- "I Could Live With That": How The CIA Made Afghanistan Safe For The Opium Trade
“I Could Live With That”: How The CIA Made Afghanistan Safe For The Opium Trade
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/10/2020 – 23:45Authored by Jeffrey St.Clair via Counterpunch.org,
“I decided I could live with that.”
– Stansfield Turner, Jimmy Carter’s CIA director, on the extreme level of civilian casualties in the CIA’s covert war in Afghanistan.
The first indelible image of the war in Afghanistan for many Americans was probably that of CBS anchorman Dan Rather, wrapped in the voluminous drapery of a mujahedin fighter, looking like a healthy relative of Lawrence of Arabia (albeit with hair that seemed freshly blow-dried, as some viewers were quick to point out). From his secret mountainside “somewhere in the Hindu Kush,” Rather unloaded on his audience a barrowload of nonsense about the conflict. The Soviets, Rather confided portentously, had put a bounty on his head “of many thousands of dollars.” He went on, “It was the best compliment they could have given me. And having a price put on my head was a small price to pay for the truths we told about Afghanistan.”
Every one of these observations turned out to be entirely false. Rather described the government of Hafizullah Amin as a “Moscow-installed puppet regime in Kabul.” But Amin had closer ties to the CIA than he did to the KGB. Rather called the mujahedin the “Afghan freedom fighters … who were engaged in a deeply patriotic fight to the death for home and hearth.” The mujahedin were scarcely fighting for freedom, in any sense Rather would have been comfortable with, but instead to impose one of the most repressive brands of Islamic fundamentalism known to the world, barbarous, ignorant and notably cruel to women.
It was a “fact,” Rather announced, that the Soviets had used chemical weapons against Afghan villagers. This was a claim promoted by the Reagan administration, which charged that the extraordinarily precise number of 3,042 Afghans had been killed by this yellow chemical rain, a substance that had won glorious propaganda victories in its manifestation in Laos a few years earlier, when the yellow rain turned out to be bee feces heavily loaded with pollen. As Frank Brodhead put it in the London Guardian, “Its composition: one part bee feces, plus many parts State Department disinformation mixed with media gullibility.”
Rather claimed that the mujahedin were severely underequipped, doing their best with Kalashnikov rifles taken from dead Soviet soldiers. In fact the mujahedin were extremely well-equipped, being the recipients of CIA-furnished weapons in the most ” “expensive covert war the Agency had ever mounted. They did carry Soviet weapons, but they came courtesy of the CIA. Rather also showed news footage that he claimed was of Soviet bombers strafing defenseless Afghan villages. This footage was staged, with the “Soviet bomber” actually a Pakistani air force plane on a training mission over northwest Pakistan.
CBS claimed to have discovered in Soviet-bombed areas stuffed animals filled with Soviet explosives, designed to blow Afghan children to bits. These booby-trapped toys had in fact been manufactured by the mujahedin for the exclusive purpose of gulling CBS News, as an entertaining article in the New York Post later made clear.
Rather made his heroically filmed way to Yunas Khalis, described as the leader of the Afghan warriors. In tones of awe he normally reserves for hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico, Rather recalls in his book, The Camera Never Blinks Twice, “Belief in ‘right’ makes ‘might’ may have been fading in other parts of the world. In Afghanistan it was alive and well, and beating the Soviets.” Khalis was a ruthless butcher, with his troops fondly boasting of their slaughter of 700 prisoners of war. He spent most[…] makes ‘might’ may have been fading in other parts of the world. In Afghanistan it was alive and well, and beating the Soviets.” Khalis was a ruthless butcher, with his troops fondly boasting of their slaughter of 700 prisoners of war. He spent most of his time fighting, but the wars were not primarily with the Soviets. Instead, Khalis battled other Afghan rebel groups, the object of the conflicts being control of poppy fields and the roads and trails from them to his seven heroin labs near his headquarters in the town of Ribat al Ali. Sixty percent of Afghanistan’s opium crop was cultivated in the Helmand Valley, with an irrigation infrastructure underwritten by USAID.
In his dispatches from the front Rather did mention the local opium trade, but in a remarkably disingenuous fashion. “Afghans,” he said, “had turned Darra into a boom town, selling their home-grown opium for the best available weapons, then going back into Afghanistan to fight.”
Now Darra is a town in northwest Pakistan where the CIA had set up a factory to manufacture Soviet-style weapons that it was giving away to all Afghan comers. The weapons factory was run under contract to Pakistani Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI). Much of the opium trucked into Darra from Afghanistan by the mujahedin was sold to the Pakistani governor of the northwest territory, Lieutenant General Fazle Huq. From this opium the heroin was refined in labs in Darra, placed on Pakistani army trucks and transported to Karachi, then shipped to Europe and the United States.
Rather belittled the Carter administration’s reaction to the Soviet-backed coup in 1979, charging that Carter’s response had been tepid and slow in coming. In fact, President Carter had reacted with a range of moves that should have been the envy of the Reagan hawks who, a couple of years later, were belaboring him for being a Cold War wimp. Not only did Carter withdraw the United States from the 1980 Olympics, he slashed grain sales to the Soviet Union, to the great distress of Midwestern farmers; put the SALT II treaty hold; pledged to increase the US defense budget by 5 percent a year until the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan; and unveiled the Carter doctrine of containment in southern Asia, which CIA historian John Ranelagh says led Carter to approve “more secret CIA operations than Reagan later did.”
Carter later confessed in his memoirs that he was more shaken by the invasion of Afghanistan than any other event of his presidency, including the Iranian revolution. Carter was convinced by the CIA that it could be the start of a push by the Soviets toward the Persian Gulf, a scenario that led the president to seriously consider the use of tactical nuclear weapons.
Three weeks after Soviet tanks rolled into Kabul, Carter’s secretary of defense, Harold Brown, was in Beijing, arranging for a weapons transfer from the Chinese to the CIA-backed Afghani troops mustered in Pakistan. The Chinese, who were generously compensated for the deal, agreed and even consented to send military advisers. Brown worked out a similar arrangement with Egypt to buy $15 million worth of weapons. “The US contacted me,” Anwar Sadat recalled shortly before his assassination. “They told me, ‘Please open your stores for us so that we can give the Afghans the armaments they need to fight.’ And I gave them the armaments. The transport of arms to the Afghans started from Cairo on US planes.”
But few in the Carter administration believed the rebels had any chance of toppling the Soviets. Under most scenarios, the war seemed destined to be a slaughter, with civilians and the rebels paying a heavy price. The objective of the Carter doctrine was more cynical. It was to bleed the Soviets, hoping to entrap them in a Vietnam-style quagmire. The high level of civilian casualties didn’t faze the architects of covert American intervention. “I decided I could live with that,” recalled Carter’s CIA director Stansfield Turner.
Prior to the Soviet invasion, Afghanistan barely registered as a topic of interest for the national press, surfacing in only a handful of annual newspaper stories. In December 1973, when détente was near its zenith, the Wall Street Journal ran a rare front-page story on the country, titled “Do the Russians Covet Afghanistan? If so, It’s Hard to Figure Why.” Reporter Peter Kann, later to become the Journal’s chairman and publisher, wrote that “great power strategists tend to think of Afghanistan as a kind of fulcrum upon which the world balance of power tips. But from close up, Afghanistan tends to look less like a fulcrum or a domino or a steppingstone than like a vast expanse of desert waste with a few fly-ridden bazaars, a fair number of feuding tribes and a lot of miserably poor people.”
After the Soviet Union invaded, this wasteland swiftly acquired the status of a precious geopolitical prize. A Journal editorial following the Soviet takeover said Afghanistan was “more serious than a mere stepping-stone” and, in response, called for stationing of US troops in the Middle East, increased military outlays, expanded covert operations and reinstatement of draft registration. Drew Middleton, then a New York Times Defense Department correspondent, filed a tremulous post-invasion analysis in January 1980: “The conventional wisdom in the Pentagon,” he wrote, “is that in purely military terms, the Russians are in a far better position vis-à-vis the United States than Hitler was against Britain and France in 1939.”
The Pentagon and CIA agitprop machine went into high gear: on January 3, 1980, George Wilson of the Washington Post reported that military leaders hoped the invasion would “help cure the Vietnam “never again’ hangover of the American public.” Newsweek said the “Soviet thrust” represented “a severe threat” to US interests: “Control of Afghanistan would put the Russians within 350 miles of the Arabian Sea, the oil lifeline of the West and Japan. Soviet warplanes based in Afghanistan could cut the lifeline at will.” The New York Times endorsed Carter’s call for increased military spending and supported the Cruise and Trident missile programs, “faster research on the MX or some other mobile land missile,” and the creation of a rapid deployment force for Third World intervention, calling the latter an “investment in diplomacy.”
In sum, Afghanistan proved to be a glorious campaign for both the CIA and Defense Department, a dazzling offensive in which waves of credulous and compliant journalists were dispatched to promulgate the ludicrous proposition that the United States was under military threat. By the time Reagan assumed office, he and his CIA director William Casey saw support for their own stepped-up Afghan plan from an unlikely source, the Democrat-controlled Congress, which was pushing to double spending on the war. “It was a windfall [for the Reagan administration],” a congressional staffer told the Washington Post. “They’d faced so much opposition to covert action in Central America and here comes the Congress helping and throwing money at them, putting money their way and they say, ‘Who are we to say no?’ ”
As the CIA increased its backing of the mujahedin (the CIA budget for Afghanistan finally reached $3.2 billion, the most expensive secret operation in its history) a White House member of the president’s Strategic Council on Drug Abuse, David Musto, informed the administration that the decision to arm the mujahedin would misfire: “I told the Council that we were going into Afghanistan to support the opium growers in their rebellion against the Soviets. Shouldn’t we try to avoid what we’d done in Laos? Shouldn’t we try to pay the growers if they will eradicate their opium production? There was silence.”
After issuing this warning, Musto and a colleague on the council, Joyce Lowinson, continued to question US policy, but found their queries blocked by the CIA and the State Department. Frustrated, they then turned to the New York Times op-ed page and wrote, on May 22, 1980:
“We worry about the growing of opium in Afghanistan or Pakistan by rebel tribesmen who apparently are the chief adversaries of the Soviet troops in Afghanistan. Are we erring in befriending these tribes as we did in Laos when Air America (chartered by the Central Intelligence Agency) helped transport crude opium from certain tribal areas?”
But Musto and Lowinson met with silence once again, not only from the administration but from the press. It was heresy to question covert intervention in Afghanistan.
Later in 1980, Hoag Levins, a writer for Philadelphia Magazine, interviewed a man he identified as a “high level” law enforcement official in the Carter administration’s Justice Department and quoted him thus:
“You have the administration tiptoeing around this like it’s a land mine. The issue of opium and heroin in Afghanistan is explosive … In the State of the Union speech, the president mentioned drug abuse but he was very careful to avoid mentioning Afghanistan, even though Afghanistan is where things are really happening right now … Why aren’t we taking a more critical look at the arms we are now shipping into gangs of drug runners who are obviously going to use them to increase the efficiency of their drug-smuggling operation?”
The DEA was well aware that the mujahedin rebels were deeply involved in the opium trade. The drug agency’s reports in 1980 showed that Afghan rebel incursions from their Pakistan bases into Soviet-held positions were “determined in part by opium planting and harvest seasons.” The numbers were stark and forbidding. Afghan opium production tripled between 1979 and 1982. There was evidence that by 1981 the Afghan heroin producers had captured 60 percent of the heroin market in Western Europe and the United States (these are UN and DEA figures).
In 1971, during the height of the CIA’s involvement in Laos, there were about 500,000 heroin addicts in the United States. By the mid- to late 1970s this total had fallen to 200,000. But in 1981 with the new flood of Afghan heroin and consequent low prices, the heroin addict population rose to 450,000. In New York City in 1979 alone (the year that the flow of arms to the mujahedin began), heroin-related drug deaths increased by 77 percent. The only publicly acknowledged US casualties on the Afghan battlefields were some Black Muslims who journeyed to the Hindu Kush from the United States to fight on the Prophet’s behalf. But the drug casualties inside the US from the secret CIA war, particularly in the inner cities, numbered in the thousands, plus untold social blight and suffering.
Since the seventeenth century opium poppies have been grown in the so-called Golden Crescent, where the highlands of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran all converge. For nearly four centuries this was an internal market. By the 1950s very little opium was produced in either Afghanistan or Pakistan, with perhaps 2,500 acres in these two countries under cultivation. The fertile growing fields of Afghanistan’s Helmand Valley, by the 1980s under intensive opium poppy cultivation, were covered with vineyards, wheat fields and cotton plantations.
In Iran, the situation was markedly different in the early 1950s. The country, dominated by British and US oil companies and intelligence agencies, was producing 600 tons of opium a year and had 1.3 million opium addicts, second only to China where, at the same moment, the western opium imperialists still held sway. Then, in 1953, Mohammed Mossadegh, Iran’s nationalist equivalent of China’s Sun Yat-sen, won elections and immediately moved to suppress the opium trade. Within a few weeks, US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles was calling Mossadegh a madman, and Dulles’s brother Allen, head of the CIA, dispatched Kermit Roosevelt to organize a coup against him. In August 1953 Mossadegh was overthrown, the Shah was installed by the CIA, and the oil and opium fields of Iran were once again in friendly hands. Production continued unabated until the assumption of power in 1979 of the Ayatollah Khomeini, at which point Iran had a very serious opium problem in terms of the addiction of its own population. Unlike the mujahedin chieftains, the Ayatollah was a strict constructionist of Islamic law on the matter of intoxicants: addicts and dealers faced the death penalty. Opium production in Iran dropped drastically.
In Afghanistan in the 1950s and 1960s, the relatively sparse opium trade was controlled by the royal family, headed by King Mohammed Zahir, The large feudal estates all had their opium fields, primarily to feed domestic consumption of the drug. In April 1978 a populist coup overthrew the regime of Mohammed Daoud, who had formed an alliance with the Shah of Iran. The Shah had shoveled money in Daoud’s direction – $2 billion on one report – and the Iranian secret police, the Savak, were imported to train Daoud’s internal security force. The new Afghan government was led by Noor Mohammed Taraki. The Taraki administration moved toward land reform, hence an attack on the opium-growing feudal estates. Taraki went to the UN, where he requested and received loans for crop substitution for the poppy fields.
Taraki also pressed hard against opium production in the border areas held by fundamentalists, since the latter were using opium revenues to finance attacks on the Afghan central government, which they regarded as an unwholesome incarnation of modernity that allowed women to go to school and outlawed arranged marriages and the bride price.
By the spring of 1979 the character of Dan Rather’s heroes, the mujahedin, was also beginning to emerge. The Washington Post reported that the mujahedin liked to “torture their victims by first cutting off their noses, ears and genitals, then removing one slice of skin after another.” Over that year the mujahedin evinced particular animosity toward westerners, killing six West Germans and a Canadian tourist and severely beating a US military attaché. It’s also ironic that in that year the mujahedin were getting money not only from the CIA but from Libya’s Moammar Qaddaffi, who sent $250,000 in their direction.
In the summer of 1979, over six months before the Soviets moved in, the US State Department produced a memorandum making clear how it saw the stakes, no matter how modern-minded Taraki might be, or how feudal the mujahedin: “The United States’ larger interest … would be served by the demise of the Taraki-Amin regime, despite whatever setbacks this might mean for future social and economic reforms in Afghanistan.” The report continued, “The overthrow of the DRA [Democratic Republic of Afghanistan] would show the rest of the world, particularly the Third World, that the Soviets’ view of the socialist course of history as being inevitable is not accurate.”
Hard pressed by conservative forces in Afghanistan, Taraki appealed to the Soviets for help, which they declined to furnish on the grounds that this was exactly what their mutual enemies were waiting for.
In September 1979 Taraki was killed in a coup organized by Afghan military officers. Hafizullah Amin was installed as president. He had impeccable western credentials, having been to Columbia University in New York and the University of Wisconsin. Amin had served as the president of the Afghan Students Association, which had been funded by the Asia Foundation, a CIA pass-through group, or front. After the coup Amin began meeting regularly with US Embassy officials at a time when the US was arming Islamic rebels in Pakistan. Fearing a fundamentalist, US-backed regime pressing against its own border, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in force on December 27, 1979.
Then began the Carter-initiated CIA buildup that so worried White House drug expert David Musto. In a replication of what happened following the CIA-backed coup in Iran, the feudal estates were soon back in opium production and the crop-substitution program ended.
Because Pakistan had a nuclear program, the US had a foreign aid ban on the country. This was soon lifted it as the waging of a proxy war in Afghanistan became prime policy. In fairly short order, without any discernible slowdown in its nuclear program, Pakistan became the third largest recipient of US aid worldwide, right behind Israel and Egypt. Arms poured into Karachi from the US and were shipped up to Peshawar by the National Logistics Cell, a military unit controlled by Pakistan’s secret police, the ISI. From Peshawar those guns that weren’t simply sold to any and all customers (the Iranians got 16 Stinger missiles, one of which was used against a US helicopter in the Gulf) were divvied out by the ISI to the Afghan factions.
Though the US press, Dan Rather to the fore, portrayed the mujahedin as a unified force of freedom fighters, the fact (unsurprising to anyone with an inkling of Afghan history) was that the mujahedin consisted of at least seven warring factions, all battling for territory and control of the opium trade. The ISI gave the bulk of the arms – at one count 60 percent – to a particularly fanatical fundamentalist and woman-hater Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who made his public debut at the University of Kabul by killing a leftist student. In 1972 Hekmatyar fled to Pakistan, where he became an agent of the ISI. He urged his followers to throw acid in the faces of women not wearing the veil, kidnapped rival leaders, and built up his CIA-furnished arsenal against the day the Soviets would leave and the war for the mastery of Afghanistan would truly break out.
