https://mobile.twitter.com/CattHarm
Būtu jāuzsit pendele tiem, kas ir galīgi slinki un tik izlaidušies, ka neseko "woke" statusa izmaiņām. Jūsu profila "tag line" jau sen nevar atsaukties uz #StayAtHome un #WearAMask. Tagad tur jābūt #GoOutandLoot un #RiotsBuiltThisCountry. Vai kaut kā tā.
Modern American:
"Who cares what a bunch of dead slave owners thought. We should be able to decide for ourselves what kind of laws we have, let's stop second guessing these guys that rarely even agreed with each other."
6. decembrī ar sēru dievkalpojumu Rīgas Domā pēdējā gaitā izvadīja Latvijā atjaunotās Aizsargu organizācijas komandieri Jāni Rību. Aizlūgumu noturēja prāvests Jānis Liepiņš un mācītājs Kārlis Lielzuika no ārzemēm. Gandrīz tūkstotis laužu stāvēja ciešā pulkā dievnamā ap nelaiķa zārku, par kuru liecās Aizsargu organizācijas un sarkanbaltsarkanie valsts karogi.
Aizsargu organizācijas pārstāvji no visām Latvijas malām rokās aiznesa komandiera zārku cauri visai Vecpilsētai līdz Brīvības pieminekļa pakājei. Gara, jo gara pavadītāju kolonna, sēru mūzikai skanot, vijās cauri Vecrīgas
ieliņām un saplūda lielā pulkā pie Brīvības pieminekļa. Tur viņi visi vienojās himnā „Dievs, svētī Latviju“ un pēc tam aiz katalalka autobusos devās uz Drustiem, kur ir Jāņa Rības dzimtā puse.
J. Rību nogalināja 28. novembra ar diviem šāvieniem pie Matīsa ielas 101. nama, kur atrodas aizsargu štābs. Aizsargu organizācijas par priekšnieku ievēlētais Aksels Kaimiņš sacīja, ka gan organizācijai, gan J. Rībam draudēts jau kopš organizācijas atjaunošanas 1990. gadā. J. Rības nošaušanu aizsargu vadība vērtē kā Latvijas ārējo un iekšējo ienaidnieku pasūtinātu politisku slepkavību.
"1973. gadā [Jānis Vagris] iekļauts LKP Centrālajā komitejā. 1988. gada 4. oktobrī tika paaugstināts amatā par LKP CK Pirmo sekretāru. Trīs dienas vēlāk, pirms Latvijas Tautas Frontes 1. kongresa, uzstājies tautas manifestācijā Mežaparka estrādē, sakot, ka "latviešu tautai pāri nav darījis". (..) 2010. gadā [Jāni] Vagri apbalvoja ar IV šķiras Triju Zvaigžņu ordeni. Apbalvots arī ar Oktobra revolūcijas ordeni, diviem Darba Sarkanā Karoga ordeņiem, medaļām. Saņēmis arī Latvijas PSR Nopelniem bagātā rūpniecības darbinieka goda titulu."
Par mūsu valsts drošības dienestiem (07.01.2003), Paulis Kļaviņš:
"Valsts apdraudējuma pirmā analīze, no kuras izriet valsts drošības iestāžu prioritārie darbības virzieni, jau pirms septiņiem gadiem iezīmēja iekšējos draudus un noteica attiecīgās darbības jomas. Ja rezultāti nav bijuši, tad rodas aizdomas, vai drošības dienesti nepiedalās valsts nozagšanas piesegšanā, varbūt pat nozagšanā? [..]
[D]ienesti iegūst informāciju nevis savām, bet gan izpildvaras vajadzībām. Taču slepenajiem ziņu dienestiem nepienākas izpildvaras funkcijas, kādas bija čekai. Šī ir principiāla atšķirība starp demokrātisko un totalitāro valstu sistēmām. Lai nodrošinātu, ka slepenais dienests nav «valsts valstī», arī slepeno dienestu struktūrās ir nepieciešama varas dalīšana, uz ko balstās ikvienas demokrātiskās valsts satversme. Informācija, it īpaši slepeni iegūtā, ir varas faktors. Valsts drošības iestādēm jāstrādā patstāvīgi, un viņu iegūtā informācija jāizvērtē no viņiem neatkarīgai valdības komisijai. Nav pieļaujams informācijas iegūšanas, uzkrāšanas un izvērtēšanas monopols vienas iestādes rokās, piedevām vēl valsts noslēpuma pieejamības atkarība no tās pašas institūcijas. Tā bija vecā laika struktūra."
