reuters | The State Department submitted the 46-page unclassified report earlier this month to Congress as required under a new National Security Memorandum that Biden issued in early February. Among other conclusions, the report said that in the period after Oct. 7 Israel “did not fully cooperate” with U.S. and other efforts to get humanitarian aid into Gaza.
But it said this did not amount to a breach of a U.S law that blocks the provision of arms to countries that restrict U.S. humanitarian aid.
Gilbert, who worked for the State Department for over 20 years, said she notified her office the day the State Department report was released that she would resign. Her last day was Tuesday.
U.S. State Department deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel told reporters on Thursday that he would not comment on personnel issues but that the department welcomes diverse points of view.
He said the administration stood by the report and continued to press the government of Israel to avoid harming civilians and urgently expand humanitarian access to Gaza.
"We are not an administration that twists the facts, and allegations that we have are unfounded," Patel said.
The Israeli embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Gilbert's accusations.
Gilbert’s bureau was one of the four that contributed to a classified initial options memo, reported exclusively
by Reuters in late April, that informed U.S. Secretary of State Antony
Blinken Israel might be violating international humanitarian law.
Gilbert
said the State Department removed subject matter experts from working
on the report to Congress when the document was a rough draft about 10
days before it was due. She said the report was then edited by more
senior officials.
In
contrast to the published version, the last draft she saw stated that
Israel was blocking humanitarian assistance, Gilbert said.
Officials who resigned prior to Gilbert include Arabic language spokesperson Hala Rharrit and Annelle Sheline of the human rights bureau.
More
than 36,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel's air and land war
in Gaza. Israel launched its offensive after Hamas fighters crossed from
Gaza into southern Israel on Oct. 7 last year, killed 1,200 people and
abducted more than 250, according to Israeli tallies.
It’s not easy to shock Joe Rogan but that’s exactly what happened when they played this eerily accurate prediction from 1965 on how to destroy the fabric of society.
mid.ru | White House spokesman John Kirby’s statement, made in Washington
shortly after the attack, raised eyebrows even at home, not only outside
the United States. At first, he said he needed “more time, and we need
to learn more information” on the Crocus City Hall attack for the pieces
of the puzzle to fall into place. Finally, one would think, someone
sees reason – we need to wait for at least some preliminary examination
results, for interrogations and investigative actions. But no, after
just a couple of hours, the pieces must have clicked together. The White
House and the State Department declared that Ukraine had no role in the
attack. What grounds or what information did they have to draw this
conclusion? This was absolutely unclear. One thing was clear though.
They started finding excuses for the Kiev regime in order to get
themselves off the hook. Everyone is perfectly aware that there is no
independent Kiev regime without Western financial support or military
aid.
When asked
whether the United States knew about the attack in advance, Mr Kirby
referred the reporter to the State Department. Think about it, this is
important. To answer the question of who was behind the terrorist attack
in Russia, it only took the State Department and the White House a
couple hours. They immediately said who was responsible. But when the
White House was asked whether the Biden administration or the US
intelligence community had officially transferred relevant materials to
Moscow, they couldn’t answer that question. They referred the
journalists to other agencies. How can this be? This is their area of
responsibility and competence. Why were they not ready to answer for
their own actions, while being quick to write a “prescription” for a
case they had absolutely no knowledge of, given that they had no facts
on hand (at least, the United States never said they had any).
Let me remind
you that on March 7, the US Embassy urged its citizens to avoid
shopping malls. The embassies of other NATO countries did the same,
which indicated that their intelligence services had some information
about possible attacks.
The apparent
synchronicity between the condolences extended by the Western
governments and Washington’s statements has not gone unnoticed: US
satellites published them (mostly on social media) only after getting a
clear go-ahead from their Big Brother. A few NATO countries stood out
though. Sweden, a newcomer to NATO, confined itself to a brief comment
that they were “following the developments” in the first hours after the
attack. Only when they caught on to the general tone of other comments
did Stockholm express its condolences in a manner more befitting the
situation. In the same vein, Moldovan officials managed to get out a few
meager words only after harsh condemnation by opposition politicians
and the Russian-speaking diaspora. Moldovan nationals could have been
there – not only Moldovans by passport, but by ethnic origins or
kinship. But the authorities in Chisinau could not find a few words of
sympathy.
Lithuanian
Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis published a totally outrageous
post in response to the attack: “Let's not lose focus.” It isn’t “focus”
that they can lose. They do not want to lose the aim. But then that
should have been the way to say it. Ireland, Canada and New Zealand
tried to remain silent, delaying their response as long as they could.
As I said,
the Zelensky regime was the only one that accused Russia of involvement
in the Crocus attack. Later they said they were misunderstood and they
didn’t mean what they said. No, we got it perfectly right. We saw and we
saved every video, audio, and screenshots of messages posted online or
shown on television during those hours. We saw officials representing
the Kiev regime, and others, who call themselves Ukrainian journalists
(in fact, they are not even propagandists, but simply troubadours of
terror), spend hours ranting about Russia’s guilt and the country’s
leaders’ role in the terrorist attack, under headlines like “Moscow is
killing its own citizens.”
As a
reminder, American liberal Democrats have been financing the terrorist
activities of the Kiev crime ring for a long time, not a year or two, or
even five. It began under the Obama Administration, when Joe Biden, who
is now President of the United States, was Vice President. In ten
years, Ukraine has been transformed by the West into a centre for the
spread of terrorism. However, ignoring this “dancing on the graves”
organised by Ukrainian propagandists, people from all continents are
extending their heartfelt condolences to the families and friends of the
victims, wishing a speedy recovery to the injured and strongly
condemning this terrible attack against innocent civilians.