Using his weapons to get control of the opium fields, Hekmatyar and his men would urge the peasants, at gun point, to increase production. They would collect the raw opium and bring it back to Hekmatyar’s six heroin factories in the town of Koh-i-Soltan
One of Hekmatyar’s chief rivals in the mujahedin, Mullah Nassim, controlled the opium poppy fields in the Helmand Valley, producing 260 tons of opium a year. His brother, Mohammed Rasul, defended this agricultural enterprise by stating, “We must grow and sell opium to fight our holy war against the Russian nonbelievers.” Despite this well-calculated pronouncement, they spent almost all their time fighting their fellow-believers, using the weapons sent them by the CIA to try to win the advantage in these internecine struggles. In 1989 Hekmatyar launched an assault against Nassim, attempting to take control of the Helmand Valley. Nassim fought him off, but a few months later Hekmatyar successfully engineered Nassim’s assassination when he was holding the post of deputy defense minister in the provisional post-Soviet Afghan government. Hekmatyar now controlled opium growing in the Helmand Valley.
American DEA agents were fully apprised of the drug running of the mujahedin in concert with Pakistani intelligence and military leaders. In 1983 the DEA’s congressional liaison, David Melocik, told a congressional committee, “You can say the rebels make their money off the sale of opium. There’s no doubt about it. These rebels keep their cause going through the sale of opium.” But talk about “the cause” depending on drug sales was nonsense at that particular moment. The CIA was paying for everything regardless. The opium revenues were ending up in offshore accounts in the Habib Bank, one of Pakistan’s largest, and in the accounts of BCCI, founded by Agha Hasan Abedi, who began his banking career at Habib. The CIA was simultaneously using BCCI for its own secret transactions.
The DEA had evidence of over forty heroin syndicates operating in Pakistan in the mid-1980s during the Afghan war, and there was evidence of more than 200 heroin labs operating in northwest Pakistan. Even though Islamabad houses one of the largest DEA offices in Asia, no action was ever taken by the DEA agents against any of these operations. An Interpol officer told the journalist Lawrence Lifschultz,
“It is very strange that the Americans, with the size of their resources, and political power they possess in Pakistan, have failed to break a single case. The explanation cannot be found in a lack of adequate police work. They have had some excellent men working in Pakistan.”
But working in the same offices as those DEA agents were five CIA officers who, so one of the DEA agents later told the Washington Post, ordered them to pull back their operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan for the duration of the war.
Those DEA agents were well aware of the drug-tainted profile of a firm the CIA was using to funnel cash to the mujahedin, namely Shakarchi Trading Company. This Lebanese-owned company had been the subject of a long-running DEA investigation into money laundering. One of Shakarchi’s chief clients was Yasir Musullulu, who had once been nabbed attempting to deliver an 8.5-ton shipment of Afghan opium to members of the Gambino crime syndicate in New York City. A DEA memo noted that Shakarchi mingled “the currency of heroin, morphine base, and hashish traffickers with that of jewelers buying gold on the black market and Middle Eastern arms traffickers.”
In May 1984 Vice President George Bush journeyed to Pakistan to confer with General Zia al Huq and other ranking members of the Pakistani regime. At the time, Bush was the head of President Reagan’s National Narcotics Border Interdiction System. In this latter function, one of Bush’s first moves was to expand the role of the CIA in drug operations. He gave the Agency primary responsibility in the use of, and control over, drug informants. The operational head of this task force was retired Admiral Daniel J. Murphy.
Murphy pushed for access to intelligence on drug syndicates but complained that the CIA was forever dragging its feet. “I didn’t win,” he said later to the New York Times. “I didn’t get as much effective participation from the CIA as I wanted.” Another member of the task force put it more bluntly, “The CIA could be of value, but you need a change of values and attitude. I don’t know of a single thing they’ve ever given us that was useful.”
Bush certainly knew well that Pakistan had become the source for most of the high-grade heroin entering Western Europe and the United States and that the generals with whom he was consorting were deeply involved in the drug trade. But the vice president, who proclaimed later that “I will never bargain with drug dealers on US or foreign soil,” used his journey to Pakistan to praise the Zia regime for its unflinching support for the War on Drugs. (Amid such rhetorical excursions he did find time, it has to be said, to extract from Zia a contract to buy $40 million worth of gas turbines made by the General Electric Co.)
Predictably, through the 1980s the Reagan and Bush administrations went to great lengths to pin the blame for the upswing in Pakistani heroin production on the Soviet generals in Kabul. “The regime maintains an absolute indifference to any measures to control poppy,” Reagan’s attorney general Edwin Meese declared during a visit to Islamabad in March 1986. “We strongly believe that there is actually encouragement, at least tacitly, over growing opium poppy.”
Meese knew better. His own Justice Department had been tracking the import of drugs from Pakistan since at least 1982 and was well aware that the trade was controlled by Afghan rebels and the Pakistani military. A few months after Meese’s speech in Pakistan, the US Customs Office nabbed a Pakistani man named Abdul Wali as he tried to unload more than a ton of hash and a smaller amount of heroin into the United States at Port Newark, New Jersey. The Justice Department informed the press that Wali headed a 50,000-member organization in northwest Pakistan – but Deputy Attorney General Claudia Flynn refused to reveal the group’s identity. Another federal official told the Associated Press that Wali was a top leader of the mujahedin.
It was also known to US officials that people on intimate terms with President Zia were making fortunes in the opium trade. The word “fortune” here is no exaggeration, since one such Zia associate had $3 billion in his BCCI accounts. In 1983, a year before George Bush’s visit to Pakistan, one of President Zia’s doctors, a Japanese herbalist named Hisayoshi Maruyama was arrested in Amsterdam packing 17.5 kilos of high-grade heroin manufactured in Pakistan out of Afghan opium. At the time of his arrest he was disguised as a boy scout.
Interrogated by DEA agents after his arrest, Maruyama said that he was just a courier for Mirza Iqbal Baig, a man whom Pakistani customs agents described as “the most active dope dealer in the country.” Baig was on close terms with the Zia family and other ranking officials in the government. He had twice been a target of the DEA, whose agents were told not to pursue investigations of him because of his ties to the Zia government. A top Pakistani lawyer, Said Sani Ahmed, told the BBC that this was standard procedure in Pakistan: “We may have evidence against a particular individual, but still our law-enforcing agencies cannot lay hands on such people, because they are forbidden to act by their superiors. The real culprits have enough money and resources. Frankly, they are enjoying some sort of immunity.”
Baig was one of the tycoons of the Pakistani city of Lahore, owning cinemas, shopping centers, factories and a textile mill. He wasn’t indicted on drug charges until 1992, after the fall of the Zia regime, when a US federal court in Brooklyn indicted him for heroin trafficking. The US finally exerted enough pressure on Pakistan to have him arrested in 1993; as of the spring of 1998 he was in prison in Pakistan.
One of Baig’s partners (as described in Newsweek) in his drug business was Haji Ayub Afridi, a close ally of President Zia, who had served in the Pakistani General Assembly. Afridi lives thirty-five miles outside Peshawar in a large compound sealed off by 20-foot-high walls topped with concertina-wire and with defenses including an anti-aircraft battery and a private army of tribesmen. Afridi was said to be in charge of purchasing raw opium from the Afghan drug lords, while Baig looked after logistics and shipping to Europe and the United States. In 1993 Afridi was alleged to have put out a contract on the life of a DEA agent working in Pakistan.
Another case close to the Zia government involved the arrest on drug charges of Hamid Hasnain, the vice president of Pakistan’s largest financial house, the Habib Bank. Hasnain’s arrest became the centerpiece of a scandal known as the “Pakistani League affair.” The drug ring was investigated by a dogged Norwegian investigator named Olyvind Olsen. On December 13, 1983 Norwegian police seized 3.5 kilos of heroin at Oslo airport in the luggage of a Pakistani named Raza Qureishi. In exchange for a reduced sentence Qureishi agreed to name his suppliers to Olsen, the narcotics investigator. Shortly after his interview with Qureishi, Olsen flew to Islamabad to ferret out the other members of the heroin syndicate. For more than a year Olsen pressured Pakistan’s Federal Investigate Agency (FIA) to arrest the three men Qureishi had fingered: Tahir Butt, Munawaar Hussain, and Hasnain. All were associates of Baig and Zia. It wasn’t until Olsen threatened to publicly condemn the FIA’s conduct that the Agency took any action: finally, on October 25, 1985 the FIA arrested the three men. When the Pakistani agents picked up Hasnain they were assailed with a barrage of threats. Hasnain spoke of “dire consequences” and claimed to be “like a son” to President Zia. Inside Hasnain’s suitcase FIA agents discovered records of the ample bank accounts of President Zia plus those of Zia’s wife and daughter.
Immediately after learning of Hasnain’s arrest, Zia’s wife, who was in Egypt at the time, telephoned the head of the FIA. The president’s wife imperiously demanded the release of her family’s “personal banker.” It turned out that Hasnain not only attended to the secret financial affairs of the presidential family, but also of the senior Pakistani generals, who were skimming money off the arms imports from the CIA and making millions from the opium traffic. A few days after his wife’s call, President Zia himself was on the phone to the FIA, demanding that the investigators explain the circumstances surrounding Hasnain’s arrest. Zia soon arranged for Hasnain to be released on bail pending trial. When Qureishi, the courier, took the stand to testify against Hasnain, the banker and his co-defendant hurled death threats against the witness in open court, prompting a protest from the Norwegian investigator, who threatened to withdraw from the proceedings.
Eventually the judge in the case clamped down, revoking Hasnain’s bail and handing him a stiff prison term after his conviction. But Hasnain was just a relatively small fish who went to prison while guilty generals went free.
“He’s been made a scapegoat,” Munir Bhatti told journalist Lawrence Lifschultz.
“The CIA spoiled the case. The evidence was distorted. There was no justification in letting off the actual culprits who include senior personalities in this country. There was evidence in this case identifying such people.”
Such were the men to whom the CIA was paying $3.2 billion a year to run the Afghan war, and no person better epitomizes this relationship than Lieutenant General Fazle Huq, who oversaw military operations in northwest Pakistan for General Zia, including the arming of the mujahedin who were using the region as a staging area for their raids. It was Huq who ensured that his ally Hekmatyar received the bulk of the CIA arms shipments, and it was also Huq who oversaw and protected the operations of the 200 heroin labs within his jurisdiction. Huq had been identified in 1982 by Interpol as a key player in the Afghan-Pakistani opium trade. The Pakistani opposition leaders referred to Huq as Pakistani’s Noriega. He had been protected from drug investigations by Zia and the CIA and later boasted that with these connections he could get away “with blue murder.”
Like other narco-generals in the Zia regime, Huq was also on close terms with Agha Hassan Abedi, the head of the BCCI. Abedi, Huq and Zia would dine together nearly every month, and conferred several times with Reagan’s CIA director William Casey. Huq had a BCCI account worth $3 million. After Zia was assassinated in 1988 by a bomb planted (probably by senior military officers) in his presidential plane, Huq lost some of his official protection, and he was soon arrested for ordering the murder of a Shi’ite cleric.
After Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was deposed, her replacement Ishaq Khan swiftly released Huq from prison. In 1991 Huq was shot to death, probably in revenge for the cleric’s death. The opium general was given a state funeral, where he was eulogized by Ishaq Khan as “a great soldier and competent administrator who played a commendable role in Pakistan’s national progress.”
Benazir Bhutto had swept to power in 1988 amid fierce vows to clean up Pakistan’s drug-sodden corruption, but it wasn’t long “before her own regime became the focus of serious charges. In 1989 the US Drug Enforcement Agency came across information that Benazir’s husband, Asif Ali Zardari, may have been financing large shipments of heroin from Pakistan to Great Britain and the United States. The DEA assigned one of its agents, a man named John Banks, to work undercover in Pakistan. Banks was a former British mercenary who had worked undercover for Scotland Yard in big international drug cases.
While in Pakistan, Banks claims he posed as a member of the Mafia and that he had met with Bhutto and her husband at their home in Sind. Banks further claims that he traveled with Zadari to Islamabad, where he secretly recorded five hours of conversation between Zadari, a Pakistani air force general and a Pakistani banker. The men discussed the logistics of transporting heroin to the US and to Britain: “We talked about how they were going to ship the drugs to America in a metal cutter,” Banks said in 1996. “They told me that the United Kingdom was another area where they had shipped heroin and hashish on a regular basis.” The British Customs Office had also been monitoring Zadari for dope running: “We received intelligence from about three or four sources, about his alleged involvement as a financier,” a retired British customs officer told the Financial Times. “This was all reported to British intelligence.” The customs official says his government failed to act on this report. Similarly, Banks asserts that the CIA halted the DEA’s investigation of Zardari. All this emerged when Bhutto’s government fell for the second time, in 1996, on charges of corruption lodged primarily against Zardari, who is now in prison for his role in the murder of his brother-in-law Murtaza. Zardari also stands accused of embezzling more than $1 billion in government funds.”
In 1991 Nawz Sharif says that while he served as prime minister he was approached by two Pakistani generals – Aslam Beg, chief of staff for the army, and Asad Durrani, head of the ISI – with a plan to fund dozens of covert operations through the sale of heroin. “General Durrani told me, ‘We have a blueprint ready for your approval,’ Sharif explained to Washington Post reporter John Ward Anderson in 1994. “I was totally flabbergasted. Both Beg and Durrani insisted that Pakistan’s name would not be cited at any place because the whole operation would be carried out by trustworthy third parties. Durrani then went on to list a series of covert military operations in desperate need of money.” Sharif said that he rejected the plan, but believes it was put in place when Bhutto resumed power.
The impact of the Afghan war on Pakistan’s addiction rates was even more drastic than the surge in heroin addiction in the US and Europe. Before the CIA program began, there were fewer than 5,000 heroin addicts in Pakistan. By 1996, according to the United Nations, there were more than 1.6 million. The Pakistani representative to the UN Commission on Narcotics, Raoolf Ali Khan, said in 1993 that “there is no branch of government where drug corruption doesn’t pervade.” As an example he pointed to the fact that Pakistan spends only $1.8 million a year on anti-drug efforts, with an allotment of $1,000 to purchase gasoline for its seven trucks.
By 1994 the value of the heroin trade in Pakistan was twice the amount of the government’s budget. A Western diplomat told the Washington Post in that year that “when you get to the stage where narco-traffickers have more money than the government it’s going to take remarkable efforts and remarkable people to turn it around.” The magnitude of commitment required is illustrated by two episodes. In 1991 the largest drug bust in world history occurred on the road from Peshawar to Karachi. Pakistani customs officers seized 3.5 tons of heroin and 44 tons of hashish. Several days later half the hashish and heroin had vanished along with the witnesses. The suspects, four men with ties to Pakistani intelligence, had “mysteriously escaped,” to use the words of a Pakistani customs officer. In 1993 Pakistani border guards seized 8 tons of hashish and 1.7 tons of heroin. When the case was turned over to the Pakistani narcotics control board, the entire staff went on vacation to avoid being involved in the investigation. No one was disciplined or otherwise inconvenienced and the narco-traffickers got off scot free. Even the CIA was eventually forced to admit in a 1994 report to Congress that heroin had become the “life blood of the Pakistani economy and political system.”
In February 1989 Mikhail Gorbachev pulled the Soviet troops out of Afghanistan, and asked the US to agree to an embargo on the provision of weapons to any of the Afghan mujahedin factions, who were preparing for another phase of internecine war for control of the country. President Bush refused, thus ensuring a period of continued misery and horror for most Afghans. The war had already turned half the population into refugees, and seen 3 million wounded and more than a million killed. The proclivities of the mujahedin at this point are illustrated by a couple of anecdotes. The Kabul correspondent of the Far Eastern Economic Review reported in 1989 the mujahedin’s treatment of Soviet prisoners: “One group was killed, skinned and hung up in a butcher’s shop. One captive found himself the center of attraction in a game of buzkashi, that rough-and-tumble form of Afghan polo in which a headless goat is usually the ball. The captive was used instead. Alive. He was literally torn to pieces.” The CIA also had evidence that its freedom fighters had doped up more than 200 Soviet soldiers with heroin and locked them in animal cages where, the Washington Post reported in 1990, they led “lives of indescribable horror.”
In September 1996 the Taliban, fundamentalists nurtured originally in Pakistan as creatures of both the ISI and the CIA, seized power in Kabul, whereupon Mullah Omar, their leader, announced that all laws inconsistent with the Muslim Sharia would be changed. Women would be forced to assume the chador and remain at home, with total segregation of the sexes and women kept out of hospitals, schools and public bathrooms. The CIA continued to support these medieval fanatics who, according to Emma Bonino, the European Union’s commissioner for humanitarian affairs, were committing “gender genocide.”
One law at odds with the Sharia that the Taliban had no apparent interest in changing was the prophet’s injunction against intoxicants. In fact, the Taliban urged its Afghan farmers to increase their production of opium.
One of the Taliban leaders, the “drug czar” Abdul Rashid, noted, “If we try to stop this [opium farming] the people will be against us.”
By the end 1996, according to the UN, Afghan opium production had reached 2,000 metric tons. There were an estimated 200,000 families in Afghanistan working in the opium trade. The Taliban were in control of the 96 percent of all Afghan land in opium cultivation and imposed a tax on opium production and a road toll on trucks carrying the crop.
