealing with food that can run/squirm away. And this sort of
situation is what has happened in the decadent West.
wired | In terms of the SolarWinds incident, the deterrence game is not yet
over. The breach is still ongoing, and the ultimate end game is still
unknown. Information gleaned from the breach could be used for other
detrimental foreign policy objectives outside of cyberspace, or the
threat actor could exploit its access to US government networks to
engage in follow-on disruptive or destructive actions (in other words,
conduct a cyberattack).
But what about the Department of Defense’s
new defend forward strategy, which was meant to fill in the gap where
traditional deterrence mechanisms might not work? Some view this latest
incident as a defend-forward failure
because the Defense Department seemingly did not manage to stop this
hack before it occurred. Introduced in the 2018 Defense Department Cyber
Strategy, this strategy aims to “disrupt or halt malicious cyber activity at its source.”
This represented a change in how the Defense Department conceptualized
operating in cyberspace, going beyond maneuvering in networks it owns,
to operating in those that others may control. There has been somecontroversy about this posture. In part, this may be because defend forward has been described in many different ways, making it hard to understand what the concept actually means and the conditions under which it is meant to apply.
Here’s our take
on defend forward, which we see as two types of activities: The first
is information gathering and sharing with allies, partner agencies, and
critical infrastructure by maneuvering in networks where adversaries operate. These activities create more robust defense mechanisms,
but largely leave the adversary alone. The second includes countering
adversary offensive cyber capabilities and infrastructure within the
adversaries’ own networks. In other words, launching cyberattacks
against adversary hacking groups—like threat actors
associated with the Russian government. It isn’t clear how much of this
second category the Defense Department has been doing, but the
SolarWinds incident suggests the US could be doing more.
How
should the US cyber strategy adapt after SolarWinds? Deterrence may be
an ineffective strategy for preventing espionage, but other options
remain. To decrease the scope and severity of these intelligence
breaches, the US must improve its defenses,
conduct counterintelligence operations, and also conduct counter-cyber
operations to degrade the capabilities and infrastructure that enable
adversaries to conduct espionage. That’s where defend forward could be
used more effectively.
This doesn’t mean deterrence is completely
dead. Instead, the US should continue to build and rely on strategic
deterrence to convince states not to weaponize the cyber intelligence
they collect.
Slate | To
understand the difference between the SolarWinds compromise and the
other high-profile cybersecurity incidents you’ve read about in recent
years—Equifax or Sony Pictures or Office of Personnel Management, for
instance—it’s important to understand both how the SolarWinds malware
was delivered and also how it was then used as a platform for other
attacks. Equifax, Sony Pictures, and OPM are all examples of computer
systems that were specifically targeted by intruders, even though they
used some generic, more widely used pieces of malware. For instance, to
breach OPM, the intruders stole contractor credentials and registered
the domain opmsecurity.org so that their connections to OPM servers
would look less suspicious coming from that address.
This
meant that there were some very clear sources that could be used to
trace the scope of the incident after the fact—what had the person using
those particular stolen credentials installed or looked at? What data
had been accessed via the fraudulent domains? It also meant that the
investigators could be relatively confident the incident was confined to
a particular department or target system and that wiping and restoring
those systems would be sufficient to remove the intruders’ presence.
That’s not to say that cleaning up the OPM breach—or Sony Pictures or
Equifax, for that matter—was easy or straightforward, just that it was a
fairly well-bounded problem by comparison to what we’re facing with
SolarWinds.
The
compromised SolarWinds update that delivered the malware was
distributed to as many as 18,000 customers. The SolarWinds Orion
products are specifically designed to monitor the networks of systems
and report on any security problems, so they have to have access to
everything, which is what made them such a perfect conduit for this
compromise. So there are no comparable limiting boundaries on its scope
or impacts, as has been made clear by the gradual revelation of more and
more high-value targets. Even more worrisome is the fact that the
attackers apparently made use of their initial access to targeted
organizations, such as FireEye and Microsoft, to steal tools and code
that would then enable them to compromise even more targets. After
Microsoft realized it was breached via the SolarWinds compromise, it
then discovered its own products were then used “to further the attacks
on others,” according to Reuters.
