thinkprogress | On Monday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that the Justice
Department has formed a task force to implement religious liberty
guidance it introduced last year. Sessions made the announcement during
a “Religious Liberty Summit” at Justice Department headquarters.
When the guidance was issued
in October, saying that the government can’t punish anyone for acting
or not acting “in accordance with one’s religious beliefs,” civil rights
organizations worried
it could be used to excuse individuals and groups who refuse to provide
services to people in the LGBTQ community and people who want
reproductive care. Indeed, Sessions specifically mentioned LGBTQ rights
and reproductive rights in his announcement of the task force.
“We’ve seen nuns ordered to buy contraceptives,” Sessions said on
Monday. “We’ve seen U.S. senators ask judicial and executive branch
nominees about dogma—even though the Constitution explicitly forbids a
religious test for public office. We’ve all seen the ordeal faced so
bravely by Jack Phillips.”
Jack Phillips is the Colorado cake artist
who told a same-sex couple he would not make them a wedding cake
because it is against his religious beliefs in the U.S. Supreme Court
case Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. In
his critique of senators’ questions for judicial and executive branch
nominees, Sessions may be referring to Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) questioning then HUD Secretary nominee Ben Carson about whether he supported LGBTQ rights or senators asking judicial nominee Wendy Vitter about her past anti-reproductive rights actions.
LRB | Despite his hankering for historical significance, Rhodes understands
the anomalousness of his own situation. To travel the world with the
American president – and not just any president, but this one –
was to get access to some of the most famous people in the world, who
nevertheless continued to regard Obama with a kind of awe. Even as his
popularity waned back home, Obama remained the biggest draw on the world
stage. Stars were starstruck by him, and some of the fairy dust
inevitably got sprinkled on whoever was standing nearby. Only on very
rare occasions did someone manage to break the spell. In early 2011
Rhodes gets an invitation with the rest of Team Obama to a state banquet
at Buckingham Palace. He rents a white-tie tuxedo – ‘You guys clean up
pretty well,’ the impeccably turned-out Obama tells his normally scruffy
speechwriters – and goes to see the British aristocracy put on a show.
‘The women wore diamond tiaras; some of the men, military uniforms. One
of these ladies, after telling me about her various hobbies, looked at
me quizzically – “You do know who I am, don’t you?” she said. Of course, I assured her … I didn’t have the slightest idea.’ Then the real centre of attention arrives:
Obama stood next to the queen, a stoic
yet kindly-looking woman adorned in jewels. Standing there, you got the
sense of the impermanence of your own importance – this woman had met
everyone there was to know over the last fifty years … When the dinner
was over, we were moved to another room, where they served after-dinner
drinks. I found myself in a conversation with David Cameron about the
HBO show Entourage, which we both apparently enjoyed – in a room full of royals, the prime minister is oddly diminished, just another staffer.
‘The Impermanence of Importance’ would have made a good alternative title for this book.
That said, the title Rhodes chose is better, because it has a deeper
meaning. At one level, it refers to the ongoing contest between Obama’s
realism and the hopes of people like Rhodes that he would deliver
lasting change. The tension between what is and what ought to be forms
the essence of most political coming-of-age memoirs and this one is no
different from other classics of the genre, such as The Education of Henry Adams:
the dilemmas it describes could come from any time in the history of
modern politics, not just our own. But the other reference point for the
title is more about now. We are witnessing the increasingly fraught
contest between the world as it is – the world of facts – and the world
as it is described by people with little or no regard for the facts.
Obama and Rhodes may sometimes have found themselves on different sides
of the struggle between what is and what ought to be, but they were
always on the same side of the struggle between the world as it is and
the world as they say it is. Both men were victims of character
assassinations by their opponents, who showed increasing disregard for
anything that might be called common ground. During Obama’s presidency,
the world as it is started to disappear, buried beneath the accusations
and counter-accusations of those who said it was another way entirely,
simply because they could.
This story is best told backwards, because it is a tale that
culminates in the election of Trump. If that represented the ultimate
catastrophe for Team Obama – ‘after all the work you guys did,’
as Rhodes’s wife says to him the morning after Trump’s victory – what
precedes it has to be sifted for clues that it might be coming. They are
easy to miss and Obama’s people missed plenty of them at the time.
Sometimes this was down to political incompetence, but there was also
some arrogance. In April 2016 Obama travelled to London on a hastily
arranged trip to help Cameron fight off the threat of defeat in the
Brexit referendum. Obama is greeted by an op-ed from Boris Johnson in
the Telegraph attacking him for removing a bust of Churchill
from the Oval Office. ‘Some said,’ Johnson wrote, ‘that it was a symbol
of the part-Kenyan president’s ancestral dislike of the British Empire.’
ChicagoTribune | “We have a sense of urgency about this project (and) when we started,
we wanted the public to know we would break ground as soon as
possible,” said Michael Strautmanis, the vice president for civic
engagement for the foundation. “But we also knew there were some things
that were not in our control. We insist on going through the process
with integrity and without rushing.”
Before the presidential center can be built, the federal government
will review its impact on Jackson Park, which is on the National
Register of Historic Places, and evaluate the project’s environmental
effects. Any impact that the review highlights will have to be resolved
before construction can be allowed.
There have already been two
public federal review meetings. A third was scheduled in June, but then
it was delayed until July. Now it has been delayed until late summer,
according to the city of Chicago’s website.
The federal review
process has to be conducted because of Jackson Park’s historic status
and because it involved closing and expanding major streets.
The
news of the delay comes just a day after activists gathered on the South
Side at a meeting to discuss placing a community benefits agreement
proposition on the February ballot.
“We have a new window of opportunity before the next
election to protect the most vulnerable people in our community,” said
Parrish Brown, an activist with the Black Youth Project 100 Chicago
Chapter, in a written statement. “We’re gathering to make sure Mayor
(Rahm) Emanuel and the local aldermen do the right thing, or we’ll have
to elect people who will.”
The coalition wants an ordinance that
would require that 30 percent of all newly constructed housing near the
presidential center be set aside as affordable housing. They want a
property tax freeze for the longtime homeowners closest to the site and
an independent monitor to make sure local residents are hired to work on
the project. In addition, they are now calling for a community trust
fund and support for the neighborhood schools.
riordanclinic | On one particular day in the early 1970s, Olive was sitting under a
hair dryer reading a review about a new book, Nutrition and Your Mind,
by George Watson. The review stated that nutrition, or the food you eat,
has an effect on your mind. This struck a chord in Olive. She did not
believe that wallowing in your childhood and reliving traumas in your
life would lead to a healthy mind. She differed with her former
classmate, Karl Menninger, who became famous for starting the Menninger
Clinic in Topeka. She couldn’t wait to read this book and immediately
ordered it.