We are
thankful to everyone worldwide who responded with compassion to the
tragic terrorist attack at Crocus City Hall. Heads of state and
government, heads of government agencies, international organisations,
non-profit organisations, religious groups, and concerned citizens have
all shown their sympathy in the face of this terrible tragedy. In
moments like these, the true nature of a person is revealed. However, we
cannot overlook the monstrous and misanthropic remarks made by
Ukrainian professional propagators of terrorism. The actions and
statements of the Kiev regime adepts underscore their moral decline and
ugly Nazi nature. Unfortunately, the mainstream Western media fail to
shed light on this dark side of modern blatant neo-Nazism in Ukraine,
which is rooted in hatred towards all things Russian. They are not
ridiculed in caricatures, nor are they held accountable by international
human rights organisations, or subjected to “cancel culture” for their
reprehensible statements and actions. Instead, they are rewarded with
even more financial support. But for what purpose? As George W. Bush
once remarked, to enable them to kill even more Russians. It appears
that the representatives of the White House and the current Biden
administration have embraced this notion, deeming it a beneficial
arrangement.
TIMESTAMPS: (00:00) Candace is attacked – even when she’s right (4:27) Ben Shapiro’s comments (12:50) The emotional response to news out of Israel (23:05) Nikki Haley vs. free speech (30:34) 2024 predictions pic.twitter.com/VOThqpQQ48
dailycaller | The Daily Wire co-founder Jeremy Boreing announced Friday that the outlet has severed ties with Candace Owens. Owens hosted a show on The Daily Wire after becoming a prominent name in the conservative movement. The outlet abruptly made the announcement of her departure for reasons currently unknown. “Daily Wire and Candace Owens have ended their relationship,” Boreing announced without an explanation.
In an essay published Monday in City Journal,
Kulldorff wrote that his anti-mandate position got him fired from the
Mass General Brigham hospital system, where he also worked, and
consequently from his Harvard faculty position.
Kulldorff detailed how his commitment to scientific inquiry put him at odds with a system that he alleged had “lost its way.”
“I am no longer a professor of medicine at Harvard,” Kulldorff wrote.
“The Harvard motto is Veritas, Latin for truth. But, as I discovered,
truth can get you fired.”
He noted that it was clear from early 2020 that lockdowns would be futile for controlling the pandemic.
“It was also clear that lockdowns would inflict enormous collateral
damage, not only on education but also on public health, including
treatment for cancer, cardiovascular disease, and mental health,”
Kulldorff wrote.
“We will be dealing with the harm done for decades. Our children, the
elderly, the middle class, the working class, and the poor around the
world — all will suffer.”
That viewpoint got little debate in the mainstream media until the epidemiologist and his colleagues published the Great Barrington Declaration, signed by nearly 1 million public health professionals from across the world.
The document made clear that no scientific consensus existed for
lockdown measures in a pandemic. It argued instead for a “focused
protection” approach for pandemic management that would protect
high-risk populations, such as elderly or medically compromised people,
and otherwise allow the COVID-19 virus to circulate among the healthy population.
Although the declaration merely summed up what previously had been conventional wisdom in public health, it was subject to tremendous backlash.
Emails obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request revealed
that Dr. Francis Collins, then-director of the National Institutes of
Health called for a “devastating published takedown” of the declaration and of the authors, who were subsequently slandered in mainstream and social media.
respectfulinsolence | So what was (and is) going on? Kulldorff now says he was fired as
though the firing happened recently, but two and a half years ago he was
already referring to his time as professor of medicine at Harvard
Medical School in the past tense. Something odd is going on here but
what could it be. One big hint is his profile on the Harvard website,
which lists him as being “on leave,”
which led me to immediately recognize that trying to figure out when
Kulldorff went on leave was a job for the almighty Wayback Machine at
Archive.org. There, I found that, as early as December 2021, Kulldorff’s
status had already been listed as “on leave.” So where did Wikipedia
get the idea that he had only been on leave since 2023? Whatever the
case, it’s clear that before his “firing,” Kulldorff had not been
working for Mass General Brigham or Harvard since at least November or
December 2021, given that the last archive of his webpage showing him
not on leave is dated October 20, 2021 and the next one on December 20, 2021 shows his status as “on leave.” This time period aligns very nicely with his move to the Brownstone Institute.
However, it also aligns with the Harvard vaccine mandate for the fall
2021 term. So maybe Harvard did fire him for refusing to be vaccinated
and raising all sorts of nonsensical objections, such as his claim that
it was against his religion because the vaccine mandate was more
religious than science-based? If that was the case, though, then why was
he listed as “on leave” on the website, rather than as suspended? Let’s
look further.
Here’s yet another hint. If you look at Kulldorff’s Harvard listing,
you’ll see that it includes his research support, specifically his
grant support. This listing indicates that he has not had NIH grant
support since 2019. To understand why this is important, you need to
know that lots of universities, but in particular Harvard Medical
School-associated positions, require faculty to maintain grant support
sufficient to cover a specific percentage of their salary. This
percentage can range from a relatively modest 30-50% to a rather
draconian 100%. (If you have to get grants to cover 100% of your salary,
I always wonder, what good is the university?) While it is true that
there is some wiggle room in that if you lose grant funding for a while
usually the university will support you until you reacquire funding, but
the university won’t support you forever. Kulldorff’s leave started a
bit more than two years after his NIH R01 grant support expired, which
is a fairly reasonable period of time for Harvard to support whatever
percentage of Kulldorff’s salary that had been grant-supported, in the
hopes that he would reacquire NIH funding.
