It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Sunday, January 09, 2022
ARMED STRUGGLE IS NOT TERRORISM Colombia's leftist ELN rebels claim responsibility for bombing A destroyed truck of the Police Mobile Anti-Riot Squad (ESMAD) is seen after an explosion in Cali
Sat, January 8, 2022, 2:41 PM·2 min read
BOGOTA (Reuters) - Colombia's leftist rebel National Liberation Army (ELN) on Saturday claimed responsibility for an attack in the country's third-largest city, Cali, that injured more than a dozen police officers. ELN operatives carried out the bombing, which was directed against members of ESMAD, the Colombian national police's feared anti-riot unit, late on Friday, while they were traveling in a vehicle.
"At 9:55 pm on Jan. 7, our units carried out an operation against ESMAD ... in the city of Cali," the ELN said in a statement published on a website belonging to its so-called urban front, adding that its members withdrew uninjured.
The ELN and national police both confirmed that 13 officers were injured in the attack, with police officials saying that some were seriously hurt. No deaths were reported.
The attack drew condemnation from the government and police, with President Ivan Duque decrying it as an attempt by the rebels to influence presidential elections later this year.
"Colombia does not and will not bend to terrorism and our government will never reward terrorists," Duque said in a message on Twitter.
Colombia is offering a reward of 1 billion pesos for information regarding El Rolo, the leader of the ELN's urban front, and 350 million pesos for information concerning those who planned and executed the attack, said General Jorge Vargas, the country's top police official. Together, the two rewards amount to around $334,000.
LIBERATION THEOLOGY IN PRACTICE The ELN is estimated to have some 2,350 combatants and has fought the government since its 1964 founding by extremist Roman Catholic priests.
Peace talks between the ELN and Colombia's government were put on ice after a rebel bombing killed 22 police cadets in 2019.
The government accuses Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro of harboring ELN rebels and dissident members of the demobilized FARC guerrillas who reject a 2016 peace deal, something the government in Caracas has repeatedly denied.
(Reporting by Oliver Griffin and Luis Jaime Acosta; Editing by Paul Simao)
PEOPLE BEFORE PROFIT
From Texas to India, a patent-free Covid vaccine looks to bridge equity gaps
Evan Bush Fri, January 7, 2022
Millions of doses of a new, cheap coronavirus vaccine will soon be available in India, and they will arrive with one distinction neither Moderna nor Pfizer can claim: They’re patent-free.
The new CORBEVAX inoculation, which was developed in Texas with decades-old technology and little support from the U.S. government, received emergency use authorization last week from India’s drug regulation agency. The researchers behind the vaccine stand with little to gain financially. “We don’t own any intellectual property,” said Dr. Peter Hotez, a researcher who helped lead the vaccine’s development.
Efforts to immunize the world are falling far short of some expectations, and human rights campaigners are pressuring pharmaceutical companies to transfer new vaccine technology to speed global access to shots.
And while doubts linger about CORBEVAX’s effectiveness against the omicron variant and a lack of public data, its development, outside the path of typical pharmaceutical development and stripped of the same financial incentives for inventors, represents a model for others and could bolster their arguments, vaccine equity advocates said.
Calling it the “World’s Coronavirus Vaccine” in a news release, Hotez and colleagues say CORBEVAX — which is cheap and stable and could be relatively easy to scale — will be key to addressing global equity gaps.
When Covid-19 began spreading around the world, Hotez and Maria Elena Bottazzi, researchers at the Baylor College of Medicine and leaders of Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine, got to work — with a head start. About a decade ago, the pair developed vaccine candidates for coronaviruses like SARS and MERS until funding ran out. Their other work had centered on neglected diseases associated with poverty, like hookworm infections.
“That’s all we know how to do is make durable, low-cost vaccines for global health,” Hotez said.
As new mRNA vaccine technology raced ahead, the pair continued to pursue decades-old technology to create a recombinant protein vaccine. Their method, which uses yeast to create a key component of the coronavirus, is similar to what has been used to create hepatitis B vaccines since the 1980s.
“Nobody was paying attention to these conventional technologies,” Bottazzi said.
Hotez and Bottazzi attracted little government funding, even as the government’s vaccine development effort, Operation Warp Speed, showered pharmaceutical companies with cash. But they kept at it.