After reading the book, she began to formulate an idea
that would eventually lead to The Center for the Improvement of Human
Functioning. She had Clifford Allison, executive director of the Garvey
Foundation, get in touch with Bill Schul, a freelance writer who had
ties to Menninger Clinic, to study what was being done on the effect of
nutrition on the mind. Although Bill thought the book was interesting,
he did not think he was qualified to make that kind of study. Allison
assured him that he was the correct person for the job since he would
not be defending any discipline or philosophy, he would not be bringing
any bias to the effort. Bill devoted more than six months to this
research effort.(32) Except for one flight to the west coast the rest of
the 12,000 miles covered during the course of this study were by car
and commercial bus. Bill visited Centers in Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri,
Illinois, Wisconsin, Washington, D.C., Maryland, New Jersey, New York,
Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Colorado, Arizona, and California. After
reading many books and research articles and interviewing leaders in the
field of nutrition, with the help of the International Academy of
Metabology, Inc., Bill was ready to give his preliminary findings. In
November 1973 Bill presented Olive with the results of his research in a
printed report, Preliminary Study: the effects of nutrition on the mind
and related subjects. Bill authored a book, Frontiers of Medicine, from
that research. He also recommended to Mrs. Garvey that he do some
additional research into holistic medicine, which he thought was going
to become the way of the future. Another book, Psychic Frontiers of
Medicine, was published as a result of that study.
In the first
study Bill focused on the state of treatment for mental diseases. Then
he presented theoretical concepts between the mind and body.
Psychosomatic medicine was also touched upon, along with the emerging
practice of treating the whole person rather than the symptoms.
Nutrition and the mind deserved several pages of the study as well as
allergy and human ecology. He had included recommendations as to how a
new type of medicine could be delivered, along with the estimated costs.
nautil-us | In April 1901, after crossing an unusually calm English Channel,
Metchnikoff for the first time exposed his newly formulated theory of
aging to the public in the notoriously rainy Manchester. He traveled
there to receive the Wilde Medal of the Manchester Literary and
Philosophical Society, the first foreigner to achieve this honor. In the
society’s compact lecture hall, he delivered an hour‐long lecture in
French, “The Flora of the Human Body,” in which he outlined his
brand‐new explanation of why we age and die too soon.
The culprit, he announced, was the body’s flora—microscopic organisms
inhabiting our internal organs, primarily the large intestine, or
colon, the body’s largest microbe container. The idea that waste
products in the intestines poison the human body went back at least to
ancient Egyptians. In the late 19th century, with the establishment of
the link between germs and disease, this belief had gained new validity,
turning into a short‐lived obsession among physicians. The contents of
the gut were thought to putrefy and release toxins through the action of
bacteria. Physicians were attributing anything from headaches and
fatigue to heart disease and epilepsy to these toxins, having their
patients swallow disinfecting mixtures containing charcoal, iodine,
mercury, or naphthalene to “sterilize” the intestines.
Metchnikoff conceded that intestinal flora could be beneficial too,
but most of these microbes, he argued, exert a harmful effect on the
body, “and this leads to premature aging of our tissues and organs.”
Lashing out with a bitter invective against the colon, Metchnikoff,
as a zoologist and a Darwinist, pointed to the animal origins of human
beings. In our evolutionary past, the colon had helped mammals to
survive. It contained not only microbes that facilitated the digestion
of plant food but also remnants of digested food, enabling the animals
to chase prey and escape predators without stopping to empty their
bowels. Humans, on the other hand, he said, “derive no benefit from this
organ,” particularly since they cook their food, making it easier to
absorb. Though the colon was already known to play a role in the
absorption of water and minerals, Metchnikoff believed it was less
essential in this respect than the stomach or the small intestine. He
was certain the colon should have long been eliminated by natural
selection, if only the latter were more effective.
nautil.us |What impact will your work have on aging research?
I’m studying whether we can separate the process of functional
reprogramming of cells from the process of aging reprogramming of cells.
Typically these two processes happen at the same time. My hypothesis is
that we can induce cellular rejuvenation without changing the function
of the cells. If we can manage to do this, we could start thinking about
a way to stall aging.
What is the difference between functional and aging reprogramming?
The function of a skin cell is to express certain proteins, keratins
for example that protect the skin. The function of a liver cell is to
metabolize. Those are cell-specific functions. Reprogramming that
function means that you no longer have a liver cell. You now have
another cell, which has a totally different function. Age, on the other
hand, is just the degree of usefulness of that cell, and it’s mostly an
epigenetic process. A young keratinocyte cell is younger than an older
keratinocyte but it is still a keratinocyte. The amazing thing is that
if you take an aged cell that is fully committed to a certain function,
and you transplant its nucleus into an immature egg cell called an
oocyte, then you revert its function to a pluripotent, embryonic one,
which means it can become any other cell of the body—and you also revert
the age of that cell to the youngest age possible. It’s mind-blowing to
me.
This could be a paradigm shift in the way we approach aging.
How can you make a pluripotent cell in the lab?
Historically, the way pluripotency was induced from non-pluripotent
cells was by doing the procedure I’ve just described: so-called “somatic
cell nuclear transfer.” You take a non-pluripotent cell, let’s say a
liver cell or a fibroblast or any other cell. You isolate its nucleus
and transplant it into an egg, an oocyte, which was previously deprived
of its own nucleus. This produces what is known as a reconstituted
embryo, in which the cytoplasm is the original egg’s cytoplasm, and the
nucleus is the nucleus of the cell that you isolated. The egg has this
amazing ability to reprogram the nucleus to an embryonic-like state.
Since embryonic cells are naturally endowed with a pluripotency program,
if you then take that embryo and put it in culture, you can establish
pluripotent stem cell lines. Shinya Yamanaka, a Japanese researcher that
got a Nobel prize for his work three years ago, demonstrated another
technique, called induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS. He showed that
if you simply boost the expression of four particular transcription
factors inside a non-pluripotent cell for a few weeks, you also could
create an embryonic-like program. The factors also somehow wipe off the
epigenetic memory of the cell, making them younger.
How close are we to using pluripotency induction in therapies?
iPS in mice was described in 2006, and in humans in 2007, so it’s
been already 10 or 11 years. The first clinical trials using iPSCs are
just about to get to early phase I and phase II. There has been a lot of
hope and promise but it’s been a little slow. The reason being that
when it comes to clinical applications, you have to consider a number of
complications. You need to know how to make the cells very efficiently,
and then they need to be safe. There will be more clinical trials
coming up based off iPSs. For example, I am collaborating with an
iPS-based platform for the cure of a skin disease called epidermolysis
bullosa. We’re trying to move this to the pre-clinical stage over the
next few years, and then if we pass that, we will potentially start
moving into a phase I clinical trial. Things are moving forward pretty
fast now.
elysiumhealth |The Takeaway: In his lab at Yale School of Medicine, immunobiologist Vishwa Deep Dixit and his team are researching the ties between the immune system, metabolism, and aging-related diseases, with a specific focus on an oft-misunderstood biological phenomenon — inflammation.
