It's Almost As If Our Presidents And Politicians Are Being Blackmailed

The US and Germany agreed to no NATO expansion with Gorbachev. Then Clinton and Albright bombed Yugoslavia.  What to make of these neocon think tanks? Organized Grima Wormtongues chock full of grand children of middle European aristocratic refugees dreaming revenge fantasies including return to the family castle, ancestral titles, and estates destroyed by the Soviets.

These elderly buffoons are aided and abetted by financiers who see war as an opportunity to make a buck.

The neocons and neoliberals who have run both foreign and economic policy across administrations and Congresses of BOTH political parties – the nominal left and right – who have brought about the diminution of US strength and moral standing in world affairs and the offshoring and consequent dependence on other countries in our economic affairs.

Yet, not only do thet continue to dominate our ruling class - but they have in fact - consolidated their power to near absolute power.

As we are seeing now in Canada - dissent is not only being canceled but criminalized. We saw through their covidian policies not only in Democrat run states but even in some Republican run states. Authoritarian policies were enacted ostensibly for the “greater good” although they never did any of that. Instead they favored the laptop class and pummeled the working class and the poor and of course the kids who’ve been saddled with massive debt and denied an opportunity for an education to pay for all that debt.

It’s amazing how psychopaths are so good at keeping their subordinate politicians loyal to the overclass. It’s almost as if they are being blackmailed.

I Don't Care What Happens To The Ukraine One Way Or Another Either!

WaPo  |  Vance has taken a ton of heat recently for claiming, “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or the other.” In that appearance, Vance added that “Mexican fentanyl” is a much bigger problem, describing the southern border as a “total war zone.”

What's happening in Ukraine has nothing to do with our national security, but it is distracting our idiot "leaders" from focusing on the things that actually do matter to our national security, like securing the border & stopping the flow of Fentanyl that's killing American kids. https://t.co/a6bAaRxSH7

— J.D. Vance (@JDVance1) February 22, 2022

Buried underneath this smarmy formulation is a real argument, and it’s a repulsive one. There’s a reason Vance and others keep linking our border to that of Ukraine: Drawing this connection treats immigration to the United States as a species of invasion on a par with what Russia is threatening.

Russia has just declared that two separatist regions in Ukraine are independent and sent in troops to them, a move that the United Nations has condemned as a violation of international law and Ukrainian sovereignty.

Yet Vance’s ugly suggestion is that immigration to the United States and this Russian invasion are somehow vaguely comparable threats to national sovereignty, and that only the former one should occupy our attention.

Of course, what Vance really objects to is that Biden has undone a few of Trump’s immigration policies. We’re now letting in migrant kids whereas Trump tried to keep them out, and Biden is trying to end Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy.

That has created serious logistical challenges with no easy answers, to be sure. But it’s hardly a severe blow to our national sovereignty, and at any rate, it’s better than Trump’s alternative, which produced a humanitarian catastrophe. Vance views that catastrophe as successful policy.

But the deeper point of Vance’s formulation connecting the U.S. and Ukrainian borders is this: In that version of populist nationalism, the United States should dramatically retreat on any and all international obligations, both in maintaining the liberal international order and in letting in legal immigrants, asylum seekers and refugees.

These are two sides of the same coin. David Rothkopf, a foreign policy expert, author and commentator, notes that both represent similar retreats on the very idea of having an international order at all.

“A central tenet of Trumpism was to seek the end of the international order,” Rothkopf told me. “But this isn’t just Trumpism. It’s also Putinism.”

 

Blaming Zelensky For The U.S. Foreign Policy Fail...,

NYTimes  |  It’s not hard to guess what President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine must be craving right now: one normal day.

The comic-turned-president surely never imagined the job would be quite so intense. First, he got tangled up in the impeachment of Donald Trump. Then he had to deal with the Covid pandemic. And now he’s facing the prospect of a full-scale invasion by Russia.

Russia, of course, has been waging a war in eastern Ukraine since 2014. But now the threat is total: Up to 190,000 Russian troops have amassed near Ukraine’s borders and in separatist regions, and an invasion, bringing devastation and disaster, could come at any time. It’s a gravely serious situation. And Mr. Zelensky, a comedian for most of his life, is in over his head.

When Mr. Zelensky took power in Ukraine in 2019, converting his TV fame into a stellar political career, no one knew what to expect. His opponents said he was so inexperienced, he was bound to be a disaster. His supporters thought that he would break away from the old ways and end corruption. His harshest critics claimed that Mr. Zelensky, a Russian-speaking man born in eastern Ukraine, would all but sell the country off to Russia. Others said he was an oligarch puppet.

Yet the truth is more prosaic. Mr. Zelensky, the showman and performer, has been unmasked by reality. And it has revealed him to be dispiritingly mediocre.

After his nearly three years in office, it’s clear what the problem is: Mr. Zelensky’s tendency to treat everything like a show. Gestures, for him, are more important than consequences. Strategic objectives are sacrificed for short-term benefits. The words he uses don’t matter, as long as they are entertaining. And when the reviews are bad, he stops listening and surrounds himself with fans.

He started brightly. Early in his tenure, Mr. Zelensky commanded more power than any of his predecessors had. His fame and anti-establishment allure landed him with a parliamentary majority, a handpicked cabinet and a mandate for reform. At first, it seemed to be working. His government opened up the farmland market and expanded digital services across the country. He began an enormous road construction program, proclaiming that he wanted to be remembered as the president who finally built good roads in Ukraine.

