- The Con Job Of The Century?
The Con Job Of The Century?
Authored by Laurie Calhoun via The Libertarian Institute,
Over the course of the past century, a number of truly awe-inspiring heists have been carried out by con artists, whose modus operandi is to exploit human frailties such as credulity, insecurity and greed. Con is short for confidence, for the con artist must first gain the trust of his targets, after which he persuades them to hand their money over to him. A con job differs from a moral transaction between two willing, fully informed trading partners because one of the partners is deceived, and deception constitutes a form of coercion. In other words, the person being swindled is not really free. If he knew what was really going on, he would never agree to invest in the scheme.
The “Ponzi scheme” was named after Charles Ponzi, who in the 1920s persuaded investors to believe that he was generating impressive profits by buying international reply coupons (IRCs) at low prices abroad and redeeming them in the United States at higher rates, the fluctuating currency market being the secret to his seemingly savvy success. In reality, Ponzi used his low-level investors’ money to pay off earlier investors, support himself, and expand his business by luring more and more investors in. More recently, Bernie Madoff managed to abscond with billions of dollars by posing as an investment genius who could deliver sizable, indeed exceptional, returns on his clients’ investments.
It is plausible that at least some of the early investors in such gambits, who are paid as promised, suppress whatever doubts may creep up in their minds as they bask in the splendor of their newfound wealth. But even those who begin consciously to grasp what is going on may turn a blind eye as the scheme grows to engulf investors who will be fleeced, having been persuaded to participate not only by the smooth-talking con artist, but also by the reported profits of previous investors. Eventually, however, the house of cards collapses, revealing the incredible but undeniable truth: there never were any investments at all. No trading ever took place, and all of the company’s transactions were either deposits or withdrawals of gullible investors’ cash.
Before a con artist is unmasked, nearly everyone involved plays along, either because they stand to gain, or because they truly believe. Sometimes the implications of having been wrong are simply too devastating to admit, and these same psychological dynamics operate in many other realms where most people would never suspect anything like a Ponzi scheme. It is arguable, for example, that the continuous siphoning of U.S. citizens’ income to pay for misguided military interventions abroad constitutes a form of Ponzi scheme. If President George H. W. Bush had never used taxpayers’ dollars to wage the First Gulf War on Iraq in 1991 and to install permanent military bases in the Middle East, then Osama bin Laden would likely never have called for jihad against the United States. If the U.S. military had not invaded Iraq in 2003, then ISIS would never have emerged and spread to Syria and beyond. Such implications are deeply unsettling, and even in the face of mounds of evidence, most people prefer to cling to the official story according to which the 1991 Gulf War was necessary and just, while the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, were completely unprovoked, and all subsequent interventions a matter of national self-defense.
The series of bombing campaigns in the Middle East beginning in 1991 are plausibly regarded as a type of Ponzi scheme because the “investors” (taxpayers), have actually paid to make themselves worse, not better, off. Not only have the “blowback” attacks perpetrated in response to U.S. military intervention abroad killed many innocent persons, but the lives of thousands of soldiers have been and continue to be wrecked through dubious deployments abroad. Along with all of the blood spilled, much treasure has been lost. The more than $28 trillion national debt (as of June 2021) is due in part to the massive Pentagon budget, rubber-stamped annually by Congress, to say nothing of the many other “discretionary” initiatives claimed to be necessary in national defense. Afghanistan is a perfect example of how billions of taxpayer dollars continue to be tossed into the wind even as the formal U.S. military presence winds down. The reason why the War on Terror continues on is not because it is protecting the citizens who pay for it or helping the people of the Middle East but because it has proved to be profitable to persons in the position to influence U.S. foreign policy.
One might reasonably assume that anyone who stands to enrich himself from government policies should be excluded from consequential deliberations over what ought to be done, and in certain realms, the quite rational concern with conflict of interest still operates to some degree. With regard to the military, however, there has been a general acquiescence by the populace to the idea that because only experts inside the system are capable of giving competent advice, they must be consulted, even when they will profit from the policies they promote, such as bombing, which invariably increases the value of stock in companies such as Raytheon. Throughout history, there has always been a push by war profiteers to promote military interventions, but Dick Cheney, who served as Secretary of Defense under George H.W. Bush and vice president under his son, George W. Bush, took war profiteering to an entirely new level. By privatizing many military services through the Logistics Civilian Augmentation Program (LOGCAP), Cheney effectively ushered in a period of war entrepreneurialism, beginning with Halliburton (of which he was CEO from 1995-2000), which continues on today, making it possible for a vast nexus of subcontractors to profit from the never-ending War on Terror, and to do so in good conscience. When more people have self-interested reasons for supporting military interventions, then they become more likely to take place.
With the quelling of concerns that conflict of interest should limit the persons who advise the president on matters of foreign policy, the formal requirement that the secretary of defense be not a military officer but a civilian has been effectively dropped, with both James Mattis and Lloyd Austin easily confirmed as “exceptions” to the rule, despite the fact that, not only did both have significant financial interests in promoting war, but each also had a full career in the military before retiring and being invited to lead the DoD. Military men are inclined to seek military solutions to conflict, which is undoubtedly why high-ranking officers are invited to join the boards of military companies, making Mattis and Austin textbook examples of “revolving door” appointments.
Arguably even more ruinous to the republic in the longterm than the rampant conflict of interest inherent to “revolving door” appointments between the for-profit military industry and the government has been the infiltration of the military into academia, with many universities receiving large grants from the Defense Department for research. Academia would be a natural place for intellectual objections to the progressive militarization of society, but when scholars and scientists themselves benefit directly from DoD funds, they have self-interested reasons to dismiss or discredit those types of critiques—whether consciously or not—in publishing, retention and promotion decisions. In addition to the institutional research support provided by DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), successful academics may receive hefty fees as consultants for the Pentagon and its many affiliates, making them far more likely to defend the hegemon than to raise moral objections to its campaigns of mass homicide euphemistically termed “national defense”.
As a result of the tentacular spread of the military, Cui bono? as a cautionary maxim has been replaced by Who cares? People seem not at all bothered by these profound conflicts of interest, and the past year has illustrated how cooption and corruption may creep easily into other realms as well. Indeed, there is a sense in which today we have two MICs: the military-industrial-complex and, now, in the age of Covid-19, the medical-industrial-complex. This latter development can be viewed, in part, as a consequence of the former, for in recent decades the military industrial complex has sprouted tentacles to become the military-industrial-congressional-media-academic-pharmaceutical-logistics banking complex. Long before Covid-19 appeared on the scene, the Veterans Administration (VA) adopted pro-Big Pharma policies, including the prescription of a vast array of psychotropic medications in lieu of “talk therapy” to treat PTSD among veterans and to preemptively medicate soldiers who expressed anxiety at what they were asked to do in Afghanistan and Iraq. The increase in the prescription of drugs to military personnel generated hefty profits for pharmaceutical firms, allowing them to expand marketing and lobbying efforts to target not only physicians but also politicians and the populace.
Since the initial launch of Prozac in 1986, the pharmaceutical industry has become an extremely powerful force in Western society, made all the more so in the United States when restrictions on direct-to-consumer advertising were lifted by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1997. Already by 2020, about 23% of Americans (nearly 77 million out of a population of 331 million) were taking psychiatric medications, and those numbers appear to have increased significantly during the 2020 lockdowns, which took a toll on many people’s psychological well-being. As medications are prescribed more and more throughout every sector of society, drug makers exert a greater and greater influence on policy, even as the heroin/fentanyl overdose epidemic, caused directly by the aggressive marketing and rampant overprescription of opioid painkillers, continues on.