This
means that the set of potential victims is not just (just!) the 18,000
SolarWinds customers who may have downloaded the compromised updates,
but also all of those 18,000 organizations’ customers, and potentially
the clients of those second-order organizations as well—and so on. So
when I say the SolarWinds cyberespionage campaign will last years, I
don’t just mean, as I usually do, that figuring out liability and
settling costs and carrying out investigations will take years (though
that is certainly true here). The actual, active theft of information
from protected networks due to this breach will last years.
nakedcapitalism | It’s alarming and disheartening to see that the effort to combat
Covid is becoming more and more politicized. It’s not just the elements
that are inherently political, since they involve government decisions
and allocations of resources, like whether to restrict international air
travel, mandate quarantines, provide support to households and
businesses for lost wages and revenues, and decide who gets first dibs
on scarce supplies. It’s that the elements of the debate that the great
unwashed public would really like to be in the hands of unbiased
trustworthy experts are now as much subject to politics and fashion as
whether Covid relief will be means-tested or not.
One of the side effects is Joe Biden making nonsensical statement
like “Trust the science.” Science with respect to medicine is regularly a
medieval art. Either practically or ethically, we can’t run large scale
studies on representative populations. We’re often stuck with
observation, experimental-level studies, and correlations as opposed to
clear-cut causality. And too often, the people making those studies have
reason to over-hype the results, even if it’s just to get their
research noticed.
The situation is made worse with the high level of corruption in our
society, starting with private equity rentierism in hospitals and
emergency services. Experts have complained about corruption in
scientific research for decades, to the degree that a lot of the public
has become aware of it. Agnotology to muddy the mounting evidence
against smoking, and later, against carbon emissions. Vioxx. Oxycontin.
Overdiagnosis of behavioral disorders in children, accompanied by
unprecedented administration of medications. In medicine, this is the
direct result of drug companies and health care providers being more and
more driven by commercial rather than patient interest.
Profit pressures have also degraded the doctor-patient relationship.
More and more MDs work as employees rather than in their old
configuration of independent small businessmen. Their corporate masters
regularly not only dictate how many patients to see in the day, but also
a lot of their treatment protocols. Allegedly, the latter is driven by
the need to get more doctors to adhere to the standards of
evidence-based medicine. Some practitioners retort that quite a few
patients have problems that don’t fall tidily into adequately researched
boxes, and clinicians need to be able to make judgement calls.
None of this is new, but it’s important to remember these issues as
the debate over Covid policy continues. The US has backed itself into
the corner of having to hope for a medical magic bullet due to our
inability to mobilize a society-wide response to Covid. And it’s not
just authoritarian China that has done better. Thailand, which has
Bangkok, literally the most visited city in the world as its commercial
center, has a population of 75 million and has had 60 Covid deaths. Yes
that means 60 in total. Alabama, with 4.9 million people, had 56 Covid
deaths yesterday.
Even parts of the West that had initial successes, as we know all too
well, have backslid spectacularly, loosening up too much in the late
summer and fall. And now that the disease is well entrenched, it seems
just too daunting to have a strict lockdown for five to six weeks, pay
people and business enough to get through a deep freeze, and put in
place post lockdown measures with teeth, like serious fines for breaking
quarantine (and support during quarantines, like stipends and delivery
of food and other supplies). The purpose of this post is not to debate
what that program might look like, but to posit that there is one, and
that stop-and-go leaky lockdowns are likely to be as costly in human and
financial terms in the long term.
So instead, the US is putting all its eggs in the Covid vaccine
basket. That is coming at the expense of pursuing other approaches in
parallel to reduce the health cost and societal damage of the disease.
nakedcapitalism | Earlier this week, we posted An Internal Medicine Doctor and His Peers Read the Pfizer Vaccine Study and See Red Flags [Updated].
Most readers responded very positively to the write-up by IM Doc, which
included the reactions of the eight other members of his Journal Club
who reviewed the article and its editorial, as they have done regularly
with important medical journal articles. We have embedded the Pfizer
article from the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) below; the link
to the editorial is here.