The overall narrative is that the reason that Kulldorff had to go on
leave was because of Harvard’s vaccine mandate for its fall 2021 term,
which somewhat fits with the timeline. However, what doesn’t make sense
(at least to me, at least) about this potential explanation. Harvard got rid of its vaccine mandate a week ago.
Would Harvard decide to fire Kulldorff now, given that it had
progressively decreased its requirements for boosters and now has
eliminated the COVID-19 vaccine mandate altogether? Possibly. I can’t
rule it out entirely. Certainly, that’s what Kulldorff appears to be
claiming, that he was fired because he refused to be vaccinated.
However, it seems rather excessive that it took over two and a half
years. I also believe, based on my experience observing him, that
Kulldorff is not to be trusted, which is why I’m skeptical of his
explanation.
Here’s my educated guess as to what really happened, and I freely
acknowledge that it is nothing more than an educated guess. However, it is
a guess that makes sense given the timeline and what we know. My guess
is that in late 2021, having failed to garner any new NIH RO1 grants,
Kulldorff saw the writing on the wall and decided to go on leave in
order to accept Tucker’s offer to become senior scientific director of
the new right wing think tank that Tucker was forming, the Brownstone
Institute. (It is also possible that Harvard’s imposition of a vaccine
mandate for fall 2021 might have played into his considerations.) My
further guess is that Brigham has a limit to how long you can be on
leave before you lose your position. Here we are, over two years since
Kulldorff went on leave, and Kulldorff shows no signs of renewed
academic activity that might allow him to score new NIH or other
government grant funding. Assuming that Kulldorff was not tenured, which
now seems likely, that meant that it was time for him to go.
Of course, I still can’t totally rule out the possibility that he was
actually canned because he refused to be vaccinated against COVID-19
and that he was tenured, which somehow allowed him to drag out the
process two and a half years. However, it still seems unlikely (to me,
at least) that he would have been able to drag out the appeals process
that long even as a tenured full professor, particularly given that in
the intervening time Harvard has progressively decreased its vaccine
mandate until it got rid of it altogether a week ago. Still, it seems
rather implausible that it would take two and a half years from his
refusal to his being fired, and it seems even less plausible that
Harvard would go through with firing Kulldorff after that long given how
much the political winds have shifted with respect to mandates and how
much heat Harvard would face for doing so, in particular after its
president Claudine Gay was forced to resign over her testimony regarding campus free speech plus plagiarism charges.
BBC | The news host has long been a familiar face for Russians, with clips of his critical outbursts on Fox News against US foreign policy aired extensively across Russian state TV.
Kremlin-controlled television continues to dominate the Russian media, with around two-thirds of people receiving most of their news from there.
In Russia, Carlson is frequently cited as an authoritative source of news, particularly when it comes to his views on the war in Ukraine.
In September last year, Russian news channel Rossiya 24 even began airing lengthy excerpts of his "Tucker on X" show, dubbed into Russian.
While Carlson has not spoken directly to any of Russia's TV channels, their shows are revelling in his visit and the US reaction to it.
"In the West they're comparing this visit to actress Jane Fonda's visit to Vietnam in 1972, following which she ended up on the list of America's top ten traitors and the Hollywood blacklist," presenter and pro-Putin politician Yevgeny Popov told viewers of his 60 Minutes talk show.
Popov also jibed that Carlson had managed to experience Moscow's modern public transport system during his visit.
"Americans can't even dream of such wonders of civilisation!" he said.
Before Carlson confirmed plans to interview Mr Putin, NTV, Russia's second most popular channel, promoted a post on X by Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene saying that "Democrats and their propagandists in the media are spasming" at the prospect of Carlson interviewing Mr Putin.
"In Washington they suspect with good reason that the journalist didn't fly to Moscow to sightsee," NTV's presenter commented.
IndianPunchline | The US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s press conference
on Thursday concluding his visit to Israel conveyed three things. One,
the Biden Administration will be seen as backing Israel to the hilt by
way of meeting its security needs but Washington will not be drawn into
the forthcoming Gaza operations except to arrange exit routes in the
south for hapless civilians fleeing the conflict zone.
Two, Washington’s top priority at the moment is on engaging with the regional states
who wield influence with Hamas to negotiate the hostage issue. Fourteen
US citizens in Israel remain unaccounted for. (White House confirmed
that the death toll in the fighting now includes at least 27 Americans.)
Three,
the US will coordinate with the regional states to prevent any
escalation in the situation to widen the conflict on the part of
Hezbollah. Although the US cannot and will not stop Israeli leadership
on its tracks apropos the imminent Gaza operation, it remains
unconvinced.
Blinken was non-committal about any direct US military involvement, and the chances are slim as things stand.Most
important, even as Blinken could hear the war drums, he also cast his
eye on a future for Israel (and the region) where it will be at peace
with itself, would integrate into the region and concentrate on creating
economic prosperity — metaphorically put, beating its swords into
plowshares in a Biblical Messianic intent.
That
is to say, despite the massive show of force off the waters of Israel,
with the deployment of two aircraft carriers along with destroyers and
other naval assets and fighter jets off the waters of Israel, the Biden
Administration is profoundly uneasy about any escalation of the conflict
into a wider war. If the US senses that this is a catastrophe that Israel allowed to happen, that remains a strictly private thought.
Even
as Blinken was heading for Tel Aviv, US House Foreign Affairs Committee
Chairman Michael McCaul told reporters in Washington on Wednesday
following a closed-door intelligence briefing that “We know that Egypt
has warned the Israelis three days prior that an event like this could
happen. I don’t want to get too much into classified, but a warning was
given. I think the question was at what level.”