We all know inflammation:
the painful red swelling that happens when we are injured or a wound
becomes infected. But why would a Yale scientist interested in the
mechanisms of aging and age-related disease be leading a lab researching
such a thing?
Turns out there’s a lot more to the condition than most people realize.
“‘Inflammation’ is not just a word not understood properly by the lay
public, it’s often not properly understood by scientists,” said Vishwa
Deep Dixit, a professor of comparative medicine and immunobiology at
Yale’s School of Medicine. Dixit and eight other students, postdoctoral
fellows, and professors study the intersection between the immune system
and metabolism at Dixit Lab.
Their focus is not these signs of “classic” inflammation, like redness,
swelling, pain, and loss of function. Instead, they believe a
different, underlying condition, “low-grade chronic inflammation,”
is part of a wider immune system process linked to aging and
age-related diseases. By studying the connections between inflammation
and other bodily systems, like metabolism and the immune system, they
hope to help humans live longer. We asked Dixit about his lab’s work,
the future of immunobiological research, and the potential for effective
interventions in human health.
Before You Start: Terms to Understand Inflammation: The immune system’s local, short-term response to cellular damage by increasing blood flow and other repair-focused compounds.
Low-grade chronic inflammation: A “slow drip” response to widespread cell damage caused by aging, with the byproduct of impairing the function of cells and organs.
Inflammasome: A multiprotein intra-cellular complex that regulates inflammatory responses. Metabolism: The sum of every chemical reaction that happens in the body. It breaks down (catabolism) food for energy and also rebuilds (anabolism) those basic molecules into cells.
Macrophage: Immune cells that reside in every organ in the body and are critical to maintaining organ function.
healthimpactnews | There was a time, decades ago, when doctors would prescribe bicarbonate of soda, aka baking soda, mixed with water to patients suffering from influenza or other temporary ills. By the way, baking soda does not contain aluminum,baking powder usually does.
Now its efficacious use is known by only a handful of holistic medical practitioners. Though not part of the medical establishment’s “standard of care,” which if not followed can result in an MD’s loss of license to practice, bicarbonate of soda has been used by paramedics and ER attendants for extreme emergencies. A handful of MDs have even discretely used it on kidney patients to augment or avoid dialysis.
Now a medical study has reported indications of dampening inflammation that bring on autoimmune diseases. The study was published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Immunology in April of 2018 to confirm the hypothesis that bicarbonate of soda does have medical merit, and can be a simple cure to autoimmune diseases.
The Study and What It Means
The research report is titled Oral NaHCO3 Activates a Splenic Anti-Inflammatory Pathway: Evidence That Cholinergic Signals Are Transmitted via Mesothelial Cells. (Abstract)
Time for a few nomenclature explanations:
NaHCO3 is the chemical makeup of bicarbonate of soda, commonly known as baking soda. Splenic refers to the spleen. Cholinergic refers to choline, a primary component of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine found in nerve fibers, are thin plate-like calls that cover the walls of fluid containing cavities within the body.
The study was conducted at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University and funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health. The researchers’ message is:
Our data indicate that oral NaHCO3 activates a splenic anti-inflammatory pathway and provides evidence that the signals that mediate this response are transmitted to the spleen via a novel neuronal-like function of mesothelial cells.
The Georgia Medical College study determines the mechanics of how baking soda manages all of the wonderful things it does despite its efficacy not being heralded by the “orthodox” medical industry.
Their research discovered the spleen’s role in mitigating inflammation beyond raising acidic pH levels to higher alkaline levels, which is a recognized attribute of baking soda even in mainstream medicine.
The spleen creates macrophages, large white blood cells that clear cellular and microbial debris, and lymphocytes or killer cells that go after bacterial and viral infections. This is an aspect of the immune system, which if unnecessarily overstimulated, creates chronic inflammation
The Georgia Medical College researchers observed that when rats or healthy people drink a solution of small amounts of sodium bicarbonate it ironically becomes a trigger for the stomach to make more acid to digest the next meal.
Regarding the inflammation/autoimmune disease link, after drinking water with baking soda for two weeks, the population of macrophages shifted from those that promote inflammation, (M1), to those that reduce it (M2).
The researchers became aware that the little-studied mesothelial cells sitting on the spleen receive cholinergic messages telling the fist-sized organ that there’s no need to mount a protective immune response.
This eliminates an unnecessary inflammatory response, which may become an endless immune response feedback loop leading to a cytokine storm, which can be fatal, or chronic inflammation, the precursor to almost all autoimmune diseases. Fist tap Dale.
strategic-culture |Neoconservatism
started in 1953 with Henry “Scoop” Jackson, the Democratic Party US
Senator from the state of Washington (1953-1983), who became known as a
‘defense’ hawk, and as “the Senator from Boeing,” because Boeing practically owned him. The UK’s Henry Jackson Society was
founded in 2005 in order to carry forward Senator Jackson’s unwavering
and passionate endorsement of growing the American empire so that the US-UK alliance will control the entire world (and US weapons-makers will dominate in every market).
Later,
during the 1990s, neoconservatism became taken over by the Mossad and
the lobbyists for Israel and came to be publicly identified as a
‘Jewish’ ideology, despite its having — and having long had — many
champions who were ‘anti-communist’ or ‘pro-democracy’ or simply even
anti-Russian, but who were neither Jewish nor even focused at all on the
Middle East. Republicans Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and John McCain;
and the Democrat, CIA Director James Woolsey — the latter of whom was one of the patrons of Britain’s Henry Jackson Society —
were especially prominent neoconservatives, who came to prominence even
before neocons became called “neoconservatives.” What all neocons have
always shared in common has been a visceral hatred of Russians. That
comes above anything else — and even above NATO (the main neocon
organization).
During
recent decades, neocons have been hating Iranians and more generally
Shiites — such as in Syria and in Lebanon, and now also in Yemen — and
not only hating Russians.
When
the Israel lobby during the 1990s and after, pumped massive resources
into getting the US Government to invade first Iraq and then Iran,
neoconservatism got its name, but the ideology itself did not change.
However, there are a few neoconservatives today who are too ignorant to
know, in any coherent way, what their own underlying beliefs are, or
why, and so who are anti-Russians (that’s basic for any neocon) who
either don’t know or else don’t particularly care that Iran and Shia
Muslims generally, are allied with Russia. Neoconservatives such as
this, are simply confused neocons, people whose underlying ideology is
self-contradictory, because they’ve not carefully thought things
through.
theamericanconservative | 1) It’s clear now that Europeans will increase their
contributions to NATO. But Big Media totally ignored the trillion dollar
gorilla in room: Why does anyone have to spend so much on NATO in the
first place?