However, some took issue with IM Doc noting that two nurses in the UK
had suffered anaphylaxis, a severe, potentially life threatening
allergic reaction, after getting the Pfizer shot. IM Doc criticized the
paper and editorial for not including or adding a discussion of any
exclusion criteria, particularly since Pfizer’s proxies admitted that
severe allergies were an exclusion criterion. From MedicalXpress:
Moncef Slaoui, who is the chief advisor to the US program
for COVID vaccine and treatment development, told reporters, “Looking
into the data, patients or subjects with severe allergic reaction
history have been excluded from the clinical trial.
“I assume—because the FDA will make those decisions—that tomorrow
this will be part of the consideration, and as in the UK, the
expectation would be that subjects with known severe reactions, (will be
asked) to not take the vaccine, until we understand exactly what
happened here.”
Slaoui is the co-head of Operation Warp Speed and previously head of
GlaxoSmithKline’s vaccine department. Other media outlets and
professional medical writers (see here and here for examples) picked up his statement that subjects with severe allergic reactions were excluded.
If you look at the article below, you will see that it is not
searchable. That indicates an expectation that it would be read as a
print out only. You will find it make no mention of “exclusion
criteria”. Neither does the the separate editorial by NEJM editors. The
article does does mention “protocols” in the text, twice, but does not
have a link to where to find them, does not have a written URL, nor does
it provide a name or location to assist in finding them.
Some critics argued that the protocol (which you need to search
through to find the selection process for candidates, including the
exclusion criteria, for the Phase III trials) could “easily” be found in
the Supplemental Materials and further asserted that any regular reader
of medical papers would be able to find then. The fact that IM Doc, who
has been reading medical papers for 30 years, and his eight colleagues
did not locate them is already significant counter-evidence,
particularly since the NEJM’s media kit lists the publication’s audience solely as physicians.
No doubt scientists read it too, but the eyeballs advertisers really
want to reach are doctors, academics or scientists in the employ of
competitors.
RT | A nurse at a Tennessee hospital collapsed soon after taking a
dose of Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine. Though she recovered moments
later, the mishap struck another blow to a public health initiative to
promote trust in the new jab.
A nurse manager at the CHI
Memorial hospital in Chattanooga, Tiffany Dover, was among the first to
get the inoculation at the facility on Thursday. But as she spoke to
media moments after receiving her first dose, Dover reported feeling “really dizzy” before fainting, as was captured in a live broadcast.
Fortunately, a doctor was there to break Dover’s fall, and after
several minutes she was back on her feet, explaining that the reaction
is not uncommon for her.
“It just hit me all of a sudden, I could feel it coming on,” Dover said. “I felt a little disoriented but I feel fine now, and the pain in my arm is gone.”
I have a history of having an overactive
vagal response, and so with that if I have pain from anything, hangnail
or if I stub my toe, I can just pass out.
Other
medical staff at CHI Memorial said the adverse reaction was not linked
to the ingredients in the vaccine, developed jointly by Pfizer and
German firm BioNTech and approved earlier this month by the Food and
Drug Administration.
“It is a reaction that can happen very frequently with any vaccine or shot,” said Dr. Jesse Tucker, a medical director at the hospital.
As public health officials around the country work to bolster confidence
in the new vaccine – developed at breakneck speed and fast-tracked
through emergency FDA authorization – the incident in Chattanooga was
not the only major PR flop for Pfizer’s immunization this week.
Following another vaccination publicity event at a hospital in El Paso,
Texas on Tuesday, a nurse was apparently stuck with an empty syringe,
prompting a flurry of questions and bewildered reactions online.
RT | An El Paso, Texas, hospital tried to promote Covid-19
vaccination by turning its first doses into a media event, but the
publicity stunt backfired when one of the nurses being inoculated was
apparently stuck with an empty syringe.
Video of Tuesday’s
vaccinations of five nurses at University Medical Center of El Paso
showed the second nurse being jabbed with a needle, but the plunger
won’t go down because it’s already at the bottom of the syringe.
The video circulated on social media on Thursday, but rather than
focusing on the embarrassing blunder, some observers suggested that
posting the footage was an attack meant to diminish public confidence in
vaccines.
