CIA and U.S. Special Forces Are Operating in Ukraine
October 7th, 2022Via: The Intercept:
When it became clear that the agency’s predictions of a rapid Russian victory had been wrong, the Biden administration sent the clandestine assets that had been pulled out of Ukraine back into the country, the military and intelligence officials said. One U.S. official insisted that the CIA only conducted a partial withdrawal of its assets when the war began, and that the agency “never completely left.”
Yet clandestine American operations inside Ukraine are now far more extensive than they were early in the war, when U.S. intelligence officials were fearful that Russia would steamroll over the Ukrainian army. There is a much larger presence of both CIA and U.S. special operations personnel and resources in Ukraine than there were at the time of the Russian invasion in February, several current and former intelligence officials told The Intercept.
Secret U.S. operations inside Ukraine are being conducted under a presidential covert action finding, current and former officials said. The finding indicates that the president has quietly notified certain congressional leaders about the administration’s decision to conduct a broad program of clandestine operations inside the country.
How To Download All of Wikipedia Onto a USB Flash Drive in 2022
October 6th, 2022Despite the many problems with Wikipedia, it does contain a lot of useful information. If you live in an area that will not be incinerated by a nuclear fireball, this might come in handy at some point. (Assuming any computer gear that you plan to use hasn’t succumbed to EMP.)
Have a nice day!
Via: Planet of the Paul:
If you want to download Wikipedia onto a USB flash drive for offline access, you’ve come to the right place.
Study Links Omega-3s to Improved Brain Structure, Cognition at Midlife
October 6th, 2022Via: UT Health:
Eating cold-water fish and other sources of omega-3 fatty acids may preserve brain health and enhance cognition in middle age, new evidence indicates.
Having at least some omega-3s in red blood cells was associated with better brain structure and cognitive function among healthy study volunteers in their 40s and 50s, according to research published online Oct. 5 in Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Faculty of The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (UT Health San Antonio) and other investigators of the Framingham Heart Study conducted the analysis.
Even After $100 Billion, Self-Driving Cars Are Going Nowhere
October 6th, 2022Cryptogon 2019: Automakers Are Rethinking the Timetable for Fully Autonomous Cars:
In short, I asked him: Is this going to work?
No.
He’s confident that it’s not going to work under the current paradigm.
Via: Bloomberg:
“You’d be hard-pressed to find another industry that’s invested so many dollars in R&D and that has delivered so little,” Levandowski says in an interview.
The De-Population Bomb
October 6th, 2022Via: Hoover Institution:
“Be Afraid, Be Actually Afraid”: Reporters Panic at the Thought of Twitter Restoring Free Speech Protections
October 6th, 2022The purported concern and even hysteria about Musk's purchase and control of Twitter has always been driven by an obvious fear, totally different from the one they claim.
Liberals are petrified Musk will stop censoring their adversaries. That's all there is to it.
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) October 4, 2022
Via: Jonathan Turley:
“Be afraid, be actually afraid.” Those words from former Politico Magazine editor Garrett M. Graff captures the hyperventilation in the media this week. No it is not Vladimir Putin’s threat of unleashing a nuclear war or the word that our national debt has reached a staggering $31 trillion. No, it is the news that Elon Musk may go forward with the purchase of Twitter and . . . [trigger warning] . . . free speech protections might be restored on the platform. The pearl-clutching of various media and academic figures shows how engrained the censorship culture has become in the United States.
After Musk indicated that he was going forward, the Twitter stock quickly soared. The news that Musk might bring an end to Twitter’s extensive censorship system had previously drawn people back to the platform. However, the media is in full panic mode that the control over speech could be loosened with Musk. Twitter employees also previously panicked at the thought that they might lose some of their control over the speech of others.
China Pairs Armed Robot Dogs With Drones That Can Drop Them Anywhere
October 6th, 2022Via: The Warzone:
Footage of a Chinese-made drone carrying a ‘robot dog’ that is armed with a machine gun has started to make its rounds on social media, and it looks like it was taken straight out of a dystopian war movie. It isn’t immediately clear if the video was recorded as part of a Chinese military exercise or rather in an effort to demonstrate how the pairing will operate, but even without that context, the clip could serve as a foretelling of the technology that may populate future battlegrounds.