“A lot of the vaccine producers in low- and middle-income countries realized they were going to be on the outside,” Bottazzi said. “We provided an attractive alternative.”
To this day, countries like India remain without access to the mRNA vaccines produced by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, which have largely been purchased and distributed by wealthy countries. Boosters, and even fourth doses, are being administered in rich countries before access to first and second doses are available worldwide.
“No country can boost its way out of the pandemic,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, said in December.
Hotez and Bottazzi hope CORBEVAX can fill the gap in India and other countries.
Biological E, the company that licensed CORBEVAX in India and ran clinical trials there, said it will soon be able to produce 100 million doses each month, the company said in a statement. The Indian government has ordered 300 million doses already.
CORBEVAX has some advantages. Research and development for the vaccine in Texas cost no more than $7 million, most of which was provided by philanthropists, Hotez and Bottazzi said.
The vaccine is relatively cheap to produce and easy to store, and it can be created anywhere hepatitis B vaccines are manufactured.
Because the technology is nearly a half-century old, many countries are familiar with it and have perfected use of its technology, said Jeremy Kamil, an associate professor of microbiology and immunology at LSU Health Shreveport, who wasn’t involved in developing CORBEVAX.
“There’s nothing prohibitively pricey about all of this,” Kamil said, adding that protein subunit vaccines are generally stable and will be much easier to store than mRNA vaccines.
Clinical trials conducted by Biological E found that the vaccine was safe and effective, the company said in a statement. The company said the vaccine was more than 90 percent effective against the original strain of Covid-19 and more than 80 percent effective against the delta variant.
Data from a clinical trial with more than 3,000 participants have yet to be published, which leaves experts wary.
“Until they are showing the data, there’s going to be questions about what it really means,” Kamil said.
Hotez said Biological E was working to get the data published.
Achal Prabhala, a public health activist and researcher based in Bangalore, India, called Biological E a “blue-chip” vaccine manufacturer but objected to what he called “science by press release” and said there needs to be public data on how effective CORBEVAX is against the omicron variant.
Kamil had concerns about how the vaccine would hold up against the omicron variant, which has reduced the effectiveness of many vaccines, particularly those that rely on technology other than mRNA.
CORBEVAX is designed to introduce people’s immune systems to the coronaviruses’ receptor-binding domain — part of the spike protein targeted by many vaccines.
“It’s the most rapidly changing part of the spike. Omicron basically remodeled the entire thing,” Kamil said. “I would guess that might not be very effective against omicron.”
Kamil said that it should be relatively easy to update the vaccine formula to better protect against the variant, if necessary, but that it would take time.
Although questions remain about the CORBEVAX’s effectiveness in a shifted landscape in which the omicron variant is dominant, experts said its development should be a model for immunizing the world population and reducing vaccine inequity.
“For its practical utility, I wish it had come out months earlier,” Prabhala said, saying it would have been helpful before the omicron variant emerged. But “its symbolic utility is priceless.”
Prabhala said about 120 facilities around the world, including some in poorer countries, could produce mRNA vaccines if the pharmaceutical companies transferred their technology.
Hotez and Bottazzi’s approach is an ethic to point toward, Prabhala said.
The longer it takes to vaccinate the world, the more chances the coronavirus will have to mutate as it infects new hosts.
“We know variants emerge more rapidly in unvaccinated populations,” Kamil said. “If we don’t address vaccine equity, we are always going to be playing catch-up with the latest variant.”
Cyprus reportedly discovers a Covid variant that combines omicron and delta
A researcher in Cyprus has discovered a strain of the coronavirus that combines the delta and omicron variant, Bloomberg News reported Saturday.
Leondios Kostrikis, professor of biological sciences at the University of Cyprus, called the strain “deltacron.”
It’s still too early to tell whether there are more cases of the strain or what impacts it could have.
Staff at CSL are working in the lab on November 08, 2020 in Melbourne, Australia, where they will begin manufacturing AstraZeneca-Oxford University COVID-19 vaccine. Darrian Traynor | Getty Images
A researcher in Cyprus has discovered a strain of the coronavirus that combines the delta and omicron variant, Bloomberg News reported on Saturday.