Shortly after
McCaul spoke to reporters in Washington, an anonymous Egyptian official
confirmed to the Times of Israel that Cairo’s agents did warn their
Israeli counterparts about a planned Hamas attack, but that this warning
may not have made it to Netanyahu’s office.
These
disclosures would embarrass the Israeli government, as Saturday’s
surprise attack can be viewed as a catastrophic failure for Israel’s
intelligence services. In a brutally frank statement
on Thursday, the Chief of General Staff of the Israel Defense Forces
General Herzi Halevi admitted, “The IDF is responsible for the security
of our nation and its citizens, and we failed to do so on Saturday
morning. We will look into it, we will investigate, but now it is time
for war.”
This
failure will impact the decision-making in Tel Aviv. Gen. Halevi
described Hamas as “animals” and “merciless terrorists who have
committed unimaginable acts” against men, women and children. He said
that the IDF “understands the magnitude of this time, and the magnitude
of the mission that lays on our shoulders.”
“Yahya Sinwar, the
ruler of the Gaza Strip, decided on this horrible attack, and therefore
he and the entire system under him are dead men,” the general added,
vowing to “attack them and dismantle them and their organisation” and
that “Gaza will not look the same” afterward.
There isn’t a single working mRNA vaccine right now...,
How can you give a Nobel Prize for it?
Reduce transmission? – you seriously must be kidding at this point. I could never even dream to make that claim with a straight face at this point. Seriously, this is the kind of thing that is causing the damage to the reputation of medicine to be hyper-driven.
Morbidity – Given the number of instant severe problems that many patients had with the vaccine – even in the early days. Blood clots, pulmonary emboli, autoimmune and neurological issues…. And now that it is becoming obvious that it is the multiply boosted and vaxxed that seem to be having many more problems with getting infected over and over again – multiple studies are now showing this.
Again – if someone can please answer the question – If it seems that the multiply boosted are getting infected more often – and it seems that multiple infections increase the incidence of all kinds of problems – how are the vaccines helping?
Extreme morbidity and mortality – hospitalizations, etc. —– in the first year of the pandemic, this may have been so. However, as with any mitigation scheme, one must keep track over the entire event – and one also must keep track of those being harmed by the mitigation procedure.
The overwhelming majority of patients who are being admitted right now are vaxxed/boosted. I think the claim of improvement in morbidity early on was justified. I am not seeing this now. When taken in its entirety – I am not certain that we can make the claim that this vaccine program has been a success. It is going to take the entirety of the raw data over the entire country/world to really ascertain this. But yet, the authorities are completely unwilling to do so. Can you explain to me why that is? What about releasing all raw data is so problematic? Especially for “The Scientists”?
With regard to Nobel prizes. We all must remember that the Medicine Prize went to the gentleman who pioneered frontal lobotomies. The Peace Prize went to Obama who spent the next 8 years bombing weddings with drones. Sometimes Nobel prizes go pear-shaped.
It should truly be an award for those whose work has stood the test of time. I wonder what will be thought of this one awarded yesterday a generation from now.
It is significant that the Nobel recipients were not involved with the development of the mRNA spike protein vaccines. Their work was in developing a mechanism for repressing the immune system response to allow cells to absorb mRNA. This mechanism was then utilized by Moderna and BioNTech/Pfizer in their vaccines.
I think this was simply a way to award “The Nobel Prize” to the vaccines without actually giving it directly to Big Pharma. – i.e. it is a propaganda move. Heaven forbid we get into the DAPRA project with Moderna concerning the Pathogen Protection Platform, which was to use mRNA to spur antibodies to send soldiers into an environment where the pathogen of interest was used as weapon. That was 2013, and DARPA stopped.
The world has a chance to achieve “authentic democratization” in
international relations by establishing a multipolar world order,
marking the first such opportunity since the end of World War II,
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told the UN General Assembly
(UNGA) on Saturday.
The US and its Western allies seek to prevent such a development by
stirring up new conflicts to divide humanity and keep their “hegemony of
the global minority” in place, he added.
West is the ‘empire of lies’
The US and its allies still reject the principle of equality in
international relations, Lavrov said. Americans and Europeans keep
looking down on the rest of the world and that leads to their “total
intractability” in any negotiations. Washington and its allies “keep
making promises left and right” that end up being reneged-on, the
Russian minister added.
“As Russian President Vladimir Putin put it, the West is now the real ‘empire of lies’,” he said.
‘Reckless’ Western politicians have forgotten about self-preservation
NATO activities have reached “unprecedented” levels since the end of
the Cold War, the top Russian diplomat believes. The US-led forces of
the bloc have conducted drills that involved simulating nuclear strikes
against Russia, he claimed, adding that Washington is also actively
seeking to project its military might in the Asia-Pacific through
establishing military-political “alliances” with nations like Australia,
South Korea or Japan and pushing them towards closer cooperation with
NATO.
Such actions “risk creating a new explosive geopolitical hotspot in
addition to the … European one,” Lavrov warned, adding that Western
politicians have been so blinded by a feeling of impunity that they’ve
lost “the sense of self-preservation.”
True democracy in international relations is within reach
For the first time since 1945, when the United Nations was
established, the world has a chance to establish a truly democratic
world order, the Russian foreign minister said. The “global majority” –
ie the nations of Asia, Africa and Latin America – are increasingly
seeking independence and equality, as well as respect for their
sovereignty in international relations.
“It is obvious for Russia that there is no other way,” Lavrov told
the UNGA, adding that this fact “encourages optimism in those believing
in the rule of international law and wishing to see the UN restored to
its role of a central coordinating body of world politics.”