But the successes largely stopped there. Mr. Zelensky’s other major project, a campaign he calls “deoligarchization” that’s aimed at capping the influence of the very wealthy, looks more like a P.R. move than serious policy. Despite his campaign promises, no progress has been made in fighting corruption. According to Transparency International, Ukraine remains the third-most-corrupt country in Europe, after Russia and Azerbaijan. Anti-corruption and law enforcement agencies are either stalling or run by loyalists appointed by the president.

 

Read Putin's Speech - Has There Been A Comparable U.S. President In Your Lifetime?

kremlin.ru  |  President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Good afternoon, colleagues.

We are meeting today to discuss the current developments in Donbass.

I will briefly remind you how it all started and how the situation has developed even though you know this very well. But we need general background to help us make appropriate decisions.

So, after the 2014 coup in Ukraine, part of the population did not accept the outcome. Let me remind you that this was an anti-constitutional, blood-shedding coup that killed many innocent people. It was truly an armed coup. Nobody can argue that.

Some of the country’s citizens did not accept the coup. They were residents of Crimea and the people who currently live in Donbass.

Those people declared that they were establishing two independent republics, the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Lugansk People’s Republic. This was the point when the confrontation started between the Kiev officials and the people living on that territory.

In this context, I would like to point out that Russia initially did everything it could to make sure these disagreements could be resolved by peaceful means. However, the Kiev officials have conducted two punitive operations on those territories and, apparently, we are witnessing a third escalation.

All these years – I want to stress this – all these years, the people living on those territories have been literally tortured by constant shelling and blockades. As you know, the people living on those territories, close to the front line, so to speak, were in fact forced to seek shelter in their basements – where they now live with their children.

A peace plan was drafted during the negotiating process called the Minsk Package of Measures because, as you recall, we met in the city of Minsk. But subsequent developments show that the Kiev authorities are not planning to implement it, and they have publicly said so many times at the top state level and at the level of Foreign Minister and Security Council Secretary. Overall, everyone understands that they are not planning to do anything with regard to this Minsk Package of Measures.

Nevertheless, Russia has exerted efforts and still continues to make efforts to resolve all the complicated aspects and tragic developments by peaceful means, but we have what we have.

Our goal, the goal of today’s meeting is to listen to our colleagues and to outline future steps in this direction, considering the appeals by the leaders of the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Lugansk People’s Republic on recognising their sovereignty, as well as a resolution by the State Duma of the Russian Federation on the same subject. The latter document urges the President to recognise the independence and sovereignty of the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Lugansk People’s Republic.

At the same time, I would like to note that these different matters are, nevertheless, closely linked with matters of maintaining international security, on the European continent in particular, because the use of Ukraine as a tool for confronting this country, Russia, of course, presents a major and serious threat to us.

This is why we have intensified our work with our main partners in Washington and NATO over the past few months and in late 2021, so as to reach an eventual agreement on these security measures and to ensure the country’s calm and successful development under peaceful conditions. We see this as our number one objective and a top priority; instead of confrontation, we need to maintain security and ensure conditions for our development.

But we must, of course, understand the reality we live in. And, as I have said many times before, if Russia faces the threat of Ukraine being accepted into the North Atlantic Alliance, NATO, the threat against our country will increase because of Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty that clearly states that all countries in the alliance must fight on the side of their co-member in the event of an aggression against it. But since nobody recognises the will expressed by the people of Crimea and Sevastopol, and Ukraine continues to insist that it is Ukrainian territory, there is a real threat that they will try to take back the territory they believe is theirs using military force. And they do say this in their documents, obviously. Then the entire North Atlantic Alliance will have to get involved.

As you know, we have been told that some NATO countries are against Ukraine becoming a member. However, despite their objections, in 2008, they signed a memorandum in Bucharest that opened the doors for Ukraine and Georgia to join NATO. I have not received an answer to my question as to why they did that. But if they took one step under pressure from the United States, who can guarantee that they will not take another step under pressure? There is no guarantee.

There are no guarantees whatsoever because the United States is known to easily discard any agreements and documents it signs. Still, at least something must be put on paper and formulated as an international legal act. At this point, we cannot even agree on this one thing.

Therefore, I would like to suggest that we proceed as follows: first, I will give the floor to Mr Lavrov who is directly involved in the attempts to reach an agreement with Washington and Brussels, and with NATO, on security guarantees. Then I would like Mr Kozak to report on his findings concerning the talks on the implementation of the Minsk agreements. Then each of you will be able to speak. But at the end of the day, we must decide what we will do next and how we should proceed in view of the current situation and our assessment of these developments.

Mr Lavrov, please.

The Burden Of Proof Is ALWAYS On The One Making The Claim...,

caitlinjohnstone |  Well you’ll be shocked to learn that, while the Ukraine invasion we’ve been told for weeks was happening any day now still has not occurred, the US and UK have declared that Russia attacked Ukraine in an invisible and unverifiable way for which the evidence is secret.

“The White House blamed Russia on Friday for this week’s cyberattacks targeting Ukraine’s defense ministry and major banks and warned of the potential for more significant disruptions in the days ahead,” AP reports. “Anne Neuberger, the Biden administration’s deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technologies, said the U.S. had rapidly linked Tuesday’s attacks to Russian military intelligence officers.”

“Technical information analysis shows the GRU was almost certainly involved in disruptive DDoS attacks,” adds a statement from the UK Foreign Office.

