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Cake day: July 5th, 2023

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  • Nice to know that he at least can acknowledge reality?

    But behind it is a state dept that is ignoring it’s own studies rank indictment of isreals murderous actions in order to keep feeding the beast. Maybe it’s some far-flung plan to give isreal and netenyahoo all the rope they need to hang themselves, becoming global outcasts, which would then force them into accepting a two-state solution… Or the problem is a lot simpler.

    The records and interviews also show that the pressure to keep the arms pipeline moving also comes from the U.S. military contractors who make the weapons. Lobbyists for those companies have routinely pressed lawmakers and State Department officials behind the scenes to approve shipments both to Israel and other controversial allies in the region, including Saudi Arabia. When one company executive pushed his former subordinate at the department for a valuable sale, the government official reminded him that strategizing over the deal might violate federal lobbying laws, emails show.

    Weapons sales are a pillar of American foreign policy in the Middle East. Historically, the U.S. gives more money to Israel for weapons than it does to any other country. Israel spends most of those American tax dollars to buy weapons and equipment made by U.S. arms manufacturers.

    Don’t forget, while Biden and his state dept. is in charge of investigating and ensuring the proper use of these weapons, it’s congress that’s approving it. A congress that is balls-deep invested in U.S. weapons manufacturers.

    For Israel and NATO allies, if the sale is worth at least $100 million for weapons or $25 million for equipment, Congress also gets final approval.

    The most widely held defense contractor stock among senators and representatives is Honeywell, an American company that makes sensors and guiding devices that are being used by the Israeli military in its airstrikes in Gaza. The second most commonly held defense stock by Congress is RTX, formerly known as Raytheon, the company that makes missiles for Israel’s Iron Dome, among other weapons systems. - Sludge Article


  • There are two reasons he believes the neocortex could be replaced, albeit only slowly. The first is evidence from rare cases of benign brain tumors, like a man described in the medical literature who developed a growth the size of an orange. Yet because it grew very slowly, the man’s brain was able to adjust, shifting memories elsewhere, and his behavior and speech never seemed to change—even when the tumor was removed.

    That’s proof, Hébert thinks, that replacing the neocortex little by little could be achieved “without losing the information encoded in it” such as a person’s self-identity.

    The second source of hope, he says, is experiments showing that fetal-stage cells can survive, and even function, when transplanted into the brains of adults. For instance, medical tests underway are showing that young neurons can integrate into the brains of people who have epilepsy and stop their seizures.

    “It was these two things together—the plastic nature of brains and the ability to add new tissue—that, to me, were like, ‘Ah, now there has got to be a way,’” says Hébert.

    Very interesting. I’ve also seen research suggesting that the application of stem cells to damaged neural tissue within the spinal cord could repair it, so the idea that you could use a similar approach to actual brain health isn’t such a big leap. But still, wow. I wonder how long it would take for the immature cells to develop into “adult mode” that’s fully integrated into the patients cortex. In order to replace the entire brain, you’d have to do it in like, 8 parts, with years of recovery time in between each surgery. Also there would exist the potential for the new cells to develop into like, a second, smaller brain, if the connections sour or if the new material isn’t stimulated the “right” way.