West stands in the way of a just world order
The US and its allies seek to stall the onset of a multipolar world
order, in particular by “stirring up conflicts that artificially divide
humanity into hostile blocs and prevent it from achieving common goals,”
the Russian minister pointed out. The West wants the world to “play by
its infamous and self-serving rules,” he said, adding that the
international community should instead strive for a world where everyone
“agrees on how to solve issues together, on the basis of a fair balance
of interests.”
Western sanctions hurt the world
Russia is calling for “an immediate and full” lifting of sanctions
imposed against such nations as Cuba, Venezuela and Syria, Lavrov said,
adding that such unilateral punitive measures “blatantly violate the
principle of sovereign equality of nations” and interfere with these
countries’ rights to development.
“One should put an end to any coercive measures imposed in
circumvention of the UN Security Council as well as to the West’s …
practice of manipulating its sanctions policies to exert pressure on
those deemed undesirable,” he added.
Russia’s top diplomat also blasted the US over what he called threats against nations willing to work with Moscow.
“It is shameful for a great power to run around like this and
threaten everyone and only demonstrating its obsession with domination,”
he told journalists after the UNGA session.
Russia’s stance on conflict in Ukraine
Moscow is ready for talks on its ongoing conflict with Kiev at any
time, Lavrov told a press conference on the sidelines of the UN
assembly. However, Russia will not consider any deals involving a
ceasefire, he said, adding that Moscow and Kiev had supposedly almost
reached an agreement in the first months of the conflict following a
series of talks in Belarus and Türkiye only for this process to be
disrupted, supposedly by Ukraine’s Western backers.
“Putin
said it very clearly: yes, we are ready for talks but we will not
consider any ceasefire proposals because we did so once and were
deceived.”
Russia also respects Ukraine’s sovereignty in accordance with the
Ukrainian declaration of independence and its constitution, Lavrov said,
adding that both documents also declare the non-aligned status of
Ukraine and respect for the Russian language and Russian-speaking
minorities.
Ukraine’s sovereignty “was destroyed by those who staged and
supported a coup, the leaders of which then declared a war on their own
people,” Lavrov said, referring to the 2014 Maidan coup.
West is ‘de-facto’ waging war on Russia
The US and its allies are de-facto engaged in a conflict with Russia,
Lavrov told the press conference. “We call it a hybrid war but it does
not change things,” he said. Western nations are sending arms to Kiev
and training its troops, he explained, so “They are de-facto fighting
against us with the hands and bodies of Ukrainians.”
Western nations also openly say that “Russia should be defeated on
the battlefield,” Moscow’s top diplomat said, adding that Moscow is
ready for such a development. “Under such circumstances, [if they want
it] to be on the battlefield, let it be on the battlefield,” he said.
(RT)
TNR | The
provision comes from Civil Rights Act of 1871, also known as the
Enforcement Act and the Ku Klux Klan Act. Radical Republicans in
Congress and President Ulysses S. Grant pushed it through at the height
of Reconstruction to strengthen protections for recently freed Black
Americans living in the South. Section 1983 is most often
associated with lawsuits over policing tactics and prison conditions
since those interactions are far more likely to involve a person’s
constitutional rights than, say, getting your driver’s license renewed
at the DMV. But it can apply to all sorts of state and local officials,
making it a valuable tool for Americans to vindicate their rights in
court.
In response to Rogers’s lawsuit, the prison
officials disputed the facts of the case and also invoked qualified
immunity for their actions. As its name suggests, qualified immunity is a
partial shield for state and local officials against Section 1983
claims. It falls short of the absolute immunity enjoyed by judges,
prosecutors, and lawmakers for their official duties. But it can still
be a potent barrier against lawsuits. An investigation by Reuters in
2020 found that courts were increasingly likely to use it to defeat excessive force claims against police officers.
Under
the Supreme Court’s precedents, qualified immunity kicks in when a
state or local official’s conduct does not violate “clearly established
law” at the time of the violation. A federal district court ruled in
favor of the prison officials in Rogers’s case and held that their
conduct did not meet that threshold. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals
upheld that decision in a March ruling.
“What happened to Rogers
was unfortunate,” the panel concluded. “Maybe it was negligent. But was
it the product of deliberate indifference? Not on this record. And even
if it were, these officials did not violate clearly established law on
these facts.”
But one of the Fifth Circuit panel’s three members,
Judge Don Willett, wrote a separate concurring opinion. He explained
that he agreed with his colleagues as a matter of precedent. He then
took aim more broadly at qualified immunity, pointing to recent
scholarship that cast serious doubt on its lawfulness and its historical
basis.
“For
more than half a century, the Supreme Court has claimed that (1)
certain common-law immunities existed when Section 1983 was enacted in
1871, and (2) ‘no evidence’ suggests that Congress meant to abrogate
these immunities rather than incorporate them,” Willett wrote. “But what
if there were such evidence?”
That evidence, he wrote, can be found in a February article published in California Law Review
by Alexander Reinart, a law professor at Yeshiva University in New
York. Reinart, as Willett explained, noted that the Supreme Court had
consistently read Section 1983 in the U.S. Code to not exclude so-called
“common-law immunities,” which it then revived in the form of qualified
immunity. But that reading was flatly contradicted by the text of
Section 1983 itself when enacted in 1871.
“In between the words
‘shall’ and ‘be liable,’ the statute contained the following clause:
‘any such law, statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage of the
State to the contrary notwithstanding,’” Reinart explained. “And it is a
fair inference that this clause meant to encompass state common law
principles.”