In 1997 an Afghan opium farmer gave an ironic reply to Jimmy Carter’s brooding on whether to use nuclear weapons as part of a response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. Amhud Gul told a reporter from the Washington Post, “We are cultivating this [that is, opium] and exporting this as an atom bomb.”
CIA intervention had worked its magic once again. By 1994, Afghanistan, according to the UN drug control program had surpassed Burma as the world’s number one supplier of raw opium.
* * *
Note: This story was more than two years in the making. I started reporting it in 1995 for the premier issue of a Portland-based magazine called Serpent’s Tooth: Reporting the Drug War, which was meant to be a cross between Ramparts and Paul Krassner’s The Realist, with plenty of sex ads to pay the bills. In fact, Krassner also wrote a scathingly funny piece for that issue, some ribald tale involving three of his favorite subjects: Bill Clinton, LSD and the virtues of masturbation. Alas, a few weeks before the magazine was ready to go to press, the trust-fund publisher pulled the plug on the entire venture after getting into a brawl with the editorial collective. In my experience, any time there’s an “editorial collective” in charge, the publication is destined for a ventilator, especially when cocaine is involved. So, after spending more than a year working on my big piece on the Afghan war and the opium trade, it was orphaned. Portions of the story later appeared in CounterPunch, the Anderson Valley Advertiser and the Twin Cities weekly, City Pages. And a version of it ended up as a chapter in our book Whiteout: the CIA, Drugs and the Press.
- Lifestyles Of The Mega-Rich & Fearful: Inside The Luxury Apocalypse Bunker
Lifestyles Of The Mega-Rich & Fearful: Inside The Luxury Apocalypse Bunker
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/10/2020 – 23:25When it comes to doomsday bunkers – we might have found the ‘Cadillac’ of underground shelters for the superrich to ride out the virus pandemic and social-economic implosion of America.
It’s called the Survival Condo, buried 200 feet underground in the middle of rural Kansas, several hundred miles from Kansas City, is a newly outfitted Cold War nuclear silo that houses underground condos that can survive a 12-kiloton nuclear warhead.
Condos start at $1 million, plus an extra $2,500 per month condo fee to cover expenses in the bunker, such as food, ammo, electricity, and internet connectivity.
CNET spoke with Larry Hall, the owner of the Survival Condo, who said the bunker is 15 floors and buried 200 feet underground.
“Beneath the dome, the cylindrical silo houses a further 14 floors — the top three floors are where you’ll find the mechanical rooms, medical facilities and a food store (complete with a full hydroponics and aquaculture setup), followed beneath by seven levels of residential condos. At the bottom, the final four floors house the classroom and library, a cinema and bar, and a workout room (with a sauna),” CNET said.
Survival Condo’s website lists the facilities top features:
- Elevator & Stairwell Access throughout the facility.
- Over 20,000 square foot of floor space in the monolithic dome.
- Redundant electric sources.
- Redundant water supply with minimum of 75,000 gallon reserve tanks.
- Redundant air filtration including Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical (NBC) filtration.
- Organic hydroponic and aquaculture food production.
- General Store.
- Indoor Pool & Spa, and a complete workout facility.
- Custom theater.
- Custom Bar & Lounge.
- Library & Classroom.
- Command & Control Center.
- Medical First Aid Center.
- Communication Center complete with on-site Internet subset access.
- Digital weather station.
The facility has a maximum occupancy of 75 people that can survive for about five years. Here are some of the condo features:
- Full-Floor layout is approximately 1,820 square feet of living space.
- Half-Floor layout is approximately 900 square feet of living space.
- Maximum occupancy for full & half floor layouts are 10 and 5 respectively.
- Full kitchens with High-end stainless appliances.
- Full Spectrum LED lighting throughout.
- Kohler fixtures throughout.
- 50-inch LED TV and home automation system with remote off-site access.
- Biometric Keyless access.
- Each unit is fully furnished and professionally decorated.
- Each unit comes with a five-year food reserve per person.
- Washer and dryer in each unit.
There’s also a shooting range and pool to keep occupants trained for the apocalypse.
The smallest unit costs around $1 million, with the largest about $3 million. Condos are predominantly owned by wealthy elites:
“All of our people are self-made millionaires,” Hall said. “They’re very successful: doctors, engineers, lawyers, international business people… almost all of them have children. And they’re concerned about the ‘what if’ scenario.”
Video: Inside the doomsday bunker
Somewhere in rural Kansas – millionaires have a luxury bunker where they can ride out the socio-economic implosion of America. Can even withstand a nuclear blast if the president decides to go to war with China. After all, President Trump didn’t spend trillions of dollars on the military to look at shiny new hypersonic missiles and fifth-generation fighters at future parades in Washington, D.C. The rich are preparing for the end game – the world has already entered a period of chaos that could persist through the 2020s.
- Major Tax Increases Are About To Slam America As Cities & States Want You To Pay For COVID Fallout
Major Tax Increases Are About To Slam America As Cities & States Want You To Pay For COVID Fallout
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/10/2020 – 23:05Authored by Isaac Davis via Waking Times,
Just prior to the global Coronavirus outbreak, serious signs of an emerging financial crisis began to emerge. As people were beginning to realize that yet another central bank engineered ‘bust’ was coming down on us, we were thrown into lockdown, shuttering millions of businesses and sending millions of people to the unemployment line.
Now, a few months later, we are starting to realize just how deep the economic fallout will be, and Americans are scrambling to adjust their lifestyles to a totally new world order. At the top of the food chain, though, is government. City, county, state and federal.
In the midst of such a bizarre and frightful socioeconomic crisis, the tax man is hurting too. Tax revenues at all levels of government have plummeted like never before, and the pain is especially acute for city budgets who’ve seen sales tax revenue nosedive. While the American citizenry is seeing a drastic drop in income, so is Uncle Sam and all of his bureaucratic agencies.
Take a look at some of the numbers.
For states like Texas, Alaska and New Mexico which depend on oil revenue to balance their budgets, the financial hit will be a double whammy.
Alaska is projecting an $815 million decline in revenues in the coming fiscal year, and New Mexico could see a $1.5 to $2 billion drop. [Source]
While Americans clamor to figure out how to make ends meet in their own households, so too is government trying to figure out how to balance budgets, and the reality is that once these emergency accounting measures really begin to sink in, Americans aren’t going to like it one bit.
The question for mayors and governors will be, ‘how much money can we extract from the people without causing extreme poverty and triggering widespread revolt?’
The answer, of course, is taxes. Primarily property taxes, because that’s the one thing people are still paying while locked down at home and unable to shop.
Take note:
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Nashville Mayor John Cooper is openly proposing raising property taxes by 32% in order to correct an estimated $250 million budget shortfall.
“There is no choice but to have a significant increase in property taxes,” he said. “Measured in a percent, it’s going to be on the order of more than 20 percent to be sure.” [Source]
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Dallas, TX is looking at a proposed 8% increase in property taxes, and is having to work a loophole that allows them to ignore state law which would prevent them from raising taxes more than 3.5%. [Source]
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Expecting a $700 million shortfall, Chicago’s Mayor Lightfoot has said that a property tax increase is ‘on the table.’ [Source]
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California is considering a partial reversal of Proposition 13, which would allow government to assess commercial properties differently, creating an increase in property tax revenue without actually increasing the property tax rate. [Source]
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Other initiatives include “Arizona, where taxes would be raised on incomes above $250,000 to boost teacher salaries; Colorado, which is targeting corporations for at least $151 million in taxes to fund out-of-school learning; and North Carolina, which would issue bonds worth $1.9 billion in part to pay for school capital improvements.” [Source]
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New York is pitching the idea of tax increases for wealthier people. [Source]
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New Jersey is expected to see an unknown increase in taxes as the governor moves to borrow billions of dollars to cover budget gaps. [Source]
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CNBC reports that many states across the nation will be looking at tax increases in many areas, including corporate income taxes, online purchases, excise and sales taxes, property taxes, and gross receipts taxes. [Source]
As we move forward in this deepening crisis, we shall see how all of this works out; but for to be sure, Mr. and Mrs. America, even though you didn’t create the fraud in the financial system, and even though you were forced to close down your business, you will now be used as tax cattle to pay for this giant fustercluck.
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- Kim's Sister Rules Out Further Talks With Trump, Vows Peace As Long As "U.S. Doesn't Touch Us"
Kim’s Sister Rules Out Further Talks With Trump, Vows Peace As Long As “U.S. Doesn’t Touch Us”
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/10/2020 – 22:45It appears the world will not witness any kind of breakthrough Trump-Kim meeting by the end of Trump’s first term in office, given that on Friday Kim Jong Un’s increasingly powerful sister, Kim Yo Jong, had some specific words on the matter.
She said a new Trump-Kim summit is “unlikely” to happen this year but left a remote door open, suggesting “a surprise thing may still happen.”
While this is hardly a surprise given stalled nuclear talks since the end of last year – hopes for any resumption which has since been completely dashed – what is new is her assertion that there will be peace as long as the US “don’t touch us and hurt us, everything will flow as is.”
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and his sister Kim Yo Jong, via Reuters. The comments carried by KCNA news agency are a huge change in tune when compared to her coming close to threatening all-out war against the South a month ago.
Pyongyang had ordered a military build-up along the DMZ ostensibly in response to South Korean activists floating ‘propaganda balloons’ across the border, urging citizens in the North to defect.
Kim Yo Jong said Friday:
“We would like to make it clear that it does not necessarily mean the denuclearisation is not possible,” and added: “But what we mean is that it is not possible at this point of time.”
She emphasized that the US must change its stance and tone toward Pyongyang if Washington hopes for a future breakthrough.
“We do not have the slightest intention to pose a threat to the U.S…. Everything will go smoothly if they leave us alone and make no provocation on us,” she said.
The historic summit in Singapore on June 12, 2018, via AFP. Recent rising North-South tensions have been attributed by many analysts to Seoul’s failed to materialize assurances that Washington would ease sanctions as part of denuclearization talks. This has further appeared an opportunity for Kim’s increasingly visible and powerful sister to flex her authority over the military and next in line to rule.
In these newest comments she also interestingly mentioned watching footage of July 4th celebrations in America.
Bloomberg reports that she expressed curiosity over how the United States celebrates its Independence Day. Bloomberg describes that:
…she received permission from her brother to obtain the DVDs of what she called the “celebratory events” of last week. “I’m trying to personally obtain DVDs on U.S. Independence Day events from now on, and I’ve also gotten approval from the chairman for that,” she said, adding that she’s already watched news reports of the celebrations.
She also expressed good wishes to President Trump, but said the time isn’t right to meet.
Perhaps this somewhat odd aside regarding the DVDs is meant to spur another ‘letter writing type opening’ from Trump? Perhaps a “July 4th care package” might be in the works?
- "Defund The Police" Just Means "I'm Rich & White"
“Defund The Police” Just Means “I’m Rich & White”
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/10/2020 – 22:25Authored by Karol Markowicz via Spectator,
Wealthy white liberals don’t suffer the consequences of their fringe ideologies…
Walk along the leafy streets of any neighborhood in so-called ‘brownstone Brooklyn’, Park Slope, Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn Heights, and you’ll see ‘Defund the Police’ in many a home window.
Owners of $3 million dollar brownstones proudly proclaim their agreement with a fringe policy, designed to remove resources from police squads, as a solution to police violence. How exactly less funding for police will result in better policing is unclear, but virtue signaling of the kind that has rich people pushing for fewer resources for poor people doesn’t get tangled up in the details.
The details are specifically grim.
The New York Post reported on Monday that ‘between Monday, June 29, and Sunday, July 5, the city saw 74 shooting incidents with 101 victims’. Those numbers are more than tripled from the same period in 2019.
But the city is largely not gripped in terror. The rise in homelessness and general lawlessness had been a frequent topic of conversation over the last year. The shootings are contained to only a few neighborhoods and the pain is not spread evenly among the residents of the city. And the left has to mostly ignore the crime rate lest their ‘Defund the Police’ pledge starts to look like cruelty.
The issue, of course, is that these shootings are largely happening in majority-black neighborhoods around the five boroughs. Brownsville, Brooklyn has been hit particularly hard. Upper Manhattan. Harlem. Dozens shot, many dead. No shootings have taken place in Park Slope, Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn Heights. The position ‘Defund the Police’ can easily be shorthand for ‘I’m rich’.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio blames the violence on coronavirus and pent up rage.
He’s not wrong, exactly – our continued lockdown is exacerbating the situation – but he’s also ignoring the elephant in the room. The sustained attack on police leads to a force unable to do its job.
People feel unsafe as a result, and that feeling leads to ever more violence. It’s a lesson New York City has learned before. It’s too bad it has to learn it all over again.
If these shootings were happening in the neighborhoods with the ‘Defund the Police’ signs in their windows, they would quickly be replaced with ‘Triple the Police’, and everybody knows it.
But as long as the violence is confined to mostly black areas, rich white liberals are happy to go along with leftist policy goals that don’t affect them. ‘Black Lives Matter’, their signs say. But not always.
- Sonoma Hotel Employs Robot For Contactless Room Service
Sonoma Hotel Employs Robot For Contactless Room Service
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/10/2020 – 22:05During the pandemic, readers may recall several of our pieces describing what life would be like in a post corona world.
From restaurants to flying to gambling to hotels to gyms to interacting with people to even housing trends – we highlighted how social distancing would transform the economy.
As the transformation becomes more evident by the week, we want to focus on automation and artificial intelligence – and how these two things are allowing hotels, well at least one in California, to accommodate patrons with contactless room service.
Hotel Trio in Healdsburg, California, is surrounded by wineries and restaurants in Healdsburg/Sonoma County region, recently hired a new worker named “Rosé the Robot” that delivers food, water, wine, beer, and other necessities, reported Sonoma Magazine.
The four-foot plastic cylinder with wheels is an innovative robotic butler that offers patrons a contactless experience while staying in the hotel. The robot rolls up and down hallways, even use the elevator, while flashing digital messages to guests in – such as, “I’m on a guest delivery.”
“As Rosé approaches a room with a delivery, she calls the phone to let the guest know she’s outside. A tablet-sized screen on Rosé’s head greets the guest as they open the door, and confirms the order. Next, she opens a lid on top of her head and reveals a storage compartment containing the ordered items. Rosé then communicates a handful of questions surrounding customer satisfaction via her screen. She bids farewell, turns around and as she heads back toward her docking station near the front desk, she emits chirps that sound like a mix between R2D2 and a little bird,” said Sonoma Magazine.
Henry Harteveldt, a travel industry analyst at Atmospheric Research Group in San Francisco, said robots would be integrated into the hotel experience.
“This is a part of travel that will see major growth in the years ahead,” Harteveldt said.
Rosé is manufactured by Savioke, a San Jose-based company that has dozens of robots in hotels nationwide.
The tradeoff of a contactless environment where automation and artificial intelligence replace humans to mitigate the spread of a virus is permanent job loss.
- Matt Taibbi: "It Was Like Watching Bruce Springsteen And Dionne Warwick Be Pelted With Dogshit For Singing We Are the World"
Matt Taibbi: “It Was Like Watching Bruce Springsteen And Dionne Warwick Be Pelted With Dogshit For Singing We Are the World”
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/10/2020 – 21:45Authored by Matt Taibbi
As excerpted from “If it’s Not “Cancel Culture,” What Kind of Culture is it?“
Any attempt to build bridges between the two mindsets falls apart, often spectacularly, as we saw this week in an online fight over free speech that could not possibly have been more comic in its unraveling.
A group of high-profile writers and thinkers, including Pinker, Noam Chomsky, Wynton Marsalis, Salman Rushdie, Gloria Steinem and Anne Appelbaum, signed a letter in Harper’s calling for an end to callouts and cancelations.
“We refuse any false choice between justice and freedom,” the authors wrote, adding, “We need to preserve the possibility of good-faith disagreement without dire professional consequences.”
This Hallmark-card-level inoffensive sentiment naturally inspired peals of outrage across the Internet, mainly directed at a handful of signatories deemed hypocrites for having called for the firings of various persons before.
Then a few signatories withdrew their names when they found out that they would be sharing space on the letterhead with people they disliked.
“I thought I was endorsing a well meaning, if vague, message against internet shaming. I did know Chomsky, Steinem, and Atwood were in, and I thought, good company,” tweeted Jennifer Finney Boylan, adding, “The consequences are mine to bear. I am so sorry.”
Translation: I had no idea my group statement against intellectual monoculture would be signed by people with different views!
In the predictable next development – no dialogue between American intellectuals is complete these days without someone complaining to the boss – Vox writer Emily VanDerWerff declared herself literally threatened by co-worker Matt Yglesias’s decision to sign the statement. The public as well as Vox editors were told:
The letter, signed as it is by several prominent anti-trans voices and containing as many dog whistles towards anti-trans positions as it does, ideally would not have been signed by anybody at Vox… His signature on the letter makes me feel less safe.
Naturally, this declaration impelled Vox co-founder Ezra Klein to take VanDerWerff’s side and publicly denounce the Harper’s letter as a status-defending con.
“A lot of debates that sell themselves as being about free speech are actually about power,” tweeted Klein, clearly referencing his old pal Yglesias. “And there’s a lot of power in being able to claim, and hold, the mantle of free speech defender.”
This Marxian denunciation of the defense of free speech as cynical capitalist ruse was brought to you by the same Ezra Klein who once worked with Yglesias to help Vox raise $300 million. This was just one of many weirdly petty storylines. Writer Thomas Chatterton Williams, who organized the letter, found himself described as a “mixed race man heavily invested in respectability politics,” once he defended the letter, one of many transparent insults directed toward the letter’s nonwhite signatories by ostensible antiracist voices.