Leondios Kostrikis, professor of biological sciences at the University of Cyprus, called the strain “deltacron,” because of its omicron-like genetic signatures within the delta genomes, Bloomberg said.
So far, Kostrikis and his team have found 25 cases of the virus, according to the report. It’s still too early to tell whether there are more cases of the strain or what impacts it could have.
“We will see in the future if this strain is more pathological or more contagious or if it will prevail” against the two dominant strains, delta and omicron, Kostrikis said in an interview with Sigma TV Friday. He believes omicron will also overtake deltacron, he added.
The researchers sent their findings this week to GISAID, an international database that tracks viruses, according to Bloomberg.
The deltacron variant comes as omicron continues its rapid spread across the globe, causing a surge in Covid-19 cases. The U.S. is reporting a seven-day average of more than 600,000 new cases daily, according to a CNBC analysis Friday of data from Johns Hopkins University. That’s a 72% increase from the previous week and a pandemic record.
ROARING TWENTIES SPECULATORS
Bitcoin ETF Goes From Boom to Bust After a Record U.S. Debut
Vildana Hajric
(Bloomberg) -- The crypto bloodbath has transformed a famous Bitcoin ETF that launched the most successful debut ever into one of the biggest losers for an issuer in their first two months of trading.
With a 30% drop, the ProShares Bitcoin Strategy exchange-traded fund, ticker BITO, is now one of the 10 worst performers when looking at returns two months after a public listing, Bloomberg Intelligence data analyzed by Athanasios Psarofagis show.
Thank the wider retreat in digital currencies as the Federal Reserve readies to withdraw pandemic stimulus. Bitcoin, the largest digital asset by market value, lost more than 34% in the two months after BITO’s debut on Oct. 19, and is down significantly from a November peak of above $68,000 per coin. Since the start of the year, Bitcoin is roughly 10% lower.
“Timing can be tough sometimes with ETFs,” Psarofagis said. “You aren’t hearing much about the performance flop of BITO since it went live.”
When it made its first showing, BITO saw turnover of almost $1 billion, which solidified it as the best debut behind only a fund that had pre-seed investments, Bloomberg data showed at the time. The fund also drew in $1 billion in assets in just two days, a record. For the crypto industry, it underscored pent-up demand for Bitcoin exposure in an ever-maturing institutional ecosystem.
But BITO is down near 9% this week alone. And flows data show initial euphoria also hasn’t kept up. It hasn’t seen a single day of inflows since 2022 started.
The fund is based on futures contracts and was filed under mutual fund rules that SEC Chairman Gary Gensler has said provide “significant investor protections.” An ETF that directly holds Bitcoin does not yet exist in the U.S. due to a multitude of regulatory concerns.
Still, Psarofagis says its performance thus far won’t necessarily impact future industry growth. “You can see some other ETFs had a rough start out of the gate but can still raise assets,” he said in reference to his list.
N.Y. governor proposes 1st-ever statewide ban on gas hookups in new buildings
As the centerpiece of a multipronged initiative to combat climate change, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul proposed on Wednesday a first-of-its-kind statewide ban on natural gas hookups in all new buildings.
“New construction in the state will be zero-emission by 2027, and we will build climate-friendly electric homes and promote electric cars, trucks and buses,” Hochul said in her annual State of the State speech.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul speaks at a news conference. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
In a policy outline released Wednesday ahead of her State of the State address, Hochul’s office laid out her plan to curb on-site greenhouse gas emissions. In effect, the plan means that new buildings could have neither oil or gas burners for heat or hot water, nor gas stoves. The plan would also require energy analyses of every new building’s energy usage, known as “benchmarking.” Hochul’s climate change agenda also sets a goal of 2 million electrified homes by 2030.
The governor’s proposal comes on the heels of New York City becoming the largest locality in the United States to ban gas hookups in new buildings last month. New York City also already has an energy benchmarking law on the books, which was passed in 2016.
The statewide plan drew praise from some experts.
“When we passed the city bill, we said, ‘If you can do it here, you can do it anywhere,’ and it’s really exciting to see the governor prove that out, to take these ambitions statewide,” Ben Furnas, who served as former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s director of climate and sustainability, told Yahoo News. “It’s a proof point for the entire country that this makes a lot of sense.”