How
had the courts missed this part of the text over the last 150 years? It
was not removed by Congress itself in subsequent legislation. The
answer lies in a scrivener’s error. The United States Code is,
technically speaking, not actually the law: It is merely a compilation
of the laws enacted by Congress that is presented in a more readable and
usable format. When it was first compiled almost a century ago, Reinart
noted, it drew upon an earlier official attempt at codification known
as the Revised Statutes of the United States, which were published in
1874.
The Revised Statute’s first edition was somewhat notorious
for its errors, which prompted repeated updates and eventually a
wholesale replacement. “Although the Revised Statutes were supplemented
and corrected over time until the first United States Code was published
in 1926, the Reviser’s error in omitting the Notwithstanding Clause
from the reported version of the Civil Rights Act of 1871 was never
corrected,” Reinhart noted.
This is the civil rights lawyer’s
equivalent of double-checking the stone tablets that Moses brought down
from Mount Sinai and finding that one actually says, “Thou shalt commit
adultery.” Reinart’s discovery—and he does appear to be the first person
to discover this—was a sensational find when his paper was published
earlier this spring, even garnering coverage in The New York Times.
The missing text upends the origin story for qualified immunity as a
doctrine and indicates that it may be fundamentally flawed.
“These
are game-changing arguments, particularly in this text-centric judicial
era when jurists profess unswerving fidelity to the words Congress
chose,” Willett wrote in his concurring opinion. “Professor Reinert’s
scholarship supercharges the critique that modern immunity jurisprudence
is not just atextual but countertextual. That is, the doctrine does not
merely complement the text—it brazenly contradicts it.”
This is a slim, wickedly funny satire of 126 pages organised into ten
chapters of rollicking hilarity. It’s a hugely enjoyable book for all
those who were critical of lockdowns, masks, and vaccines. As the Brits
say, it takes the piss out of all the self-proclaimed Covid experts, the
public health clerisy, the media, and people with blind faith in the
experts.
Thus the fictitious professor Oisín MacAmadáin informs us of “a good
friend in Dublin whose fully vaccinated father died from Covid. He also
told me how much worse he knew it could have been.” And all the grannies
going merrily about their way in Stockholm “must be brainwashed. A
perfect example of state propaganda.” The true believers are likely to
be offended.
The book is successful in skewering the many Covidian dogmas because
MacAmadáin closely tracks the many gaslighting tropes used by the
experts and the authorities to attack critics, dissenters, Florida, and
Sweden. The last, for example, is dismissed as irrelevant because its
vast empty spaces make it very difficult to encounter the virus and
anyway, we all know the Swedes are so reserved they rarely hug.
It’s been many a long year since I laughed so much while reading a
seriously serious book. The greater your familiarity with the lies,
obfuscations, and gaslighting by health experts and governments in the
last three years, and with the range of scientific literature and
controversies, including the leading names, the more you will be
entertained by this book.
American readers will especially enjoy the chapter on Florida and the
attempted puncturing of Robert Malone and Peter McCullough as
anti-vaxxer ringleaders. That they were removed from Twitter is proof
they were spouting anti-scientific drivel. Their knowledge is so shallow
that they can be shown up even by the likes of Neil Young and Meghan
Markle.
MacAmadáin is inventive with names in the mould of JK Rowling,
referencing the CDLWQ (CatDogLynxWolfQuestioning) + community for those
who self-ID as catgender etc. The encomia on the back cover are from
eminent world experts like President Macaroni who adores the book
because it will “really ‘piss off’ the anti-vaxxers;” Santa Klaus who is
incredulous that the author “was never a WEF young leader;” the CEO of
Pfizzle; and Gubnet O’Foole, the correspondent in residence of the Oirish Times. The final encomium is signed off “The author.”
We meet Prof. Nadir Jibjab and Dr. Smärtz Aleks. Austria has a Mr.
Hündbisket and a Prof. Ann Schlüss who has written a treatise on The Jab as Moral Good.
She holds firmly to the view that the government decisions tick all
ethical boxes, “even those of Kant whose ethical boxes are notoriously
hard to tick.” A German schoolteacher named Gretel Voopingkoff praises
Oisín’s “awesome work in exterminating anti-vaxxer propaganda.” She
informs him that her multi-jabbed kids “play the geese marching game”
from which the unvaxxed are, of course, excluded.
Here’s an updated list of the sterilizing vaccines, effective monoclonal antibodies, long Covid treatments, updated ventilation lists in businesses and schools and the action plan to fight this virus after almost 4 years. pic.twitter.com/AGPxsOOKmU
It is clearly evident that some ‘ways of knowing’ actively abhor the biosphere, and all forms or assemblies of organism in general. Perhaps more surprising is that a vast portion of the ways of knowing we commonly credential actively abhor human beings, and hate or attack all human children — merely by the nature of their character and function in the imaginal and real worlds. Why would we select or empower such modes, when an infinite garden of choices are immediately at hand?
Quoth Bro. Makheru;
As far as these Power Structure Apocalyptic’s are concerned, they have this world on a collision course with barbarism and ecological disaster. Whatever their underpinnings are, they have to be neutralized right now.
We will gain no advantage from any activism that creates dogmas and bureaucracies of itself — and must instead assemble new ways of learning and knowing together. Ways which by their changing and playful nature empower us to lift each other into a place of direct experiential access to new experiences and expression of mutual uplift, exploration, and the celebration of the real potentials of our anciently conserved and miraculously elaborated organismal sentience.
We are cognitive animals, in a hypercognitive environment. Our human activisms will fail, unless they can address the sources of our ancient confusions and failures to discover the clearly present ways and means of mutual prosperity inherent in the problems our broken access magnifies into our experience and history.