Are we planning a ground attack on Russia because we
really think the former Soviet Empire will invade Poland or the Baltic
nations? Are we planning for a land war in Europe to intervene in the
Ukraine? What for is the money? The Trump administration and Big Media,
for all their noise, mainly argue that more spending is good. There is
no debate about the reasons why. Meanwhile Russia is cutting its military spending.
Washington is so dominated by our
military-industrial-congressional complex that spending money is a major
intent. Remember when Washington first insisted that putting up an
anti-missile system in Poland and Romania was supposed to protect Europe
from an Iranian attack? Of course, it was really directed against
Russia. Washington was so eager to spend the money that it didn’t even
ask the Europeans to pay the cost even though it was supposedly for their defense. As of 2016 Washington had spent $800 million
on the site in Romania. Now it appears that Poland and Romania will pay
billions to the Raytheon Corporation for the shield to comply with
their commitment to increase military spending to 2 percent of gross
national product.
2) There was no focus on the real, growing threat of
nuclear war, intentional or accidental. No one, including journalists at
the joint press conference, spoke about the collapsing missile treaties
(the only one who reportedly seemed keen to discuss it was ejected
beforehand). Scott Ritter details these alarming risks here on TAC.
The U.S. is now funding new cruise missiles with nukes
which allow for a surprise attack on Russia with only a few minutes of
warning, unlike the ICBMs which launch gives a half an hour or more.
This was the reason Russia opposed the anti-missile system in Eastern
Europe, because they could have little warning if cruise missiles were
fired from the new bases. Americans may think that we don’t start wars,
but the Russians don’t. The old shill argument that democracies don’t
start wars is belied by American attacks on Serbia, Iraq, Libya, and
Yemen.
3) For all the Democratic and Big Media attacks on Trump
for supposedly caving in to Putin, he gave Putin nothing. His
administration is still maintaining an increasingly stringent economic
attack on Russian trade and banking, announcing (just days after his
meeting) $200 million of new aid to Ukraine’s military
and threatening Europeans with sanctions if they go ahead with a new
Baltic pipeline to import Russian natural gas. Consequently, some
analysts believe that Putin has given up on wanting better relations
with the U.S. and instead is just trying to weaken and discredit
America’s overwhelming power in the world. In a similar vein Rand Paul
writes how we never think about other nations’ interests.
4) The release of intelligence agency findings about
Russians’ intervention in the last election just a day before the
conference precisely shows the strength of the “Deep State” in
dominating American foreign policy. An article by Bruce Fein in TAC argues we should “Forget Trump: The Military-Industrial Complex is Still Running the Show With Russia,” showing how Washington wants to keep Russia as an enemy because it’s good for business.
Counterpunch | Joe: I think you know that the NATO you are talking about was formed
in 1949, four years after the German defeat (at the hands basically, as
you know, of the Red Army), as a U.S.-led anti-Soviet military alliance.
It was part of the Truman Doctrine, which legitimated all efforts to
contain the communist “enemy” whether by military force (the suppression
of the Greek communist partisans who had heroically resisted the
fascists), by rigged elections (in France and Italy in 1946-48), by
espionage, political assassinations, disinformation campaigns and
military alliances.
I assume you know this history anyway. It might have been taught at
Pensacola Catholic High School in the late seventies, or at the
University of Alabama in the early 1980s, or you might have learned it
during your law school years in Florida or during your brief tenure in
Congress.
Anyway (as you know), when NATO expanded in 1956 to include the
U.S.-occupied West Germany, Moscow responded—you might say, somewhat
belatedly—by creating the Warsaw Pact. There were then 15 members of
NATO (Spain joined in 1982). But the Warsaw Pact included only 8 nations
at its height. Its forces were deployed precisely once during its
existence, in Czechoslovakia in 1968 to suppress the Prague Spring
movement. Albania had already been expelled from the pact, and Romania
in this instance refused to participate. (Indeed Bucharest denounced the
Soviet-led intervention in Czechoslovakia and sought closer relations
with both the U.S. and China in its aftermath.)
The Soviets were less interested in “dividing” NATO than in
preserving control over their own cordon sanitaire in “eastern”
Europe—their control over the sphere they had conquered while destroying
the Wehrmacht in 1944-45. (Moscow was no doubt pleased when Charles De
Gaulle pulled France out of NATO’s military structure in 1966, but that
was clearly the French president’s decision based on French
nationalism.) The Soviets of course hoped for allies win in contested
elections and to be appointed to high office in western Europe (although
as you know, Joe, Truman forbade allies from allowing communists into
their cabinets). Of course the Soviets were interested in dividing
NATO—not to invade the NATO countries, but rather to defend themselves.
This remains Russia’s objective.
As the Berlin Wall fell in 1988 Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev
agreed to the expansion of NATO to include East Germany, as it was
reunited with the West; in return he demanded a commitment from George
H. W. Bush that the alliance would not advance “one inch” towards the
east. You know very well that James Baker averred this publicly in
Moscow.
And as you know, Joe, the U.S. has broken this promise since 1999
when Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary (the core of the Warsaw Pact
dissolved in 1991 along with the Soviet Union) joined NATO. And then in
2004 George W. Bush (who had looked into Putin’s eyes and seen his soul,
and welcomed his help after 9/11) further broke it when he expanded the
alliance to include Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania,
Slovakia and Slovenia. And then in 2009 with Albania and Croatia, and
Montenegro last year (so Trump could join in on the process). Look at a
map and see how NATO’s expanded and ask what would you think if you were
watching from Moscow.
The anti-Russian NATO military alliance numbering 16 nations in 1991
now numbers 28, including four that border Russia. It is not your
daddy’s NATO. It’s foolish of you talk about Moscow now using “Soviet
strategy.” What do you mean by that? Do you know yourself? Make a
specific comparison; I challenge you.
Joe, if you do not see why the Russian state (and people) would view
this expanding alliance with anxiety you really are ignorant of history.
The Russians are at once aware that they, not the NATO countries, have
more often been the victims of aggression in the past, and they have no
intentions of invading Europe. The Warsaw Pact has been gone 26 years.
And Russians know better perhaps than people in this country how NATO
has been used since the USSR collapsed. And how U.S. governments and
mass media whip up fears among the people of this country that often
become pretexts for aggression.
How has NATO ever been deployed? Never during the Cold War; it was
not necessary. It was first used in Bosnia in 1994-5, then in Serbia
1999, then Afghanistan, 2001-present, then Libya in that disgraceful war
crime in 2011. As for Russia wanting to divide NATO—well of course! RT
reports positively on the rise of Eurosceptics and nationalists in NATO
member states; the fact is, there is a lot of anti-NATO sentiment in
Europe, especially in some eastern European countries. The anti-Russian
sanctions the EU has adopted under U.S. pressure (exercised largely
through the Brexiting UK) following the Kiev events and Russia’s
re-annexation of Crimea, are not popular among European farmers and
manufacturers. There are internal tensions in NATO that may weaken it.
The Russians can try to exploit and exacerbate the contradictions but
they can’t create them.