No evidence for this claim has been provided beyond the assertive tone with which American and British officials have uttered it, but that likely won’t stop arguments from western narrative managers that this “attack” justifies immediate economic sanctions.

You’ve probably also heard by now that President Biden announced at a press briefing that Vladimir Putin has made the decision to invade Ukraine and violently topple Kyiv “in the coming days,” citing only “intelligence”.

“What reason do you believe he’s considering that option at all?” a reporter asked Biden after his speech.

“We have a significant intelligence capability, thank you very much,” the president answered, and made his exit.

As we were reminded earlier this month in an interesting exchange between State Department spinmeister Ned Price and AP’s Matt Lee, US officials firmly believe that simply placing assertions next to the word “intelligence” should be considered rock solid proof that those assertions are true, and the press are expected to play along with this.

And indeed, a large percentage of the political/media class is responding to Biden’s unevidenced claim that Putin has decided to launch a full-scale ground invasion of Ukraine as though that invasion is actually happening.

 

Russia Is In Total Control Of The Narrative And The Timeline

consortiumnews  |  “I am here today,” Blinken said, trying to remove himself from Powell, “not to start a war, but to prevent one.”

But like Powell, Blinken produced no evidence at all to the U.N. to back up his assertion that Russia is “preparing to launch an attack against Ukraine in the coming days,” even though he could have. Rather than produce fake evidence, as Powell had, he just produced nothing at all.

Blinken only had words, blithely accusing Russia of seeking “to manufacture a pretext” for an invasion of Ukraine, whether by fabricating a terrorist bombing inside Russia; (a jab at Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has been accused of false-flag attacks of Moscow apartment buildings to generate support for the Second Chechen War in 1999); the discovery of a mass grave; staging a drone strike against civilians or the use of chemical weapons.

After such a “false flag,” Russian would call for a military response “to defend Russian citizens or ethnic Russians in Ukraine” and would then invade Ukraine, Blinken said.

In the past, when the U.S. took to the floor of the U.N. Security Council to hurl accusations of malfeasance at Russia, American diplomats would present incontrovertible intelligence to back up its claims.

This was done in October 1962, when Adlai Stevenson showed the world U-2 photographs proving the Russians had deployed missiles in Cuba. Again, in September 1983, Jeane Kirkpatrick played audio tapes of intercepted communications which proved Russian military aircraft shot down Korean Airlines flight 007.

Blinken brought no such proof. His was just a verbal assurance that this was not a repeat of Colin Powell’s performance. This time, the U.S. should just be trusted to tell the truth.

Valodya DeCommunizes 90% Russian Donetsk And Luhansk

WaPo |  Russian President Vladimir Putin signed decrees ordering military forces into two separatist regions of Ukraine for “peacekeeping” purposes as Moscow recognized the breakaway regions’ independence Monday.

Putin signed a decree recognizing the areas — a move that Russia could use to justify an attack in those locations — and an agreement of cooperation with the heads of the two regions: Denis Pushilin of the Donetsk People’s Republic and Leonid Pasechnik of the Luhansk People’s Republic. The separatists do not control the entirety of their regions, and it was not clear Monday evening whether a military incursion could occur.

The formal recognition prompted a chorus of condemnation from Western leaders, with some vowing sanctions.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said President Biden would issue an executive order prohibiting U.S. investment and trade in the breakaway regions.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called Putin’s recognition of the breakaway territories a “blatant violation” of international law and said the bloc would “react with unity, firmness and with determination in solidarity with Ukraine.”

British Foreign Minister Liz Truss tweeted that the U.K. would announce “new sanctions on Russia in response to their breach of international law and attack on Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity."

There Is No ‘Russian Invasion’ Of Ukraine

johnhelmer |  In the Foreign Ministry’s new paper for the State Department, delivered on Thursday afternoon and then published on the Ministry website,   there is a restatement of the Russian proposals for security in Europe which the US refuses to address. There is also nothing new in the threat: “In the absence of the readiness of the American side to agree on firm, legally binding guarantees to ensure our security from the United States and its allies, Russia will be forced to respond, including through the implementation of military-technical measures.”

President Vladimir Putin said the same thing to the assembly of the Russian officer corps on December 21. “Is anyone unable to grasp this? This should be clear…I would like to emphasise again: we are not demanding any special exclusive terms for ourselves. Russia stands for equal and indivisible security in the whole of Eurasia. Naturally, as I have already noted, if our Western colleagues continue their obviously aggressive line, we will take appropriate military-technical reciprocal measures and will have a tough response to their unfriendly steps.”

Putin’s point was repeated by Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov in Geneva on January 10, following his talks with his State Department counterpart, Wendy Sherman.  For more detail on those talks, read this.

What is meant by “military-technical measures” is Russia’s black box defence. This is not the place – it will not be the place – to read what this will be. Anglo-American think-tankers are paid by their governments to guess what is inside the box, as is the new source for analysis of Russia in the Anglo-American media, the Estonian Foreign Intelligence Service.

Three things are certain about what is inside the black box. The first is spelled out emphatically in yesterday’s Foreign Ministry paper: “There is no ‘Russian invasion’ of Ukraine, as the United States and its allies have been officially declaring since last autumn, and there are no plans for it.”  This rules out a land force invasion of Ukraine, as well as aerial bombing, missile and drone strikes launched from Russian territory.

The second sure thing about the black box defence is that it is black: it will be a surprise.