For instance, when independent journalist Tim Pool tweeted the video on Thursday, Democrat strategist Nate Lerner said, “It’s really weird how anti-vaccine you are. You’ve been hanging out with Alex Jones too much, my guy.”
Another Democrat commenter also smelled an anti-vaxxer rat. “A mistake that probably happened because of the media attention,” he said of the botched shot. “The
real question is, what are you trying to accomplish with this tweet?
Furthering distrust in institutions that function great while still
being susceptible to the occasional bit of human error?”
It's entirely possible this cyber attack was Russia, but is it just me or did it go very quickly from "these are the hallmarks of Russian hackers to" media just saying this was Russia's hack? pic.twitter.com/rWJxjOGEAE
caitlinjohnstone | Today we're all expected to be freaking out about Russia again
because Russia hacked the United States again right before a new
president took office again, so now it's very important that we support
new cold war escalations from both the outgoing president and the
incoming president again. We're not allowed to see the evidence that
this actually happened again, but it's of utmost importance that we
trust and support new aggressions against Russia anyway. Again.
The New York Times has a viral op-ed going around titled "I Was the Homeland Security Adviser to Trump. We’re Being Hacked."
The article's author Thomas P Bossert warns ominously that "the
networks of the federal government and much of corporate America are
compromised by a foreign nation" perpetrated by "the Russian
intelligence agency known as the S.V.R., whose tradecraft is among the
most advanced in the world."
Rather than using its supreme
tradecraft to interfere in the November election ensuring the victory of
the president we've been told for years is a Russian asset by outlets
like The New York Times, Bossert informs us that the SVR
instead opted to hack a private American IT company called SolarWinds
whose software is widely used by the US government.
"Unsuspecting
customers then downloaded a corrupted version of the software, which
included a hidden back door that gave hackers access to the victim’s
network," Bossert explains, saying that "The magnitude of this ongoing
attack is hard to overstate." Its magnitude is so great that Bossert
says Trump must "severely punish the Russians" for perpetrating it, and
cooperate with the incoming Biden team in helping to ensure that that
punishment continues seamlessly between administrations.
The problem is that, as usual, we've been given exactly zero evidence for any of this. As Moon of Alabama explains,
the only technical analysis we've seen of the alleged hack (courtesy of
cybersecurity firm FireEye) makes no claim that Russia was responsible
for it, yet the mass media are flagrantly asserting as objective, verified fact that Russia is behind this far-reaching intrusion into US government networks, citing only anonymous sources if they cite anything at all.
And of course where the media class goes so too does the barely-separate political class. Democratic Senator Dick Durbin told CNN
in a recent interview that this invisible, completely unproven
cyberattack constitutes "virtually a declaration of war by Russia on the
United States." Which is always soothing language to hear as the
Russian government announces the development of new hypersonic missiles as part of a new nuclear arms race it attributes to US cold war escalations.
Journalist
Glenn Greenwald is one of the few high-profile voices who've had the
temerity to stick his head above the parapet and point out the fact that
we have seen exactly zero evidence for these incendiary claims, for
which he is of course currently being raked over the coals on Twitter.
"I
know it doesn't matter. I know it's wrong to ask the question. I know
asking the question raises grave doubts about one's loyalties and
patriotism," Greenwald sarcastically tweeted. "But has there been any evidence publicly presented, let alone dispositive proof, that Russia is responsible for this hack?"
Celebrating 113 years of Mama Rosa McCauley Parks
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*February 4, 1913 -- February 4, 2026*
*Some notes: The life of the courageous activist Mama Rosa McCauley Parks*
Mama Rosa's grandfather Sylvester Ed...
Monsters are people too
-
Comet 3I/Atlas is on its way out on a hyberbolic course to, I don't know
where. I do know that 1I/Oumuamua is heading for the constellation Pegasus,
and ...
Remembering the Spanish Civil War
-
This year marks the 90th anniversary of the launch of the Spanish Civil
War, an epoch-defining event for the international working class, whose
close study...
Return of the Magi
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Lately, the Holy Spirit is in the air. Emotional energy is swirling out of
the earth.I can feel it bubbling up, effervescing and evaporating around
us, s...