https://www.vestnesis.lv/ta/id/6994
"VDK izmeklētājs kapteinis Andris Strautmanis, kurš 1983. gadā vadīja čekas tiesas procesus pret mūsu [Helsinki-86] pretošanās grupu, arī pret Gunāru Astru, vēlāk bija Drošības policijas priekšnieka vietnieks. Vai arī notikušais ar Pauli Kļaviņu un viņa izveidoto pirmo Drošības dienestu, kas ļoti nepatika Auseklim Pļaviņam, bijušajam Padomju Savienības Galvenās izlūkošanas pārvaldes jeb GRU pulkvedim, kurš Aizsardzības ministrijā darbojās kā vispārējās informācijas dienesta vadītājs un vēlējās turpināt GRU garā, proti, izspiegot savas valsts augstākos ierēdņus un iestādes. Kad Paulis atteicās šos rīkojumus pildīt, ieradās toreizējā aizsardzības ministra Valda Pavlovska sūtņi un uz vietas atlaida gan viņu, gan vēl 13 darbiniekus. Viena no šo «bijušo» rūpēm bija, lai valsts struktūrās nebūtu patriotisku latviešu."
http://www.aprinkis.lv/index.php/sabied
"Minēšu vēl kādu piemēru. 1946.gadā dzimušais Andris Strautmanis Latvijas neatkarības laikus sagaidīja kā VDK Izmeklēšanas daļas nodaļas priekšnieks. Nevis vienkārši čekists, bet čekistu priekšnieks. Un kas ar viņu notika tālāk? Vēlāk viņš bija LR Drošības policijas 1.galvenās pārvaldes priekšnieka vietnieks, kā arī iekšlietu ministra Mareka Segliņa padomnieks.
[..] Es te vēl gribētu pieminēt dzirdētu argumentu, ka, lūk, mēs sākām taisīt karjeras okupācijas iestādēs, piemēram, astoņdesmitajos gados, kad Staļins jau sen bija miris, kad okupācijas režīms nebija vairs tik agresīvs. Tas ir mīts par maigajiem astoņdesmitajiem gadiem. Minēšu vienkāršu faktu. 1983.gadā VDK Latvijā arestēja 24 cilvēkus, kas bija lielākais arestēto skaits kopš 1972.gada.
[..] Piemēram, ir milzīga atšķirība starp vācieti, kurš nacistu laikā vienkārši klusi mēģināja dzīvot, un vācieti, kurš centās uzkalpoties nacistu varas hierarhijā. Pēc kara Vācija ilgstoši un mokoši tomēr šīs lietas izrunāja. Citām valstīm, piemēram, Francijai, okupācijas perioda neērtie jautājumi neatbildēti palika ilgāk, tomēr galu galā tiem pieķērās.
[..] Austrumeiropā, to skaitā Latvijā, izņemot šauru vēsturnieku slāni, ar šiem jautājumiem netiek strādāts joprojām. Nodevības pret savu valsti inde turpina netraucēti darboties. " - M. Zanders
"Izņēma, lai glābtu, un tad atlika atpakaļ, lai gāztu." -- Georgs Andrejevs
https://ir.lv/2020/01/14/deva-tev-iespe
https://twitter.com/unaunaunauna/st
It’s no secret to anyone—and therefore not a conspiracy theory—that communism and other forms of totalitarian rule are built on a culture of secrecy. Communism necessitates a strong central government, and for a central government to maintain strong control over a country, it’s necessary for them to control information flow into, within, and out of the country. This involves both direct and indirect censorship of the media and internet—and often, more importantly, tight administrative controls that govern the transfer of information within the country.
Therefore, it’s not a conspiracy theory to consider the possibility of a cover-up relating to the origin and the source of COVID-19 in Wuhan, Hubei, China. In fact, there is good evidence of Chinese cover-ups from the beginning of the pandemic.