Just as the military industry is granted the benefit of the doubt on the assumption that they are helping to protect the nation, the pharmaceutical industry accrues respectability from its association with the medical profession. Who, after all, could oppose “defense” and “health”? In reality, however, for-profit weapons and drug companies are beholden not to their compatriots, nor to humanity, but to their stockholders. War and disease are profitable, while peace and health are not. The CEOs of military and pharmaceutical companies, like all businesspersons, seek to ensure that their profits increase by all means necessary, the prescription opioid epidemic being a horrific case in point. Just as academics may enjoy Defense Department funding, many doctors and administrators of medical institutions today derive essential funding from drug companies and the government, whether directly or indirectly. These connections are immensely important because many politicians receive generous campaign contributions from Big Pharma, which by now has more lobbyists in Washington, DC, than there are congresspersons, and not without reason. Formulary decisions at the VA regarding the appropriateness of prescribing, for example, dangerous antipsychotic medications such as Astrazeneca’s Seroquel to soldiers as sleep aids are made by administrators who are political appointees, as are public health officials more generally.
Charles Ponzi. Image source: Wikimedia Commons. With a functional Fourth Estate, it would be possible to question if not condemn the conflicts of interest operating in the for-profit military and medical realms. Unfortunately, however, we no longer have a competent press. Throughout the Coronavirus crisis, this has become abundantly clear as alternative viewpoints on every matter of policy have been squelched, suppressed, and outright censored in the name of the truth, when there may have been ulterior motives at play. In fact, the complete quashing of any directives regarding non-vaccine therapies for mitigating the effects of Covid-19—including Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine—may be best explained by the simple fact that FDA emergency use authorization of vaccines in the United States is possible only when “there are no adequate, approved, and available alternatives,” as is stated plainly on the specification sheets for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.
Regarding the origins of the virus, early claims by some researchers that Covid-19 may have been produced in the virology lab in Wuhan and released accidentally were swiftly dismissed as “conspiracy theories.” Anyone who suggested this eminently plausible origin of the virus was immediately denounced by the media and deplatformed or censored by the big tech giants. “Gain-of-function” research, often funded by the military, involves making existent viruses deadlier to human beings and is said by its proponents to be necessary in order to be prepared for future natural pandemics or in the event that some enemy might use such a virus as a bioweapon. The latter is a familiar line of reasoning among military researchers, invoked also (mutatis mutandis) in nuclear proliferation and the military colonization of space: we must develop the latest and greatest nuclear bombs and effect total spectrum domination of the galaxy before any other government has the chance to do so! Many of the scientists involved in these endeavors may have the best of intentions, but that does nothing to detract from the propensity of human beings to commit errors.
Read the rest of the full essay here.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/26/2021 – 23:45 - Virginia's First 3D-Printed Home Under Construction Amid "Hyperinflating" Housing Market
Virginia’s First 3D-Printed Home Under Construction Amid “Hyperinflating” Housing Market
Last month, we noted “Screw Lumber, Just 3D-Print Your Next Home,” which is precisely what one builder did in Virginia.
According to local news NBC12, history was made Thursday when the first house in the state, located in South Richmond, was constructed with a 3-D printer.
“It’s a home where your wall are made out of concrete instead of wood that’s it,” said Zachary Manngeimer, CEO of Alquist, a 3D printing construction firm from Iowa City.
Printing walls out of concrete instead of stick building with lumber is a relief for homebuilders and homeowners. This year alone, a new single-family home cost had risen at least $36,000 because of soaring lumber prices. The good news today is lumber prices are declining but remain well above pre-COVID levels.
“It’s mixed in a mixing bowl and from there it goes through a tube into a printer head and that printer head is programmed to go around and print the wall system,” said Chris Thompson, Director of Virginia Housing.
To print the 1,550-square-foot home with three bedrooms and two baths will take approximately 15 hours and requires less labor and fewer materials. The contractor on the project said the home is no different than any other average home.
“It’s the same plumbing, same electrical, same HVAC, and same roof structure. All of that is the same,” said Manngeimer.
Manngeimer added: “The housing prices have been out of control for decades and the pandemic has only made it worse. We think this technology can drop the cost make it more efficient and also help families customize a home to fit their lifestyle in ways they may not have been able to do before.”
This comes as veteran housing analyst Ivy Zelman said she saw “hyperinflation” in the US housing “ecosystem” fraught with labor and materials bottlenecks.
Zelman’s warning comes as investors are closely watching whether a broad surge in inflation as the economy recovers from pandemic lockdowns will prove to be transitory. At least it validates one part of a recent Bank of America warning which said that the US is facing “hyperinflation” if transitory.
Currently, Florida and Arizona are two other states with companies printing homes. We’ve noted this phenomenon is occurring in other parts of the world.
While the Federal Reserve and federal government continue to allow home prices to hyperinflate to well beyond bubble levels, making homeownership unaffordable for many, companies are innovating how materials and new technologies can create cheaper homes. The only issue now is finding buildable land.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/26/2021 – 23:15 - Losing The Plot On COVID
Losing The Plot On COVID
Authored by Dan Rabil via AmericanThinker.com,
What happens when a population of introverts, hypochondriacs, and obsessive-compulsives is continuously bombarded with messages to seclude and disinfect themselves, for fear that COVID-19 prickle-balls lurk everywhere, waiting to attack?
What happens is that emotionally damaged people start driving bad politics and bad policy.
“Fifteen days to flatten the curve.”
That phrase is surely now banned by corporate media, for it reminds us how the supposedly acute health threat of March 2020 was repeatedly re-packaged to keep populations off-balance and out of business not for 15 days, but for 15 months.
Never in modern times has a health issue been so flagrantly politicized, nor wielded as a club, as the Wuhan virus has been. Outside a few rational locales, almost every nation drank the COVID Kool-Aid, competing to see who could enforce the stupidest rules.
Naturally, academia would lead the way:
Among Americans aged 15–24, a total of 587 died of COVID in 2020, according to the CDC, representing about 0.16%, or about 1 in 642, of COVID deaths.
If you are young, you have essentially no chance of dying of COVID. The low youth mortality impact from COVID was known by April 2020.
Yet many universities now require these low-risk young people to inject the experimental vaccine or be banished from campus.
Did you already catch the WuFlu and have antibodies?
Too bad. The great pulsating brains of academia cannot differentiate.
Young people who want to serve their country are also targets: the passive-aggressive command at West Point compels the unvaccinated to sacrifice a week’s vacation to quarantine and then to wear masks in the most ridiculous circumstances imaginable — to harass them and make them look like fools. Military leaders do not care whether the experimental vaccines might do more harm than good, especially on a previously COVID-exposed youth. Take the jab and shut up, cadet; Colonel Suckup needs to PowerPoint his 100% compliance success.
Famed baseball pitcher Anthony Fauci claims that he is Science personified, yet anyone can make simple deductions that have eluded the doctor: there is effectively no difference in COVID rates between regions that went full Stalin on COVID rules and those areas that took a more holistic or decentralized approach to the virus.
Great Britain, with its multiple draconian lockdowns, has a COVID case rate of 6.76% of the population, while Sweden, which mostly left schools and businesses open and went soft-touch on mask mandates, has a case rate of 10.7%. But Sweden’s death rate is 20% lower than the U.K.’s, so what was the point of Britain’s lockdown hysteria?