The third thing is, as Putin said last December, it will be “reciprocal”. This  means the Americans and their European allies are already using comparable measures in their attacks on Russia directly and in the Donbass. Reciprocal in this Russian vocabulary may mean comparable; it does not mean symmetrical along the Russian land border with the Ukraine; offshore, in the Black and Azov Seas; in the airspace above the Donbass or in the cyberspace .

The Russian paper was handed to US Ambassador John Sullivan at the Foreign Ministry and then posted publicly. The ministry website, mid.ru, was then incapacitated for more than an hour. The official English translation will follow during Friday.

“The package nature of Russian proposals has been ignored, from which ‘convenient’ topics have been deliberately chosen. They, in turn, have been ‘twisted’ in the direction of creating advantages for the United States and its allies. This approach, as well as the accompanying rhetoric of American officials, reinforces reason for doubt that Washington is really committed to correcting the situation in the field of Euro-security.”

The paper then itemizes the specific security measures and treaty articles which have been tabled by the Russian side since December, and which the US and NATO replies have so far ignored. For analysis of each of the booby traps contained in the US paper released in Spain a fortnight ago, read this.

Twice the new Foreign Ministry paper uses the term “concrete”. The first is to signal that this remains to be provided in the papers sent to Moscow by the US and NATO so far. “We expect concrete proposals from the members of the alliance on the content and forms of legal consolidation of the rejection of further expansion of NATO to the east.”

In the second application of the term “concrete”, the paper says: “the United States and its allies should abandon the policy of ‘containing’ Russia and take concrete practical measures to de-escalate the military-political situation, including in line with paragraph 2 of Article 4 of our draft treaty.”

Article 4 says, not only that NATO will not include Ukraine and Georgia as members, but that even if formal membership is ruled out, there will be no US military bases in non-member states, no military infrastructure (arms stockpiles, for example), and no “bilateral military cooperation” targeted at Russia.

Among other concrete issues required for negotiation, the Russian paper identifies “heavy” (nuclear) bomber flights close to Russian airspace, combat vessels in the Black and Baltic Seas, the Aegis Ashore missiles batteries in Romania and Poland, and intermediate and short-range nuclear missiles.

For a Russian analysis of Russia’s black box options, published at the end of January in Vzglyad, read this.

 

 

Before Brandon Became A Senile Bag Of Botox He Was Widely Considered A Moron...,

NYTimes |  President Biden said on Friday that the United States has intelligence showing that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has made a final decision to reject diplomatic overtures and invade Ukraine, in what Mr. Biden said would be a “catastrophic and needless war of choice” in Eastern Europe.

Speaking from the Roosevelt Room in the White House, Mr. Biden said “we have reason to believe the Russian forces are planning to and intend to attack Ukraine in the coming week, in the coming days,” adding that “we believe that they will target Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, a city of 2.8 million innocent people.”

Asked whether he thinks that Mr. Putin is still wavering about whether to invade, Mr. Biden said, “I’m convinced he’s made the decision.” Later, he added that his impression of Mr. Putin’s intentions is based on “a significant intelligence capability.”

Still, Mr. Biden implored Russia to “choose diplomacy.”

“It is not too late to de-escalate and return to the negotiating table,” Mr. Biden said, referring to planned talks between Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and Russia’s foreign minister on Thursday. “If Russia takes military action before that date, it will be clear that they have slammed the door shut on diplomacy.”

In the hours before Mr. Biden’s late afternoon remarks, Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine called for mass evacuations in two contested regions of the country, claiming, with little evidence, that Ukraine’s military was about to launch a large-scale attack there, an assertion that appeared intended to provoke Russian military intervention.

The ominous messaging of the rebels in the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk was loudly echoed by Moscow, raising fears that Russia was setting the stage for an imminent invasion that could ignite the biggest conflict in Europe in decades.

The call by the Russian-backed separatists for evacuations came as they blamed Ukraine for an array of provocations, including shelling along the front lines between Ukraine and the separatist forces, and an explosion involving an empty car that pro-Moscow news outlets said belonged to the head of the region’s security services.

Mr. Biden, who had just concluded a video call with a dozen Western leaders, rejected the claims as lies intended by Mr. Putin to inflame the situation on the ground and provide a pretext for war — something the United States and other European leaders had been warning about for weeks.

He cited the bombing of a Ukrainian kindergarten as a Russia-backed provocation. And he pointed to Russian separatist accusations that Ukraine was planning to launch a major offensive attack as evidence of Russian efforts to justify military action with misinformation.

“There is simply no evidence to these assertions, and it defies basic logic to believe the Ukrainians would choose this moment, with well over 150,000 troops arrayed on its borders, to escalate a yearlong conflict,” Mr. Biden said.

The president’s comments are the clearest indications of just how close the world may be to the largest conflict in Europe since World War II. He took the highly unusual course of specifically predicting the time frame and parameters of the invasion, despite the risks that he could be proved wrong.

Brandon Seeks To Extend U.S. Covid-19 Emergency Powers Declaration...,

whitehouse |  Dear Madam Speaker: (Dear Madam President:)

Section 202(d) of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1622(d)) provides for the automatic termination of a national emergency unless, within 90 days prior to the anniversary date of its declaration, the President publishes in the Federal Register and transmits to the Congress a notice stating that the emergency is to continue in effect beyond the anniversary date.  In accordance with this provision, I have sent to the Federal Register for publication the enclosed notice stating that the national emergency declared in Proclamation 9994 of March 13, 2020, beginning March 1, 2020, concerning the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, is to continue in effect beyond March 1, 2022.