The whole episode was nuts. It was like watching Bruce Springsteen and Dionne Warwick be pelted with dogshit for trying to sing We Are the World.
This being America in the Trump era, where the only art form to enjoy wide acceptance is the verbose monograph written in condemnation of the obvious, the Harper’s fiasco inspired multiple entries in the vast literature decrying the rumored existence of “cancel culture.” The two most common themes of such essays are a) the illiberal left is a Trumpian myth, and b) if the illiberal left does exist, it’s a good thing because all of those people they’re smearing/getting fired deserved it.
In this conception there’s nothing to worry about when a Dean of Nursing at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell is dismissed for writing “Black Lives Matter, but also, everyone’s life matters” in an email, or when an Indiana University Medical School professor has to apologize for asking students how they would treat a patient who says ‘I can’t breathe!’ in a clinical setting, or when someone is fired for retweeting a study suggesting nonviolent protest is effective. The people affected are always eventually judged to be “bad,” or to have promoted “bad research,” or guilty of making “bad arguments,” etc.
In this case, Current Affairs hastened to remind us that the people signing the Harper’s letter were many varieties of bad! They included Questioners of Politically Correct Culture like “Pinker, Jesse Singal, Zaid Jilani, John McWhorter, Nicholas A. Christakis, Caitlin Flanagan, Jonathan Haidt, and Bari Weiss,” as well as “chess champion and proponent of the bizarre conspiracy theory that the Middle Ages did not happen, Garry Kasparov,” and “right wing blowhards known for being wrong about everything” in David Frum and Francis Fukuyama, as well as – this is my favorite line – “problematic novelists Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie, and J.K. Rowling.”
Where on the irony-o-meter does one rate an essay that decries the “right-wing myth” of cancel culture by mass-denouncing a gymnasium full of intellectuals as problematic?
Continued reading on Matt Taibbi’s Substack
- Washington Town Resorts To Printing Wooden Currency To Boost COVID Stimulus Spending
Washington Town Resorts To Printing Wooden Currency To Boost COVID Stimulus Spending
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/10/2020 – 21:25The last time this small town in Washington State printed local dollars out of wood was in the Great Depression. Now, the town of Tenino, a community of fewer than 2,000 people near Seattle, has fired up the printing presses after 90 years to fight the virus-induced downturn that has decimated the region.
Tenino residents who can prove economic hardships caused by the virus pandemic are eligible for $300 per month in wooden dollars, subsidized by the local government grant program. So far, the city printed $10,000 of local currency for residents to only be used at businesses in city limits.
Tenino wood dollar The currency is not made of cotton/linen material or 0s or 1s on the blockchain – but rather, wood, as this is the latest example of the rise of “micro currencies” in local communities.
Tenino Mayor Wayne Fournier told The Hustle the wood coins were used during the pandemic to bring back consumption that crashed.
“We were talking about grants for business, microloans, trying to team up with a bunch of different banks,” Fournier said. “The big concern was, ‘How do we directly help families and individuals?”
Resident using wood dollar And then it dawned on him: “Why not start our currency?”
The plan came together fast. Fournier decided that Tenino would set aside $10k to give out to low-income residents hurt by the pandemic. But instead of using federal dollars, he’d print the money on thin sheets of wood designed exclusively for use in Tenino. His mint? A 130-year-old newspaper printer from a local museum.
Tenino printing press Fournier’s central idea is pulled straight from Tenino’s history. During the Great Depression, the city printed sets of wooden dollars using that exact same 1890 newspaper printer. Within a year, the wooden currency had helped bring the economy back from the dead.
By reinstating the old currency now, Fournier has accidentally become part of a much bigger movement. With businesses worried about keeping the lights on and people scrambling to find spending money, communities have struggled to keep their local economies afloat.
So they’ve revived an old strategy: When in doubt, print your own money. – The Hustle
Not too long ago, we noted a small southern Italian town of Castellino del Biferno, printed their local currency to support the local economy during the pandemic.
Amid the current recession, bartering has been booming – it was noted back in April that online bartering sites saw a rapid surge in traffic.
And what does this all mean? Well, the Federal Reserve is not in the businesses of saving small communities – they’re in the business of stabilizing too-big-to-fail banks and Wall Street hedge funds – which means in a post-corona world, the emergence of local currencies could be coming to a small community near you.
Google search trend for “microcurrencies” has erupted in recent months.
Fed up with the status quo? Launch a local micro currency in your small town.
- West Vancouver Police: Driver Carried Out "Gesture Of Hate" For Skidding On Pride Crosswalk
West Vancouver Police: Driver Carried Out “Gesture Of Hate” For Skidding On Pride Crosswalk
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/10/2020 – 21:05Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,
West Vancouver Police accused a man of carrying out a “gesture of hate” for ‘defacing’ a rainbow-colored gay pride crosswalk after he left tire marks on the road.
“On July 7, 2020 at 4:04 pm staff inside the police station heard a loud and sustained tire squealing outside,” according to the West Vancouver Police website.
“When officers took a closer look, they discovered that someone had just left tire marks across a portion of the crosswalk, at the intersection of 16th St and Esquimalt Ave.”
The man then left the area at high speed but has since been identified by authorities.
“This is very upsetting,” said Cst. Kevin Goodmurphy. “For whatever reason, this person has chosen to leave a gesture of hate on a crosswalk that stands for the exact opposite.”
Investigators would like to speak with the driver responsible for defacing a recently installed Pride crosswalk at 16th St. and Esquimalt Ave. If you have information, please call 604-925-7300. https://t.co/ywkNR4DMAv pic.twitter.com/ViW0ZxcxYN
— West Vancouver PD (@WestVanPolice) July 8, 2020
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
The “gesture of hate” is a tire skid mark that covers part of the crosswalk but is by no means substantial.
Respondents to the tweet questioned whether West Vancouver Police should be concentrating on finding more dangerous criminals than those who leave tire marks on the road.
“If you look closely, there are hardly any skid marks on the white stripe. This driver must have been homophobic AND a white supremacist,” joked one respondent.
If you look closely, there are hardly any skid marks on the white stripe. This driver must have been homophobic AND a white supremacist.
— Alphazero (@Caturman) July 9, 2020
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“Have you started an investigation into yourselves for having the nerve to stand on it?” asked another.
have you started an investigation into yourselves for having the nerve to stand on it? pic.twitter.com/Lnh6lPFTep
— TheRealMeans ⭐⭐⭐ (@TheRealMeans) July 9, 2020
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“I understand that Vancouver has no serious crime and needs to classify a traffic violation as a hate-crime to make the job of the police more interesting before it gets defunded, or is this business as usual for Canadian police?” commented another Twitter user.
I understand that Vancouver has no serious crime and needs to classify a traffic violation as a hate-crime to make the job of the police more interesting before it gets defunded, or is this business as usual for Canadian police?
— ofehrmedia.press (@OfehrmediaPress) July 9, 2020
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It remains to be seen whether the culprit will be charged with a hate crime.
* * *
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- China Passenger Car Sales Slump 6.5% In June After Dead Cat Bounce In May
China Passenger Car Sales Slump 6.5% In June After Dead Cat Bounce In May
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/10/2020 – 20:45Despite endless government incentives and a faux-V-shaped recovery, reality once again seems to be sinking in for China’s auto market.
Beijing announced today that the country had sold 1.68 million units in June, according to the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA). This marks a 6.5% year over year drop despite May’s dead cat bounce, where numbers rose 1.9% from the year prior, mostly due to easy comps.
The association called the number proof of a “continuing recovery” in the passenger car market, according to Reuters.
As was the case in May, luxury automakers outpaced the market while sales of NEV vehicles reached 85,600. Tesla accounted for 23% of the pure battery EV sector in the month and CPCA Secretary-General Cui Dongshu said he expects EV sales to outperform in the second half of 2020.
These numbers won’t come as too big of a surprise for Zero Hedge readers. We noted days ago that sales numbers coming out of June looked as though it would be another slumping month for China. Just days ago, the CPCA said that retail car sales were down 37% YOY for the 4th week of June.
Average daily sales were down to 51,627 during June 22-27, which marked a 6% sequential fall from the same week in May, indicating little respite or improvement from the pressure of the coronavirus pandemic on the industry. PCA blamed “seasonal factors” for the drop, which is a funny way to say “Chinese-borne virus ravaging the entire planet”.
We said days ago:
“This also paints an ugly picture for June’s new car sales number, since we reported about 3 weeks ago that the first week in June was also off to an ugly start. In that article, we noted that retail car sales fell 10% year over year – but more importantly 20% from the same period in May – in the first week of June.”
This news comes despite better than expected results in May, where sales showed a 12% increase year over year.
According to The Detroit Bureau, premium and luxury passenger car retail sales led the charge in May, rising 28% last month compared with year-ago results. Luxury vehicles maintained their strength in June.
The Chinese government continues to try to spur demand with new policies aimed at enticing buyers.
Recall, we have recently noted that U.S. auto manufacturers are also teeing up sizeable incentives to get buyers back into showrooms. Europe is following suit, with Volkswagen starting a sales initiative to revive demand, including improved leasing and financing terms.
Outlook for the year in China remains less-than-optimistic. The CAAM predicts that sales will drop 15% to 25% for the year, depending on whether or not the country is able to further slow the spread of the virus.
- Here's What 75 Preppers Learned During The Lockdown
Here’s What 75 Preppers Learned During The Lockdown
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/10/2020 – 20:25Authored by Daisy Luther via The Organic Prepper blog,
The lockdown that recently took place due to the pandemic was like a practice run for a bigger SHTF event. Many of our prepper theories played out and were accurate, while others weren’t as realistic as we thought beforehand.
People who weren’t preppers already learned a lot about why they would want to be better prepared in the future, but they weren’t the only ones who learned lessons. These preppers took a moment to answer questions about the lessons they learned during the lockdown. (Here’s an article about the things I learned.)
What did you learn about preparedness during the lockdown?
Trisha…
I learned two main things. First, I was very surprised at how strongly the isolation hit me. I am a person who is “energized” by interacting with other people. I knew that already, but I was shocked at how MUCH it affected me. Second, I got a taste of normalcy bias. I kept trying to see ways in which our situation was still “Normal”. As a school teacher of little ones for thirty years, I was pretty much used to switching into action immediately to deal with a crisis and putting my feelings on the back burner. So, I was shocked that it took me a couple of months to “accept” the changes in our lives and start looking for creative ways to make life work and meet our needs.
Maria…
I learned it is so important to pay attention to what’s going on and stay ahead of the crowd. My husband and I were able to stock up two weeks before everyone else panicked. I also learned my plan of being stocked up and shopping only for replacements is a great system. For example I have 3 jars of mayo on the shelf, when I open one I put it on the list to purchase next time and replenish. Same with Costco TP. Every time I shop there I grab one package. We didn’t even go through half our stock pile and I was able to leave it for those who really needed it. I also learned to listen to your instincts, inner voice, the spirit, God or whatever you call it. I listened every time and we have made it through very comfortably. Also, look for opportunities to help others prepare. I have gotten several people to prepare seriously because of staying ahead of everyone else. I couldn’t have done what I did with[out] Daisy and her spot on articles. Like I said earlier, they kept me two weeks ahead of the crowd.
Angela…
That individuals mental state can be intrusive to yours. For me-it preteen having her 1st period.
Annabel…
That things happen really fast. If you act when things happen it is too late. Act now.
Judith…
That prepping is far more than one type of crisis. Organization of preps is vitally important ( I am still not where I need to be). Having a list of recipes and items needed helps with how and what to shop for. Alternative sources for cooking, cleaning etc. are important.
Angela…
Being in a lockdown during the spring was great. House was cool and could bake. Once it got hot, there was no baking. Need to learn to bake more via the fire, not just cook.
Maya…
I had anticipated shortages like food, soap, TP, and PPEs, but I underestimated how short in supply durable consumer goods would be – like the fact that freezers would pretty much become extinct, all gardening supplies, etc. Luckily, I had stockpiled seeds (although this year I brought veggie starts because everything started late this year.) It took until June to get the raised bed kits (industrial area, it’s not safe to grow anything you want to eat in the ground). Canning jars have also become in short supply. I anticipated has shortages, which did not take place – in fact, gas became dirt cheap with nobody able to go anywhere. I did fail to anticipate that the border would be closed for half a year! Living in a border city, I tend to rely on the much cheaper US prices for many things. I really should not have put off dentist and eye appointments, or a haircut! I will get that attended to before the next wave of contamination and lock-downs. I am working now on beefing up food growing and preserving supplies. Desiccants, oxygen absorbers, Mylar bags, food grade buckets, canning lids, canning jars, and food saver bags are all likely to become harder to obtain as food prices rise and more people become aware of how to grow and preserve foods. I am also stocking up on organic fertilizers and indoor growing options. And sprouting seeds – I think I have at least 2 years’ worth of those.
Tarra…
Baby items. We have a brand-new great grandchild born on the 4th and an 8-month-old granddaughter. I have always kept some things for when they are here, or the kids need help. We learned when it first hit that formula and diapers go quick.
Lynda…
Realized we ATE way more than I thought we would and more than normal, I think. Also, it’s easy to slip into an [depressive] state even when you aren’t prone to depression.
Chelsea…
I was truly surprised at how fast everything happened. I learned that people get really angry and do things that defy logic when they are panicking. I remember I kept thinking, “if they do this over hand sanitizer and toilet paper, how crazy are they going to be when it’s food!”. I learned that my preparations allowed me some measure of peace and calm that others didn’t have. It allowed me to enjoy family time at home. I was surprised by how information changed daily. You really didn’t know who or what info to trust. I had to be vigilant in reading sources and reasoning. I learned that people are generally idiots and very selfish. As much as we want to believe people will rise up for the greater good, many won’t. But also, there were many beautiful people out there willing to help anyone who felt scared going to the store. I didn’t see many holes because I truly planned ahead and made trips to the store when needed. I was surprised how quickly people lost their jobs and businesses went under. It really didn’t take much for that to happen. I have become wearier of information released. I don’t t trust it immediately because it will change the next day…which makes it harder to get a handle on the truth of a situation. I learned that when you watch, you will prepare…and we were stocked and self-isolating before the government required it. I learned emotionally preparing is just as important as physical. Mental and emotional resilience is what got us through when we realized this was a marathon and not a sprint.
Tara…
I learned not to wait to get something you want or need. I was lucky to get new filters for our Berkey before they ran out. Also, I have wanted a grain mill forever and now I have one ordered but is back order until August. And remember, one is none and two is one rule!
Shelley…
Never assume that your job is safe. I’m a L&D nurse at a busy hospital. BUT, I’m per diem, April 8th I was sent home early and have not worked regularly since then. I just now found a travel nurse assignment that fits. I’ll be working both jobs for the time being. My hospital definitely puts profit over patient safety.
Pat…
I was surprised how quickly the shut-down of stores, libraries, etc. happened. The notice went out only hours before the shutdown happened so there was little opportunity to get out and pick up the non-essential supplies (books, craft supplies, gardening supplies) that would have made isolation easier. I was/am also surprised by the shifting “news” and medical opinion. First–masks won’t help, then they may help, now they are required. And the fact that prepping quickly became “hoarding”.
Pam…
Coffee and tonic water. People in SW Kansas found out that tonic water had quinine in it and bought it like crazy, once it was suggested that malaria drugs would fight the virus.
Melissa…
I learned I need a bigger network and plans for the winter. Things I thought I may need, but didn’t buy, I should have- like more masks. If I think maybe, then I should get it then like a pool or kayak cause the reasonable ones are gone. My family depended on me to send them things since they were in a hot spot and store were limited on particular items.
Melinda…
I learned to follow my instincts. I did, and I’m thankful, because we were better stocked than we would have been otherwise. Holes – I didn’t have enough TP. I also didn’t anticipate how much I would rely on easy to prepare foods for my kids, such as Mac and cheese cups. It seemed like when everything else was upside down, they really appreciated having a “fun” food.
Sandy…
I learned that “Alone Time” is worth more than anything we could’ve bought at the store. With quarantines and self-isolation ‘all in the same house’, it was very difficult at times to remain sane. Normal entertainment was taken advantage of as well and so some of us just sat there dumbfounded when our ‘normally scheduled program’ wasn’t there, or when the next episode of our favorite show wasn’t going to come out until next year sometime. This was different than a power outage, a big snowstorm, or a hurricane… There was very little entertainment, plenty of work that ‘could’ be done, but little to work with. Ultimately, creativity and imagination became my best friend. In lieu of that, I’ve ordered plenty of paper, pencils, new brushes, and canvas.
Sue…
I learned that medical emergencies can appear out of the blue. Thanks to early pandemic prep posts here, the oxygen concentrator I got saved my dog during a sudden life-threatening ARDS episode when the vet ER was closed during lockdown and fish mox made all the difference when I developed a tooth abscess until oral surgery was available over a month later. I learned that my success during lockdown was largely because online ordering never stopped, and all utilities were available. Back in February and March, I had prepped for both being shut down and did a good job with that. The fact that they didn’t made our lockdown pretty easy. My house is like a disorganized warehouse now. My focus was getting supplies in and deal with it later. My current and future plans are to organize and work diligently to improve/optimize health.
Kathy…
Glasses. Always get your eye exam on time so that you aren’t facing an uncertain future using an outdated prescription. (I still need to get mine updated!)
What are some holes you found in your preps?