PCR | The article is long but very important and is worth a careful read.
It shows that the military/security complex has woven itself so tightly
into the American social, economic, and political fabric as to be
untouchable. President Trump is an extremely brave or foolhardy person
to take on this most powerful and pervasive of all US institutions by
trying to normalize US relations with Russia, chosen by the
military/security complex as the “enemy” that justifies its enormous
budget and power.
In 1961 President Eisenhower in his last public address to the
American people warned us about the danger to democracy and accountable
government presented by the military/industrial complex. You can
imagine how much stronger the complex is 57 years later after decades of
Cold War with the Soviet Union.
The Russian government, Russian media, and Russian people desperately
need to comprehend how powerful the US military/security complex is and
how it is woven into the fabric of America. No amount of diplomacy by
Lavrov and masterful chess playing by Putin can possibly shake the
control over the United States exercised by the military/security
complex.
Professor Roelofs has done a good deed for the American people and
for the world in assembling such extensive information documenting the
penetration into every aspect of American life of the military/security
complex. It is a delusion that a mere President of the United States
can bring such a powerfull, all-pervasive institution to heel and
deprive it of its necessary enemy.
joanroelofs | Among the businesses with large DoD contracts are book publishers:
McGraw-Hill, Greenwood, Scholastic, Pearson, Houghton Mifflin, Harcourt,
Elsevier, and others. Rarely have the biases in this industry, in
fiction, nonfiction, and textbook offerings, been examined. Yet the
influences on this small but significant population, the reading public,
and the larger schooled contingent, may help explain the silence of the
literate crowd and college graduates.
Much of what is left of organized industrial labor is in weapons
manufacture. Its PACs fund the few “progressive” candidates in our
political system, who tend to be silent about war and the threat of
nuclear annihilation. Unlike other factories, the armaments makers do
not suddenly move overseas, although they do use subcontractors
worldwide.
Military spending may be only about 6% of the GDP, yet it has great
impact because: 1. it is a growing sector; 2. it is recession-proof; 3.
it does not rely on consumer whims; 4. it is the only thing prospering
in many areas; and 5. the “multiplier” effect: subcontracting, corporate
purchasing, and employee spending perk up the regional economy. It is
ideally suited to Keynesian remedies, because of its ready destruction
and obsolescence: what isn’t consumed in warfare, rusted out, or donated
to our friends still needs to be replaced by the slightly more lethal
thing. Many of our science graduates work for the military directly or
its contractee labs concocting these.
The military’s unbeatable weapon is jobs, and all members of
Congress, and state and local officials, are aware of this. It is where
well-paying jobs are found for mechanics, scientists, and engineers;
even janitorial workers do well in these taxpayer-rich firms. Weaponry
is also important in our manufactured goods exports as our allies are
required to have equipment that meets our specifications. Governments,
rebels, terrorists, pirates, and gangsters all fancy our high tech and
low tech lethal devices.
Our military economy also yields a high return on investments. These
benefit not only corporate executives and other rich, but many middle
and working class folk, as well as churches, benevolent, and cultural
organizations. The lucrative mutual funds offered by Vanguard, Fidelity,
and others are heavily invested in the weapons manufacturers.
Individual investors may not know what is in their fund’s portfolios;
the institutions usually know. A current project of World Beyond War
(https://worldbeyondwar.org/divest) advocates divestment of military
stocks in the pension funds of state and local government workers:
police, firepersons, teachers, and other civil servants. Researchers are
making a state-by-state analysis of these funds. Among the findings are
the extensive military stock holdings of CALpers, the California Public
Employees Retirement System (the sixth largest pension fund on earth),
the California State Teachers Retirement System, the New York State
Teachers Retirement System, the New York City Employees Retirement
System, and the New York State Common Retirement Fund (state and local
employees). Amazing! the New York City teachers were once the proud
parents of red diaper babies.
The governmental side of the MIC complex goes far beyond the DoD. In
the executive branch, Departments of State, Homeland Security, Energy,
Veterans Affairs, Interior; and CIA, AID, FBI, NASA, and other agencies;
are permeated with military projects and goals. Even the Department of
Agriculture has a joint program with the DoD to “restore” Afghanistan by
creating a dairy cattle industry. No matter that the cattle and their
feed must be imported, cattle cannot graze in the terrain as the native
sheep and goats can, there is no adequate transportation or
refrigeration, and the Afghans don’t normally drink milk. The native
animals provide yogurt, butter, and wool, and graze on the rugged
slopes, but that is all so un-American.
Quantamagazine | Furey has gone further. In her most recent published paper, which appeared in May in TheEuropean Physical Journal C,
she consolidated several findings to construct the full Standard Model
symmetry group, SU(3) × SU(2) × U(1), for a single generation of
particles, with the math producing the correct array of electric charges
and other attributes for an electron, neutrino, three up quarks, three
down quarks and their anti-particles. The math also suggests a reason why electric charge is quantized in discrete units — essentially, because whole numbers are.
However, in that model’s way of arranging particles, it’s unclear how
to naturally extend the model to cover the full three particle
generations that exist in nature. But in another new paper that’s now
circulating among experts and under review by Physical Letters B, Furey uses C⊗O
to construct the Standard Model’s two unbroken symmetries, SU(3) and
U(1). (In nature, SU(2) × U(1) is broken down into U(1) by the Higgs
mechanism, a process that imbues particles with mass.) In this case, the
symmetries act on all three particle generations and also allow for the
existence of particles called sterile neutrinos — candidates for dark
matter that physicists are actively searching for now. “The
three-generation model only has SU(3) × U(1), so it’s more rudimentary,”
Furey told me, pen poised at a whiteboard. “The question is, is there
an obvious way to go from the one-generation picture to the
three-generation picture? I think there is.”
This is the main question she’s after now. The mathematical physicists Michel Dubois-Violette, Ivan Todorov and Svetla Drenska are also trying to model
the three particle generations using a structure that incorporates
octonions called the exceptional Jordan algebra. After years of working
solo, Furey is beginning to collaborate with researchers who take
different approaches, but she prefers to stick with the product of the
four division algebras, R⊗C⊗H⊗O,
acting on itself. It’s complicated enough and provides flexibility in
the many ways it can be chopped up. Furey’s goal is to find the model
that, in hindsight, feels inevitable and that includes mass, the Higgs
mechanism, gravity and space-time.
Already, there’s a sense of space-time in the math. She finds that all multiplicative chains of elements of R⊗C⊗H⊗O
can be generated by 10 matrices called “generators.” Nine of the
generators act like spatial dimensions, and the 10th, which has the
opposite sign, behaves like time. String theory also predicts 10
space-time dimensions — and the octonions are involved there as well.
Whether or how Furey’s work connects to string theory remains to be
puzzled out.