There remains a need to continue this national emergency.  The COVID-19 pandemic continues to cause significant risk to the public health and safety of the Nation.  More than 900,000 people in this Nation have perished from the disease, and it is essential to continue to combat and respond to COVID-19 with the full capacity and capability of the Federal Government.

Therefore, I have determined that it is necessary to continue the national emergency declared in Proclamation 9994 concerning the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Mask Wars Have Polarized American Society

tabletmag  |  Recent days have witnessed the emergence of a new rift in our pandemic debate. Strikingly, this time the dispute is not just partisan, but also splitting the Democratic Party. While Democratic governors appear to see where political winds are blowing, some blue cities are moving in the opposite direction. And many states that are dropping adult mask mandates are retaining them for kids, resulting in the absurd prospect of indefinite masking for a less vulnerable population for whom masks have more significant downsides.

How did partisan warfare over mask mandates become such a central feature of the pandemic? The familiar answer is that the mask wars are just another symptom of national polarization. When Donald Trump casually denigrated cloth masks as president, the stage was set for a Democratic backlash—turning masks into not just a public health measure, but also a talismanic symbol of virtue signaling on one side and a rallying cry about freedom for the other. But polarization is only part of the story. Mask mandates are a microcosm of a key failure of our pandemic response: the poor climate for public discourse fostered by an elite culture whose overconfidence led to a prolonged strategy of undermining open discussion in a vain attempt to prove that complex questions could have only one universal and immutable answer.

From the beginning of the pandemic, technocratic elites have offered us a dubious bill of goods. Aided and abetted by the media and by many academics, politicians proffered—indeed, likely believed—the idea that the pandemic would go away if everyone just did as they were told. “If everyone wore a mask for two weeks …” became a telltale refrain, a claim that was neither true nor possible. Pundits celebrated President Joe Biden’s ill-fated “hundred days of masking,” which promised “just 100 days to mask, not forever.” This habit of exaggeration and blind optimism among elites helps explain gaffes like Biden’s bizarre claim during his campaign that every single pandemic death could have been averted by better leadership.

Choices needed to be made, and leaders got some right (accelerating vaccine research) and others wrong (failing to protect the elderly). In other instances, they missed opportunities, failing to strengthen policies like sick leave that would improve our resilience—a topic almost entirely avoided by political elites, who prefer to blame the pandemic’s consequences on a handful of dissenters. But in acting as if their policy choices came from scientific omniscience, elites minimized the messiness of the real world—in which chance, trust, and voluntary decisions all play a crucial role.

Today, the plerophory of elites—born of hubris and unbridled self confidence—is bearing bitter fruit. For some, the overselling of policy has led them to religiouslike zeal and dogmatism about particular interventions. For others, it has led to a complete loss of faith in institutions like the CDC, the FDA, and the NIH, which depend on public trust in order to fulfill their missions. Masking was simultaneously described as a panacea—better than a vaccine, in the memorable words of the former CDC director—yet it wasn’t good enough to quickly reopen many closed schools, even given that an unvaccinated child faced lower risk than a vaccinated grandparent. The arbitrariness of the resulting policy recommendations and mandates is etched into the many photographs of masked kids, sometimes posed with unmasked politicians, that will likely come to represent much of our badly flawed pandemic response.

Drug Addicts Don't Even Trust These Damned Neo-Vaccinoids....,

statnews |  A patient who has taught me a lot about how to best care for people who use drugs floored me one afternoon while she was in the clinic when I asked her thoughts on getting vaccinated against Covid-19.

“I know this sounds crazy,” she said, casting her gaze to the floor, “but I trust my drug dealer more than I trust this vaccine.”

I was stunned. Curious how anyone could trust putting something from the current fentanyl-contaminated heroin supply in their arm over a highly vetted vaccine, I had to ask, “What makes you trust your dealer?”

Here’s the gist of what she told me: When she speaks to her dealer, they listen to her concerns without judgment and accept her for who she is. When she feels bad, they are attentive to her. They will not sell her drugs if they know she is in a bad place because they have known each other for a long time. They are highly accessible, often by text or phone at all hours. They deliver a tangible, immediate response to the needs she expresses. They have time for her and treat her like they would any other human.

To be sure, not all people who sell drugs operate in the best interest of their consumers. After all, we are currently enduring the fourth wave of the opioid overdose epidemic due to illicitly-manufactured fentanyl that has been contaminating the drug supply. Although this phenomenon should be analyzed as a potential result of the war on drugs, some sellers in the drug market clearly prioritize profits over the lives of their customers. This is highlighted by the fact that people who use drugs are more likely to die of a drug overdose than Covid-19.

Yet my patient isn’t alone having this kind of experience with the person who sells her drugs. Other people who use drugs trust their drug dealers, especially those they have established relationships with over longer periods of time. In these sorts of relationships, people who use drugs trust that their dealer communicates openly about the drug supply. As one person told British of Columbia researchers about their dealer: “I guess we’ve known each other for a long time and they’ve always had a good supply and treat me with respect.”

Contrast this with how the health care system treats people who use drugs.

 

 

IMHO - The Addiction Article Is Pseudoscience - The Video Is Closer To The Truth

MIT |  Cocaine, opioids, and other drugs of abuse disrupt the brain’s reward system, often shifting users’ priorities to obtaining more drug above all else. For people battling addiction, this persistent craving is notoriously difficult to overcome — but new research from scientists at MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research and collaborators points toward a therapeutic strategy that could help.