Kate…
Reading the articles here on Prep Club kept me ahead of the curve by at least a month, if not 6 weeks. I didn’t hit us hard here on Vancouver Island, but the one thing I did fail with was yeast and baking soda. Never expected that so many would decide to start baking bread, and the baking soda I use mixed with dish soap in place of comet or vim. We were down to our last little box when the local Walmart finally got a shipment in. Also failed with seed potatoes. I had a lot left over from last years harvest, but I wanted to get more. Tried every store and nursery and they were all gone. I always get my seeds in January, so that was not an issue.
Jenn…
I didn’t plan adequately for fresh things like milk & eggs (I had powdered milk but more frozen for the shorter term would have been good). I also realized w[ith] the yeast & flour shortage (both of which I had but wanted to preserve my stock of) it was easier & a better use of my resources to buy inexpensive white sandwich bread for curbside pickup rather than bake it.
Kim…
I found holes in personal items. My husband and I both were essential so we didn’t get to lock-down but we limited unnecessary travel/trips to the store in the beginning. I found that I had been so busy making sure we had plenty of water, food and tp. I didn’t realize I didn’t stock up on shampoo, soap etc. I have since made sure we have a year’s supply of personal toiletry items.
Becky Ann…
I ran out of Dawn and surprisingly coffee
Anne…
I will never assume TP will always be available. Or frozen peas, rice, cleaners, pasta, flour, etc. When I see it any of these items, I’m going to go stay ahead of the game and get them consistently. THAT SAID, what will I do differently tomorrow? I will try to anticipate where the next shortage will occur. I need more beans, for sure. I think clothing and shoes may be harder to get at some point.
Letia…
Holes was toiletries. I was so concentrated on food. I need to get bug out bags made and set up for us to grab. Honestly y’all have taught me so much! I’m just gonna keep going. Stocking food, bumping up security, bags, canning, growing food.
Chris…
Masks were the item I missed in my preps. When I tried to order them before covid even hit here, they were sold out. I refuse to pay 50.00 for 10 so I’ve been slowly buying a box at a time as the price comes down. And I’ve yet to find yeast.
Angela…
…not enough extension cords. Old house does not have a lot of 3 prong outlets, which I need for my current extension cords. We do not have a printer. So, schoolwork needed to be printed, adapted and overcome.
Polly…
…we had gotten sloppy with replacing some of our frequently used food – peanut butter, popcorn, flour, etc. I also learned it is really, really important to be at least one step ahead of the masses when it comes to supplies. My son-in-law would say, “we need to make sure we have enough (********** )” and I would say, “Got it.” When the info about the virus started to filter through to Ohio, I made a special trip for gloves, hand sanitizer, masks, etc. Within another 2 weeks, you couldn’t find them anywhere, for any price. I couldn’t believe how a mistaken belief (How much toilet paper do you need for a respiratory virus.) caused such craziness. That freaked me out.
Heather…
Ask my hubs this question and he said, “you did good”. I plan on getting things like paint and building supplies as they were unavailable. Took contractors almost two months to build my barn because of supply issues.
StivnSheila…
Need more chocolate and chips…. and canning supplies.
Melissa…
Thermometers. When covid started becoming a household word and it was recommended to check temperatures, I realized my never-been-used thermometer was a dud. My husband had been sick for a week- not covid, but we couldn’t tell if he had a low-grade fever or not. I went to four different stores to find a thermometer- all four stores were sold out! Then, I remembered we had bought three extensive first aid kits- we dug them out, and each had a thermometer. I thought we were prepared, but we weren’t prepared at all for a pandemic.
Arleene…
We need more storage space for animal feed. Found that out the hard way when we weren’t able to make our bimonthly run to the feed store.
Whitney…
I worked the whole time so not much changed. Holes were toiletries, medical supplies and I need to come up with an alternative energy solution. I need better organization and more room. One major issue is: foot problem (in pt now, may have to still do surgery) has caused me to not get some stuff done. Trying to rectify that slowly before I have to tell the Dr yes or no on the surgery.
Teresa…
The only hole in my preps was “entertainment “. We live out in the country so going outside was a great help but, for bad weather days I need more movies and maybe series on DVD. Where we live streaming is not yet optimal, and that is putting it nicely! Books, puzzles, and games are great but, sometimes you just want to watch a good movie.
Dana…
My biggest problem was forgetting how much more I would need when my oldest daughter and her 2 toddlers moved back in. I also can’t depend on anyone but me to check out how low the resources are getting.
Laura…
Dried yeast was the thing we didn’t have enough of that we missed. Next time I’ll make sure I have enough in sealed tins. I’ll double up on PPE although we still haven’t used it all up. For information two sources were useful… lists posted on here by knowledgeable group members, even in other countries and local info from friends about which shops had what scarce stuff.
Donna…
I underestimated how QUICKLY shortages would show up in our rural town. Within HOURS of the first confirmed case of corona virus in our area (still several counties away), sections of the local Walmart were cleaned out and remained that way for weeks. I wish I had stocked more PPE. I had not expected garden supplies to sell out so quickly and remain sold out so long. Many garden supply items are sold out within hours of being stocked on the shelves. The rabbits this year seem to be eating everything. (peppers, marigolds, peas, beans, etc.) Hardware cloth is still difficult to find.
What will you do differently to prepare for any future lockdown?
Judi…
I would stock a lot more liquid hand soap and dish washing liquid. It was truly hard to find hand soap, still is most places. Meat has gotten very expensive. I wish I had my chest freezer full of hamburger instead of turkey, a ham and chicken. I can do more things creatively with hamburger. With everyone home, it’s too hard to keep up with making bread. Hungry little piranhas trying to eat it before it’s even cool enough to slice…lol! Store bought bread to the rescue. These folks can go through a loaf in one lunch, with only 3 of them eating it!
Max…
My family was more prepared than needed which provided us confidence and peace of mind. What would I do differently? Buy more gloves. My stock was sized for medical use, not going to the grocery use.
Alyssa…
Act on the thoughts and feelings you have immediately, and don’t stop to overthink them. For example: I had the thought back in January to learn how to can ground beef and get a few quarts canned. I didn’t act on that and now ground beef is almost $5 a pound. One thing I feel I did right, is that the month before seeds had sold out, I had already placed my order so I could start things inside. By the time I was ready to plant outside, things were pretty much sold out.
Diane…
Watch my mental state. Keep watch on the news, but don’t get obsessed with it. Stay proactive. The only things missing were coffee and hair coloring….Oh! Need more popcorn for when the next wave of social media arguments break out. (j/k) Things we did that really worked: We sat down with my son & his wife and put a game plan together if supply chains got broken. He started an organic farm with dairy goats and chickens. We expanded our garden and made a good contact with a local family ranch. Their business was just gone because the restaurants had shut down, so I helped them figure out some veggie boxes and then promoted on social media. It helped both the people getting high quality fresh veggies and the farm. Now, they’re just flooding me with veggies. My thought was that if things go south, having a farm as a friend was a good thing.
Allison…
Food-wise I would buy more frozen fruits and vegetables. My freezer is packed with meat and some quick meals(and frozen pizza for the teenager) I have canned veggies but wanted more variety. Broccoli, cauliflower, and such. Fruit, I needed more apples, bananas, oranges, lemons, and limes. Trying to problem solve the lack of citrus.
Susan…
Aside from wishing I’d had more money for padding, about the only thing I plan on stocking more of is chocolate and sweets. It turns out that a Cadbury egg every day is what kept me feeling sane and safe. Weird, and please don’t judge me..(LOL) I think the excessive sugar/carb/fat triggers a serotonin reaction. And yes, I found where I can buy a box of 48 for $25. I did find that I’m reluctant to cook the dried beans I have. I’m not sure why. Lack of experience. Not having recipes. I have many types, and a lot of them, so I should start using them I suppose.
Erica…
Adding more food and supplies. I wasn’t planning on having four more people back home so that made me change my game plan a bit. Otherwise, getting more pandemic supplies to carry in all vehicles.
How will you change your preparedness in general?
Leigh Ann…
My husband and I became sick with covid-19 and were pretty much unable to leave the house for almost a month. I thought I had done a decent job of preparing with food storage. But after not going to a store for a month and very limited shopping a couple months before that, I realized I had underestimated how much food we would go through. I also underestimated the amount of paper products, garbage bags, cleaning products etc. We still did OK and I am so glad I had what I had. But I am learning you need a lot more than what you think you do. I had heard and read that before but I think it’s hard to understand exactly what that means until you can see it firsthand.
Hayley…
I’ve actually coasted along quite nicely once I got past the initial upset of having my routine messed up, fresh produce was an issue, I’m planning an overhaul of the garden to help supplement that for this winter onward, what I did find odd was my reluctance to start using my stockpile, I was concerned as to how I would replenish it, I’m not sure how I can really overcome that other than having back ups of back ups so if, for example, I manage to work thru my 12 months supply of loo roll I then have other options I can fall back on until I can get more or if it never restocks.
Sharon…
We did pretty good overall. We have been long term preppers, dealing with weather related and power outages. We had no problem at all with social distancing because we generally do that anyways. What we learned was how much money we saved by working from home. Almost $500 month on just gas alone in savings was like a wonderful gift. I am thankful my husband has a job that he could do this. What we learned is we HAVE to get out of this rental and buy a place of our own. The fresh stuff we relied on as a staple kept us much healthier. We both gained weight living off of more pantry staples. While I have some pots of salad greens & herbs that’s a far cry from what I usually buy fresh. A garden is a must have for us. We have taken the opportunity to learn a lot of new skills including more medical skills, organizing preps & inventory keeping, planning for the unexpected, learning to slaughter & process a pig in hot weather – totally different than the usual early winter harvest. I learned how fast supplies can become unavailable because of importing of goods. I became aware of how much the media pushes their agenda in whatever direction it wants and is not to be trusted or relied on and how its really feeding the divisions that can easily fuel a civil war. Knowledge and skills are so much more important than having a lot of stuff. In all I think it really impacted our reasons as to why we prep and to step it up a lot more in our time frames from WHAT IF…To WHEN! Where are we going to be??? And giving us a START GETTING READY NOW! kick in the pants.
Lisa…
We did pretty well. I don’t know if I’m able to change what I need to which would be to stop helping others. I started pushing family members to start building a stock of hygiene/sanitizing products and I was ignored (I’m sure there were whispers that my tinfoil hat was too tight). Then when they couldn’t find the stuff, I gave out of my stash. I had/have enough but now need to rebuild my stockpile. It was frustrating to be sure! Can I look at my dad or my in-laws and tell them “I told you so”? Well, I did but I still gave them the supplies they needed. But the ‘kids’ (ages 25+), I told them they need to figure it out themselves and sent links on DIY stuff.
Pam…
Keeping informed from sources outside msm kept me 3-4 weeks ahead of the crowds, thank you Prep Club. I felt comfortable with my preps when things got bad here in the US. I did find myself reluctant to use my stash. I was able to explain early the need to be ready for lockdown with extended family. In turn, they were better prepared and now know I’m not paranoid. It was surprising to learn how few times I truly need to go anywhere ever.
Lisa…
Snacks and quick stuff to eat. I typically don’t keep a lot of it anyway, but with everyone home constantly it was more of an issue. I’m still not quite sure how to impact that without impacting storage and stock rotation issues. Second was a little more emergency or liquid cash…that issue is currently changing. We just were not comfortable with how tight we were personally and for our business. Sometimes that can’t be helped, but we are making a concerted effort to have a little better padded emergency fund. We would have survived, but not as comfortably as we would like.
Angela…
…coffee brings me sanity… and a bit of normality. How I look forward to my cup each morning. Part of my routine that never changed.
Deb…
I was in the hospital when the whole COVID thing blew wide open. I came home to a disaster. My big fail was not explaining the prep system to hubby (who had previously no interest).
Colette…
As full-time farmers we were never really “locked down”. The whole thing made me more aware though. We were well stocked on food and hygiene items, no real holes where supplies are concerned. In all honesty I believe we could go a year+ on total lockdown without going hungry or being dirty, or really doing without anything we really wanted or needed. We raise pretty much everything we eat, and I always keep a surplus stock of seeds. I think I would reconsider my water supply. We are on public water but if it quit running, we have a cistern and access to strip pits. It will just require considerably more work for transport and purification. I would like a solar set up for electricity. And always more means of defending our home and livestock. It’s the same as always, being able to afford those more expensive items.
Tina…
I never knew that liquid bleach got weaker over time. You can stockpile it by the gallon, but that does you no good about six months out. I picked up granulated pool shock, which can be reconstituted a tiny bit at a time and make a similar product to bleach, useful in all the same situations, that we’ll use up in tiny batches then make more. Added plus: it’s a small packet that takes up almost no space and lasts indefinitely if stored properly.
Kathy…
I need to get to the range more.
Laurie…
After having been through several hurricanes and the ’08 crash and having to help family, we’re good.
Crystal…
Toilet paper & Clorox wipes are worth more than gold to some people. When tp starts being restocked and the sign says 1 per family you buy it every trip just in case. Friends and family in larger cities don’t stock up and their large stores were out a long time. I thought I might have to start shipping toilet paper. Learning about gardening and buying extra seeds BEFORE it’s time to plant. We weren’t ready for an in-ground garden and used containers. Gardening supplies, including vegetable starts, here went fast (within days) since everyone was stuck at home and didn’t want to go to the bigger cities. Buying a spare freezer mid shutdown was interesting. Home Depot delivery was 4 months wait! Our neighbor is finally getting one they ordered in April. We bought a used one local for $100 thankfully it’s still going…Oh and stock up even more on dry/canned pet foods. We usually buy the biggest bag possible and still needed to order more. Chewy & Walmart online was sold out of most options and our small local store only gets small bags and even that was hit or miss each week. Like toilet paper buy what you can every trip and stock up. Can’t ever have too much as long as it’s sealed and not around mice.
Barbara…
Organization. I honestly didn’t know how much I needed of everything. I still don’t have that nailed. And part of that is a place I can store goods so that is can see what I have more easily. Shelves, etc.
Shelia…
Had enough TP until just now. But now was able to find some and have restocked. I will now buy every time I go to the store. Seeds: I had heirloom seeds but will begin adding extra to my collection. Never thought as a nurse that I would ever have to worry about having a steady job as I have usually over the past 32 years worked at least 1-2 Full-time jobs (we work 12-hour shifts so can work 2 -FT jobs 3 -12 hr. shifts per week) but with Covid and me now not working in the Emergency Room I found myself not being able to work my job in pre-op surgery due to being shut down. But we are now back up and running at mostly normal schedules. Our garden is supplying fresh fruits and vegetables which is great. Chicken supplying eggs. Masks and cleaning supplies are what I will also stock up on. The pool shock is a great thing I will be checking into.
Michelle…
I need to work on stocking up on clothing for my son, as he is still growing. It is harder to come by good used clothes for boys in the size he is in now and forward, but I need to be prepared anyway! I always have had a stash of tp and still have quite a bit but will continue to stock up as needed. I think the hard thing now is the temptation to sit back and not press forward on prepping as much since I have a good stash of food, etc. But one never knows just what tomorrow will bring. I keep getting two pounds of butter every time I am at Aldi, as it’s the limit and it’s the cheapest it’s been in ages ($1.88/pound). I probably have an exorbitant amount of butter in my freezers, but the low price cannot last forever!
Nicole…
I need better organization, I have too much stuff and can’t find what I need when I need it!! I didn’t go grocery shopping for over 2 months at a store other than for some random unimportant things, pet food, and fresh produce/milk. I feel that we would be okay for a long time with human things! We do need more pet food, and I’ve bought powdered milk at bulk barn every time I get milk and vacuum-sealed what we would use in a month. I also need Mylar bags and more coffee! And less dog hair would be nice! Oh, and an adult inflatable pool would be awesome! My dryer died in March, so I’ve been doing a load every time a basket is full and hang drying. Getting a huge walnut tree taken down in August since it’s a major allergy issue and blocks the sun and kills all the grass/plants in the back yard, and getting my old deck ripped out. Going to replace with patio stones or concrete since it is home for skunks, rabbits, or rats at different times of their year and I had a major rat problem this winter in my old half of the basement. Also, will be putting in proper insulation to my bedroom crawlspace since it has none and new windows/doors (they are at least 50 years old) have been bought and I will be helping my dad put them in so I can learn how to! These all need to be done before SHTF to make sure I can keep the house comfortable since they are responsible for 30% heat/cooling loss!
Julie…
I need better organization, inventory tracking methods, an upright freezer, more shelving in my storage area, and ammo. Need 9mm ammo and it’s impossible to find locally right now.
Jim…
Not much changed for me, but my wife had several clients on hiatus out of fear of getting sick.
Heather…
I love my kids, I love my kids, I love my kids. This mantra was said daily. And now with the hubby home going on week 4 it applies to him as well. I need school supplies at home, never saw that one coming. I stay home anyway so that didn’t change, the husband had to work so that was normal. I know I had some short and they were odd ones so those were taken care of.
Melissa…
I spent more money than expected! Although I typically buy extra supplies each shopping trip, in February and March with the potential for shelter in place I did some large grocery, ammo and cleaning supply purchasing. Ammo was impossible to find by mid-March, and it’s still very limited on availability in early July. I realized living alone and being furloughed, that after two weeks I craved human interaction. I ended up going to my parents for a week. When initially the lockdown began and there was not clear knowledge of what would happen with the virus, I avoided the stores but after a month caved to get fresh vegetables and fruit, but ironically during that time I also threw away vegetables as I over bought and I didn’t eat or process all of them before they rotted.
Susan…
Just trying to save money, get out of debt and looking for another (“essential”) job
Erin…
It may seem silly or trivial but purchasing undergarments and clothing. I am in need of some things that need to be tried on before purchase and I won’t be able to do that for the foreseeable future. I have a backup plan, but I procrastinated too much on making these purchases.