U.S. Buying $290M Worth of Anti-Radiation Drugs for Use in ‘Nuclear Emergency’
October 6th, 2022Via: Information Liberation:
As part of long-standing, ongoing efforts to be better prepared to save lives following radiological and nuclear emergencies, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is purchasing a supply of the drug Nplate from Amgen USA Inc; Nplate is approved to treat blood cell injuries that accompany acute radiation syndrome in adult and pediatric patients (ARS).
Amgen, based in Thousands Oaks, California, developed Nplate for ARS with support from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), part of the HHS Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR), as well as the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health.
BARDA is using its authority provided under the 2004 Project Bioshield Act and $290 million in Project BioShield designated funding to purchase this supply of the drug. Amgen will maintain this supply in vendor-managed inventory. This approach decreases life-cycle management costs for taxpayers because doses that near expiration can be rotated into the commercial market for rapid use prior to expiry and new doses can be added to the government supply.
ARS, also known as radiation sickness, occurs when a person’s entire body is exposed to a high dose of penetrating radiation, reaching internal organs in a matter of seconds. Symptoms of ARS injuries include impaired blood clotting as a result of low platelet counts, which can lead to uncontrolled and life-threatening bleeding.
To reduce radiation-induced bleeding, Nplate stimulates the body’s production of platelets. The drug can be used to treat adults and children.
Major Scientific Publisher Retracts More Than 500 Papers
October 6th, 2022Via: Epoch Times:
One of the world’s largest open-access journal publishers is retracting more than 500 papers, based on the discovery of unethical actions.
London-based Hindawi, which publishes more than 200 peer-reviewed journals across multiple disciplines, stated that its research team identified in June “irregularities” in the peer review process in some of the journals.
“All Hindawi journals employ a series of substantial integrity checks before articles are accepted for publication. Following thorough investigation, we identified that these irregularities in the peer review process were the result of suspicious and unethical activities. Since identifying this unethical activity and breach of our processes, we began proactively adding further checks and improving our processes and continue to do so,” Liz Ferguson, a senior vice president for John Wiley & Sons, Hindawi’s U.S.-based parent company, said in a Sept. 28 statement.
As a result of the investigation, 511 papers will be retracted.
The papers have all been published since August 2020.
Sixteen journals published the papers that are being retracted.
Some of the authors and editors who contributed to the articles may have been “unwitting participants” in the unethical scheme, according to Ferguson. She said the scheme involved “manipulation of the peer review process and the infrastructure that supports it.”
Richard Bennett, vice president of researcher and publishing services for Hindawi, told the Retraction Watch blog that the review uncovered “coordinated peer review rings,” which featured reviewers and editors coordinating to get papers through peer review.
Neither Ferguson nor Bennett identified any of the suspects.
The U.S. Government’s Vast New Privatized Censorship Regime
October 5th, 2022Via: Tablet:
Over the next several months, the three scientists faced a barrage of condemnation: They were called eugenicists and anti-vaxxers; it was falsely asserted that they were “Koch-funded” and that they had written the declaration for financial gain. Attacks on the Great Barrington signatories proliferated throughout social media and in the pages of The New York Times and Guardian.
Yet emails obtained pursuant to a FOIA request later revealed that these attacks were not the products of an independent objective news-gathering process of the type that publications like the Times and the Guardian still like to advertise. Rather, they were the fruits of an aggressive attempt to shape the news by the same government officials whose policies the epidemiologists had criticized. Emails between Fauci and Collins revealed that the two officials had worked together and with media outlets as various as Wired and The Nation to orchestrate a “takedown” of the declaration.
Nor did the targeting of the scientists stop with the bureaucrats they had implicitly criticized. Bhattacharya, Gupta, and Kulldorff soon learned that their declaration was being heavily censored on social media to prevent their scientific opinions from reaching the public.