Similarly, some U.S. schools were closed for up to a year, and kids as young as two were required to wear masks in a sickening display of fear-psychosis. Yet in Switzerland, schools reopened permanently about 4–5 weeks after the initial virus panic in the spring of 2020, and children under 12 were never required to wear masks at any time. Switzerland’s COVID case and death rates are both lower than the U.S.’s. On the other hand, in Washington, D.C., where self-righteous residents wear masks even while jogging in the woods, restaurants were already open in March 2021, while in Switzerland, restaurants were closed from December until late May, in the apparent hope of destroying every last small eatery. There’s no science in any of this posturing.
And none of this jumping through hoops made any difference in the progression of the virus: lockdown-crazy Michigan has a higher COVID death rate than libertarian Florida (despite its large elderly population).
Lost in all of this seems to be the simple fact that the COVID virus is not that deadly. True, about 12% of the 4.7-million total U.S. deaths recorded between January 2020 and June 2021 were credited to COVID. About 1.7% of positive cases end in death. But 80% of COVID deaths occurred in the over-65 population, which always has a much higher death rate from infectious diseases, such as pneumonia. If you are under 65 and test positive for COVID, you have a 0.25% chance of death (1/400), which is probably about the same as if you caught a bad flu and suffered complications from it. It’s also logical that we will see periods of below-average death rates in the next year or two, in the same way that there are bad flu years and not-bad flu years.
Self-serving politicians locked down free citizens (and, ironically, released prisoners), destroyed businesses, marred kids’ psyches, and harassed people with mask and testing mandates, all for a coronavirus that in the end was not that novel. And they did it with the connivance of corporate media, which censored and slandered anyone who asked the most basic questions about the virus’ origins and treatments.
In a future sane world, people will view the orchestrated panic of the COVID era with the same bemused condescension we might view the supposed War of the Worlds radio invasion scare of 1938, or the bygone use of leeches for seemingly every ailment.
Yes, grandson, back in 2020, the whole world went batty.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/26/2021 – 22:45 - More Police Officers Have Retired Or Quit In The Past Year Than Ever Before, New Survey Shows
More Police Officers Have Retired Or Quit In The Past Year Than Ever Before, New Survey Shows
Anybody who wasn’t living under a rock last summer surely remembers the wave of anti-police sentiment that swept across the US. The end result, as we have reported before, is that thousands of cops from departments across the country have been quitting in droves. Now, a survey of nearly 200 police departments indicates that retirements rose 45% and resignations rose by 18% in the year between April 2020 and April 2021.
The survey data were disclosed to the NYT, which published them as the centerpiece of a lengthy story about the trials and tribulations facing police departments across the US.
During the period in question, the NYPD saw 2,600 officers retire, compared with 1,509 the year before. Resignations in Seattle increased to 123 from 34, and retirements have risen to 96 from 43.
Minneapolis, the former department of Officer Derek Chauvin, had 912 uniformed officers in May 2019. They’re now down to just 699 sworn officers, and the department is struggling to find suitable recruits for its next class at the police academy.
All of this is happening amid a backdrop of worsening violent crime in America’s cities.
According to the NYT, one of the hardest-hit urban departments is the Asheville Police Department, a hip and deep-blue speck in mostly-red western North Carolina. Asheville is a growing community of 90K ticked into the Blue Ridge Mountains. Some have described it as the Portland of the South. Asheville became the locus of anti-police protests in the area last year. In June, the city council agreed to earmark $2.1MM to start paying reparations to the black community (about 10K of the city’s 90K residents).
Asheville Police Chief David Zack, 58, told the NYT that the surge in contempt from the community pushed many officers to quit. “They said that we have become the bad guys, and we did not get into this to become the bad guys.” The sense that the city “did not back its police” was inescapable.
Another issue is low pay: with a starting salary around $37K, most officers can’t even afford a house in Asheville, where prices have sharply increased in recent years as more outsiders have moved to the community.
One sergeant who quit after a decade on the force, who did not want his name published because of the attacks online, said last summer had chipped away at his professional pride and personal health. He could not sleep and drank too much.
In September, somebody dropped a coffin laden with dirt and manure at the front door of Police Headquarters. “The message was taking a different turn,” Chief Zack said. “The message was not about police reform, but, ‘We endorse violence against police.’”
Of the more than 80 officers who left, about half found different professions and the other half different departments, Chief Zack said. New careers included construction, real estate and pharmaceutical sales.
Alec N. Dohmann, 30, said he ended up leaving Asheville for another position in Greenville, SC. He was able to afford a house, and he described the relationship with the community as “night and day”. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ll be in uniform and someone comes up and shakes my hand, thanking me for what I do.”
Meanwhile, back in Asheville, the department is worried that even more veteran officers might be heading for the exits.
“A lot of our experience is walking out the door,” Chief Zack said.
One of the worst betrayals offices faced, however, came from the public officials in the city who appeared to use the officers as a political punching bag.
Mayor Esther Manheimer dropped into one daily police briefing, lauding the department’s efforts. The very next day, she publicly accused the police of mishandling events, several officers said.
Ms. Manheimer, mayor since 2013, said in an interview that the city was facing a “clash of cultures,” and that she had “obviously not perfected” her efforts to “thread the needle of supporting law enforcement employees, but at the same time demanding and calling for needed change.”
For Asheville, the personnel situation is getting worse. Of 7 new officers who started training in December, six have already quit. The city, meanwhile, is suffering from an increase in everything from murder to aggravated assault. A squad that investigate sexual assault and domestic violence cases have been winnowed down to a single officers.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/26/2021 – 22:15 - Ivermectin: Can a Drug Be "Right-Wing"?
Ivermectin: Can a Drug Be “Right-Wing”?
Authored by Matt Taibbi via TK News
On December 31st of last year, an 80 year-old Buffalo-area woman named Judith Smentkiewicz fell ill with Covid-19. She was rushed by ambulance to Millard Fillmore Suburban Hospital in Williamsville, New York, where she was put on a ventilator. Her son Michael and his wife flew up from Georgia, and were given grim news. Judith, doctors said, had a 20% chance at survival, and even if she made it, she’d be on a ventilator for a month.
As December passed into the New Year, Judith’s health declined. Her family members, increasingly desperate, had been doing what people in the Internet age do, Googling in search of potential treatments. They saw stories about the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin, learning among other things that a pulmonologist named Pierre Kory had just testified before the Senate that the drug had a “miraculous” impact on Covid-19 patients. The family pressured doctors at the hospital to give Judith the drug. The hospital initially complied, administering one dose on January 2nd. According to her family’s court testimony, a dramatic change in her condition ensued.
“In less than 48 hours, my mother was taken off the ventilator, transferred out of the Intensive Care Unit, sitting up on her own and communicating,” the patient’s daughter Michelle Kulbacki told a court.
After the reported change in Judith’s condition, the hospital backtracked and refused to administer more. Frustrated, the family turned on January 7th to a local lawyer named Ralph Lorigo. A commercial litigator and head of what he calls a “typical suburban practice,” with seven lawyers engaged in everything from matrimonial to estate work, Lorigo assigned one of his attorneys to review materials given to them by the family, which included Kory’s Senate testimony. The associate showed Lorigo himself the the material next morning.
“I was so convinced by what Dr. Kory was saying,” Lorigo says. “I saw the passion and the belief.”
Lorigo immediately sued the hospital, filing to State Supreme Court to force the facility to treat according to the family’s wishes. Judge Henry J. Nowak sided with the Smentkiewiczes, signing an order that Lorigo and one of his attorneys served themselves, and after a series of quasi-absurd dramas that included the hospital refusing to let the Smentkiewicz family physician phone in the prescription — “the doctor actually had to drive to the hospital,” Lorigo says — Judith went back on ivermectin.