While the New York City law and the governor’s statewide proposal would apply only to new buildings, Furnas argued that regulations requiring electric heating for new and renovated buildings will galvanize the market and eventually make them the norm, even for owners of existing buildings.
“I think as heat pump technology for heating and hot water improves, as induction stoves become the most modern and exciting type of stove on the market, and, I think, as you see federal incentives to encourage these shifts — [and] potentially other regulatory steps that municipalities could take — I think you’re going to see, as people are replacing fossil fuel appliances in their home, they’re going to be shifting more and more to modern electric versions of these things,” Furnas said.
Electric stove. (Getty Images)
A study by the think tank RMI found that by 2040, the ban on new gas hookups in New York City will reduce the emissions that cause global warming by the equivalent of taking 450,000 cars off the road. Out of New York state’s population of 19.45 million, 11 million residents live outside New York City, so expanding the policy to the rest of the state would presumably produce similar or even greater benefits.
While the measure would have to be passed by the state Legislature, it already enjoys some support in the state Capitol.
“Growing the demand for natural gas is exactly what the world does not need right now,” New York state Sen. Brian Kavanagh, who has sponsored legislation to phase out the use of natural gas in residential and commercial buildings, told the publication Stateline on Thursday. “If you build buildings that rely on fossil fuels, you are baking in very long-term needs."
Kavanaugh, like Hochul and the large majority of members in both chambers of New York’s Legislature, is a Democrat. On the other side of the aisle, 20 Republican-dominated states have passed laws preventing local governments from banning fossil fuel infrastructure.
In 2019, New York passed a law requiring the state to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. According to a 2021 state government report, buildings are the biggest contributor of greenhouse gas emissions in New York, accounting for 32 percent of the total. Currently, New York still relies on fossil fuels including natural gas to produce much of its electricity, but it has a goal, also mandated in state law, of reaching 70 percent renewable energy by 2030.
Nationally, the gas industry opposes bans on new gas hookups, arguing that electric heat pumps are more expensive for consumers than gas boilers. Furnas said, however, that isn’t necessarily true.
People walk past a new building construction site in midtown Manhattan in October. (Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images)
“For a new construction, our analysis showed that it was about comparable,” Furnas said. “For a retrofit, a lot of it is very site-dependent, and part of the impetus for setting a date certain for new buildings is it’s really going to help jump-start a much more robust market and competitive heat pump market. And I think you’ll see, as that technology improves and as developers and contractors get used to installing them in new buildings, you’ll have much more competitive products on the market and installers who are used to doing that kind of work.”
President Biden’s Build Back Better proposal includes customer rebates for electric heat pump installation, but that bill’s prospects for passage remain uncertain.
Although Hochul’s proposal would be trailblazing at the state level, it wouldn’t take effect for five years, which some environmental activists criticized as an excessively slow timeline. (In a concession to real estate developers, New York City also set 2027 as the deadline for large buildings, but buildings shorter than seven stories will have to stop being built with gas burners and stoves by 2024.) Climate activists also are frustrated that the governor has not embraced the Build Public Renewables Act, a bill with supporters in the state Senate and Assembly that would require the New York Power Authority to build out only renewable energy. In December, 55 legislators from both chambers of the state Assembly sent a letter to Hochul asking her to back the proposal, but it was not included in her State of the State agenda.
"As we face increasing hardship from climate change, we need to see more from the governor,” Patrick Robbins, coordinator of the New York Energy Democracy Alliance, told Yahoo News.
“Preexisting investments and a gas ban that won't take effect for five years are simply not enough. We need Gov. Hochul to pass the Build Public Renewables Act in the budget this year."
DIVIDE AND CONQUER France says Putin trying to bypass EU over Ukraine by talking solely to U.S
YOU CAN PLAY MORE THAN ONE CHESS GAME AT A TIME
Fri, January 7, 2022
PARIS (Reuters) -France's foreign minister said on Friday that Russia was trying to bypass the European Union by holding talks directly with the United States over Ukraine.
Talks between U.S. and Russian diplomats will begin in Geneva on Monday after weeks of tensions over Russian troop deployments near its border with neighbouring Ukraine, with envoys on each side trying to avert a crisis.