Researchers in MIT Institute Professor Ann Graybiel’s lab and collaborators at the University of Copenhagen and Vanderbilt University report in a Jan. 25 online publication in the journal Addiction Biology that activating a signaling molecule in the brain known as muscarinic receptor 4 (M₄) causes rodents to reduce cocaine self-administration and simultaneously choose a food treat over cocaine.

M₄ receptors are found on the surface of neurons in the brain, where they alter signaling in response to the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. They are plentiful in the striatum, a brain region that Graybiel’s lab has shown is deeply involved in habit formation. They are of interest to addiction researchers because, along with a related receptor called M₁, which is also abundant in the striatum, they often seem to act in opposition to the neurotransmitter dopamine.

Drugs of abuse stimulate the brain’s habit circuits by allowing dopamine to build up in the brain. With chronic use, that circuitry can become less sensitive to dopamine, so experiences that were once rewarding become less pleasurable and users are driven to seek higher doses of their drug. Attempts to directly block the dopamine system have not been found to be an effective way of treating addiction and can have unpleasant or dangerous side effects, so researchers are seeking an alternative strategy to restore balance within the brain’s reward circuitry. “Another way to tweak that system is to activate these muscarinic receptors,” explains Jill Crittenden, a research scientist in the Graybiel lab.

At the University of Copenhagen, neuroscientist Morgane Thomsen has found that activating the M₁ receptor causes rodents to choose a food treat over cocaine. In the new work, she showed that a drug that selectively activates the M₄ receptor has a similar effect.

When rats that have been trained to self-administer cocaine are given an M₄-activating compound, they immediately reduce their drug use, actively choosing food instead. Thomsen found that this effect grew stronger over a seven-day course of treatment, with cocaine use declining day by day. When the M₄-activating treatment was stopped, rats quickly resumed their prior cocaine-seeking behavior.  Fist tap Dale.

Jamelle Bouie Never Visited A Post-NAFTA Hell Of Addiction, Joblessness, And Hopelessness

NYTimes  |  It has not been uncommon, in recent years, to hear Americans worry about the advent of a new civil war.

“Is Civil War Ahead?” The New Yorker asked last month. “Is America heading to civil war or secession?” CNN wondered on the anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Last week, Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois told “The View” that “we have to recognize” the possibility of a civil war. “I don’t think it’s too far of a bridge to think that’s a possibility,” he said.

This isn’t just the media or the political class; it’s public opinion too. In a 2019 survey for the Georgetown Institute of Politics, the average respondent said that the United States was two-thirds of the way toward the “edge of a civil war.” In a recent poll conducted by the Institute of Politics at Harvard, 35 percent of voting-age Americans under 30 placed the odds of a second civil war at 50 percent or higher.

And in a result that says something about the divisions at hand, 52 percent of Trump voters and 41 percent of Biden voters said that they at least “somewhat agree” that it’s time to split the country, with either red or blue states leaving the union and forming their own country, according to a survey conducted by the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia (where I am a visiting scholar).

Several related forces are fueling this anxiety, from deepening partisan polarization and our winner-take-all politics to our sharp division across lines of identity, culture and geography. There is the fact that this country is saturated with guns, as well as the reality that many Americans fear demographic change to the point that they’re willing to do pretty much anything to stop it. There is also the issue of Donald Trump, his strongest supporters and their effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Americans feel farther apart than at any point in recent memory, and as a result, many Americans fear the prospect of organized political violence well beyond what we saw on Jan. 6, 2021.

There is, however, a serious problem with this narrative: The Civil War we fought in the 19th century was not sparked by division qua division.

If Canada's Not On The Brink Of Civil War, Why The Trudeau Emergency Act?

Slate  |   Your chapter on “The Fall of New York” focuses on threat multipliers for instability – economic, climate, property. Part of me wonders if part of the Canadian protest – in a country known for being almost smugly civil and polite and law abiding – is just a growing recognition that stuff is broken, governments are bankrupt, the climate is an existential threat, and that institutions are not up to the task of repair. I guess what I am asking is, when lawful Canadians are boiling over, is it a sign that the conditions you identified in the U.S. are in fact worldwide?

There is no question that the Trucker Convoy is the toxic American political environment spilling across our border. I mean, its biggest supporters, by far, have been Donald Trump and Elon Musk. But when you say Canadians are boiling over, we’re talking about a few thousand Canadians boiling over. And who can blame them? I mean, honestly, I sympathize with the frustrations of these truckers. I’m sick of this Covid shit, too. It makes me want to go to a major city in a piece of machinery and blare the horn too. But I don’t think the Trucker Convoy is anywhere near as significant as Jan. 6, and not simply because it happened in Canada! It’s a temper tantrum. And everyone in the country is disgusted by the temper tantrum. But it’s not much more than that.

So in a way, you’re saying that even this Canadian event is somehow more revealing about what’s going on in America than in Canada?

There is political insanity everywhere. That’s not unique to America. The question is how ready the systems are to deal with the insanity. Covid happened everywhere. It was brutal everywhere. It led to political unrest everywhere. But it was vastly more toxic, and more divisive, in America than elsewhere. That’s true about much more than Covid. For example, during the tour for this book, I’ve been asked how much social media is driving America’s toxic politics. Of course, it does have an impact but look at the rest of the world. They’ve all had to deal with Facebook too. But they didn’t have their entire political apparatus disrupted. German political parties entered into a “gentleman’s agreement” not to spread foreign misinformation. Which would never be possible in the United States today.