“She was out of that hospital in six days,” Lorigo says. After a month of rehab, his octogenarian client went back to her life, which involved working five days a week (she still cleans houses). Her story, complete with photo, was told in the Buffalo News, causing Lorigo’s phone to begin ringing off the hook. Doppleganger cases soon began dotting the map all over the country.
One of the first was in nearby Rochester, New York, where the family of Glenna Dickinson went through an almost exactly similar narrative to the Smentkiewiczes: they read about ivermectin, got a family doctor to prescribe it, saw improvement, only to later have the hospital refuse treatment. Again Lorigo intervened, again a judge ordered the hospital to treat, again the patient recovered and was discharged.
Hospitals fought hard, hiring expensive law firms, at times going to extraordinary lengths to refuse treatment even with dying patients who’d exhausted all other options. At Edward-Elmhurst hospital in Chicago, a 68 year-old named Nurije Fype was admitted, put on a ventilator, and again, as all other treatments failed, her family got a judge to order the use of ivermectin. Lorigo claims the hospital initially refused to obey the court order, which led to the filing of a contempt motion, which in turn led to a pair of counter-motions and another confrontation before another befuddled Judge named James Orel.
“Why wouldn’t this be tried if she’s not improving?” the Chicago Tribune quoted Orel as saying. “Why does the hospital object to providing this medication?”
“He basically said, ‘What do you have left?’” Lorigo recounts. “No one would administer the ivermectin. It’s as safe as aspirin, for Christ’s sake. It’s been given out 3.7 billion times. I couldn’t understand it.”
Stories like these aren’t proof the drug works. They don’t even really rise to the level of evidence. People recover from diseases all the time, and it doesn’t mean any particular treatment was responsible. Short of the gold standard of randomized controlled trials, there’s no proof.
However, anecdotes have a power all their own, and in the Internet age, ones like these spread quickly. Lorigo estimates he now gets “10, 15, 20” calls and emails a day. At this level, at the bedside of a single Covid-19 patient who’s already received the full official treatment protocol and is failing anyway, the decision to administer a drug like ivermectin, or fluvoxamine, or hydroxychloroquine, or any of a dozen other experimental treatments, seems like a no-brainer. Nothing else has worked, the patient is dying, why not?
Telescope out a little further, however, and the ivermectin debate becomes more complicated, reaching into a series of thorny controversies, some ridiculous, some quite serious.
The ridiculous side involves the front end of Lorigo’s story, the same story detailed on this site last week: the censorship of ivermectin news that, no matter what one thinks about the evidence for or against, is clearly in the public interest.
Anyone running a basic internet search on the topic will get a jumble of confusing results. YouTube’s policies are beyond uneven. It’s been aggressive in taking down videos containing interviews with people like Kory and doling out strikes to independent media figures like Bret Weinstein, but an interview with Lorigo on TrialSite News containing basically all of the same information is still up, as are clips from a just-taped episode of the Joe Rogan Experience that feature both Weinstein and Kory. Moreover, all sorts of statements at least as provocative as Kory’s “miraculous” formulation in the Senate still litter the Internet, many in reputable research journals. Take, for instance, this passage from the March issue of the Japanese Journal of Antibiotics:
When the effectiveness of ivermectin for the COVID-19 pandemic is confirmed with the cooperation of researchers around the world and its clinical use is achieved on a global scale, it could prove to be of great benefit to humanity. It may even turn out to be comparable to the benefits achieved from the discovery of penicillin…
There clearly is not evidence that ivermectin is the next penicillin, at least as far as its effects on Covid-19. As is noted in nearly every mainstream story about the subject, the WHO has advised against its use pending further study, there have been randomized studies showing it to be ineffective in speeding recovery, and the drug’s original manufacturer, Merck, has said there’s no “meaningful evidence” of efficacy for Covid-19 patients. However, it’s also patently untrue, as is frequently asserted, that there’s no evidence that the drug might be effective.
This past week, for instance, Oxford University announced it was launching a large-scale clinical trial. The study has already recruited more than 5,000 volunteers, and its announcement says what little is known to be true: that “small pilot studies show that early administration with ivermectin can reduce viral load and the duration of symptoms in some patients with mild COVID-19,” that it’s “a well-known medicine with a good safety profile,” and “because of the early promising results in some studies, it is already being widely used to treat COVID-19 in several countries.”
The Oxford text also says “there is little evidence from large-scale randomized controlled trials to demonstrate that it can speed up recovery from the illness or reduce hospital admission.” But to a person who might have a family member suffering from the disease, just the information about “early promising results” would probably be enough to inspire demands for a prescription, which might be the problem, of course. Unless someone was looking for that information, they likely wouldn’t find it, as mainstream news even of the Oxford study has been effectively limited to a pair of Bloomberg and Forbes stories.
Ivermectin has suffered the same fate as thousands of other news topics since Donald Trump first announced his run for the presidency nearly six years ago, cleaved in two to inhabit separate factual universes for left and right audiences. Repurposed drugs generally have had a hard time being taken seriously since Trump announced he was on hydroxychloroquine last year, and ivermectin clearly also suffers from its association with Republican Senators like Ron Johnson. Still, the drug’s publicity issues go beyond the taint of “conservative” news.
The drug has become a test case for a controversy that’s long been building in health care, about how much input patients should have in their own treatment. Well before Covid-19, the medical profession was thrust into a revolution in patient information, inspired by a combination of Google and new patients’ rights laws.
Should people on their deathbeds be allowed to try anything to save themselves? That seems like an easy question to answer. Should the entire world be allowed to practice self-care on a grand scale? That’s a different issue. Some would say absolutely not, while others would say the corruption of pharmaceutical companies and the medical system unfortunately make it a necessity. The world is increasingly divided along this trust/untrust axis.
This is an excerpt from today’s subscriber-only post. To read the entire article and get full access to the archives, you can subscribe for $5 a month or $50 a year.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/26/2021 – 21:45 - US Threatens Sanctions On Gulf Allies If They Normalize Relations With Assad
US Threatens Sanctions On Gulf Allies If They Normalize Relations With Assad
For the past couple months there’s been persisting reports and rumors that Saudi Arabia is preparing to restore diplomatic ties and normalized relations with the Syrian government under Bashar al-Assad, coming off a decade of war in which the Saudis spearheaded efforts alongside the US and other allies to topple him.
As we detailed in early May the first major step toward detente came when Saudi Arabia’s powerful intelligence chief, Gen Khalid Humaidan, traveled to Damascus to meet with his Syrian counterpart. The two sides broke off relations since near the start of the war in 2011, especially as it became clear the Saudis were a key part of the Western allied push for regime change, through covert support to anti-Assad insurgents and jihadists which included regular weapons shipments.
Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah, left, and Syrian President Bashar Assad in Damascus on Oct. 7, 2009, via AP. Starting in 2018, other Arab capitals had begun seeking to mend relations with Assad, especially after the United Arab Emirates reopened its long shuttered embassy in the Syrian capital at the end of that year. There’s even been talk of late of Assad being invited back into the Arab League.
Essentially America’s Gulf allies are fast coming to the conclusion that Assad is here to stay, and that pragmatism means opening up relations; however, Washington doesn’t see it that way – as its prior long-running covert war has turned to an economic war of economic strangulation and choking off national resources by occupying the oil and gas rich northeast.
On Friday, a top US official threatened regional allies with sanctions should they get too friendly with Assad. The Middle East Eye details the warning as follows:
On a call to reporters on Friday, Joey Hood, acting assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs, said Washington’s opposition to the Syrian government would not change unless there was a “major change in behavior” in Damascus.