Julia…
Coming up with more options to supplement easily perishable items. For example, I learned that carton egg whites store very well frozen in the carton and switching to shelf stable nondairy milk lasts much longer than refrigerated. Also, I learned that if I see something, I need to not worry what others thought. In Feb I did a few rather large shopping trips and got a lot of looks/comments, but I didn’t mind. Those supplies were well used, and at that point there were several left for others of they so desired. Also important for me to learn was to prep snack supplies and actual meals, not just staples. My children get very tired of just basics so when I found good deals on shelf stable things they enjoy (granola bars, cereal, packaged Mac, and cheese) I’ve been adding them to my stockpile.
Karen…
Definitely keep more cleaning wipes, paper towels and TP on hand (although I’m still good). Get another small chest freezer (I already have one) for frozen veggies, fruits and meat. For over a month I couldn’t find canned or frozen peas anywhere. Masks, definitely. Right now, I know I have a guaranteed job for this coming year, but not sure after. So, I will be saving and possibly converting to some gold and silver coin.
Jose…
Going STRAIGHT to my BOL. If the wife doesn’t want to come, cool. Hasta la vista, baby. But I´ll take the kids with me. And the cat. You can keep the dog.
Lynda…
The pandemic virus was on my radar late January, early February. We started prepping seriously for the pandemic effect here in Massachusetts. Shopping was done by early March. Our group of friends had multiple planning conversations and we shared our resources and maximized our shopping together. We informed everyone we could. Bread was probably the one item I should have frozen more of.
Vicki…
I usually have enough of everything on hand, but when I first started reading about the virus (thank you, Daisy), I quickly bought extra masks, hand sanitizer, Clorox wipes, disposable gloves, and OTC drugs, as well as extra thermometers. It was all well-stocked at the beginning of the pandemic. The only thing I forgot to stock was yeast, but I’ve since been able to buy 2 one-pound packages online.
Sheila…
I’ll never again say “Do I really need more of those (insert whatever)? I already have x amount. No, I won’t get them.” I will get them. And more. And more if I can. Not because I’m a hoarder. Because so many people I know, and love had NONE. And I shared. And they learned that yes, they need to get more of them too. And also, I learned not to ignore that nagging little feeling of “Something’s coming”.
What about you?
What did you learn during the lockdown? Did you run out of anything that you thought you have plenty? Was there something unexpected that occurred that you never saw coming?
- Trump Commutes Roger Stone's Prison Sentence
Trump Commutes Roger Stone’s Prison Sentence
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/10/2020 – 20:05President Trump has commuted the 40-month prison sentence of longtime adviser Roger Stone.
He added that he is going to continue to fight his case in the appeals court, and also do whatever he can to support the full exoneration of General Flynn
— Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) July 10, 2020
The move comes after a US appeals court denied an emergency request by Stone to delay the start of his sentence over concerns that he might contract coronavirus.
In a court filing earlier on Friday, Stone, 67, said his life would be put at risk in the Georgia facility because at least 20 inmates and four staff members there had contracted the deadly virus. When U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson denied his request for the delay, the facility with almost 1,400 inmates had no cases, he said. –Bloomberg
In a late Friday statement, the White House said “Roger Stone is a victim of the Russia Hoax that the Left and its allies in the media perpetuated for years in an attempt to undermine the Trump presidency. There was never any collusion between the Trump Campaign, or the Trump Administration, with Russia. Such collusion was never anything other than a fantasy of partisans unable to accept the result of the 2016 election.”
BREAKING: White House: “Today, President Donald J. Trump signed an Executive Grant of Clemency commuting the unjust sentence of Roger Stone, Jr.” https://t.co/aZOjNN5JnI pic.twitter.com/KwmjtWGLSv
— Dan Linden (@DanLinden) July 10, 2020
En route to #RogerStone’s house for celebratory drinks.
Justice was done by @realDonaldTrump tonight.
— John Cardillo (@johncardillo) July 10, 2020
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Stone’s clemency came as no surprise, as Trump telegraphed the move earlier Friday when he told reporters “Well, I’ll be looking at it,” adding “I think Roger Stone was very unfairly treated, as were many people.”
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Earlier in the week, Stone issued a statement urging Trump to commute his sentence, while Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham tweeted on Friday that “it would be justified if President @realDonaldTrump decided to commute Roger Stone’s prison sentence.”
- "It's Going To Be A Mess" – Quarter of NYC Renters Haven't Paid Since March
“It’s Going To Be A Mess” – Quarter of NYC Renters Haven’t Paid Since March
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/10/2020 – 20:05As the US recovery stalls and the fiscal cliff looms, there are new, troubling signs from America’s biggest rental market, as an alarming number of renters haven’t paid in months.
Bloomberg, citing a new report via the Community Housing Improvement Program (CHIP), a group that represents landlords, said 25% of New York City’s apartment renters haven’t paid since March.
Shocking, right? Because President Trump has been on Twitter this week, boasting about the economy and jobs “are growing faster than anyone expected.” However, the real story is one where the consumer is severely damaged due to the virus-induced downturn.
And the problem gets worse, that is, because when rental income for landlords collapses, they will experience financial hardships as well, including servicing mortgage payments and inability to cover other building-related expenses (if those are fixed or variable costs).
Another issue developing is the fiscal cliff – and we’ve noted, direct payments to Americans now make up 25% of all personal income, suggesting when the stimulus runs out, expected at the end of July, the economy/consumption will crater. Couple that with a stalled recovery and surging virus cases around the country, it now makes sense why the Trump administration is requesting round two in the stimulus.
If Congress fails to pass the second stimulus bill – this will prove disasters for landlords as renters will not be able to afford rent through the end of summer. Last month, New York state passed the Tenant Safe Harbor Act, which makes it even harder for landlords to evict.
Even if a landlord manages to evict someone – demand for rentals has plunged, plus people are fleeing cities due to virus pandemic and social unrest.
Dondre Roberts, an agent with brokerage Nestseekers International, represents a landlord in Manhattan with a 17% vacancy rate because college reopenings have been delayed.
“Typically a studio would go for $2,600, but now it’s $2,300,” Roberts said. “A lot of landlords are offering one-month free rent, and they’re paying the broker fee. It’s a tenant’s market.” Of course, tenants with jobs are getting harder to find.
Sharon Redhead, a landlord in Brooklyn’s East Flatbush neighborhood, said if rental income doesn’t rebound in the near term – she might be forced to sell her property.
Redhead said 40% of the tenants in her +50 unit building skipped out on rent payments in June.
“We’re rent-check-to-rent-check like our tenants,” she said. “We have small cushions.”
Besides the election propaganda from the Trump administration about a ‘rocket ship’ recovery – Ameria’s largest rental market, that is New York City, is facing a massive crisis, with no remedy in sight and a consumer that has been decimated by the virus-downturn in the economy – this all suggest the recession is far from over.
As Gary Shilling, the president of A. Gary Shilling & Co., told CNBC earlier this week, prepare for another downturn in the stock market as investors will soon realize the shape of the recovery is an “L” rather than the overhyped “V.”
- The Illiberalism At The Heart Of Cancel Culture
The Illiberalism At The Heart Of Cancel Culture
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/10/2020 – 19:45Authored by John Lloyd via CAPX
In 2018, David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker and Pulitzer Prize-winning author, cancelled a public interview with Steve Bannon, a former senior adviser to President Donald Trump, which he had organised for the magazine’s annual festival. Several staff members had complained and two or three participants in the festival had said they would withdraw if Bannon appeared. Two of the magazine’s most distinguished writers, Malcolm Gladwell and Lawrence Wright, strongly criticised Remnick’s decision: “journalism is about hearing opposing views”, said Wright. Gladwell noted that “If you only invite your friends over, it’s called a dinner party”. The episode was a worrying sign of things to come.
In 2019, New York Review of Books publisher Rea Hederman – who has a proud history of anti-racism – fired Ian Buruma, editor of the Review for only sixteen months, after pressure from the staff. Buruma’s crime? He had printed an essay – ‘Confessions of a Hashtag’ by Jian Ghomeishi, a former Canadian Broadcasting radio host, who had been accused of violence to around twenty women, but had been recently acquitted in a case brought by some of them. Ghomeishi’s piece, which addressed these accusations, was deemed to be out of step with the spirit of the #MeToo movement. That the next issue of the NYRB was to devote a large amount of space to rebuttal was not enough to save Buruma.
A G Sulzberger had, in his apprentice journalist years, used relentless coverage to force a Lion’s Club in Narragansett to reverse its decision to bar women, and revealed misconduct in an Oregon sheriff’s office, causing his resignation. He took over as publisher of the New York Times in 2018, the sixth Sulzberger to take that position: he strongly criticised President Trump, in an Oval Office meeting, for calling the Times “treasonous” and rendering journalists’ work more dangerous.
Then in June 2020, he forced the resignation of James Bennet, editor of the NYT‘s op-ed page. Why? Because they carried an opinion piece by the Republican senator Tom Cotton which argued that demonstrations which turned violent should be met with “an overwhelming show of force” – a phrase that caused outrage among some of the staff. Bennet had been tipped as the future Editor of the New York Times. Now he was out the door.
In each case, the main actors were men I admired – Hederman and Sulzberger by reputation, Remnick (whom I met when we were both correspondents in Moscow) by his writing and editing. They had faced difficult decisions, made enemies and hard choices. In each case, the men worked for a journal with a history of innovative, no-hold-barred criticism of the powerful.
And in each case, they had folded because of pressure from the staff – pressure which stemmed from an article or an event the complainants deemed unsuitable for any audience. For those staff, opinions they dislike are seen as intolerable in a publication on which they work. A red line had been crossed.
Journalism, in the protesting staffs’ view, must conform to novel, liberal verities, which include the protection of audiences from material seen as hurtful, even dangerous. The view of John Stuart Mill in On Liberty (1859) – “to utter and argue freely, according to conscience”- is now discarded in many parts of the cultural landscape. The sharpening of one’s own convictions by setting them against opposing opinions would now, under this approach, be impossible.
Part of this may be the phenomenon which Jonathan Swift noted when he wrote that “you cannot reason someone out of something that he or she was not reasoned into”: that views held because fashionable, or approved by one’s circle, or regarded as morally beyond question, are sometimes too shallow to be able to sustain argument. Dogmatic positions adopted with little thought except for signaling virtue often collapse when questioned hard.
What’s to be done about this? First, the phenomenon itself has to be held up to the light as much as possible. If, as I suspect, much of it is loudly proclaimed but lightly ingested, argument and debate has to be brought to bear. The best argument remains Mill’s: that opinions, many of them having to do with central issues of our time, are too important not to be challenged, worked over, considered anew and either strengthened or weakened – and, in the latter case, either modified or discarded.
Journalism needs now, more than ever, to build debate and contestation into news media worlds. The challenge is to rediscover the fundamentals of journalism – without which it ceases to be a necessary pillar of democratic, civic societies: in short, journalism needs to rediscover a belief in the fact of facts, and in the plurality of opinion. No liberal would for a moment agree that criticism of President Trump, distasteful to his supporters, should be censored.
Editors’ mission is to insist that, barring the dangerous extremes, all opinions deserve airing and contesting, just as all facts deserve to be checked and given context. Those in journalism who object to views in their journal, channel or website must accept that the robust clash of beliefs remains a necessary insurance against enforced conformity, and indeed reaction. In a society built on diverse ways of looking at the world, some upset on seeing or reading an account or a conviction which strongly contradicts your own has to be borne, considered and where possible replied to, not shut down.
A letter signed by prominent writers, scholars and others organized by Harper’s Magazine on July 7 – “On Justice and Open Debate” – noted that “it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought. More troubling still, institutional leaders, in a spirit of panicked damage control, are delivering hasty and disproportionate punishments instead of considered reforms”.
The concession to staff protests in the great New York titles and the punishments to Buruma and Bennet were “hasty and disproportionate”. These journals stood as examples to others: their example has been weakened. Journalists have been trained to keep an open mind to all events they chronicle, conscious of their complexity: and to listen to and allow space for views which are far from their own. That tradition is not past its useful life.
John Lloyd is a Contributing Editor to the Financial Times, ex-editor of The New Statesman and a co-founder of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford.
- YouTube Removes Video Of Popular EV Owner Explaining Why He Traded His Tesla For A Gas-Powered Car
YouTube Removes Video Of Popular EV Owner Explaining Why He Traded His Tesla For A Gas-Powered Car
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/10/2020 – 19:25Rich Benoit has a YouTube channel that has over 700,000 subscribers and over 80 million views. Business for his channel over the last couple of years was, for all intents and purposes, booming.
Benoit made a name for himself with the EV community, attracting a huge subscriber base of electric car enthusiasts due to a number of projects involving Teslas that he would take on. His most recent, according to Vice, was a rebuilt 2013 Tesla S P85.
But the YouTube love he was getting changed suddenly when he posted one of his latest projects called: “Why I’m selling my Tesla and going back to Gas.”
The video was supposed to be an explanation of why Benoit was selling his most recent Tesla project in favor of purchasing a gas-powered car. But the Tesla cult didn’t allow the video to air more than a couple of hours. Shortly after posting the video, it was taken down by YouTube for violating Community Guidelines.
He said at the beginning of the video: “This video is going to be a little bit different. In this episode I’m going to re-building a Tesla Model S. It’s going to be from start to finish in one episode, while I talk over the reasons why I’m switching back to gas. Kind of ironic, isn’t it?”
On his Twitter, Benoit blamed “Tesla fanboys” for the YouTube ban:
The Tesla fanboys formed like Voltron and ganged up to flag my video for removal on youtube. The video which was flagged for “inappropriate content” was about me selling my Tesla and buying a gas car instead. Ladies and gentlemen, this is what happens when you anger the hive. 🐝 pic.twitter.com/6pJYeyAs9b
— Rich Rebuilds (@RebuildsRich) July 1, 2020
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Benoit also noticed a “high dislike ratio” on his video shortly after it was posted, which he suspects it was the Tesla cult that got his video banned.
Benoit said: “People clearly did not like the content even though there was no cursing. I’ve been on YouTube for several years now and I’ve never had a video pulled, so having a video pulled within five hours after announcing that I’ll be replacing my Tesla with a gas powered vehicle doesn’t seem like a coincidence.”
He then appealed the violation with YouTube who re-instated his video. After it was put up a second time, it was again flagged and taken down.
Benoit has surrendered to the cult and given up: “I have given up yes. It’s not worth it me trying for a third time.”
- LancetGate: "Scientific Corona Lies" & Big Pharma Corruption – Hydroxychloroquine Versus Remdesivir
LancetGate: “Scientific Corona Lies” & Big Pharma Corruption – Hydroxychloroquine Versus Remdesivir
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/10/2020 – 19:05Authored by Prof Michel Chossudovsky via GlobalResearch.ca,
Introduction
There is an ongoing battle to suppress Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), a cheap and effective drug for the treatment of Covid-19. The campaign against HCQ is carried out through slanderous political statements, media smears, not to mention an authoritative peer reviewed “evaluation” published on May 22nd by The Lancet, which was based on fake figures and test trials.
The study was allegedly based on data analysis of 96,032 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 between Dec 20, 2019, and April 14, 2020 from 671 hospitals Worldwide. The database had been fabricated. The objective was to kill the Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) cure on behalf of Big Pharma.
While The Lancet article was retracted, the media casually blamed “a tiny US based company” named Surgisphere whose employees included “a sci-fi writer and an adult content model” for spreading “flawed data” (Guardian). This Chicago based outfit was accused of having misled both the WHO and national governments, inciting them to ban HCQ. None of those trial tests actually took place.
While the blame was placed on Surgisphere, the unspoken truth (which neither the scientific community nor the media have acknowledged) is that the study was coordinated by Harvard professor Mandeep Mehra under the auspices of Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) which is a partner of the Harvard Medical School.
When the scam was revealed, Dr. Mandeep Mehra who holds the Harvey Distinguished Chair of Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital apologized:
I have always performed my research in accordance with the highest ethical and professional guidelines. However, we can never forget the responsibility we have as researchers to scrupulously ensure that we rely on data sources that adhere to our high standards.
It is now clear to me that in my hope to contribute this research during a time of great need, I did not do enough to ensure that the data source was appropriate for this use. For that, and for all the disruptions – both directly and indirectly – I am truly sorry. (emphasis added)
Mandeep R. Mehra, MD, MSC (official statement on BWH website)
But that “truly sorry” note was just the tip of the iceberg. Why?
Studies on Gilead Science’s Remdesivir and Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) Were Conducted Simultaneously by Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH)
While The Lancet report (May 22, 2020) coordinated by Dr. Mandeep Mehra was intended “to kill” the legitimacy of HCQ as a cure of Covid-19, another important (related) study was being carried out (concurrently) at BWH pertaining to Remdesivir on behalf of Gilead Sciences Inc. Dr. Francisco Marty, a specialist in Infectious Disease and Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School was entrusted with coordination of the clinical trial tests of the antiviral medication Remdesivir under Brigham’s contract with Gilead Sciences Inc:
Brigham and Women’s Hospital began enrolling patients in two clinical trials for Gilead’s antiviral medication remdesivir. The Brigham is one of multiple clinical trial sites for a Gilead-initiated study of the drug in 600 participants with moderate coronavirus disease (COVID-19) and a Gilead-initiated study of 400 participants with severe COVID-19.
… If the results are promising, this could lead to FDA approval, and if they aren’t, it gives us critical information in the fight against COVID-19 and allows us to move on to other therapies.”