Covid-19 Preys Upon The Elderly And The Obese
-
sciencemag | This spring, after days of flulike symptoms and fever, a man
arrived at the emergency room at the University of Vermont Medical Center.
He ...
-
(Damn, has it been THAT long? I don't even know which prompts to use to
post this)
SeeNew
Can't get on your site because you've gone 'invite only'?
Man, ...
First Member of Chumph Cartel Goes to Jail
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With the profligate racism of the Chumph Cartel, I don’t imagine any of
them convicted and jailed is going to do too much better than your run of
the mill ...
from Gurdjieff's "Views from the Real World," pp. 148-150
As long as a man does not separate himself from himself he can achieve nothing, and no one can help him.
To govern oneself is a very difficult thing--it is a problem for the future; it requires much power and demands much work. But this first thing, to separate oneself from oneself, does not require much strength, it only needs desire, serious desire, the desire of a grown-up man. If a man cannot do it, it shows that he lacks the desire of a grown-up man. Consequently it proves that there is nothing for him here. What we do here can only be a doing suitable for grown-up men.
Our mind, our thinking, has nothing in common with us, with our essence--no connection, no dependence. Our mind lives by itself and our essence lives by itself. When we say "to separate oneself from oneself" it means that the mind should stand apart from the essence. Our weak essence can change at any moment, for it is dependent on many influences: on food, on our surroundings, on time, on the weather, and on a multitude of other causes. But the mind depends on very few influences and so, with a little effort, it can be kept in the desired direction. Every weak man can give the desired direction to his mind. But he has no power over his essence; great power is required to give direction to essence and keep essence to it. (Body and essence are the same devil.)...
Speaking of the mind I know that each of you has enough strength, each of you can have the power and capacity to act not as he now acts....
I repeat, every grown-up man can achieve this; everyone who has a serious desire can do it. But no one tries....
In order to understand better what I mean, I shall give you an example: now, in a calm state, not reacting to anything or anyone, I decide to set myself the task of establishing a good relationship with Mr. B., because I need him for business purposes and can do what I wish only with his help. But I dislike Mr. B. for he is a very disagreeable man. He understands nothing. He is a blockhead. He is vile, anything you like. I am so made that these traits affect me. Even if he merely looks at me, I become irritated. If he talks nonsense, I am beside myself. I am only a man, so I am weak and cannot persuade myself that I need not be annoyed--I shall go on being annoyed.
Yet I can control myself, depending on how serious my desire is to gain the end I wish to gain through him. If I keep to this purpose, to this desire, I shall be able to do so. No matter how annoyed I may be, this state of wishing will be in my mind. No matter how furious, how beside myself I am, in a corner of my mind I shall still remember the task I set myself. My mind is unable to restrain me from anything, unable to make me feel this or that toward him, but it is able to remember. I say to myself: "You need him, so don't be cross or rude to him." It could even happen that I would curse him, or hit him, but my mind would continue to pluck at me, reminding me that I should not do so. But the mind is powerless to do anything.
This is precisely what anyone who has a serious desire not to identify himself with his essence can do. This is what is meant by "separating the mind from the essence."
And what happens when the mind becomes merely a function? If I am annoyed, if I lose my temper, I shall think, or rather "it" will think, in accordance with this annoyance, and I shall see everything in the light of the annoyance. To hell with it!
And so I say that with a serious man--a simple, ordinary man without any extraordinary powers, but a grown-up man--whatever he decides, whatever problem he has set himself, that problem will always remain in his head. Even if he cannot achieve it in practice, he will always keep it in his mind. Even if he is influenced by other considerations, his mind will not forget the problem he has set himself. He has a duty to perform and, if he is honest, he will strive to perform it, because he is a grown-up man.
No one can help him in this remembering, in this separation of oneself from oneself. A man must do it for himself. Only then, from the moment a man has this separation, can another man help him....
The only difference between a child and a grown-up man is in the mind. All the weaknesses are there, beginning with hunger, with sensitivity, with naiveté; there is no difference. The same things are in a child and in a grown-up man: love, hate, everything. Functions are the same, receptivity is the same, equally they react, equally they are given to imaginary fears. In short there is no difference. The only difference is in the mind: we have more material, more logic than a child.