There are many other reasons that justify investigating the Wuhan labs, and possibly even other labs in China that work with the same viruses. In particular, (a) the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 in a highly populated city in central China like Wuhan and close to the Wuhan CDC; (b) the existence of two labs in Wuhan that extensively sample bats and study coronaviruses; (c) the relatively close relationship between the SARS-CoV-2 virus and bat RaTG13 or BtCoV/4991 that the researchers obtained from bats in a cave that is 1,200 miles away from Wuhan, which suggests that SARS-CoV-2 progenitors came from the same Yunnan caves; (d) the widespread use of cell culture experiments in infectious disease transmission experiments that can allow closely related viruses to adapt to human receptors; (e) the use of chimeric coronaviruses in civil research with different backbones—the lack of knowledge of the pre-outbreak collections of the Wuhan labs justifies international inspections, and the diversity of bat ACE2 receptors can also obscure the origin of the virus as the spike proteins of natural bat coronaviruses are very diverse; (f) evidence of lax security and knowledge that lab accidents aren’t improbable; (g) evidence that not all sampled viruses are sequenced and published—the full BtCoV/4991 sequence hasn’t been published and remains a mystery despite ~99% similarity of the known portion to SARS-CoV-2, while that of RaTG13 was sampled in 2013 and published in 2020. (The large similarity of the small partial sequence of BtCoV/4991 [published in 2016] with SARS-CoV2 is evidently what motivated the WIV to release the sequence of RaTG13 which matches the known portion of BtCoV/4991. It has not been independently verified that the sequence uploaded for bat RaTG13 is accurate); (h) the available data doesn’t suggest that closely related SARS-CoV-2-like bat relatives are common among bats in China but unique to bats from a particular Yunnan area; (i) the available data doesn’t support the wet market hypothesis which prompted some lab accident deniers to propose the alternative farm source hypothesis.
The farm hypothesis is highly improbable as the bats that carry SARS-CoV-2-like coronaviruses are 1,200 miles away from Wuhan. It would have been a more probable cause had the outbreak started in the Yunnan province. Further, there is no circumstantial evidence to support the farm hypothesis or even suggest it; it’s pure speculation. A notable fact is that most bat species near Wuhan hibernate in December as pointed out by Lu et al. If the farm hypothesis was true, multiple spillovers in different cities would have taken place which is not suggested by the data, unless transmission within the intermediate species is improbable which would have made it much less likely for the outbreak to start in Wuhan from the first place.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/scie
Dr Shi Zhengli was working on bat Coronavirus research in the US and we closed the program down in 2014 for being too dangerous. She returned to China to continue her research in Wuhan. It is neither fiction, nor dangerous to speculate that this outbreak started at the Wuhan lab. It may not have been engineered. However, the bats are brought to Wuhan lab from hundreds of miles away to be studied. It is also very possible that a bat carrying the natural virus being studied at the lab escapes or infected a person. Why is China reopening the wet markets if they know the virus came from there? I will let you ponder on that.
https://thebulletin.org/2014/03/threate
https://www.the-scientist.com/news-anal
Q: Has there ever been a lab-engineered coronavirus from bats?
A: Yes. On November 12, 2015, the highly-respected scientific journal Nature published an article about one. In the explanatory note, researchers stated: “An experiment that created a hybrid version of a bat coronavirus — one related to the virus that causes SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) — has triggered renewed debate over whether engineering lab variants of viruses with possible pandemic potential is worth the risks.” Then in 2016, Ralph Baric and colleagues at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill showed that the same bat virus could infect live mice that had been engineered to express the human gene for the ACE2 receptor. The virus was “poised for human emergence,” as the title of Dr. Baric’s paper put it.
Q: Maye the lab was created there and bats were studied there in the first place because the general area was known to already have virus-carrying animals like bats?
A: I'm afraid not. The bats used in the WIV experiments were mainly from Yunnan province, over 1000kms away from Wuhan.
“If horseshoe bats were the primary host, how did the bat virus hop from its natural reservoir in a subtropical region to the bustling city of Wuhan hundreds of miles away?“
https://www.indiehackers.com/post/the-o
"At the junction of the S1 and S2 protein subunits, COVID-19 has just such a polybasic cleavage site that uses the host cell enzyme furin, which is found in many human organ systems and known to be involved in the pathogenic processes of viruses, for example, HIV, Ebola and various strains of coronavirus.