“With regard to others, who may be considering making moves, we are asking them to consider very carefully the atrocities committed by the regime on the Syrian people over the last decade, as well as the regime’s continuing efforts to deny much of the country access to humanitarian aid and security,” Hood said.
Hood brought up America’s Caesar Act sanctions, which are geared toward thwarting reconstruction of the country under Assad.
Syria: Why Saudi Arabia wants Assad on its side again | Kamal Alamhttps://t.co/OVEpKW52G0 pic.twitter.com/wxHPgqBXLn
— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) May 7, 2021
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“And I would also, of course, add that we also have the Caesar Act sanctions,” the top State Dept. official said. “This is a law that has wide bipartisan support in the Congress, and the administration is going to follow the law on that. And so governments and businesses need to be careful that their proposed or envisioned transactions don’t expose them to potential sanctions from the United States under that act,” he added.
Egypt is also a major US Mideast which has signaled its intent to improve relations with Damascus. The Sisi government is staunchly anti-Muslim Brotherhood, and wants to see Turkish ambitions in the region thwarted. It’s likely that any major rapprochement between the region’s most influential countries and Assad would come via the Arab League, potentially making it harder for Washington to make good on its threat of sanctions.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/26/2021 – 21:15 - Why Gold?
Why Gold?
Authored by Adrian Day via InternationalMan.com,
At a time when many investors are calling gold “a relic,” and many younger ones, in particular, are buying Bitcoin instead, it is worth going back to fundamentals and looking at gold’s role as money over thousands of years. I am not here to attack Bitcoin. Rather, I am here to defend gold.
Gold has an advantage that Bitcoin does not have, that Bitcoin inherently cannot have, which is its age. Gold has survived and performed its job for literally thousands of years. We shall have to wait a little longer to say that Bitcoin is as good as gold.
Nearly two-and-a-half millennia ago, Aristotle wrote his famous treatise on money. Money serves as a medium of exchange, a store of value, and a unit of account. In his treatise, Aristotle listed the characteristics of ideal money.
Money should be divisible, which is why we do not use fine art as money. It should be fungible, which is why we do not use real estate as money. It should be rare, which is why we do not use iron ore as money, and so on. Aristotle concluded that only gold has all these attributes and is the ideal form of money.
Long before the formal gold standard, when kings, emperors, and republics issued gold coins, gold was the backing of the monetary system. Gold has preserved its purchasing power throughout history. Roy Jastram, in his thorough book, The Golden Constant, looked at the price of gold, the cost of living, and the purchasing power of gold year-by-year back to the middle of the 16th century, and before that, though the records are less reliable, back to the Magna Carta in 1215. At the end of the First World War, when Britain, America, and other countries abandoned the pure gold standard, and there was a period of the dirty standard followed by Roosevelt’s confiscation of gold, then ultimately the closing of the gold window in 1971 and gold’s last formal link to the money system—gold’s purchasing value was within 1% of what it had been in 1560. During that long period, the maximum loss you would have endured, buying at the peak in 1620 and selling at the low in 1800, would have been less than 50%. That is a lot, of course, but vastly superior to the multi-century record of any fiat currency (in a much shorter time period). Had you continued to hold, you would have been back to par in 1900.
Gold has maintained its purchasing power during periods of high inflation and sharp deflation when the stock market or the currency collapses. Even during periods of chaos or war, gold holds its value. During these periods, people will look for alternate places for their cash.
Gold is thought of as an inflation hedge because it performed spectacularly during our last experience with high inflation in the U.S., the decade of the 1970s. That is a little artificial, of course, because gold started that decade at an artificial price, suppressed by the government, which outlawed private ownership. Undoubtedly, gold holds its purchasing power better than fiat currencies during inflation, but the truth is that many other assets do the same, for example, land, art, and the stock market.
It is during periods of deflation that gold truly comes into its own. Even if the nominal price of gold does not appreciate as much during deflations as during inflations, Roy Jastram demonstrated clearly that in terms of purchasing power, gold performs better during deflations, and there are few other assets that hold up in deflations. On a relative basis, gold is a far better deflation hedge than an inflation hedge.
Gold also shines during periods of instability and chaos, whether it is a declining stock market, civil disturbance, or war.
People think that gold is volatile, but, in fact, over relatively short periods and far longer ones, it has been one of the least volatile of assets. One thing we know about Bitcoin with certainty: it will continue to be volatile. Bitcoin has no central authority; it was designed that way. There is a pre-determined number of new coins each year until the cap is reached. So, the supply of Bitcoin does not change with changes in demand; price absorbs these changes, up or down—not supply. The designers of Bitcoin acknowledged that they did not know how to change that without a central authority. So, Bitcoin will remain volatile. Now, volatility is a positive thing if you are a speculator, but that is not so if you are looking for a store of value or as a payment system (so long as the good is priced in dollars). You want to pay your rent with Bitcoin priced at $64,000 one day, but then what when it is priced at $30,000 two weeks later when your rent is due?
Where the supply or demand of gold increases or declines, it is not the price that absorbs the changes but rather the opposite side of the equation changes. Thus, the largest, unexpected increase in the supply of gold in the last four centuries was with the California Gold Rush, which increased supply by a little over 6% per year. As expected, there was an increase in inflation—too much money chasing too few goods—but the increase was about 1.5% a year for the rest of the decade. That is astonishingly small and far less than one has seen under the fiat system when the money supply increases.
One last attribute of the ideal money, according to Aristotle: It must be a thing of value in and of itself. Gold is universally recognized and valued. You can travel to Zurich or Dubai or the highlands of Papua New Guinea. Everyone will immediately recognize gold and desire it. Why, you can give some to your wife to adorn her neck. Here, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies spectacularly fail. Blockchain is a valuable invention…Satoshi Nakamoto has a brilliant mind…but ultimately, there is nothing of intrinsic worth there.
Former BCA Research and Brandywine analyst Chen Zhao writes that “crypto was created out of thin air and will disappear like mist.” One does not have to go that far, but one can be certain that the same words could not be written about gold.
* * *
Negative interest rates are spreading like wildfire around the world. Investors have no choice but to look for other places as stores of value. That’s why many smart investors are running towards gold. It’s also why the big buyers, like China and Russia, are accumulating as much gold as possible. Here’s the bottom line… Negative interest rates and the devaluation of currencies will hurt a lot of people, particularly savers and retirees. But they will also give rocket fuel to the coming bull market in precious metals.
That’s precisely why legendary speculator Doug Casey just released an urgent video on this topic. Doug breaks down exactly what is coming, and what you can do about it. Click here to watch it now.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/26/2021 – 20:45 - US Food Banks Warn Soaring Prices Will Affect Distributions
US Food Banks Warn Soaring Prices Will Affect Distributions
Soaring food prices aren’t just impacting financially strapped families and the working poor. They’re also affecting the mission of US food banks who are spending a lot more on food than ever before.
“We’re already spending a lot more on food than we have in years past,” said Greg Trotter, a spokesman for the Greater Chicago Food Depository, a large food bank, who spoke with VOA News. “Our food purchasing budget has doubled this year.”
In the coming weeks and or months, food banks across the country may experience a surge in food demand from millions of folks who are set to have their stimmy checks expire. At least 25 states are ending federal unemployment benefits.
The perfect storm of factors (soaring food costs and unemployment benefits expiring) may stress food banks even further.
“The high prices are costing us more to feed a family in need,” said Alison Padget, development and outreach director at Food for Others. “We’ll have to rethink our purchasing decisions because economists say the prices are going to be high for at least a year.”
In Phoenix, Arizona, Jerry Brown, director of public relations at St. Mary’s Food Bank, told VOA that food banks could face severe difficulty once federal money dries up.