While Dr. Mandeep Mehra was not directly involved in the Gilead Remdesevir BWH study under the supervision of his colleague Dr. Francisco Marty, he nonetheless had contacts with Gilead Sciences Inc: “He participated in a conference sponsored by Gilead in early April 2020 as part of the Covid-19 debate” (France Soir, May 23, 2020)
What was the intent of his (failed) study? To undermine the legitimacy of Hydroxychloroquine?
According to France Soir, in a report published after The Lancet Retraction:
The often evasive answers produced by Dr Mandeep R. Mehra, … professor at Harvard Medical School, did not produce confidence, fueling doubt instead about the integrity of this retrospective study and its results. (France Soir, June 5, 2020)
Was Dr. Mandeep Mehra in conflict of interest? (That is a matter for BWH and the Harvard Medical School to decide upon).
Who are the Main Actors?
Dr. Anthony Fauci, advisor to Donald Trump, portrayed as “America’s top infectious disease expert” has played a key role in smearing the HCQ cure which had been approved years earlier by the CDC as well as providing legitimacy to Gilead’s Remdesivir.
Dr. Fauci has been the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) since the Reagan administration. He is known to act as a mouthpiece for Big Pharma.
Dr. Fauci launched Remdesivir in late June (see details below). According to Fauci, Remdesevir is the “corona wonder drug” developed by Gilead Science Inc. It’s a $1.6 billion dollar bonanza.
Gilead Sciences Inc: History
Gilead Sciences Inc is a Multibillion dollar bio-pharmaceutical company which is now involved in developing and marketing Remdesivir. Gilead has a long history. It has the backing of major investment conglomerates including the Vanguard Group and Capital Research & Management Co, among others. It has developed ties with the US Government.
In 1999 Gilead Sciences Inc, developed Tamiflu (used as a treatment of seasonal influenza and bird flu). At the time, Gilead Sciences Inc was headed by Donald Rumsfeld (1997-2001), who later joined the George W. Bush administration as Secretary of Defense (2001-2006). Rumsfeld was responsible for coordinating the illegal and criminal wars on Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003).
Rumsfeld maintained his links to Gilead Sciences Inc throughout his tenure as Secretary of Defense (2001-2006). According to CNN Money (2005): “The prospect of a bird flu outbreak … was very good news for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld [who still owned Gilead stocks] and other politically connected investors in Gilead Sciences”.
Anthony Fauci has been in charge of the NIAID since 1984, using his position as “a go between” the US government and Big Pharma. During Rumsfeld’s tenure as Secretary of Defense, the budget allocated to bio-terrorism increased substantially, involving contracts with Big Pharma including Gilead Sciences Inc. Anthony Fauci considered that the money allocated to bio-terrorism in early 2002 would:
“accelerate our understanding of the biology and pathogenesis of microbes that can be used in attacks, and the biology of the microbes’ hosts — human beings and their immune systems. One result should be more effective vaccines with less toxicity.” (WPo report)
In 2008, Dr. Anthony Fauci was granted the Presidential Medal of Freedom by president George W. Bush “for his determined and aggressive efforts to help others live longer and healthier lives.”
The 2020 Gilead Sciences Inc Remdesivir Project
We will be focussing on key documents (and events)
Chronology
February 21: Initial Release pertaining to NIH-NIAID Remdesivir placebo test trial
April 10: The Gilead Sciences Inc study published in the NEJM on the “Compassionate Use of Remdesivir”
April 29: NIH Release: Study on Remdesivir (Report published on May 22 in NEJM)
May 22, The BWH-Harvard Study on Hydroxychloroquine coordinated by Dr. Mandeep Mehra published in The Lancet
May 22, Remdesivir for the Treatment of Covid-19 — Preliminary Report (NEJM)
June 5: The (fake) Lancet Report (May 22) on HCQ is Retracted.
June 29, Fauci announcement. The $1.6 Billion Remdevisir HHS Agreement with Gilead Sciences Inc
April 10: The Gilead Sciences Inc. study published in the NEJM on the “Compassionate Use of Remdesivir”
A Gilead sponsored report was published in New England Journal of Medicine in an article entitled “Compassionate Use of Remdesivir for Patients with Severe Covid-19” . It was co-authored by an impressive list of 56 distinguished medical doctors and scientists, many of whom were recipients of consulting fees from Gilead Sciences Inc.
Gilead Sciences Inc. funded the study which included several staff members as co-authors.
The testing included a total of 61 patients [who] received at least one dose of remdesivir on or before March 7, 2020; 8 of these patients were excluded because of missing postbaseline information (7 patients) and an erroneous remdesivir start date (1 patient) … Of the 53 remaining patients included in this analysis, 40 (75%) received the full 10-day course of remdesivir, 10 (19%) received 5 to 9 days of treatment, and 3 (6%) fewer than 5 days of treatment.
The NEJM article states that “Gilead Sciences Inc began accepting requests from clinicians for compassionate use of remdesivir on January 25, 2020”. From whom, From Where? According to the WHO (January 30, 2020) there were 82 cases in 18 countries outside China of which 5 were in the US, 5 in France and 3 in Canada.
Several prominent physicians and scientists have cast doubt on the Compassionate Use of Remdesivir study conducted by Gilead, focussing on the small size of the trial. Ironically, the number of patients in the test is less that the number of co-authors: “53 patients” versus “56 co-authors”
Below we provide excerpts of scientific statements on the Gilead NEJM project (Science Media Centre emphasis added) published immediately following the release of the NEJM article:
“‘Compassionate use’ is better described as using an unlicensed therapy to treat a patient because there are no other treatments available. Research based on this kind of use should be treated with extreme caution because there is no control group or randomisation, which are some of the hallmarks of good practice in clinical trials. Prof Duncan Richard, Clinical Therapeutics, University of Oxford.
“It is critical not to over-interpret this study. Most importantly, it is impossible to know the outcome for this relatively small group of patients had they not received remdesivir. Dr Stephen Griffin, Associate Professor, School of Medicine, University of Leeds.
“The research is interesting but doesn’t prove anything at this point: the data are from a small and uncontrolled study. Simon Maxwell, Professor of Clinical Pharmacology and Prescribing, University of Edinburgh.
“The data from this paper are almost uninterpretable. It is very surprising, perhaps even unethical, that the New England Journal of Medicine has published it. It would be more appropriate to publish the data on the website of the pharmaceutical company that has sponsored and written up the study. At least Gilead have been clear that this has not been done in the way that a high quality scientific paper would be written. Prof Stephen Evans, Professor of Pharmacoepidemiology, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.
“It’s very hard to draw useful conclusions from uncontrolled studies like this particularly with a new disease where we really don’t know what to expect and with wide variations in outcomes between places and over time. One really has to question the ethics of failing to do randomisation – this study really represents more than anything else, a missed opportunity.” Prof Adam Finn, Professor of Paediatrics, University of Bristol.
To review the complete document of Science Media Centre pertaining to expert assessments click here
April 29: The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Study on Remdevisir.
On April 29th following the publication of the Gilead Sciences Inc Study in the NEJM on April 10, a press release of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) on Remdevisir was released. The full document was published on May 22, by the NEJM under the title:
Remdesivir for the Treatment of Covid-19 — Preliminary Report (NEJM)
The study had been initiated on February 21, 2020. The title of the April 29 Press Release was:
“Peer-reviewed data shows remdesivir for COVID-19 improves time to recovery”
It’s a government sponsored report which includes preliminary data from a randomized trial involving 1063 hospitalized patients. The results of the trial labelled Adaptive COVID-19 Treatment Trial (ACTT) are preliminary, conducted under the helm of Dr. Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID):
An independent data and safety monitoring board (DSMB) overseeing the trial met on April 27 to review data and shared their interim analysis with the study team. Based upon their review of the data, they noted that remdesivir was better than placebo from the perspective of the primary endpoint, time to recovery, a metric often used in influenza trials. Recovery in this study was defined as being well enough for hospital discharge or returning to normal activity level.
Preliminary results indicate that patients who received remdesivir had a 31% faster time to recovery than those who received placebo (p<0.001). Specifically, the median time to recovery was 11 days for patients treated with remdesivir compared with 15 days for those who received placebo. Results also suggested a survival benefit, with a mortality rate of 8.0% for the group receiving remdesivir versus 11.6% for the placebo group (p=0.059). (emphasis added)
In the NIH’s earlier February 21, 2020 report (released at the outset of the study), the methodology was described as follows:
… A randomized, controlled clinical trial to evaluate the safety and efficacy of the investigational antiviral remdesivir in hospitalized adults diagnosed with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) …
Numbers. Where? When?
The February 21 report confirmed that the first trial participant was “an American who was repatriated after being quarantined on the Diamond Princess cruise ship” that docked in Yokohama (Japanese Territorial Waters). “Thirteen people repatriated by the U.S. State Department from the Diamond Princess cruise ship” were selected as patients for the placebo trial test. Ironically, at the outset of the study, 58.7% of the “confirmed cases” Worldwide (542 cases out of 924) (outside China), were on the Diamond Cruise Princess from which the initial trial placebo patients were selected.
Where and When: The trial test in the 68 selected sites? That came at a later date because on February 19th (WHO data), the US had recorded only 15 positive cases (see Table Below).
“A total of 68 sites ultimately joined the study—47 in the United States and 21 in countries in Europe and Asia.” (emphasis added)
In the final May 22 NEJM report entitled Remdesivir for the Treatment of Covid-19 — Preliminary Report:
There were 60 trial sites and 13 subsites in the United States (45 sites), Denmark (8), the United Kingdom (5), Greece (4), Germany (3), Korea (2), Mexico (2), Spain (2), Japan (1), and Singapore (1). Eligible patients were randomly assigned in a 1:1 ratio to receive either remdesivir or placebo. Randomization was stratified by study site and disease severity at enrollment
The Washington Post applauded Anthony Fauci’s announcement (April 29):
“The preliminary results, disclosed at the White House by Anthony S. Fauci, … fall short of the magic bullet or cure… But with no approved treatments for Covid-19,[Lie] Fauci said, it will become the standard of care for hospitalized patients …The data shows that remdisivir has a clear-cut, significant, positive effect in diminishing the time to recovery,” Fauci said.
The government’s first rigorous clinical trial of the experimental drug remdesivir as a coronavirus treatment delivered mixed results to the medical community Wednesday — but rallied stock markets and raised hopes that an early weapon to help some patients was at hand.
The preliminary results, disclosed at the White House by Anthony Fauci, chief of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which led the placebo-controlled trial found that the drug accelerated the recovery of hospitalized patients but had only a marginal benefit in the rate of death.
… Fauci’s remarks boosted speculation that the Food and Drug Administration would seek emergency use authorization that would permit doctors to prescribe the drug.
In addition to clinical trials, remdesivir has been given to more than 1,000 patients under compassionate use. [also refers to the Gilead study published on April 10 in the NEJM]
The study, involving [more than] 1,000 patients at 68 sites in the United States and around the world (??), offers the first evidence (??) from a large (??), randomized (??) clinical study of remdesivir’s effectiveness against COVID-19.
The NIH placebo test study provided “preliminary results”. While the placebo trial test was “randomized”, the overall selection of patients at the 68 sites was not fully randomized. See the full report.
May 22: The Fake Lancet Report on Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ)
It is worth noting that the full report of the NIH-NIAID) entitled Remdesivir for the Treatment of Covid-19 — Preliminary Report was released on May 22, 2020 in the NEJM, on the same day as the controversial Lancet report on Hydroxychloroquine.
Immediately folllowing its publication, the media went into high gear, smearing the HCQ cure, while applauding the NIH-NIASD report released on the same day.
Remdesivir, the only drug cleared to treat Covid-19, sped the recovery time of patients with the disease, … “It’s a very safe and effective drug,” said Eric Topol, founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute. “We now have a definite first efficacious drug for Covid-19, which is a major step forward and will be built upon with other drugs, [and drug] combinations.”
When the Lancet HCQ article by Bingham-Harvard was retracted on June 5, it was too late, it received minimal media coverage. Despite the Retraction, the HCQ cure “had been killed”.
June 29: Fauci Greenlight. The $1.6 Billion Remdesivir Contract with Gilead Sciences Inc
Dr. Anthony Fauci granted the “Greenlight” to Gilead Sciences Inc. on June 29, 2020.
The semi-official US government NIH-NIAID sponsored report (May 22) entitled Remdesivir for the Treatment of Covid-19 — Preliminary Report (NEJM) was used to justify a major agreement with Gilead Sciences Inc.
The Report was largely funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
On June 29, based on the findings of the NIH-NIAID Report published in the NEJM, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced on behalf of the Trump Adminstration an agreement to secure large supplies of the remdesivir drug from Gilead Sciences Inc. for the treatment of Covid-19 in America’s private hospitals and clinics.
The earlier Gilead study based on scanty test results published in the NEJM (April 10), of 53 cases (and 56 co-authors) was not highlighted. The results of this study had been questioned by several prominent physicians and scientists.
Who will be able to afford Remdisivir? 500,000 doses of Remdesivir are envisaged at $3,200 per patient, namely $1.6 billion (see the study by Elizabeth Woodworth)
The Drug was also approved for marketing in the European Union. under the brandname Veklury.
If this contract is implemented as planned, it represents for Gilead Science Inc. and the recipient US private hospitals and clinics a colossal amount of money.
[error in above title according to HHS: $3200]
According to The Trump Administration’s HHS Secretary Alex Azar (June 29, 2020):
“To the extent possible, we want to ensure that any American patient who needs remdesivir can get it. [at $3200] The Trump Administration is doing everything in our power to learn more about life-saving therapeutics for COVID-19 and secure access to these options for the American people.”
Remdesivir for Covid-19: $1.6 Billion for a “Modestly Beneficial” Drug?
Remdesivir versus Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ)
Careful timing:
The Lancet study (published on May 22) was intended to undermine the legitimacy of Hydroxychloroquine as an effective cure to Covid-19, with a view to sustaining the $1.6 billion agreement between the HHS and Gilead Sciences Inc. on June 29th. The legitmacy of this agreement rested on the May 22 NIH-NIAID study in the NEJM which was considered “preliminary”.
What Dr. Fauci failed to acknowledge is that Chloroquine had been “studied” and tested fifteen years ago by the CDC as a drug to be used against coronavirus infections. And that Hydroxychloroquine has been used recently in the treatment of Covid-19 in several countries.
According to the Virology Journal (2005) “Chloroquine is a potent inhibitor of SARS coronavirus infection and spread”. It was used in the SARS-1 outbreak in 2002. It had the endorsement of the CDC.
HCQ is not only effective, it is “inexpensive” when compared to Remdesivir, at an estimated “$3120 for a US Patient with private insurance”.
Below are excerpts of an interview of Harvard’s Professor Mehra (who undertook the May 22 Lancet study) with France Soir published immediately following the publication of the Lancet report (prior to its Retraction).
Dr. Mandeep Mehra: In our study, it is fairly obvious that the lack of benefit and the risk of toxicity observed for hydroxychloroquine are fairly reliable. [referring to the May 22 Lancet study]
France Soir: Do you have the data for Remdesivir?
MM: Yes, we have the data, but the number of patients is too small for us to be able to conclude in one way or another.
FS: As you know, in France, there is a pros and cons battle over hydroxychloroquine which has turned into a public health issue even involving the financial lobbying of pharmaceutical companies. Why not measure the effect of one against the other to put an end to all speculation? …
MM: In fact, there is no rational basis for testing Remdesivir versus hydroxychloroquine. On the one hand, Remdesivir has shown that there is no risk of mortality and that there is a reduction in recovery time. On the other hand, for hydroxychloroquine it is the opposite: it has never been shown any advantage and most studies are small or inconclusive In addition, our study shows that there are harmful effects.
It would therefore be difficult and probably unethical to compare a drug with demonstrated harmfulness to a drug with at least a glimmer of hope.
FS: You said that there is no basis for testing or comparing Remdesivir with hydroxychloroquine, do you think you have done everything to conclude that hydroxychloroquine is dangerous?
MM: Exactly. …
All we are saying is that once you have been infected (5 to 7 days after) to the point of having to be hospitalized with a severe viral load, the use of hydroxychloroquine and its derivative is not effective.
The damage from the virus is already there and the situation is beyond repair. With this treatment [HCQ] it can generate more complications
FS Mandeep Mehra declared that he had no conflict of interest with the laboratories and that this study was financed from the endowment funds of the professor’s chair.
He participated in a conference sponsored by Gilead in early April 2020 as part of the Covid-19 debate.
– France Soir, translated by the author, emphasis added, May 23, 2020)
In Annex, see the followup article by France Soir published after the scam surrounding the data base of Dr. Mehra’s Lancet report was revealed.
Concluding Remarks
Lies and Corruption to the nth Degree involving Dr. Anthony Fauci, “The Boston Connection” and Gilead Sciences Inc.
The Gilead Sciences Inc. Remdesivir study (50+ authors) was published in the New England Journal of Medicine (April 10, 2020).
It was followed by the NIH-NIAID Remdesivir for the Treatment of Covid-19 — Preliminary Report on May 22, 2020 in the NEJM. And on that same day, May 22, the “fake report” on Hydroxychloroquine by BWH-Harvard Dr. Mehra was published by The Lancet.
Harvard Medical School and the BWH bear responsibility for having hosted and financed the fake Lancet report on HCQ coordinated by Dr. Mandeep Mehra.
Is there conflict of interest? BWH was simultaneously involved in a study on Remdesivir in contract with Gilead Sciences, Inc.
While the Lancet report coordinated by Harvard’s Dr. Mehra was retracted, it nonetheless served the interests of Gilead Sciences Inc.