America is ripe for conflict in a way that Canada simply isn’t. The forces that cause civil war are manifesting in the States. The legitimacy of its institutions are in decline, its legal system is increasingly partisan, inequality is exploding, and climate change is starting to manifest in direct destruction. These are the subjects of The Next Civil War.

I get the sense you’re not as anxious about all this as, well, like, me?

The truckers actually entered my neighborhood in Toronto yesterday. I went to check it out. They certainly disgusted me. But later, on my way home, I saw them shopping on my block. They marveled at all the pot shops and fancy bakeries. Their trip to the big city.

Has Justin Trudeau's Over Reach Triggered A Run On Canadian Banks?

dcweekly  |  Now tonight reports coming on of Canada show that there is something going on with the banks.

What the hell is happening to Canada’s banks right now? pic.twitter.com/NRjPWlG0GE

What the hell is happening to Canada’s banks right now? pic.twitter.com/NRjPWlG0GE

— James Melville (@JamesMelville) February 16, 2022

This ‘run’ may be related to the state’s actions according to some guesses.

Bank run starting . If you threaten to take people’s money a lot of them get worried and take their money out. Banks don’t like seeing a lot of money go out, so they ‘go down’ to stop the run. Only <2% of the money is paper and coins, the rest is just digits on a screen.

Bank run starting 😜. If you threaten to take people's money a lot of them get worried and take their money out. Banks don't like seeing a lot of money go out, so they 'go down' to stop the run. Only <2% of the money is paper and coins, the rest is just digits on a screen.

— Jabba (@JamesAB999) February 16, 2022

RBC reported that things should be ok by now.

I got the same response. I was hung up on when I tried to call customer service.

— itsmace_ (@ThizzWashington) February 16, 2022

We really don’t know what was the cause or what is really going on at this time. 

Fist tap Dale.

U.S. Intelligence Community Declares Zerohedge A Russian Malinformation Front

AP  |  Officials described for the first time what they say are direct communications between Russian spies and the editors or directors of the media outlets. They did not release records of the communications.

FSB officers had directed Konstantin Knyrik, the head of NewsFront, to write stories specifically damaging to Ukraine’s image, U.S. officials alleged. They said Knyrik has been praised by senior FSB officers for his work and requested derogatory information that he could use against the Caucasian Knot, a website that covers news in the mostly Muslim republics of southern Russia and neighboring countries such as Georgia.

The editor of PolitNavigator sent reports of published articles to the FSB, an official said. And the managing editor of Antifashist allegedly was directed at least once by the FSB to delete material from the site.

PolitNavigator’s editor, Sergey Stepanov, said Washington turns a blind eye to what he says are Ukraine’s anti-democratic actions and instead labels those who point them out “anti-Ukrainian propagandists” and “agents of the FSB.”

“I would like to believe that American journalism will rise above the hysteria provoked by officials,” he added.

The Strategic Culture Foundation is accused of controlling the websites Odna Rodyna and Fondsk. The foundation’s director, Vladimir Maximenko, has met with SVR handlers multiple times since 2014, officials alleged.

Several of the sites have small social media followings and may not appear influential at first glance, noted Bret Schafer, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund’s Alliance for Securing Democracy. But falsehoods or propaganda narratives often start small before they’re amplified by larger actors, he said.

“You see the narrative enter the information space, and it’s very hard to see where it goes from there,” he said.

A manifesto published on Zero Hedge’s site defends its use of anonymous authors and proclaims its goal is “to liberate oppressed knowledge.” Many articles are published under the name Tyler Durden, also a character in the movie “Fight Club.”

The website was an early amplifier of conspiracy theories and misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic. An Associated Press investigation determined the site played a pivotal role in advancing the unproven theory that China engineered the virus as a bioweapon. It’s also posted articles touting natural immunity to COVID-19 and unproven treatments.

Zero Hedge was also cited in a recent report by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue that examined how far-right extremists are harnessing COVID-19 misinformation to expand their reach. Twitter briefly suspended Zero Hedge’s account in 2020 but reinstated it a few months later, saying it “made an error in our enforcement action in this case.”

The U.S. moving to name the website could inform some people who come across its content online, Schafer said.

“My guess is that most of the people who are loyal Zero Hedge followers naturally are inclined to mistrust the U.S. government anyway,” he said, “and so this announcement is probably not going to undermine most of Zero Hedge’s core support.”

Successful Protest: Funding, Strategy, Discipline, Event Planning And Diverse Popular Support

NYTimes |  What messaging discipline exists comes from the early public face of the effort, Ms. Lich, said Jay Hill, the interim leader of the Maverick Party, a small right-of-center group based out of Calgary, Alberta, created to promote the separation of Canada’s three western Prairie Provinces from the rest of the country. Ms. Lich has deep ties to the group.

Even before the convoy assembled, its messaging was Ms. Lich’s preoccupation, according to Mr. Hill, who said she called him several times even before arriving in Ottawa to strategize.

“We had a number of discussions about staying on message, about the need in this modern-day world of politics to have a very clearly defined message that is understandable and simple, a message that people can grasp hold of and run with,” he said. “Tamara clearly understands that.”

Ms. Lich played a leading role in organizing a GoFundMe campaign for the protests that raised $7.8 million before the crowdfunding site shut it down after receiving “police reports of violence and other unlawful activity,” GoFundMe said.