The presence of the furin polybasic cleavage site may explain clinical reports of COVID-19’s ability to infect a variety of organ systems.
The furin polybasic cleavage site in COVID-19 can be roughly defined by the amino acid sequence SPRRARS, which is Serine-Proline-Arginine-Arginine-Alanine-A
Within that broader sequence, the minimum sequence for a furin cleavage site is R-X-X-R, where Arginine (R) occurs in the 3rd and 6th positions and positions 4 and 5 can be any amino acid, but activity of the furin cleavage site can be significantly enhanced with a basic amino acid like Arginine in the 4th position, as occurs in COVID-19.
It is very important to note that the furin polybasic cleavage site in COVID-19 is unique and has not been found in any of the coronaviruses yet identified as close relatives.
Remarkably, however, such sequences do exist in other viruses, including coronaviruses not directly related to COVID-19. [..]
It is also interesting to note that the S2′ sequence of bat coronavirus CoVZX21, often cited as a close relative of CoVid-19, has an identical amino acid sequence of SKPSKRS at that position, but is demonstrably different at the critical S1 cleavage site.
The bioengineering capability to insert polybasic cleavage sites into the coronavirus S1 protein is well-established, already from 2006.
Scientists in China have used site-directed mutagenesis to alter the cleavage site of an infectious bronchitis virus by introducing basic amino acids, thereby increasing its pathogenicity and resulting in a “gain of function” such that the new virus was capable of infecting the brain producing “severe encephalitis.”
Applying the bioengineering techniques of recombination, site-directed mutagenesis and reassortment, CoVid-19 could have been created through the introduction of a furin polybasic cleavage site onto an appropriate coronavirus “backbone” from the catalogue of isolated strains in Chinese laboratories.
All of the above could be considered coincidental except for the fact that no clear evolutionary pathway has been identified that would explain the presence of COVID-19’s furin polybasic cleavage site, especially given its enhanced pathogenic significance.
It is also strange that with all the information publicly available, the most widely cited article by many scientists and media, “The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2,” never mentions BtCoV/4991.
And how did a coronavirus, whether it be RaTG13 or BtCoV/4991, isolated from bats in Yunnan Province, nearly 1,000 miles away, end up in the Wuhan Seafood Market, if that was indeed the source of the outbreak?
Or, more likely, was it the result of a leak from a Wuhan laboratory, where experiments were being conducted on a variety of bat coronaviruses?"
Lawrence Sellin, Retired US Army Colonel
https://www.wionews.com/author/lawerenc
"This work, results from which were also published in Nature Medicine, demonstrated that SARS-CoV’s jump from bats to humans had not been a fluke; other bat coronaviruses were capable of something similar. Useful to know. But giving pathogens and potential pathogens extra powers in order to understand what they may be capable of is a controversial undertaking. These “gain of function” experiments, their proponents insist, have important uses such as understanding drug resistance and the tricks viruses employ to evade the immune system. They also carry obvious risks: the techniques on which they depend could be abused; their products could leak. The creation of an enhanced strain of bird flu in 2011 in an attempt to understand the peculiar virulence of the flu strain responsible for the pandemic of 1918-19 caused widespread alarm. America stopped funding gain-of-function work for several years.
Filippa Lentzos, who studies biomedicine and security at King’s College, London, says the possibility of SARS-CoV-2 having an origin connected with legitimate research is being discussed widely in the world of biosecurity. The possibilities speculated about include a leak of material from a laboratory and also the accidental infection of a human being in the course of work either in a lab or in the field.
Leaks from laboratories, including BSL-4 labs, are not unheard of. The world’s last known case of smallpox was caused by a leak from a British laboratory in 1978. An outbreak of foot and mouth disease in 2007 had a similar origin. In America there have been accidental releases and mishandlings involving Ebola, and, from a lower-containment-level laboratory, a deadly strain of bird flu. In China laboratory workers seem to have been infected with SARS and transmitted it to contacts outside on at least two occasions.