So does her future. She’s looking for a faculty job now, but failing
that, there’s always the ski slopes or the accordion. “Accordions are
the octonions of the music world,” she said — “tragically
misunderstood.” She added, “Even if I pursued that, I would always be
working on this project.”
Genomeweb | Human Longevity (HLI) is suing the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI)
and a number of unknown defendants over the misappropriation and use of
trade secrets passed along by Craig Venter, the founder of both the
company and the institute that bears his name.
In a complaint
filed last Friday with the US District Court for the Southern District
of California, Human Longevity alleges that upon his termination from
HLI on May 24, Venter took a company-owned laptop with trade secrets and
passed on protected information to the Venter Institute, of which he is
chairman and CEO. HLI also claims that the institute is working on a
product that will compete with its own business.
According to the complaint, Venter was CEO of Human Longevity from
2014 until January 2017, when he became the firm's executive chairman
and signed a "proprietary information and inventions" agreement. He
assumed the role of interim CEO in November of 2017 until his employment
was terminated in May of this year. During his time at HLI, Venter used
a company-owned laptop computer, the contents of which were backed up
in the cloud, and consistently used his JCVI email address rather than
his HLI email to conduct company business, the complaint states.
In
the spring of this year, Venter "withheld critical information from the
board and the HLI investors regarding the conduct of an HLI key
executive which would likely result in termination," the complaint says.
Further, in May, Venter had an HLI-paid counsel "draft a
Venter-favorable employment contract" and appointed a new interim
president without conferring with the HLI board first.
On May 24,
the HLI board "considered a rushed investor deal which Venter presented
to them only less than two weeks earlier," the terms of which the board
considered one-sided. The deal would have provided financial incentives
to Venter and offered the new investor rights that had already been
granted to another party, according to the complaint. "At that point,
the HLI board voted to terminate Venter from HLI," it states.
Following
his termination, Venter left the HLI offices with the company-owned
laptop and "immediately began using the HLI computer and server to
communicate to the public, solicit HLI investors and employees," the
complaint says. In a Twitter message on May 24, Venter said that he was retiring from HLI and returning to JCVI.
His
access to the HLI server and HLI emails was disabled the next day, but
the company alleges that "even after his HLI termination, Venter used
the HLI computer, accessed and sent HLI proprietary information and
trade secrets," including communications involving Series C and Asia JV
Series A documents.
UAB | Wrinkled skin and hair loss are hallmarks of aging. What if they could be reversed?
Keshav Singh, Ph.D., and colleagues have done just that, in a mouse model developed at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
When a mutation leading to mitochondrial dysfunction is induced, the
mouse develops wrinkled skin and extensive, visible hair loss in a
matter of weeks. When the mitochondrial function is restored by turning
off the gene responsible for mitochondrial dysfunction, the mouse
returns to smooth skin and thick fur, indistinguishable from a healthy
mouse of the same age.
“To our knowledge, this observation is unprecedented,” said Singh, a professor of genetics in the UAB School of Medicine.
Importantly, the mutation that does this is in a nuclear gene
affecting mitochondrial function, the tiny organelles known as the
powerhouses of the cells. Numerous mitochondria in cells produce 90
percent of the chemical energy cells need to survive.
In humans, a decline in mitochondrial function is seen during aging,
and mitochondrial dysfunction can drive age-related diseases. A
depletion of the DNA in mitochondria is also implicated in human
mitochondrial diseases, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, age-associated
neurological disorders and cancer.
“This mouse model,” Singh said, “should provide an unprecedented
opportunity for the development of preventive and therapeutic drug
development strategies to augment the mitochondrial functions for the
treatment of aging-associated skin and hair pathology and other human
diseases in which mitochondrial dysfunction plays a significant role.”
theburningplatform | Putin moved against the so-called “oligarch’s, a mainly Jewish gang
of ex-Communists who were in the forefront of looting the country.
Those he did not chase off to London (where you can see their greasy
mugs swilling in the best restaurants, hookers on each arm) he placed
under firm control. He reorganized the economy for Russia’s benefit,
not ours. Meddling? The United States and various European countries
sent in armies of international do-gooders and busy bodies to undermine
the Russian government and, among other things, promote the homosexual
agenda and corrupt Russian youth. Loudmouth journalists, the Russian
equivalents of Bill Maher, Rachel Maddow, Anderson Cooper, Trevor Noah
and similar troublemakers (“pro-democracy” activists, all of them) were
put on a leash. Most surprisingly for me, and effectively for Putin, he
restored the Russian Orthodox Church to its former importance and
influence, a very Russian thing to do. Is Putin a real Christian? I
don’t know. Go ask him. If it is merely a cynical ploy it has worked.
I might add that I admire the Russian Orthodox Church. It is one of
the few Christian churches that has rejected the filth and garbage of
the modern world and remains focused on its real job, saving souls.
There are no faggot priests in it, I can tell you that. Orthodox
priests marry.
Putin shrewdly decided to focus on quality rather than quantity in
his rebuilding of the Russian military. If news reports are accurate
(and I sure as hell hope they are not) the Russians have developed new
generations of weapons against which we have no real defense. China has
done exactly the same thing.
There is no reason at all to believe that Russia has any intention of
actually using those weapons against us in some new Pearl Harbor. That
being the case, Putin has made it crystal clear that he will not allow
Russia to be pushed around. Where is his redline? Who knows? I don’t
want to find out.
The sight of a rejuvenated Russia, proud, controlling its own
economy, conducting its won foreign policy in what it believes to be its
own interests, throwing pedophiles and other perverts in jail, running
foreign subversives out of the place, arresting or exiling Jewish
gangsters, well, all of this is just too much for the globalists and the
Neo-Con’s to take.
Then comes Trump! Who woulda thunk it? I seriously doubt if a
single senior Russian ever imagined that Trump would emerge as a
presidential candidate. Did you?
This man, seen by the self-proclaimed elites of the U.S. and Europe
as a turd in their punchbowl, is by any measure the most extraordinary
person ever to occupy the White House.
Trump is not a Russian agent, he has not been blackmailed, he is not
selling out the U.S., his interest in improving ties with Russia has
nothing to do with his personal business empire, he did not have two
Russian whores do pee-pee on Obama’s mattress. Any person who claims
to believe any of these things should be immediately marked down as
either a fool, a Jew with an irrational ancestral hatred of Russia, a
globalist, a Neo-Con, a leftist angry that Putin and Trump are both
standing up for traditional culture (though neither are saints
themselves), or somebody who either lost out on the Great Russia Piñata
of the early 1990’s or fears that Russia will in some way hit them in
the pocketbook, directly or indirectly.
There are several interest groups desperate to stop the building of a
rational, normal, civilized relationship between the United States and
Russia. They include:
unz |Putin’s
problem is the hybrid warfare carried out by the United States against
Russia. Despite accusations you hear in your media (alleged Russian ads
in the Facebook and Twitter influencing voters), American pressure on
Russia is very real and very painful. American officials try to wreck
every international deal Russia attempts to clinch. It is not only, or
even mainly about weapons. If a country A wants to sell Russians, say,
bananas, the US ambassador will come to A’s king, or his minister, and
will expressly forbid him to sell bananas to godless Russians.