Perhaps we might thus agree that we desire an activism so general, that it’s different from anything we’ve ever considered or been exposed to. Possibly even something that doesn’t have or require a name. A game of activism so like what we are and become that rather than fashioning us into the likeness of some model it proposes — it empowers us to choose and celebrate together that which we actually are and may become.
o:O:o
All of human activism has arisen primarily in opposition to broken ways of knowing — employed and empowered by people who agree to believe ideas. But these ideas are ‘cached tokens’ of the experience of distant others. If circumstance is even moderately different according to the moment and the place — this ‘belief’ is too often far more logically false than what literalists might refer to as ‘the false position of faith’.
We’re about to assemble a form of activism with the potential to overwhelm the source of human atrocity — because rather than wasting time in opposing anything — it empowers us to become more than models of some idea. I am also certain we will experience this together, learning in ways beyond the possibilities of our wildest and most hopeful imaginings. When we have unity, access to our birthrights, and the protection of our unique human, personal and cultural diversity we accrue the power to openly oppose atrocity without reference to or memory of combat. We can now explore and become something together that there is no modern model even vaguely alike with — an experience of unity so liberating that its momentum gains speed and effect at unopposable velocities.
Most of our confusion and suffering at the hands of our foibles is the result of an accident. It’s the kind of an accident we’ve never heard a decent story about — and hearing a few radically altars our potential to notice and interact together with novel domains of co-operative play. Since no one had any way to speak of this accident, or the time before it, the best thing we have are badly mistranslated analogs. When we get to play with toys of knowing that are more like what we are and represent, the way our minds arrange and experience knowledge changes dramatically.
My personal sense is this comprises an entirely unexplored universe of human potential, primarily in the domain of an incredible new way of learning — and of human unity in mutual exploration — that will lead us to terrains of knowledge so vast an unexpected that they could entirely re-write most of what we consider to be fact within the next 5 years. Science, religion, and philosophies — are about to face an insurmountable opponent to their primacy and credentialing-power: pure organismal sentience, in liberated coemergence.
And this is what ‘Life’ is actually about. All of organismal reality is ‘attempting to recapitulate something’ in the same way our own genesis and experience as an embryo was recapitulating all of the terrestrial genesis of life. Something is being assembled by and with(in) physical organismal expression and activity...that is not physical at all in the way we would match with this idea. It is hyperconnective, self-elaborative, and it plays a unityGame that binds all participants ever more closely into something we have no metaphor of: Our world is a distributed organism...
And all of this has a lot to do with how we know, what we know, and what we can do with and about these gardens...in a radically new way: a way that makes new ways, instead of trying to preserve itself and children of itself at all costs.
o:O:o
This is why I support local, nuclear centres of activity free of the thanaturgic taint. It is also why any and everything short of that achievable objective, I discount as idle conversation, or worse still, a doctrinal recapitulation of the thanaturgic ethos that I detest. Those death-loving parasites are contagious and their modus operandi is addictive, repetitive and plainly discernable in operation...,
Penrose's idea is inspired by quantum gravity, because it uses both the physical constants and . It is an alternative to the Copenhagen interpretation, which posits that superposition fails when an observation is made (but that it is non-objective in nature), and the many-worlds interpretation, which states that alternative outcomes of a superposition are equally "real", while their mutual decoherence precludes subsequent observable interactions.
Penrose's idea is a type of objective collapse theory. For these theories, the wavefunction is a physical wave, which experiences wave function collapse
as a physical process, with observers not having any special role.
Penrose theorises that the wave function cannot be sustained in
superposition beyond a certain energy difference between the quantum
states. He gives an approximate value for this difference: a Planck mass worth of matter, which he calls the "'one-graviton' level".[1]
He then hypothesizes that this energy difference causes the wave
function to collapse to a single state, with a probability based on its
amplitude in the original wave function, a procedure derived from
standard quantum mechanics.
Penrose's "'one-graviton' level" criterion forms the basis of his
prediction, providing an objective criterion for wave function collapse.[1] Despite the difficulties of specifying this in a rigorous way, he proposes that the basis states into which the collapse takes place are mathematically described by the stationary solutions of the Schrödinger–Newton equation.[4][5]
Recent work indicates an increasingly deep inter-relation between quantum mechanics and gravitation.[6][7]
Accepting that wavefunctions are physically real, Penrose believes
that matter can exist in more than one place at one time. In his
opinion, a macroscopic system, like a human being, cannot exist in more
than one place for a measurable time, as the corresponding energy
difference is very large. A microscopic system, like an electron,
can exist in more than one location significantly longer (thousands of
years), until its space-time curvature separation reaches collapse
threshold.[8][9]
In Einstein's theory, any object that has mass causes a warp in the structure of space and time
around it. This warping produces the effect we experience as gravity.
Penrose points out that tiny objects, such as dust specks, atoms and
electrons, produce space-time warps as well. Ignoring these warps is
where most physicists go awry. If a dust speck is in two locations at
the same time, each one should create its own distortions in space-time,
yielding two superposed gravitational fields. According to Penrose's
theory, it takes energy to sustain these dual fields. The stability of a
system depends on the amount of energy involved: the higher the energy
required to sustain a system, the less stable it is. Over time, an
unstable system tends to settle back to its simplest, lowest-energy
state: in this case, one object in one location producing one
gravitational field. If Penrose is right, gravity yanks objects back
into a single location, without any need to invoke observers or parallel
universes.[2]
Penrose speculates that the transition between macroscopic and
quantum states begins at the scale of dust particles (the mass of which
is close to a Planck mass). He has proposed an experiment to test this theory, called FELIX (free-orbit experiment with laser interferometry X-rays), in which an X-ray laser in space is directed toward a tiny mirror and fissioned by a beam splitter
from tens of thousands of miles away, with which the photons are
directed toward other mirrors and reflected back. One photon will strike
the tiny mirror while moving to another mirror and move the tiny mirror
back as it returns, and according to conventional quantum theories, the
tiny mirror can exist in superposition for a significant period of
time. This would prevent any photons from reaching the detector. If
Penrose's hypothesis is correct, the mirror's superposition will
collapse to one location in about a second, allowing half the photons to
reach the detector.[2]
However, because this experiment would be difficult to arrange, a
table-top version that uses optical cavities to trap the photons long
enough for achieving the desired delay has been proposed instead.[10]
AmericanConservative | Until the fighting begins, national military
strategy developed in peacetime shapes thinking about warfare and its
objectives. Then the fighting creates a new logic of its own. Strategy
is adjusted. Objectives change. The battle for Bakhmut illustrates this
point very well.
