Kooky Old Bird

I flit, I float, I fleetly flee, I fly. CaCaw! Spoonie with a fierce heart. RTs are not endorsements. She/They

[Briana Mills, LMFT ♿️🏳️‍🌈🍉 @theBrianaMills]

People vehemently believe that there are safety nets in place if you become disabled. That no matter what, you have all your needs met. If you believe this, you’re in for a rude awakening if you ever become disabled.

[Ruth Brooker @erbrooker]

I don't know why I didn't think of this before! The local paper is automatically delivered free to thousands of people in my community.

Since it landed on everyone's doormats I've had about ten people wave in the street and holler, " hey, saw your article!"
1/

[James Tate @JamesTate121]

On October 1969, in a quiet advertising office in Los Angeles after midnight, Daniel Ellsberg stood alone at a Xerox machine feeding page after page of classified documents through the feeder.

Each sheet was stamped TOP SECRET. Each copy he made was a federal felony.

He was not a radical or a traitor. He was a 38-year-old former Marine Corps officer with a Harvard PhD in economics, a senior Pentagon analyst who had helped shape U.S. Vietnam policy, and one of the few civilians granted the highest security clearances in the country. He had believed in the war. He had briefed cabinet members, advised ambassadors, flown combat missions as an observer. He had seen the inside of the machine.

Then he read 7,000 pages that proved the machine had been lying for a quarter century.

The documents—later known as the Pentagon Papers—were a classified, 47-volume study commissioned by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara in 1967. They traced American involvement in Vietnam from World War II through 1968. Their central revelation was stark: four consecutive presidents—Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson—had privately concluded the war was unwinnable yet continued to escalate it, sending tens of thousands of young Americans to their deaths to avoid the political cost of withdrawal.

By late 1969 more than 40,000 U.S. troops had been killed in a war the government knew it could not win. The public had been told victory was near, progress steady, the dominoes safe. The documents showed the opposite: deliberate deception, manipulated intelligence, repeated decisions to prolong a lost cause for reasons of credibility and domestic politics.

Ellsberg faced a choice: protect his career, his freedom, his family—or expose the truth that was killing thousands.

He chose truth.

Copying 7,000 pages alone at night was excruciatingly slow. Every passing headlight outside could be the FBI. Every jammed sheet risked exposure. The risk was not abstract: under the Espionage Act he could face life in federal prison.

Then Ellsberg made a decision that still stuns people who hear it.

He brought his children into the room.

His son Robert was 13. His daughter Mary was 10.

On the nights they helped, Robert ran the Xerox machine—feeding pages, collating stacks. Mary sat cross-legged on the floor with scissors, carefully cutting the words TOP SECRET off each photocopy so the duplicates would not be immediately identifiable as stolen classified material.

Years later Ellsberg explained why he involved them:

“I expected to be in prison very shortly. I wanted them to know that their father was doing something in a businesslike way—a calm, sober way—that I thought had to be done.”

He told Robert directly: this would probably put him in prison. He wanted his children to understand that conscience sometimes demands sacrifice, that doing the right thing is not always safe, and that a parent’s most important legacy is not wealth or status but the example of moral courage.

For nearly two years Ellsberg tried to act through official channels. He approached six senators and several congressmen, urging them to enter the documents into the Congressional Record so they could be published legally and protected by the Speech or Debate Clause. Every one of them declined—some out of political caution, some because they feared the legal consequences.

So in March 1971 he gave copies to The New York Times.

On June 13, 1971, the Times published the first installment. The Nixon administration reacted with fury. For the first time in American history, the federal government sought prior restraint—asking a court to block a newspaper from publishing. A federal judge issued a temporary injunction against the Times.

Ellsberg responded by giving the documents to The Washington Post. When they were blocked, to the Boston Globe. Then to more outlets. The truth spread faster than the government could contain it.

President Nixon did not merely want the leak stopped. He wanted Ellsberg destroyed.

He formed a secret White House unit nicknamed “the Plumbers,” tasked with discrediting the leaker by any means necessary. They broke into the office of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist, Dr. Lewis Fielding, searching for compromising personal material. They found nothing usable, but the break-in was a felony.

The Justice Department charged Ellsberg with espionage, theft, and conspiracy. He faced 115 years in federal prison.