It is important that an independent scientific and medical assessment be undertaken, respectively of the Gilead Sciences Inc New England Journal of Medicine (NEMJ) peer reviewed study (April 10, 2020) as well as the NIH-NIAID study also published in the NEJM (May 22, 2020).
* * *
ANNEX
Retraction by France Soir
The fraud concerning the Lancet Report was revealed in early June. France Soir in a subsequent article (June 5, 2020) points to the Boston Connection: La connexion de Boston, namely the insiduous relationship between Gilead Sciences Inc and Professor Mehra, Harvard Medical School as well as the two related Boston based hospitals involved.
(excerpts here, to access the complete text click here translation from French by France Soir, emphasis in the original article)
The often evasive answers produced by Dr Mandeep R. Mehra, a physician specializing in cardiovascular surgery and professor at Harvard Medical School, did not produce confidence, fueling doubt instead about the integrity of this retrospective study and its results.
… However, the reported information that Dr. Mehra had attended a conference sponsored by Gilead – producer of remdesivir, a drug in direct competition with hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) – early in April called for further investigation
It is important to keep in mind that Dr. Mandeep Mehra has a practice at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) in Boston.
That study relied on the shared medical records of 8,910 patients in 169 hospitals around the world, also by Surgisphere.
Funding for the study was “Supported by the William Harvey Chair in Cardiovascular Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. The development and maintenance of the collaborative surgical outcomes database was funded by Surgisphere.”
The study published on May 22 sought to evaluate the efficacy or otherwise of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, alone or in combination with a macrolide antibiotic. …
It is therefore noteworthy that within 3 weeks, 2 large observational retrospective studies on large populations – 96,032 and 8,910 patients – spread around the world were published in two different journals by Dr. Mehra, Dr. Desai and other co-authors using the database of Surgisphere, Dr. Desai’s company.
These two practising physicians and surgeons seem to have an exceptional working capacity associated with the gift of ubiquity.
The date of May 22 is also noteworthy because on the very same day, the date of the publication in The Lancet of the highly accusatory study against HCQ, another study was published in the New England Journal of Medicine concerning the results of a clinical trial of…remdesivir.
In the conclusion of this randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, “remdesivir was superior to placebo in shortening the time to recovery in adults hospitalized with Covid-19 and evidence of lower respiratory tract infection.”
Concretely: on the same day, May 22nd, one study demeaned HCQ in one journal while another claimed evidence of attenuation on some patients through remdesivir in another journal.
It should be noted that one of the main co-authors, Elizabeth “Libby”* Hohmann, represents one of the participating hospitals, the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, also affiliated with Harvard Medical School, as is the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, where Dr. Mandeep Mehra practices.
Coincidence, probably.
Upon further investigation, we discovered that the first 3 major clinical trials on Gilead’s remdesivir were conducted by these two hospitals:
“While COVID-19 continues to circle the globe with scientists following on its trail, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) are leading the search for effective treatment.
“Both hospitals are conducting clinical trials of remdesivir.”
MGH has joined what the National Institute of Health (NIH) describe as the first clinical trial in the United States of an experimental treatment for COVID-19, sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of NIH. MGH is currently the only hospital in New England to participate in this trial, according to a list of sites shared by the hospital.
” It’s a gigantic undertaking, with patients registered in some 50 sites across the country, getting better.
“The NIH trial, which can be adapted to evaluate other treatments, aims to determine whether the drug relieves the respiratory problems and other symptoms of COVID-19, helping patients leave hospital earlier.**
As a reminder, the NIAID/NIH is led by Antony Fauci, a staunch opponent of HCQ.
Coincidence, probably.
“At the Brigham, two additional trials initiated by Gilead, the drug developer, will determine whether it alleviates symptoms in patients with moderate to severe illness over five- and ten-days courses. These trials will also be randomized, but not placebo controlled, and will include 1,000 patients at sites worldwide. Those patients, noted Francisco Marty, MD, Brigham physician and study co-investigator, will likely be recruited at an unsettlingly rapid clip.”
As a result, the first major clinical trials on remdesivir launched on March 20, whose results are highly important for Gilead, are being led by the MGH and BWH in Boston, precisely where Dr. Mehra, the main author of the May 22nd HCQ trial, is practising.
Small world! Coincidence, again, probably.
Dr. Marty at BWH expected to have results two months later. Indeed, in recent days, several US media outlets have reported Gilead’s announcements of positive results from the remdesivir clinical trials in Boston.:
“Encouraging results from a new study published Wednesday on remdesivir for the treatment of patients with COVID-19.**
Brigham and Dr. Francisco Marty worked on this study, and he says the results show that there is no major difference between treating a patient with a five-day versus a 10-day regimen.
…”Gilead Announces Results of Phase 3 Remdesivir Trial in Patients with Moderate COVID-19
– One study shows that the 5-day treatment of remdesivir resulted in significantly greater clinical improvement compared to treatment with the standard of care alone
– The data come on top of the body of evidence from previous studies demonstrating the benefits of remdesivir in hospitalized patients with IDVOC-19
“We now have three randomized controlled trials demonstrating that remdesivir improved clinical outcomes by several different measures,” Gilead plans to submit the complete data for publication in a peer-reviewed journal in the coming weeks.
These results announced by Gilead a few days after the May 22 publication of the study in the Lancet demolishing HCQ, a study whose main author is Dr. Mehra, are probably again a coincidence.
So many coincidences adds up to coincidences? Really ?
- Trump To Sign Executive Order Giving DACA Recipients 'Road To Citizenship'
Trump To Sign Executive Order Giving DACA Recipients ‘Road To Citizenship’
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/10/2020 – 19:00In a Friday interview with Telemundo, President Trump revealed that he will be signing an executive order on immigration which would include a “road to citizenship” for recipients of the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
Speaking with anchor José Díaz-Balart, Trump slammed Democrats for nuking a DACA deal, but that the Supreme Court’s June decision blocking his plan to end the program gave him “tremendous power” to move forward on an executive order, according to The Hill.
“The deal was done. DACA is going to be just fine. We’re putting it in. It’s going to be just fine. And I am going to be, over the next few weeks, signing an immigration bill that a lot of people don’t know about. You have breaking news, but I’m signing a big immigration bill,” said Trump.
When asked “Is that an executive order?”, Trump replied “I’m going to do a big executive order. I have the power to do it as president and I’m going to make DACA a part of it.“
“But, we put it in, and we’ll probably going to then be taking it out. We’re working out the legal complexities right now, but I’m going to be signing a very major immigration bill as an executive order, which Supreme Court now, because of the DACA decision, has given me the power to do that.”
Díaz-Balart then asked if the executive order would be temporary, to which Trump replied that the DACA path to citizenship would be “part of a much bigger bill on immigration.”
“It’s going to be a very big bill, a very good bill, and merit-based bill and it will include DACA, and I think people are going to be very happy,” said Trump, adding “But one of the aspects of the bill is going to be DACA. We’re going to have a road to citizenship.“
BREAKING: President Trump tells Telemundo’s @jdbalart he will sign an executive order on immigration that will include DACA in the coming weeks. #mtpdaily
Trump: “One of the aspects of the bill is going to be DACA. We are going to have a road to citizenship.” pic.twitter.com/M926cty8A1
— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) July 10, 2020
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Needless to say, much of Trump’s base might might not be ‘very happy’ about the plan.
Start your stopwatches for the “clarification” https://t.co/qi4PTd7nJT
— Jonathan Swan (@jonathanvswan) July 10, 2020
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lol!
Y’all screamed at me weeks ago when I confirmed @EmeraldRobinson’s reporting on this plan.
Amnesty Don is doing exactly what we said he was going to do. https://t.co/UXqx8euWhq pic.twitter.com/eV1177UqT4
— Cernovich (@Cernovich) July 10, 2020
- "Liberal" NYC Cafe Owner Terrorized By Yuppie Neighbors After Claiming He Voted For Trump
“Liberal” NYC Cafe Owner Terrorized By Yuppie Neighbors After Claiming He Voted For Trump
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/10/2020 – 18:45After helping to legitimize cancel culture by running countless thinkpieces on the subject while its reporters increasingly adopted a strategy of covering these cancel campaigns and publishing opinion pieces written by (mostly minority) authors arguing extremist positions based on what should be a frightening underlying assumption: That every individual who expresses support for the president, or who in any other way breaks with the liberal orthodoxies espoused by the Times and its staff, is worthy of scorn and shame. Even when people like Chris Cooper, clearly a compassionate individual, say that the now-infamous ‘Central Park Karen’ Amy Cooper has “suffered enough” when he decided not to cooperate with an NYPD investigation into his erstwhile tormentor’s transgressions.
But as the backlash to the ‘cancel culture’ intensifies, fortunately, media figures like Joe Rogan (with his $100 million Spotify deal) are finding places in the media firmament from where they can safely question cancel culture and the notion that Trump and all his supporters are ‘evil demons’ without facing a backlash from big tech and the far left. The fact that Rogan has managed to attain such success is a testament to the weariness with the SJW ‘cancel culture’ and other orthodoxies like “the Patriarchy” and “International White Supremacy” that many millions of Americans, Europeans and others feel. And NYT staffers like Taylor Lorenz and Bari Weiss genuinely believe that Rogan shouldn’t be afforded such a platform.
Clearly, the old-timer editors at the NYT who have been swept aside by the left-wing mob are starting to feel a little remorse, because in today’s paper, one of the NYT’s top political correspondents, Azi Paybarah, has published a feature about a bar owner in Inwood, a neighborhood situated on the northern tip of Manhattan, far from the roving tourists and spoiled hipsters who populate the city below.
Thomas Bosco, the owner of the Indian Road Cafe in Upper Manhattan, is by all accounts a good-natured man and a fair employer. When employees can’t find child care, he welcomes children to the restaurant and finds a place for them where they can be supervised. His cafe had become a haven for progressives, and when the protests started, Bosco hung a black lives matter flag in the window.
But when he told a reporter at MSNBC during an interview – he claims he had believed that the comment wasn’t going to be aired – that he had voted for President Trump in 2016, the comment unleashed the hounds on him, and he soon found his business and livelihood facing a boycott as angry former patrons – including two drag queens who had hosted bingo nights at the cafe for years – launched a boycott.
At Indian Road Cafe in Upper Manhattan, a Black Lives Matter sign hangs in a front window. Local writers, artists, musicians and political activists are regulars. And for years, two drag queens have hosted a monthly charity bingo tournament there.
Many in the surrounding Inwood neighborhood considered it a community hub and a progressive oasis.
But then the cafe’s owner, Thomas Bosco, said in an MSNBC interview in late spring that he voted for President Trump in 2016 and was likely to do so again.
The backlash was swift, as you might expect.
Neighbors railed in the comments on various neighborhood Facebook groups, posting hundreds of angry messages aimed at the cafe — and one another. Some people called for a boycott.
“How could I be against Trump and all that he stands for and go somewhere and patronize someone who supports this demon?” Douglas Henderson, 62, a lawyer and nearby resident, said in an interview.
Ironically, Bosco made the appearance during a piece about the difficulties facing American small-business owners during the pandemic. Little did he know that by trying to share his experiences honestly with the public, that he would be made into a target of inchoate rage fanned by the far left.
According to the NYT, the backlash to Bosco’s seemingly innocuous comment “shows how in a highly polarized social media era, a few comments in an interview can reverberate.”
Glennis Aquino-Gil, 37, a resident of Riverdale, in the Bronx, vowed she would never go to Indian Road again.
Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, who lives nearby, wrote on Facebook: “It’s hard to ever go back.”
The two drag queens have said they will move their show to a different venue.The controversy, coming in the middle of a pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests, shows how in a highly polarized social media era, a few comments in an interview can reverberate: Mr. Bosco said the fallout from his TV appearance, in a segment about small business owners and workers, might put him out of business.
The situation got so out of hand, that Bosco felt he needed to publish an “open letter” to the community explaining his answer. He revealed in the letter that he had voted for the last 4 presidents, and that he considered himself a liberal guy.
Soon after the TV appearance circulated online, Mr. Bosco posted an open letter to the community — “the community I live in, a community I love, respect, and serve” — defending his answer to the question about Mr. Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.
In the appearance, Mr. Bosco said that the president had made missteps, “but at the end of the day, I support him. I support my governor and I support my mayor.” Mr. Bosco then said he voted for Mr. Trump in 2016 and planned to do so again.
In his open letter, Mr. Bosco wrote that he had “answered honestly and from the heart,” but his response had been presented without context. He said that what was in the video did not include that he had supported the last four presidents and that he had “found many things troubling about our administration.”
“I’m a liberal guy who supports almost every liberal cause I can think of,” Mr. Bosco said recently while sitting inside his cafe, empty because of the current ban on indoor dining.
Though the comments received plenty of good feedback, particularly, we suspect, due to his claim that MSNBC had left out a large part of his answer to that question in a manner that was highly suspect. But many are still angry, and expressing that anger on the Internet, mostly. Whether he realizes it or not, Bosco’s apology only made him more of a target since he offered some insight into how editors at NBC News often edit footage with the goal to maximize the ‘audience response’ (ie outrage). More outrage, more clicks. That’s just how it is.
But by trying to show how some ‘liberal’ well-meaning people have voted for Trump, or expressed support for the president, Bosco has made him a target to leftists who will do whatever it takes to preserve the narrative that all Trump voters are racists, and all racists are evil people who deserve to be scorned. Clearly, since Trump is the president, many people in this country don’t agree with this viewpoint. Yet, so-called “leaders” like Joe Biden have pandered to the progressive left at every turn.
In his open letter, Mr. Bosco wrote that he had “answered honestly and from the heart,” but his response had been presented without context. He said that what was in the video did not include that he had supported the last four presidents and that he had “found many things troubling about our administration.”
“I’m a liberal guy who supports almost every liberal cause I can think of,” Mr. Bosco said recently while sitting inside his cafe, empty because of the current ban on indoor dining.
When a worker did not have child care, Mr. Bosco provided it on site, Mr. Bosco and another employee said. They also said that when a different worker feared being stopped by the police and questioned about his immigration status, Mr. Bosco drove that person to and from the cafe.
Bosco is known to friends and customers for allowing his restaurant to become a haven for progressives and he often gives back to the community, and goes above and beyond for his workers. But he also told the NYT that he supported both Bernie Sanders and Trump, a concept that sometimes causes leftists to short-circuit with rage when confronted by evidence of the supposed “myth”.
When a worker did not have child care, Mr. Bosco provided it on site, Mr. Bosco and another employee said.
They also said that when a different worker feared being stopped by the police and questioned about his immigration status, Mr. Bosco drove that person to and from the cafe.
And on the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, Mr. Bosco organized a brunch to raise money for an immigrant’s advocacy organization.
He struggled to explain how he voted for Mr. Trump in 2016 after having supported Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a progressive Democrat, earlier that year. Eventually, he settled on the phrase “small government, big community.”
Now, Mr. Bosco says, he is not sure whom he will support in November.
“My staff feels like I let them down to a certain extent,” Mr. Bosco said.
“They feel like when I answered that question, that I didn’t think about them” as employees of the cafe he was representing, he added.
“And that hurts. I wish I had it back.”
Back in the day, Bosco’s views on politics never mattered. And that would probably still be the case, if it wasn’t for the fact that a wave of yuppie gentrifiers have swarmed Inwood looking for “inexpensive” rents and “more space”, pushing out the mostly working-class immigrants who had called the neighborhood home.
One complainant who chimed in online sneered: “does he know where his restaurant is?”
Mr. Bosco has not made donations to any political campaign, according to city, state and federal records online. And Indian Road is not a chain.
“Does he know where his restaurant is?” asked Caroline Montero, 29, from nearby Washington Heights. The cafe, which will change its name to Inwood Farm this month, is in a gentrifying area with many immigrants.
“Where’s your loyalty?” she added, as she sat in a park across the street from the cafe with Ms. Aquino-Gil and another friend. Sipping drinks purchased from a park vendor, all three vowed to no longer patronize the cafe.
When confronted with the fact that Bosco never donated to Trump, and that he had donated to pro-immigration groups, one neighbor still claimed that didn’t outweigh the fact that Trump was trying to “take away her rights”.
“I appreciate that he’s given money to immigrants rights groups and donated to food pantries,” Ms. Llodrá said in an interview. “That’s great. But it doesn’t take away the fact that he voted for someone in 2016 and planned to vote for someone in 2020 who will take away my rights.”
Assuming she’s an American citizens…how is he trying to do that, exactly?
Now, Bosco says he’s not sure who to support in November because he feels like he ‘let his employees down’ by sharing his feelings. But this is just another example of the ‘Internet mob mentality’ that exists when hyper-progressive NIMBY yuppies see one of their precious orthodoxies being violated. Business owners like Bosco have been in the neighborhood for years, helping to build it into the type of place that out-of-town yuppies might want to live.
And this is the thanks he gets…
- Daily Briefing – July 10, 2020
Daily Briefing – July 10, 2020
Tyler Durden
Fri, 07/10/2020 – 18:40Is the idea of a V-shaped recovery dead? Real Vision CEO Raoul Pal and senior editor Ash Bennington explore that question in depth through the lens of the virulent reemergence of COVID-19 in the U.S. Raoul and Ash break down the alarming rise of cases coming out of many states and analyze the effect that this ominous second wave will have on markets. They also discuss Ash’s seminal interview today with Dr. Kayvon Modjarrad, director for Emerging Infectious Diseases at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. Raoul is firm in belief that the human reaction function is what matters and that the virus’s effect on behavior is more significant than the virus itself. Raoul concludes that caution is prudent in these uncertain times and that the bond market is sending the clearest signal to investors. In the intro, Peter Cooper examines market news and coronavirus data.
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