It seems the problem has already begun at the Community Food Bank of New Jersey, which covers a large portion of the state. Impact leader Triada Stampas said the food bank serves more people than ever because of out-of-control prices at grocery stores.
According to Father English Food Pantry officials in Paterson, New Jersey, the food bank is already experiencing financial strain.
Kelly Mott, external affairs director at the Mississippi Food Network, said, “We already see the price changes will affect us soon, adding that “we are in the process of buying turkeys for the Thanksgiving holiday in November. And since they are so expensive, we won’t be able to purchase as many as we usually do, especially for the families with children who rely on us.”
And by the way, there are still 15 million Americans on some form of government dole…
The crisis is far from over as food bank stress begins to materialize, and not everyone might be fed this year.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/26/2021 – 20:15 - Blackouts Loom In California As Electricity Prices Are "Absolutely Exploding"
Blackouts Loom In California As Electricity Prices Are “Absolutely Exploding”
Authored by Robert Bryce via RealClearEnergy.com,
Two inexorable energy trends are underway in California: soaring electricity prices and ever-worsening reliability – and both trends bode ill for the state’s low- and middle-income consumers.
Last week, the state’s grid operator, the California Independent System Operator, issued a “flex alert” that asked the state’s consumers to reduce their power use “to reduce stress on the grid and avoid power outages.”
CAISO’s warning of impending electricity shortages heralds another blackout-riddled summer at the same time California’s electricity prices are skyrocketing.
In 2020, California’s electricity prices jumped by 7.5%, making it the biggest price increase of any state in the country last year and nearly seven times the increase that was seen in the United States as a whole. According to data from the Energy Information Administration, the all-sector price of electricity in California last year jumped to 18.15 cents per kilowatt-hour, which means that Californians are now paying about 70% more for their electricity than the U.S. average all-sector rate of 10.66 cents per kWh. Even more worrisome: California’s electricity rates are expected to soar over the next decade. (More on that in a moment.)
The surging cost of electricity will increase the energy burden being borne by low- and middle-income Californians. High energy costs have a particularly regressive effect in California, which has the highest poverty rate – and some of the highest electricity prices – in the country. In 2020, California’s all-sector electricity prices were the third-highest in the continental U.S., behind only Rhode Island (18.55 cents per kWh) and Connecticut (19.19 cents per kWh.)
Before going further, let me state the obvious: California policymakers are providing a case study in how not to manage an electric grid. Furthermore, that case study shows what could happen if policymakers at the state and federal levels decide to follow California’s radical decarbonization mandates, which include a requirement for 100% zero-carbon electricity by 2045 and an economy-wide goal of carbon neutrality by 2045.
Even though the state’s tattered electric grid can barely meet existing demand – and more rolling blackouts are almost certain this summer – California continues to pile bad policy on top of bad policy. The state has banned the future sale of cars powered by internal combustion engines which will result in dramatic increases in electricity demand and will require, according to a recent report by the California Energy Commission, the installation of 1.2 million new EV charging stations by 2030. Bans on natural gas will further increase electricity demand. Cheered on by the Sierra Club, which is getting tens of millions of dollars from billionaire Michael Bloomberg, about 46 California communities have banned the use of natural gas in homes and businesses. Making the whole thing even more absurd, is that California is pledging to achieve these goals while closing the state’s last remaining nuclear power plant, the Diablo Canyon Power Plant, which by itself produces nearly 10% of all the juice consumed in California.
The state’s surging energy costs demonstrate the regressive nature of decarbonization policies and how renewable-energy mandates drive up the price of power. California’s electricity prices are “absolutely exploding,” says Mark Nelson, an energy analyst and the managing director of the Radiant Energy Fund, who used that phrase on a recent episode of the Power Hungry Podcast. He added that the electricity price hikes are happening before the state’s utilities have incurred all of the costs of the deadly wildfires that swept the state, trimming millions of trees to prevent future wildfires, and adding all the mandated renewable-energy capacity, transmission lines, and new battery storage that the state will need to meet its climate goals. Further, the costs do not include all of the costs that will be incurred after the proposed shuttering of Diablo Canyon in 2025.
Last week’s power conservation requests are likely the first of many to come. On May 27, CAISO CEO Elliot Mainzer warned that if the state is hit with another hot summer like the one that required rolling blackouts that left more than 800,000 homes and businesses without power over two days last August, “our numbers tell us the grid will be stressed again.” That warning followed a May 12 CAISO press release which warned that “reliability risks remain” and the state will likely need “voluntary” electricity conservation this summer to avoid a repeat of last year’s blackouts.
The specter of more blackouts is yet more bad news for California’s beleaguered consumers. Between 2010 and 2020, the state’s electricity prices jumped by 39.5%, which was, the biggest increase of any state in the U.S. Even more worrisome: California’s electricity rates will soar over the next decade.
In a report issued in February, the California Public Utility Commission warned that the state’s energy costs are growing far faster than the rate of inflation, and that “energy bills will become less affordable over time.”
What’s driving up prices? The report says that “electrification goals and wildlife mitigation plans are among the near-term needs…that place upward pressure on rates and bills.” The report projected that residents living in hotter regions (that is, those who can’t afford to live close to the coast) who get their electricity from San Diego Gas & Electric could see their monthly power bills increase by 47% between now and 2030. When future gasoline-price increases are included, overall energy costs for that same consumer are projected to increase by 60%. Furthermore, the CPUC expects residential ratepayers in SDG&E’s service territory will be paying close to 45 cents per kilowatt-hour by 2030. For reference, that is more than three times the current average price of residential electricity.
Meanwhile, the state’s renewable plans are being thwarted by rural Californians who don’t want wind and solar projects in their neighborhoods. California has added essentially no new wind capacity since 2013. The latest rejection of Big Wind happened on Tuesday when the Shasta County Planning Commission unanimously rejected a permit for Fountain Wind, a project that proposed to put 216 megawatts of wind capacity (and about 71 turbines) in a mountainous area west of the town of Burney. The project met fierce resistance. According to David Benda, a reporter for the Redding Record Searchlight, “The 5-0 vote capped a marathon meeting that went nearly 10 hours and ended just before 11 p.m. The unanimous vote was met with cheers.”
As I have previously reported, the backlash against Big Wind goes far beyond California. It can be seen throughout Europe and from Maine to Hawaii. Since 2015, more than 300 communities in the U.S, have rejected or restricted wind projects.
In addition to the raging land-use conflicts, California policymakers are facing a growing backlash from California’s Latino population, which is the largest in the country. As I reported last year, the state’s Latino leaders have sued the state over its housing, energy, and climate regulations. Jennifer Hernandez, the lead lawyer for The Two Hundred, a coalition of Latino leaders, told me those regulations are “incredibly regressive” and are bringing “Appalachia economics” to California’s “non-coastal elites.”
Robert Apodaca, the founder of United Latinos Vote, a non-profit group, told me recently that the ongoing electricity price hikes in the state “will be crippling for low- and middle- income Californians, particularly for those who live in the Central Valley and the Inland Empire. They are going to really feel the heat, in more ways than one.”
The punchline here is clear: the blackouts and high electricity prices that are plaguing California provide a neon-lit warning sign about the electric reliability and energy affordability crises that loom if policymakers attempt to decarbonize our economy too quickly.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/26/2021 – 19:45 - UAW President Rory Gamble Announces His Retirement, Marking Fourth UAW Boss In Three Years
UAW President Rory Gamble Announces His Retirement, Marking Fourth UAW Boss In Three Years
UAW President Rory Gamble has announced he is going to be retiring on June 30, one year earlier than expected.