Previously, Ms. Lich worked as a personal trainer in Medicine Hat, Alberta, a town once dubbed “Hell’s Basement,” by Rudyard Kipling for its location on top of huge natural gas field.

Zach Smithson, an employee at Body Building Depot Fitness Emporium, where Ms. Lich used to work, said she has since become the talk of the town.

“I think we are all very proud of her,” he said.

Ms. Lich did not respond to a call and text message requesting an interview.

B.J. Dichter, an official spokesman for the convoy, said he joined the effort after Ms. Lich sought help managing the swell of donations flowing into a GoFundMe page. Mr. Dichter has a history of spouting anti-Islamist views and once said that “political Islam” is “rotting away at our society like syphilis.” He has rejected claims of racism.

“I’m Jewish,” he told the journalist Rupa Subramanya. “I have family in mass graves in Europe. And apparently I’m a white supremacist.”

Within the occupiers’ tightly managed ground operations, there are military hallmarks, outlined and executed by the several higher-ups who have backgrounds in the armed forces and law enforcement, according to Mr. Marazzo. He said he spent 25 years in the military, and with his measured tones he is frequently deployed as the spokesman for the group.

“This was a grass-roots convoy that just left their homes and headed for Ottawa,” said Mr. Marazzo, a former instructor at Georgian College in Ontario who added that he was fired because of his anti-vaccine beliefs. “They’ve deployed to the field without really knowing who our commanding officers were, who were the platoon commander, and who were the captains — That was a team effort.”

 

Trudeau's Emergency Overreaction Brings Unwanted Scrutiny To Similar DHS Contingencies...,

jonathanturley  |  With the emergency powers, Trudeau can now prohibit travel, public assemblies, conduct widespread arrests, and block donations for the truckers. This also includes freezing bank accounts and ramping up police surveillance and enforcement.

The Canadian Civil Liberties Association objected:

“The federal government has not met the threshold necessary to invoke the Emergencies Act. This law creates a high and clear standard for good reason: the Act allows government to bypass ordinary democratic processes. This standard has not been met. The Emergencies Act can only be invoked when a situation ‘seriously threatens the ability of the Government of Canada to preserve the sovereignty, security and territorial integrity of Canada’ & when the situation ‘cannot be effectively dealt with under any other law of Canada.’”

Such voices have been drowned out by media demonizing the truckers as racists or insurrectionists.

As civil libertarians, it is less important what people are saying as their right to say it. That includes people who speak through their financial support or donations. Millions in such donations were blocked by GoFundMe or the Canadian government in this crackdown.

It is often tempting to ignore the implications of such extreme measures by focusing on your disagreement with a given group. To understand the scope of this law you can simply look to how widely revered movements could be treated under the same provisions.  For example, the Civil Rights marchers also engaged in civil disobedience in shutting down bridges and occupying spaces.  As I stated on Monday,

“Now, when you put all of that together, you’ve extinguished the ability of thousands, perhaps even millions of people to express themselves through a form of civil disobedience. And according to Prime Minister Trudeau’s definition, he could have shut down the Civil Rights Movement. He could have arrested Martin Luther King. He could have arrested any number of figures that we now celebrate today as visionaries.”

On Tuesday, I returned to that same point and noted that Canada could easily use the same law against the marchers and Dr. King today. Trudeau’s government could cut off all funding for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) while arresting figures like Dr. King. I noted that “I thought [the use of the Emergency Act] was quite excessive. This is an act of civil disobedience. That is a standard tactic of groups going back to the civil rights movement and even earlier to block bridges and streets, to do what was referred to as — quote — ‘good trouble.’ By this rationale, they could have cracked down on the Civil Rights Movement. They could have arrested Martin Luther King.”

The “they” is clearly the Canadian government in its use of these emergency powers today — not a reference to arrests in the past in the United States.

Canadian Emergency Powers Declaration - A Dry Run For What This Way Comes?

DHS been squaring up on you stiff-necked hard-headed busters for a minute now - because any minute now - the clampdown will kick off in earnest here in the homeland.

CISA |  CISA’s Mis-, Dis-, and Malinformation (MDM) team is charged with building national resilience to mis-, dis-, and malinformation and foreign influence activities. Through these efforts, CISA helps the American people understand the scope and scale of MDM activities targeting elections and critical infrastructure, and enables them to take actions to mitigate associated risks. The MDM team was formerly known as the Countering Foreign Influence Task Force (CFITF). 

January 31, 2022: Today, CISA released a set of four election security training videos to enhance the awareness and importance of securing the Nation’s election infrastructure. The training videos provide an overview of CISA’s role in election security, the importance of building public trust through secure practices, the risks associated with ransomware and resources to mitigate them, and the risks associated with phishing and resources to combat them.

• To view these videos, visit Election Security Trainings - YouTube
  
• For additional election resources, visit the Election Security Library.

January 27, 2022: The Election Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council (GCC) and the Subsector Coordinating Council’s (SCC) Joint Mis/Disinformation Working Group released the Rumor Control Page Start-Up Guide and the MDM Planning and Incident Response Guide for Election Officials as voluntary tools to assist State and local election officials prepare for and respond to risks of MDM.

• Download/share the Rumor Control Page Start-Up Guide for direction on how and when to develop a rumor control webpage to dispel specific MDM narratives through transparent and authoritative information.
• Download/share the MDM Planning and Incident Response Guide for Election Officials to understand how to recognize, prepare for, and respond to MDM threats that may impact the ability to conduct elections.