Otherwise, do not expect the US aid, or do not count on US favours in
your disputes with your neighbours, or the US won’t buy your production,
or US banks will take another long and jaundiced view at your financial
transactions. You witnessed the scene,
when the crazed Nikki Haley, the US Ambassador to the UN, threatened
sovereign nations with severe punishment for voting against the US
desires, so you have an idea of American delicacy and caution while
pushing their will through.
Russians
are in a very uncomfortable seat. All their neighbours are subject to
American pressure to annoy Russia, be it Georgia (once they even attacked Russia militarily being led by American and Israeli advisers) or the Ukraine (Americans arranged a coup d’état
and installed extremely hostile to Russia government in Kiev). American
military bases surround Russia and NATO troops drew closer and closer
to its centres. American military budget of 600 billion dollars dwarfs
the Russian one, while the armaments’ race can undermine Russian
finances. If Russia were a woman, she would scream: stop it!
Perhaps our colleague Mr Andrei Martyanov is right and the US can’t destroy Russia militarily; perhaps Immanuel Wallerstein
is correct and American power is in decline; but meanwhile the US is
perfectly able to make life hard and difficult for any state. It made
life unbearably hard for North Korea, extremely hard for Iran. Russia is
not doing half as good as she could do without ceaseless American
meddling.
President
Putin would like Trump to relent. There is no reason for this incessant
picking on Russia; it is not Communist anymore; it is much smaller and
less populous than the former USSR; it wants to live in peace as a
member of the family of nations, not as a great alternative. The
anti-Russian offensive began in earnest in the days of previous US
presidents, namely Obama and Clinton; so it would make sense for Trump
to stop it.
Problem
is, President Trump is also actively engaged in war against Russia.
Just a few days ago he pressured the German Chancellor to give up on the
North Stream-2, to stop buying Russian gas. His advisers demanded that
Turkey desist from buying a Russian antimissile system. The US Air Force
bombed Russian troops in Syria.
Still
Putin made a good try. He proposed to hold a referendum in the Donbas
area of Eastern Ukraine which is presently independent though lacking
international recognition. The people of Donbas had their own referendum
in 2014, and voted for independence; Kiev regime and its Western
sponsors denied its validity as it was done under Russian army’s
protection, they claimed. Now Putin proposed a re-run under
international auspices.
medium | We were
scheduled to have sixty minutes with Putin. After pleasantries were
exchanged, Obama opened the conversation by expressing his optimism for
U.S.-Russia relations. Putin interrupted him early to express a
different view.
For
the next hour, Putin walked through the complete history of
U.S.-Russian relations during his time as president. He punctuated his
narrative with several instances of disrespect from the Bush
administration. He liked President George W. Bush as a person, he told
Obama, but loathed his administration. As Putin explained, he had
reached out to Bush after September 11, believing that the United States
and Russia should unite to fight terrorists as a common enemy. He had
helped persuade leaders in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan to allow the U.S.
to open air bases in their countries to help fight the war in
Afghanistan. But in return, so he claimed, the Bush administration had
snubbed him.
Putin even suggested that Russia and the United States
could have cooperated on Iraq had the Bush administration treated Russia
as an equal partner. But it did not, and that’s why U.S.-Russia
relations deteriorated so dramatically while Bush was president. The
Bush team had supported color revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine — a
blatant threat to Russia’s national interests. In Putin’s view, Russia
had done nothing wrong; America was to be blamed for the poor relations
between the two countries.
Putin
knew how to tell a dramatic story. For each vignette of disrespect or
confrontation, he told the president the date, the place, and who was at
the meeting. During one story, he pointed to a chair he recalled
Condoleezza Rice sitting in at the time, right next to Sergei Ivanov,
then Putin’s defense minister. He must have rehearsed all these details
beforehand. For one story about counterterrorism cooperation, Putin told
Obama how the Russians had benefited from some information shared with
them by American officials. Dramatically, he waved away the waiters
serving us tea, leaned in, and told Obama that they had used this
information to “liquidate” the terrorists.
As
I remember it, Putin spoke uninterrupted for nearly the entire time
scheduled for the meeting, documenting the injustices of the Bush
administration. This was a guy with a chip on his shoulder. Obama
listened patiently, maybe too patiently. I was amazed. There was no way I
could have sat for a full hour without saying something. I was also
nervous. The meeting was scheduled for sixty minutes, and by minute
fifty-five the U.S. president had not said a thing. It was my assignment
to read out this meeting to our press corps later that day. I couldn’t
tell them that Obama had merely listened the entire time!
My worries
were misplaced. In the end the meeting went well beyond three hours, and
Obama had plenty to say. His main message was again about Reset. He
asked Putin to have an open mind about resuming engagement with the
United States on issues of common interest. He explained to Putin that
he was different, representing a break with many of the policies of the
Bush administration. Obama avoided flowery language about friendships
and strategic partnerships. Instead, he pledged to always be straight
with Putin and to respect Russia.
The
two most contentious subjects that morning were missile defense and
Iran. Putin explained to Obama why planned American missile deployments
in Europe threatened “strategic stability” — otherwise known as mutual
assured destruction (MAD) — between our two countries. Putin seemed
annoyed — irrationally annoyed — with the Bush administration’s plan for
missile-defense deployments so close to Russia’s borders. Obama pledged
to review America’s missile-defense plans and get back to Putin on his
decisions. Putin expressed less concern about the Iranian threat than
Medvedev had. He talked more generally about the strategic importance of
Russia’s bilateral relationship with Iran as its most significant
partner in the Middle East.
unz |But there is more bad news for the AngloZionist Empire: in a recent interview by General Iurii Borisov,
Deputy Prime Minister for Defense and Space Industry named six weapons
systems which, in his opinion, have no counterpart in western arsenals.
These include two almost never (or very rarely) mentioned before:
The “Sarmat” heavy MIRVed ICBM
The Sukhoi Su-57 aka “PAKFA”, the 5th generation jet fighter being developed for air superiority and attack operations
The revolutionary T-14 “Armata” main battle tank
The long-range S-500 air defense system
The mobile anti-satellite system “Nudol“
The ground-based mobile jamming system for satellite communications “Triada-2S“
While
the first four systems listed have been known for a while, very little
is known about the Nudol ASAT or the Triada-2S jamming systems. A couple
of years ago, in 2015, The Washington Free Beacon wrote one article
about the Nudol system entitled “Russia Flight Tests Anti-Satellite Missile Moscow joins China in space warfare buildup”
but I did not find anything at all in English about the Triada-2S.
There are a few articles published about these two systems in Russian
however, and I will summarize them here beginning with the Nudol system.