The retirement comes as the union attempts to shake a sullied public image as a result of 11 former officials being convicted of Federal crimes in recent years.
Gamble was instrumental in helping negotiate deals to resolve criminal investigations into the union. The resultant settlements will give the Federal government “prolonged oversight and broad control” over the union. In other words, the gravy train could officially be over for top union officials.
He also worked to reorganize the union, “disbanding a 17-state region based in Missouri that employed leaders involved in financial wrongdoing,” according to The Detroit News.
Negotiations with the government also led to a third party monitor being appointed to oversee the union for the next six years. As part of a consent decree reached with the DOJ, the union will also consider amending its constitution to enable the direct election of the union’s top officials.
Gamble, the first African American president of the United Auto Workers, will mark the fourth leaders in just three years for the UAW.
“I said on Day One I would hand over the keys to this treasured institution as a clean union,” Gamble said in a statement less issued less the two hours after he officially notified the UAW’s governing International Executive Board, according to the The Detroit News.
He continued: “My original intent as a UAW Vice President was to retire at the end of June 2021, and after looking at the progress we have made and the best interests of UAW members for a stable transfer of power, this is the right time for me to turn over the reins.”
The announcement of his retirement comes just one day before the union was set to hold a $150-per-plate gala dinner “honoring and saluting The Man, The Legend, Mr. Rory Gamble”.
Secretary-Treasurer Ray Curry, 55, is slated to take over for Gamble.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/26/2021 – 19:15 - Senate Republicans Urge CDC To End Mask Mandate On Airplanes, Public Transit
Senate Republicans Urge CDC To End Mask Mandate On Airplanes, Public Transit
Authored by Ivan Pentchoukov via The Epoch Times,
A group of Republican senators on June 25 introduced a resolution urging the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to end the mask mandate for fully vaccinated Americans using public transit and interstate travel.
The CDC has already lifted the mask guidance for fully vaccinated people outdoors and in most other settings. But interstate rail lines, airports, and airplanes still require masks in abeyance to one of the early executive orders issued by President Joe Biden.
“Over 150 million people in the United States are fully vaccinated and mask mandates have been lifted across the country. But the CDC inexplicably still hasn’t lifted the mask mandate for public transportation. It’s long past time for President Biden and the CDC to follow the science and end this mask mandate for fully vaccinated individuals,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said in a statement.
“Americans should be able to travel to celebrate Independence Day with their friends and loved ones without having to follow an outdated and unnecessary mandate.”
The text of the resolution says lifting the mandate would incentivize more people to get the CCP virus vaccine. The CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, commonly known as the novel coronavirus, causes COVID-19.
The Republicans also argue that ending the mandate would help with the economic recovery by safely boosting travel and tourism.
“Outside of the beltway, the country is going back to normal. Wyoming and most other states lifted their mask mandate months ago. Vaccination rates are increasing and COVID cases are decreasing. The only place most Americans are wearing masks now is in airports and on airplanes,” said Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.).
“Secretary Buttigieg even said that the mandate is not actually about the science, but instead about ‘respect.’ If there’s no science backing it up, it’s time for the mandate to go.”
On April 30, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) extended the mask requirement at airports and throughout the transportation network until September 13. The resolution urges the TSA to “update its mask requirements, to be consistent with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance, to permit fully vaccinated individuals to travel on all transportation networks throughout the United States without wearing a mask.
A group representing major airlines earlier this month urged the Department of Justice to prosecute passengers who don’t comply with the mask requirement. According to the letter, the Federal Aviation Administration has received more than 3,039 reports of unruly behavior. Many of the reports deal with passengers who refused to wear masks.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/26/2021 – 18:45 - Japan Trails The World In Vaccination Race As Olympics Loom
Japan Trails The World In Vaccination Race As Olympics Loom
As the UEFA Euros are underway across Europe, showcasing the return of spectator sports on the world stage, Japan is preparing to host an even bigger event in less than a month. With COVID cases down and the state of emergency freshly lifted in most of the country, it may look like the timing could hardly be better for the Olympics to come to Tokyo, at least under the given circumstances. However, as Statista’s Feliz Richter notes, for many people in Japan the thought of hosting thousands of athletes, trainers, and media workers from all over the world in the middle of a pandemic remains daunting, especially under the specter of the more infectious delta variant of the coronavirus.
And while roughly 18,000 workers directly involved in the Tokyo Olympics will be vaccinated ahead of the Games, as the organizers recently announced, the same cannot be said of the Japanese population, which trails other rich countries by a wide margin in terms of vaccination progress.
You will find more infographics at Statista
According to official figures tracked by Our World in Data, less than 20 percent of the Japanese population had received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine by June 22, compared to 53 percent in the U.S., 48 percent in the EU and 43 percent in China. The contrast is even more startling when looking at fully vaccinated people, where Japan stands at a rate of just 8 in 100 people.
Tokyo 2020 will kick off with the opening ceremony on July 23 and competitions will be held until August 8. The spectator limit has been set at 50 percent of venue capacity up to a maximum of 10,000 people. Masks will be mandatory at all times and other rules to limit infection risk will be implemented. The Paralympic Games will be held from August 24 to September 5. A decision on spectator limits for the Paralympics will be made on July 16.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/26/2021 – 18:15 - White House: Afghanistan Is "Not a Winnable War"
White House: Afghanistan Is “Not a Winnable War”
Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,
Ahead of talks between President Biden and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki on Friday said Afghanistan is “not a winnable war” in response to hawks calling for the troop drawdown to be reversed.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) met with Ghani and other Afghan leaders on Thursday. In a statement on the meeting, McConnell called for a “reversal” of President Biden’s withdrawal.
Via Reuters When asked about McConnell’s comments, Psaki said, “The President made a decision — which is consistent with his view that this was not a winnable war — to bring the US troops home after 20 years of fighting this war.”
Later on Friday, Biden met with Ghani and vowed continued support for the Afghan government. “The partnership between Afghanistan and the United States is not ending,” Biden said. “Our troops may be leaving, but support for Afghanistan is not ending.”
President Biden earmarked $3.3 billion in his request for the 2022 Pentagon budget for the Afghan military, a $300 million increase from this year. NATO will also continue funding the Afghan military, and is looking to train Afghan soldiers outside of the country.
While Biden and Psaki say the US is leaving Afghanistan, a US official told The Associated Press on Thursday that Washington wants to leave about 650 troops to guard the US embassy in Kabul. The troops could also support Turkish forces that are expected to stay to secure the Kabul airport.
USS Ronald Reagan now in Middle East to provide air support for U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan, Ike headed home pic.twitter.com/fanoo84fVh
— Lucas Tomlinson (@LucasFoxNews) June 25, 2021
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The issue with Biden’s post-withdrawal plans is that the Taliban are against them, and it could put US troops at risk of being attacked.
On Friday, a Taliban spokesman said the group would view a continued US presence after Biden’s September 11th withdrawal deadline as a violation of the Doha agreement.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/26/2021 – 17:45 - 'You Were Wrong About A Lot Of Sh*t': Maher Blasts Big Tech, CDC Over Lab-Leak Censorship
‘You Were Wrong About A Lot Of Sh*t’: Maher Blasts Big Tech, CDC Over Lab-Leak Censorship
Bill Maher slammed Big Tech on Friday’s episode of his show, “Real Time with Bill Maher,” criticizing Facebook and Google for censoring content discussing the COVID-19 lab-leak theory.
“I find this outrageous. Facebook banned any post for four months about COVID coming from a lab,” said Maher, adding “Now, even the Biden administration is looking into it.”