The trial began in Los Angeles in 1973. Prosecutors portrayed Ellsberg as a traitor who had endangered national security. They demanded he be made an example.

Then the government’s own misconduct began to surface.

The Fielding break-in became public. Evidence of illegal wiretaps and prosecutorial overreach mounted. Most explosively, it emerged that Nixon had offered trial judge William Matthew Byrne Jr. the directorship of the FBI—while the trial was under way.

The offer was blatant judicial tampering.

On May 11, 1973, Judge Byrne dismissed all charges against Ellsberg with prejudice, citing “improper government conduct that precluded a fair trial.”

Daniel Ellsberg walked free.

The Pentagon Papers did not end the Vietnam War overnight, but they changed everything. They confirmed what millions already suspected: the government had systematically lied to the public for decades about a war that cost more than 58,000 American lives. Public opposition surged. Congress began restricting funding. The war that could not be ended politically was finally being ended by exposure.

There was one more consequence Nixon had not foreseen.

The same Plumbers unit that burgled Ellsberg’s psychiatrist later broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex. Nixon’s obsession with destroying Daniel Ellsberg helped set in motion the scandal that destroyed his presidency.

Ellsberg did not just expose lies about Vietnam. He inadvertently helped expose corruption at the highest level of American government.

He lived to 92, dying on June 16, 2023. For the rest of his life he remained an antiwar activist, whistleblower advocate, and lecturer on government secrecy and conscience. He never regretted his decision.

His children, Robert and Mary, grew up understanding something profound: that citizenship sometimes requires courage. That doing the right thing is not always safe. That their father chose conscience over comfort, even when it meant risking prison and involving them in an act that could have cost him everything.

The Pentagon Papers did not stop the war immediately. But they changed how Americans view their government. They proved that citizens have both the right and the responsibility to demand truth from their leaders.

Today Daniel Ellsberg is remembered as one of history’s most consequential whistleblowers. The phrase “pulling an Ellsberg” entered the language as shorthand for exposing government wrongdoing at great personal risk.

But in late 1969 he was simply a man in a friend’s office at night, feeding classified pages into a Xerox machine while his 13-year-old son collated and his 10-year-old daughter cut TOP SECRET stamps off the copies.

He could have stayed silent. Kept his clearances. Protected his career and family.

Instead he handed scissors to his daughter and told her to start cutting.

Because sometimes the most patriotic act is to tell the truth—even when your government calls it treason.

[adam.tsuris @AdamTsuris]

You don't need the government to implement an N95 mandate to wear an N95. You don't need the government to ban GenAI to stop using it. You can do the right thing on your own.

[Harry Spoelstra @HarrySpoelstra]

🚨New study!

Reinfection with SARS-CoV-2 raised the odds of long COVID by nearly 10x (OR 9.7) in children aged 8+ , even in primary care, not just hospitalized kids.

➡️Study of 349 Mexican children (all unvaccinated at the time).

➡️Long COVID → 11.8%.

➡️Reinfections were rare (only 2.6%) but devastating when they happened( rare in 2022!).

➡️Clear study limitations, yes, but still….

‼️So, this study delivers a clear warning: even (infrequent) reinfection with SARSCoV2 can multiply the odds of long COVID nearly tenfold in children over 8 years old.
With roughly 1 in 8 previously infected children already affected, allowing repeated exposures is not a neutral choice, it is actively contributing to a growing burden of chronic paediatric illness. PREVENTING reinfection must be treated as a core public-health priority to protect children from potentially lifelong consequences. #Vaccination
#LongCOVID #AvoidSars2 #COVIDKids #AvoidReinfections
https://t.co/mDzHhDIE7M

[aldebaran 🍉😷 CHECK PINNED @mdashaldebaran]

Disabled rage is so fucking valid. We have a LOT to be pissed about. My heart hurts and burns with rage for my disabled friends.

[PACO @PacoOnPause]

There is this pervasive lie that economically insecure disabled people are not to be trusted and it disgusts me.

The angry mobs who are trying to silence these voices, have further cemented my opposition to Government Administered Death.

[Conor Browne @brownecfm]

'Today, following the withdrawal of the US funding for disease surveillance and severe funding shortfalls, contact tracing is reaching fewer than *half* of the contacts'.

This is a dire and very dangerous situation. Control is collapsing.

*my emphasis.