A preprint published on ResearchGate, a website, by two Chinese scientists and subsequently removed suggested that work done there may have been cause for concern. This lab is reported to have housed animals—including, for one study, hundreds of bats from Hubei and Zhejiang provinces—and to have specialised in pathogen collection.
Richard Pilch, who works on chemical and biological weapons non-proliferation at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, in California, says that there is one feature of the new virus which might conceivably have arisen during “passaging experiments” in which pathogens are passed between hosts so as to study the evolution of their ability to spread.
Many scientists think that with so many biologists actively hunting for bat viruses, and gain-of-function work becoming more common, the world is at increasing risk of a laboratory-derived pandemic at some point. “One of my biggest hopes out of this pandemic is that we address this issue—it really worries me,” says Dr Pilch. Today there are around 70 BSL-4 sites in 30 countries. More such facilities are planned."
https://www.economist.com/science-and-t
"[The] Obama administration and U.S. National Institutes of Health were sufficiently worried about scientists working on these types of viruses, and the risk of an accidental release of one of these viruses, to halt federal funding for this research. They were also sufficiently worried about an accidental release to encourage anyone not taking federal funding to halt their work as well. They had good reason to be; in addition to the cases at the U.S. CDC and FDA, the Chinese CDC’s National Institute of Virology in southern Beijing had accidentally released SARS. Twice. The “pause” on funding remained in place for the remainder of the Obama administration, and wasn’t lifted until a year into the Trump presidency."
https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morn
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi
Mary Beard, professor of classics at Cambridge University, notes that elite Romans strived to switch off as much as possible. “Our division between leisure and work is reversed in the Roman world. What we mostly do is work and, when we’re not working, we’re at leisure.” In Rome it was the other way round for the elite: “The normal state of play is otium, it’s leisure. And sometimes, you’re not at leisure, you’re doing business, which is negotium.” Though the English word “business” has an inbuilt aura of action and industry, the Latin neg-otium – literally “not leisure” – has an almost grudging sense of pleasure denied.
Romans didn’t have to go to a special place to work. Their tablets and styluses were every bit as portable as our own, a feature that elite Romans took full advantage of. Two thousand years ago Pliny the Younger, an author and lawyer, wrote a letter to his friend Tacitus. He had found, he said, a splendid new method of working. Instead of going about his business at a desk, he had decided that day to combine it with a boar hunt. He sat next to his nets “not with boar spear or javelin, but pencil and tablet, by my side”. After expanding on the pleasure of his method for some time, Pliny (the office boar) concluded that this was a remarkably productive way to work since “the mind is stirred and quickened into activity by brisk bodily exercise”. He concluded by advising Tacitus, “whenever you hunt, to take your tablets along with you”.
https://www.1843magazine.com/features/d
Neoliberālisms piečurāja manu kāpņutelpu, bet sociāldemokrātija izglāba kaķīti.
“The Americans are the best Europeans” he sentenced, and he meant that the best European values continued to live in the American political culture. Moreover he intended also that the USA performed successfully a role of “federator” of the European states. In fact, Hallstein was persuaded that the American federalist tradition, beginning with the original experience of his transition from the Confederation Articles of 1778 until the federalist constitution by the ideologic struggle of Hamilton and Madison's Federalist, could represent mutatis mutandis a good example for the European states too.
Hallstein was very far from a definition of the Atlantic Community, which was in the 1940s elaborated either by Walter Lippmann, or Henry Luce in the Life Magazine (both authors are never appointed in NWH or in Hallstein's works). Hallstein's recognition of the American role in European recovery and development was very different from the acceptance of an "Atlantic Community". In the reconstruction of this ideological concept made by Marco Mariano9, the characters of the "transatlantic, Christian and white world" composed a framework for the USA as "leader of a transatlantic space that included North America, western European countries, and the dominions of the southern hemisphere of the «white settlers»".
Of course this vision supposed "shared political and economic principles and institutions (liberal democracy, individual rights and the rule of law, free market and free trade), cultural traditions (Christianity and western civilization), national interests" (p. 163), which the European Hallstein in according with the Atlantic Charter and NATO's political and strategical antisoviet finalities could largely share too. What Hallstein could not entirely share in this vision was probably the stress upon the minor consideration of Europe in the terms of leadership and contours of this "western civilization". He preferred anyway to speak more of an "open partnership" than of "community".