The
Russian plan to counter the US military threat is becoming clearer and
clearer with each passing day. I would summarize as follows:
US Capability
Russian Response
ABM system
maneuverable hypersonic ballistic and very long-range cruise missiles
US aircraft carriers and surface fleet
maneuverable hypersonic ballistic and very long-range cruise missiles
US airpower and cruise missiles
advanced and integrated air defenses + 5th generation multirole fighters
US attack submarines
advanced diesel-electric/AIP submarines in littoral and coastal waters
US command, control, communications, networks, and satellites
electronic warfare and anti-satellite systems
US/NATO deployments near Russia
Tank Armies with T-14s, doubling of the size of the Airborne Forces, Iskander missiles (see here)
US nuclear forces
Deployment of a next-generation SSBNs, road-mobile and rail-mobile ICBMs, PAK-DA (next generation bomber) and ABM systems
By
targeting US space-based capabilities Russia is aiming at an exceedingly
important and currently extremely fragile segment of the US armed
forces and the impact of that cannot be overstated. It is already well
known that the US military has almost no practice operating in a highly
contested electronic warfare environment and that, in fact, US EW
capabilities have stagnated over the years. In the age of advanced
communication and network-centric warfare, the disruption or elimination
of any meaningful segment of the US space-based capabilities would have
a dramatic impact on US warfighting capabilities. Just like US tactical
air is practically completely dependent on AWACs support, all the
branches of the US military have grown accustomed to enjoying advanced
command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance,
and reconnaissance capabilities (C4ISR) and this is what the Russians
want to deny them (and you can bet that the Chinese are working along
the exact same lines).
This is not to say that Russia has achieved anywhere near full-spectrum dominance
over the United States but it does mean that the United States has
totally failed in its efforts to achieve anything near full-spectrum
dominance over Russia and, therefore, over the rest of the planet. It is
important to understand that while, for the US, it is crucial to
achieving superiority, for Russia it is enough to deny that superiority
to the US. Russia, therefore, has no need to achieve anything even
remotely resembling full-spectrum dominance over the US/NATO – all she
needs to achieve is to make it impossible for the Empire to make her
submit by force or threat of force.
unz |Enter Mr Andrey Nekrasov,
a Russian dissident filmmaker. He made a few films considered to be
highly critical of Russian government. He alleged the FSB blew up houses
in Moscow in order to justify the Chechnya war. He condemned the
Russian war against Georgia in 2008, and had been given a medal by
Georgian authorities. He did not doubt the official Western version of
Browder-Magnitsky affair, and decided to make a film about the noble
American businessman and the brave Russian lawyer fighting for human
rights. The European organisations and parliamentarians provided the
budget for the film. They also expected the film to denounce Putin and
glorify Magnitsky, the martyr.
However,
while making the film, Mr Nekrasov had his Road to Damascus moment. He
realised that the whole narrative was hinging on the unsubstantiated
words of Mr Browder. After painstaking research, he came to some totally
different conclusions, and in his version, Browder was a cheat who run
afoul of law, while Magnitsky was his sidekick in those crimes.
Nekrasov
discovered an interview Magnitsky gave in his jail. In this interview,
the accountant said he was afraid Browder would kill him to prevent him
from denouncing Browder, and would make him his scapegoat. It turned out
Browder tried to bribe the journalist who made the interview to have
these words expunged. Browder was the main beneficiary of the
accountant’s death, realised Nekrasov, while his investigators were
satisfied with Magnitsky’s collaboration with them.
Nekrasov
could not find any evidence that Magnitsky tried to investigate the
misdeeds of government officials. He was too busy covering his own tax
evasion. And instead of fitting his preconceived notions, Nekrasov made
the film about what he learned. (Here are some details of Nekrasov’s film)
While
the screening in the EU Parliament was been stopped by the powerful Mr
Browder, in Washington DC the men are made of sterner stuff. Despite
Browder’s threats the film was screened,
presented by the best contemporary American investigative journalist
Seymour Hersh, who is 80 if a day, and still going strong. One has to
recognise that the US is second to none for freedom of speech on the
globe.
What
makes Browder so powerful? He invests in politicians. This is probably a
uniquely Jewish quality: Jews outspend everybody in contributions to
political figures. The Arabs will spend more on horses and jets, the
Russians prefer real estate, the Jews like politicians. The Russian NTV
channel reported that Browder lavishly financed the US lawmakers. Here
they present alleged evidence of money transfers: some hundred thousand
dollars was given by Browder’s structures officially to the senators
and congressmen in order to promote the Magnitsky Act.
Much
bigger sums were transferred via good services of Brothers Ziff,
mega-rich Jewish American businessmen, said the researchers in two
articles published on the Veteran News Network and in The Huffington Post.
These
two articles were taken off the sites very fast under pressure of
Browder’s lawyers, but they are available in the cache. They disclose
the chief beneficiary of Browder’s generosity. This is Senator Ben
Cardin, a Democrat from Maryland. He was the engine behind Magnitsky Act
legislation to such an extent that the Act has been often called the Cardin List.
Cardin is a fervent supporter of Hillary Clinton, also a cold warrior
of good standing. More to a point, Cardin is a prominent member of
Israel Lobby.
Browder affair is a heady upper-class Jewish cocktail of money, spies, politicians and international crime.
Almost all involved figures appear to be Jewish, not only Browder,
Brothers Ziff and Ben Cardin. Even his enemy, the beneficiary of the
scam that (according to Browder) took over his Russian assets is another
Jewish businessman Dennis Katsiv (he had been partly exonerated by a New York court as is well described in this thoughtful piece).
Browder
began his way to riches under the patronage of a very rich and very
crooked Robert Maxwell, a Czech-born Jewish businessman who assumed a
Scots name. Maxwell stole a few million dollars from his company pension
fund before dying in mysterious circumstances on board of his yacht in
the Atlantic. It was claimed by a member of Israeli Military
Intelligence, Ari Ben Menashe, that Maxwell had been a Mossad agent for
years, and he also said Maxwell tipped the Israelis about Israeli
whistle-blower Mordecai Vanunu. Vanunu was kidnapped and spent many
years in Israeli jails.
Rejuvenation Pills
-
No one likes getting old. Everyone would like to be immorbid. Let's be
careful here. Immortal doesnt include youth or return to youth. Immorbid
means you s...
Death of the Author — at the Hands of Cthulhu
-
In 1967, French literary theorist and philosopher Roland Barthes wrote of
“The Death of the Author,” arguing that the meaning of a text is divorced
from au...
9/29 again
-
"On this sacred day of Michaelmas, former President Donald Trump invoked
the heavenly power of St. Michael the Archangel, sharing a powerful prayer
for pro...
Return of the Magi
-
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...
New Travels
-
Haven’t published on the Blog in quite a while. I at least part have been
immersed in the area of writing books. My focus is on Science Fiction an
Historic...
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 ...