"(Russian President) Vladimir Putin wants to bypass the European Union... he wants to put dents in the EU cohesion, which is solidifying", Jean-Yves Le Drian told BFM TV and RMC Radio.
"You can't envisage EU security without the Europeans." France has just taken over the six-month rotating presidency of the EU.
French President Emmanuel Macron later told a news conference that he was planning to have discussions with Putin soon, to discuss topics including Ukraine - but he gave no details and did not say when that could take place.
Russia has moved nearly 100,000 troops close to its border with Ukraine. It says it is not preparing for an invasion but wants to see the West back off from its support for Ukraine's government and has demanded guarantees that NATO will not expand further eastwards.
"Putin has proposed to discuss with NATO to sort of return to the zones of influence from the past...which would mean Russia restore the spirit of Yalta," Le Drian said referring to the conference between World War Two Allied powers in February 1945 that gave the Soviet Union control over its eastern European neighbours.
"This is not our point of view, but we have to accept the discussion."
Russia annexed the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, drawing sanctions and condemnation from the West. Kyiv wants the territory back.
Le Drian said any further military incursion into Ukraine by Russia would bring "serious strategic consequences", with one option being a review of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea.
He said that despite Putin's assurances that he was beginning to withdraw troops from the region, Paris had yet to see that happen.
Senior French and German diplomats met with Russian counterparts in Moscow on Thursday as part of efforts to revive peace talks over eastern Ukraine.
(Reporting by John Irish, Benoit Van Overstraeten and Sudip Kar-GuptaEditing by Angus MacSwan and Frances Kerry)
STALINISTS OF A FEATHER Cambodia to take 'different approaches' to Myanmar crisis as ASEAN chair Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen speaks during a ceremony at the
Morodok Techo National Stadium in Phnom Penh
Sat, January 8, 2022
PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen did not seek to meet former Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi during his visit to the country this week and will take "different approaches" to the crisis there, Cambodia’s foreign minister said on Saturday.
The comments by Prak Sokhonn indicate Cambodia, this year's chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), will likely invite junta officials to ASEAN meetings - possibly starting with a foreign minister's meeting Jan. 17.
The regional grouping had last year taken the unprecedented step of excluding junta chief Min Aung Hlaing from its annual leaders' summit.
Hun Sen, who himself seized power in a 1997 coup and has in subsequent elections been criticised over crackdowns on his political opponents, returned from Myanmar on Saturday after a two-day trip.
His visit was the first by a head of government since the army overthrew the civilian administration of Aung San Suu Kyi on Feb. 1 last year, sparking months of protests and a bloody crackdown.
Myanmar's state media on Saturday reported that Min Aung Hlaing had thanked Hun Sun for "standing with Myanmar". The army has said its takeover was in response to election fraud and was in line with the constitution.
Prak Sokhonn, who accompanied Hun Sen to Myanmar, on Saturday denied the trip amounted to backing the junta, saying it was another way of working to implement a five-point ASEAN peace plan adopted in April.
He also confirmed that Hun Sen did not ask to meet with Suu Kyi, the Nobel laureate who has been in detention since the army takeover last year and faces more than a dozen criminal charges.
Prak Sokhonn, expected to take up the post as special envoy for Myanmar, said the refusal of the current envoy, Brunei's foreign minister, to visit without guarantees he could meet with Suu Kyi was unproductive.
"If they build a thick wall and we use our head to hit it, it is useless," Prak Sokhonn told reporters. "Cambodia uses different approaches to achieve the five-point consensus."
(Reporting by Prak Chan Thul; Writing by Kay Johnson; Editing by David Holmes)
WATER IS PROFIT
Intel will pay water authority $32M to build 6-mile pipeline
Theresa Davis, Albuquerque Journal, N.M. Fri, January 7, 2022,
Jan. 7—For Intel, making the computing chips that power modern devices is impossible without water.
Millions of gallons are needed each day to rinse the chemicals that polish each layer of the tiny semiconductors.
The chip-making giant announced a $3.5 billion retrofit of its Rio Rancho plant in May to boost production capacity of its chip-packaging technology.
To support water demand for the expansion, the company will pay the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority to build a $32 million, 6-mile water pipeline from two wells west of Universe Boulevard to the Rio Rancho plant.