When General Sergey Vladimirovich Surovikin,
commander of Russian aerospace forces, assumed command of the Russian
military in the Ukrainian theater last year, President Vladimir Putin
and his senior military advisors concluded that their original
assumptions about the war were wrong. Washington had proved incurably
hostile to Moscow’s offers to negotiate, and the ground force Moscow had
committed to compel Kiev to negotiate had proved too small.
Surovikin was given wide latitude to streamline command relationships
and reorganize the theater. Most importantly, Surovikin was also given
the freedom of action to implement a defensive strategy that maximized
the use of stand-off attack or strike systems while Russian ground
forces expanded in size and striking power. The Bakhmut “Meatgrinder” was the result.
When it became clear that Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky and
his government regarded Bakhmut as a symbol of Ukrainian resistance to
Russian military power, Surovikin turned Bakhmut into the graveyard of
Ukrainian military power. From the fall of 2022 onward, Surovikin
exploited Zalenskiy’s obsession with Bakhmut to engage in a bloody
tug-of-war for control of the city. As a result, thousands of Ukrainian soldiers died in Bakhmut and many more were wounded.
Surovkin’s performance is reminiscent of another Russian military officer: General Aleksei Antonov.
As the first deputy chief of the Soviet general staff, Surovikin was,
in Western parlance, the director of strategic planning. When Stalin
demanded a new summer offensive in a May 1943 meeting, Antonov, the son
and grandson of imperial Russian army officers, argued for a defensive
strategy. Antonov insisted that Hitler, if allowed, would inevitably
attack the Soviet defenses in the Kursk salient and waste German
resources doing so.
Stalin, like Hitler, believed that wars were won with offensive action, not defensive operations.
Stalin was unmoved by Soviet losses. Antonov presented his arguments
for the defensive strategy in a climate of fear, knowing that
contradicting Stalin could cost him his life. To the surprise of
Marshals Aleksandr Vasilevsky and Georgy Zhukov, who were present at the
meeting, Stalin relented and approved Antonov’s operational concept.
The rest, as historians say, is history.
If President Putin and his senior military leaders wanted outside
evidence for Surovikin’s strategic success in Bakhmut, a Western
admission appears to provide it: Washington and her European allies seem to think that a frozen conflict—in
which fighting pauses but neither side is victorious, nor does either
side agree that the war is officially over—could be the most politically
palatable long-term outcome for NATO. In other words, Zelensky’s supporters no longer believe in the myth of Ukrainian victory.
The question on everyone’s mind is, what’s next?
In Washington, conventional wisdom dictates that Ukrainian forces
launch a counteroffensive to retake Southern Ukraine. Of course,
conventional wisdom is frequently high on convention and low on wisdom.
On the assumption that Ukraine’s black earth will dry sufficiently to
support ground maneuver forces before mid-June, Ukrainian forces will
strike Russian defenses on multiple axes and win back control of
Southern Ukraine in late May or June. Roughly 30,000 Ukrainian soldiers
training in Great Britain, Germany, and other NATO member states are
expected to return to Ukraine and provide the foundation for the
Ukrainian counterattack force.
General Valery Gerasimov, who now commands the Russian forces in the
Ukrainian theater, knows what to expect, and he is undoubtedly preparing
for the Ukrainian offensive. The partial mobilization of Russian forces
means that Russian ground forces are now much larger than they have been since the mid-1980s.
Given the paucity of ammunition
available to adequately supply one operational axis, it seems unlikely
that a Ukrainian offensive involving two or more axes could succeed in
penetrating Russian defenses. Persistent overhead surveillance makes it
nearly impossible for Ukrainian forces to move through the twenty- to
twenty-five-kilometer security zone and close with Russian forces before
Ukrainian formations take significant losses.
Once Ukraine’s offensive resources are exhausted Russia will likely
take the offense. There is no incentive to delay Russian offensive
operations. As Ukrainian forces repeatedly demonstrate,
paralysis is always temporary. Infrastructure and equipment are
repaired. Manpower is conscripted to rebuild destroyed formations. If
Russia is to achieve its aim of demilitarizing Ukraine, Gerasimov surely
knows he must still close with and complete the destruction of the
Ukrainian ground forces that remain.
Why not spare the people of Ukraine further bloodletting and
negotiate with Moscow for peace while Ukraine still possesses an army?
Unfortunately, to be effective, diplomacy requires mutual respect, and Washington’s effusive hatred for Russia
makes diplomacy impossible. That hatred is rivaled only by the
arrogance of much of the ruling class, who denigrate Russian military
power largely because U.S. forces have been lucky enough to avoid
conflict with a major power since the Korean War. More sober-minded
leaders in Washington, Paris, Berlin, and other NATO capitols should
urge a different course of action.
Rejuvenation Pills
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Covid-19 Preys Upon The Elderly And The Obese
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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 ...