And in Europe also diminished the belief in taking measurables steps in the direction of unity, because there were growing - against Hallstein's thought - forces believing that Community had to be seen as more of a trading bloc in formation than as a political partner and military ally which would be able to ease the USA's growing burden of global responsibility.
De Gaulle Europe's politics of an "Europe of the Europeans" - against American and NATO's influence -, with his veto against Britain's accession on January 1963 in the EEC, the gaullist France's egocentric policy of the "empty chair", which ended with Hallstein's defeat, and France's withdrawal from the military integration of NATO, made grow the American disillusion as for the possibility of an "Atlantic partnership" with the Europeans.
Nevertheless, Hallstein considered that as a developing period and underlined that European integration was "a long-term undertaking" and that the present economic Europe was only the core of the future Europe. He asserted: "Only when full economic union is seen and felt by Europeans to be a real part of everyday life, will this EEC develop a strong urge in the direction of political union. Political union remains a necessary and realistic objective of European integration policy. It is the objective which the fathers of the Rome Treaties had before them, and the Treaties were framed with it in view". In this perspective, but not automatically, Hallstein foresaw Europe had to develop a foreign common policy and a common defence policy. And there, in a "world of tomorrow", had had to be a new encounter for American-European "Atlantic partnership".
How far is today's world from this vision, everybody can judge.
"Presently, the Baltic states’ rail and road infrastructures are not adequate for either economic or military needs, which diminishes the overall security of the region.
Transportation, energy and digital infrastructure are key priorities for the Three Seas Initiative, and the Baltic states are major beneficiaries. Projects receive funding from member states and the EU, and in February of 2020, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the US would pledge up to $1 billion towards the initiative to support US allies’ efforts to counter Russian and Chinese pressure and influence. The Trump administration has been a vocal supporter of the initiative in light of the strategic significance of Central and Eastern Europe amid a reemergent great power competition. The Rail Baltica and Via Baltica projects, which connect the Baltic states along a north-south route with the rest of Europe, are priority projects for the initiative.
Improvements to the Via Baltica highway route and the construction of Rail Baltica will not only improve flows of goods and people between Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia themselves, but also bring the three countries closer to continental Europe. Widening the Via Baltica highway and improving intersections within cities and along city bypasses will facilitate faster and safer freight and passenger transport, while Rail Baltica diversifies options for said transport. In so doing, the Baltic countries will be more economically interconnected with the West and will be less reliant on the whims of Russia in the rail sector. For example, Russia may refuse to send spare parts for technologies of Russian/Soviet origin, and already seeks to bypass the Baltic states’ railways for export of goods west, which has resulted in major losses of cargo volume and personnel layoffs. More broadly, the Baltic states will be more resilient in the face of hybrid attacks from Russia targeting their economies. By extension, greater economic security will make Baltic society more resilient in the face of information warfare, as well.
In a crisis scenario, this region and its infrastructure will be critical to maintain a supply line to the Baltics. Wider roads and the existence of a north-south railway line will provide quicker and higher volume flows of troops and equipment to resupply the NATO enhanced forward presence (eFP) battalions already present in the Baltics in the event of conflict with Russia. Indeed, successive NATO summits have acknowledged that rail infrastructure is critical to ensuring rapid mobilization of large and heavy military units across Europe. This capability is the key to the eFP battalions’ credibility as a deterrent. Given the Baltic states’ geography vis-à-vis NATO and Russia, logistics is a key problem for the allies, and any improvements that will enable faster response will greatly improve the security situation in the region.
The status quo of current Baltic road and rail infrastructure is not sustainable for either economic or military security. The lack of a north-south railway line forces freight and passenger traffic onto a highway system that cannot accommodate the volume of demand, and it would be difficult to send troops and heavy equipment along that route efficiently in war-time. By undertaking road improvement projects along the critical Via Baltica route and pushing forward with Rail Baltica, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia are investing in their economic and military security alike."
https://www.fpri.org/article/2020/04/th
When I asked him what he thinks makes America different, he said: “America is a terrible place to be stupid.”
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