Linda Qian, spokeswoman for Intel New Mexico, said the company will then filter the nonpotable groundwater onsite into "ultrapure water."
"We use that ultrapure water to clean the surface of the silicon wafer," Qian said. "If you think of the chip process as building layers on top of a wafer, in between each of those layers, you rinse with ultrapure water."
When the 200-acre site opened, Qian said, manufacturing demanded about 2 gallons of fresh water to produce 1 gallon of ultrapure water.
Now, the ratio is about 1 to 1.
Intel estimates demand at the expanded plant could be 1 million to 3 million gallons of water a day.
The pipeline project will also replace well motors, pumps and casings.
Intel also uses water for cooling towers, industrial equipment and landscaping.
"Most of our water is used and recycled, and used again, treated and then discharged," Qian said. "A portion of the water we use is lost to irrigation or some other processes, so our restoration efforts are focused on closing that gap."
In 2020, Intel pumped more than 756 million gallons of groundwater for its New Mexico plant, according to company data.
The company treated and discharged about 705 million gallons, or 93% of its withdrawals, back into the municipal system.
Intel has a goal of restoring more water than it uses by 2030.
In New Mexico, Intel has funded watershed restoration projects with Audubon, Trout Unlimited and the National Forest Foundation.
Qian said the company is pursuing more water and habitat projects with conservation groups to balance the increase in groundwater pumping.
The city-county water utility treats Intel's wastewater again before discharging it into the Rio Grande.
Utility spokesman David Morris said the two groundwater wells west of Universe Boulevard were taken out of service about two decades ago because they exceeded new federal standards for arsenic.
"Arsenic is mainly a West Side issue because of naturally occurring arsenic related to the volcanoes and volcanic rock," Morris said.
But the water authority reserved the wells as a backup source for the northwest part of town.
"In times of really high demand, maybe in the height of the summer months ... we can blend water from these wells with water brought in from elsewhere to get it to the federal standard," Morris said.
Intel will fund $15 million in transmission lines to boost the area's drinking water capacity and replace the utility's backup water source.
The water authority is preparing to ask the state Legislature for $30 million for projects in the utility's northwest service area, although Morris said the work is "only tangentially related to Intel."
"We're looking at adding some arsenic treatment capacity out there with an additional arsenic treatment plant," he said.
"We need to do some improvements to an existing pump station and we need to upgrade reservoirs."
The utility anticipates pipeline construction will begin in April. The system should be delivering water to the Intel facility by December.
Theresa Davis is a Report for America corps member covering water and the environment for the Albuquerque Journal.
BOTTOM OF THE BOOT, LICKER
Column: Scraping bottom, Kevin McCarthy manages to sink even lower Mark Z. Barabak Fri, January 7, 2022 Rep. Kevin McCarthy in 201`8. (Brendan Smialowski / AFP/Getty Images)
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Crazytown) has a history of spewing anti-vaccine, anti-mask, anti-science claptrap. This week her wacky effusions led to permanent suspension of her personal Twitter account.
Facebook — corporate motto: Putting profits first — also saw fit to briefly banish the Georgia congresswoman, an exile that lasted all of 24 hours. By Tuesday, Greene was once more free to offer constituent services and promulgate perfectly reasonable theories like the one about California's 2018 wildfires being started by Jewish-controlled space lasers.
In the year since taking office, Greene has proved to be nothing more than a political distraction, and an odious one at that. But the way GOP House leader Kevin McCarthy responded to her sanctioning by social media — and the fact he chose to weigh in — was telling.
"The American experiment is dependent on the freedom and ability of Americans to express themselves, which Republicans are fighting to preserve," the Republican from Bakersfield said in a statement.
The American experiment is also dependent on recognizing the will of voters as expressed in free and fairly conducted elections, which is something McCarthy and 146 of his Republicans colleagues refused to do on Jan. 6, 2021. But that's another column.
McCarthy further threatened to exact revenge. If Republicans take control of Congress in November's midterm election, he said, they would respond by "shutting down the business model you rely on today."
"Twitter (all big tech), if you shut down constitutionally protected speech (not lewd and obscene) you should lose 230 protection," McCarthy tweeted, referring to the provision in the 1996 federal Communications Decency Act that allows companies to publish user-posted materials without being held liable.