[Dr. Sean Mullen @drseanmullen]

@drkeithsiau No, but I have noticed that when society loses interest in prevention, surveillance, and public health, people become remarkably creative storytellers.

The less willing we are to discuss causes, the more we’ll hear about destiny.

[The Vertlartnic @TheVertlartnic]

Loads Of Kids With Chronic Conditions Is A Price Worth Paying For Normal Childhood

[Harry Spoelstra @HarrySpoelstra]

😡😡Let’s be brutally honest:

The leading anti-vaxx grifters aren’t fighting for your health, they’re farming your fear to line their pockets. Supplements, “detox” kits, books, Substacks, blogs, and ad revenue. That’s the entire business model.

Direct or indirect, your actual health is irrelevant to them.

Meanwhile, the data/science keeps coming: a large JAMA Internal Medicine study of over a million veterans found that the COVID vaccine cut major cardiovascular events linked to the virus (heart attacks, strokes, and heart-disease hospitalizations) by roughly 40%.

I don’t only disagree with the anti-vaxx crowd. I pity the people they’ve conned into throwing away that protection.

Pure stupidity is filling our waiting rooms today.

(General warning: finger hovering over the block button.)

[Lola Germs @LolaGerms]

We would all be better off if infrastructure was updated to provide cleaner indoor air in public places, using technology that is already well understood and known to be safe-- it's just not happening.

[Dr. Sean Mullen @drseanmullen]

As physicians struggle to explain rising cancer rates and excess mortality, it’s remarkable how often magical thinking fills the vacuum.

We’re living through a mass disabling and carcinogenic event driven, at least in part, by a pathogen many healthcare workers no longer bother to mitigate against…for themselves or their patients.

Expect a lot more explanations involving fate, luck, karma, ‘good people,’ and bad luck.

Anything but the risk factors staring us in the face.

[‏ً @omgsidewalks]

I’m constantly astonished that billionaires would rather ignore the climate crisis and prepare to live in a bunker with dvds and baked beans than devote a modicum of their bottomless wealth to saving the planet where we have fresh fruit and soft grass and blue skies.

[ME/CFS Science @mecfsskeptic]

1) This review found that people with ME/CFS are profoundly impacted by stigmatisation and that it also affects their social circles, such as friends and family.

The most frequently identified issue was stigmatising experiences by healthcare professionals and physicians.

[‏ً @omgsidewalks]

We are in the final stage of capitalism where global capital can’t expand or sustain past profits. It now consumes public institutions and key systems, sacrificing democracy, welfare, infrastructure, education, healthcare, and ecosystems for short-term gain.

[Kelly @broadwaybabyto]

It’s amazing how you can spend your entire existence advocating for disability rights, fighting ableism and explaining chronic illness only to have people in your life still say “if it’s that bad you would have help”.

They of course never offer the help.

They turn away instead.

[Jamie Walters, CAIA @JWalters314]

See the propaganda move?

Make the image emotionally overwhelming, then pretend the only possible objection is hatred of America.

Nobody has to pretend to be mad at a flyover.

It looks cool.

That is not the critique.

The critique is that cool imagery is being used to launder the structure underneath it.

The White House becomes the set.

The military supplies the emotional force.

UFC supplies the combat aesthetic.

Paramount+ gets the paid stream.

Trump-world and politically connected corporations get the branding halo.

And then accounts like this say: if you notice the machinery, you must hate America.

No.

I like the flyover.

I dislike fake patriotism that turns the country into ad inventory.

This is Don Draper selling belonging after tribal sorting so the powerful concentrate more power.

Working-class people are not props.

Marines are not props.

National monuments are not props.

The issue is billionaires turning the White House into branded regime content, then hiding behind “the working class” when anyone notices the circus.

[Lulu NYT @LuluGNavarro]

This is so so good and scary. “I can’t stand this place anymore,” he said. “These major tech giants will burn everything to the ground as long as they’re making a profit. They’re not interested in anything that’s going to slow them down.”

The World’s Leading Deepfake Expert No Longer Trusts His Own Eyes https://t.co/L8dil5znDy

[Craig Unger @craigunger]

1/ Last month I told a room of Baltic intelligence officers and diplomats that Donald Trump is an asset of Russian intelligence. Not one of them blinked. "Of course," they said. Ho hum. But in America, saying it out loud is still taboo. Why? 🧵