There are many good reasons for a long-overdue clampdown on monopolistic disinformation superspreaders like Facebook and other social media. But thwarting an investigation into the attempted violent overthrow of the government and restoring Greene's personal Twitter account are not two of them.
It's not as though Greene has been silenced. Her official congressional account remains fully functional, serving as a reliable source of misplaced pity and compassion for the jailed insurrectionists who tried to overturn the 2020 election.
Moreover, there is no constitutional right to be on Twitter or Facebook, any more than there is a constitutional right to walk into a store and take whatever you like without paying.
"Twitter simply kicking someone off is not a 1st Amendment violation," said Eugene Volokh, a UCLA expert on constitutional law. Government entities, not private companies, are bound by the guarantee of free expression.
Greene's quasi-termination for repeatedly violating Twitter's terms of service was, however, grist for an inevitable fundraising appeal. ("Rush an emergency contribution of $1.00 right away," she pleaded.) Having lost her committee assignments for, among other things, advocating violence against Democrats, Greene apparently has little to do with her time besides fleecing the gullible and outrage-prone.
Way back in 2019, McCarthy was among those Republicans who supported removing GOP Rep. Steve King from his committee assignments after the Iowa congressman defended the notion of white supremacy in a New York Times interview. (It was just the latest in a history of bigoted remarks from King.)
Fast-forward to last November. When Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) was sanctioned and stripped of his committee assignments for tweeting a video that depicted him killing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and swinging swords at President Biden, McCarthy adopted a much different stance. He told reporters that Gosar and Greene might even get better committee assignments if the GOP reclaims control of the House in November.
That's quite the incentive structure: Behave badly and reap the benefit.
However, that turnabout is nothing compared with McCarthy's head-snapping response to the violent and traitorous events of Jan. 6.
He initially held Donald Trump to account, flatly stating, "The president bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress by mob rioters.” That changed when the anticipated anti-Trump backlash failed to materialize among rank-and-file Republican voters. Soon McCarthy was on a flight to Palm Beach, Fla., to grovel and beg forgiveness.
For McCarthy, it all comes down to Trump, his worshipers like Greene and Gosar, and a belief that voters in the former president's thrall are indispensable to a robust GOP turnout this fall and McCarthy's long-nurtured dream of claiming the House speakership.
Holding out Greene as some kind of free-speech martyr because her personal Twitter account was shuttered is as fanciful and absurd as one of those pyrotechnic Jewish lasers. It's also a great deal more cynical.
But, sadly, it's not surprising. As McCarthy grasps for the height of congressional power, the only question is how low he is willing to go.
TIT FOR TAT Russia reacts furiously to Blinken jibe over troops in Kazakhstan
U.S. Secretary of State Blinken speaks about Russia and Ukraine at State Department in Washington
Sat, January 8, 2022, 6:31 AM·2 min read
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia responded angrily on Saturday to a comment by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken that Kazakhstan might have a hard time getting rid of Russian troops, saying he should reflect instead on U.S. military meddling around the world.
Blinken on Friday challenged Russia's justification for sending forces into Kazakhstan https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/kazakhstan-detains-ex-security-chief-crisis-convulses-nation-2022-01-08 after days of violent unrest in the Central Asian country.
"One lesson of recent history is that once Russians are in your house, it's sometimes very difficult to get them to leave," Blinken said.
Russia's foreign ministry called Blinken's remark "typically offensive" and accused him of joking about tragic events in Kazakhstan. It said Washington should analyse its own track record of interventions in countries such as Vietnam and Iraq.
"If Antony Blinken loves history lessons so much, then he should take the following into account: when Americans are in your house, it can be difficult to stay alive and not be robbed or raped," the ministry said on its Telegram social media channel.
"We are taught this not only by the recent past but by all 300 years of American statehood."
The ministry said the deployment in Kazakhstan was a legitimate response to Kazakhstan's request for support from the Collective Security Treaty Organisation, an alliance of ex-Soviet states that includes Russia.
The Kazakh intervention comes at a time of high tension in Moscow's relations with Washington as the two countries prepare for talks on the Ukraine crisis starting on Monday.
Moscow has deployed large numbers of troops near its border with Ukraine but denies Western suggestions it plans to invade.