“Outrageous.” @BillMaher railed against Facebook and Google for banning and suppressing content about lab leak. “You were wrong, Google and Facebook….The CDC’s been wrong about a lot shit, this is outrageous that I can’t look this information up.” #RealTime pic.twitter.com/28dwaQGz9W
— Brent Baker (@BrentHBaker) June 26, 2021
As the Daily Caller‘s Andrew Jose notes:
Facebook revised its ban on such posts in late May, stating, “In light of ongoing investigations into the origin of COVID-19 and in consultation with public health experts, we will no longer remove the claim that COVID-19 is man-made or manufactured from our apps.”
The ban put into effect Apr. 16, 2020, deemed allegations of lab leak or deliberate development of the COVID-19 as misinformation alongside claims of “vaccines are not effective at preventing the disease they are meant to protect against,” “it’s safer to get the disease than to get the vaccine,” and, “vaccines are toxic, dangerous, or cause autism.”
Last month, social media giants were similarly slammed over lab-leak theory censorship, after Dr. Anthony Fauci admitted that it’s a possibility.
Fauci was also asked by Katie Sanders of Politifact if he thought COVID-19 had developed naturally. Fauci responded by suggesting other causes are a possibility.
“I am not convinced about that, I think we should continue to investigate what went on in China until we continue to find out to the best of our ability what happened,” replied the ‘good’ doctor.
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Fauci’s comments came after a report by the Wall Street Journal that
that three researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology became so sick in November 2019 that they required hospital treatment. Two months later and China was still telling the WHO that there was zero human to human transmission of the virus.
Politifact, meanwhile, was forced to retract a ‘fact check’ that claimed it had “debunked” the lab leak origin theory of COVID-19.
All of this, because the left hates Donald Trump.
Here is President Trump in April 2020 telling the world the virus likely came out of the Wuhan Institute of Virology pic.twitter.com/p7q0kQQdrv
— Poso (@JackPosobiec) May 23, 2021
Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/26/2021 – 17:15 - "Enough Is Enough": Los Angeles Sheriff Urges State Of Emergency On Homelessness
“Enough Is Enough”: Los Angeles Sheriff Urges State Of Emergency On Homelessness
Authored by Jamie Joseph via The Epoch Times,
In an unusual move, Los Angeles Sheriff Alex Villanueva has sent a letter to the Board of Supervisors urging them to declare a local state of emergency to address the spiraling homelessness crisis in the county, citing an increase in crime, lack of sanitation, and struggling businesses.
“We’ve been inundated with calls, with concerns, with images from the news, from people picking up the phone, emailing, sending us letters, about what’s going on in Venice,” Villanueva told reporters during a press conference inside the Justice Hall on June 23. “And that is a microcosm of what’s going on throughout the entire county of Los Angeles.”
“Enough is enough, we need to kick this into high gear,” he said.
There’s an estimated 200 homeless people on the Venice Beach Boardwalk and 2,000 throughout the neighborhood, making it the second largest concentration of homeless people after Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles. The area has been getting primary attention recently from Villanueva and the sheriffs’ Homeless Outreach and Services Team (HOST).
Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department deputies speak with Venice Beach, Calif., homeless individuals on June 8, 2021. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)
With the state of emergency, the county will be eligible for FEMA funds, since county resources are limited, he said.
“With the homeless, you have two choices if you’re an elected official: You can get busy helping [or] you get busy hindering, it’s your choice,” he said.
A few Venice community residents who’ve been sounding the alarm for months were also part of the press conference. Chie Lunn, a teacher and member of the Venice Public Health & Safety Committee told The Epoch Times “there was a huge problem that was growing around us” and that her “children were becoming more and more enclosed.”
“And it wasn’t just because of COVID, I felt like I needed to do something for not only them, but for other children in the neighborhood, as I witnessed more people going inward within their safety and feeling like they couldn’t just walk outside their front doors,” she said.
She said the Venice Beach Park was labeled by Councilmember Mike Bonin, whose district includes Venice, “as a place for kids to go during COVID to feel safe and to get internet access.”
“But yet at that very park we had three RVs exploding, we had drug use, we had RVs staying on the streets. So, when we talk about sanitation, our police have been doing an amazing job, our sanitation has been doing a great job, but they cannot keep up with the amount of things and people dropping off stuff and using our streets as a dumping ground for their trash,” she said.
Billions in Funding Spent
“It is a national disgrace,” Villanueva said.
“All those 501 C-3 organizations … we’re going to talk about money; there is a homeless industrial complex, and they’re raking in money, not by the millions, not by the hundreds of millions, by the billions.”
Villanueva shared salary data equating to over $2.8 million of the top earning employees compensated by the Venice Family Clinic revenue, a nonprofit organization that provides comprehensive healthcare services to low-income residents in Venice.
“But what actually gets out to the actual service provided by individuals is just not there,” he said.
Villanueva slammed the state’s “housing first” policy, a theory officials have adopted that building permanent and supportive housing units immediately will solve the homelessness crisis. However, Measure HHH, a $1.2 billion bond obligation passed in 2016 by Angeleno voters to build 10,000 supportive housing units, has only constructed a total of three buildings.
A photo of Los Angeles Sheriff Alex Villanueva. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)
“You cannot build your way out of homelessness,” Villanueva said.
“It was the Los Angeles Homeless Authority themselves that said for every 100 that we house, they’re replaced by 120 on the street–that math seems to elude these people … our elected officials.”
On average, Los Angeles spends close to $1 billion annually on homeless services, according to data the sheriff provided.
“In fact, we’re way past $2 billion this year because this is just half of one year, so the true numbers are way up here, as the problem grows, like clockwork, year after year. So, you tell me, you think it’s time to regulate public space?” he said.
In response to the press conference, Councilmember Bonin released a statement: “Sheriff Villanueva and I are very different. I believe in treating people humanely and with dignity, whether they are housed or unhoused. I believe everyone has a right to housing, food, and health care, and I applaud those who provide it. And I believe (and evidence shows) that the best, most effective, least expensive way to end homelessness is with housing, not with handcuffs.”
Enforcing the Law
The famed beach town of Venice has been inundated with tents, trash, needles, drugs, and an increased number of homeless people since the pandemic rolled back city codes that previously prohibited encampments on the beach.
Homeless individuals in Venice Beach, Calif., roam around their encampments on June 8, 2021. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)
Bob Carlson, owner of a local skate shop called Arbor Venice, has been victimized several times by homeless people outside his shop. Two weeks ago, his beloved security guard “T” was brutally attacked by a homeless person who was high on drugs.
“He stabbed him multiple times in the head tearing up pieces of his scalp,” Carlson told reporters. He paused.
“Sorry, this is this is tough … these are people who work for me, and I feel responsible for,” he said.
“He tore open his wrist and sliced his finger to the bone and cut him in several other places across his arms and torso.”
Carlson, who’s lived in Venice Beach for the last 25 years, said as a skateboarder he’s had multiple interactions with police officers in his life that were less than perfect.
“It takes a lot for me to stand up here, and give that man my thanks very publicly, but that’s what I’m here to do,” Carlson said pointing to Villanueva.
“The people of Venice are scared and walk around in fear of being attacked, our tourists are gone, our restaurants and businesses are struggling. And one of the cultural hearts, the arts community of Los Angeles is being decimated, and something has to be done about it,” he said.
A homeless man looks for food in a trashcan in Venice Beach, Calif., on Jan. 27, 2021. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)
Bonin was granted $5 million by the Budget & Finance Committee to ramp up the homeless efforts specifically in Venice. The councilmember has been staunchly opposed to law enforcement’s involvement in the effort.
“The ‘Venice Beach Encampment to Home’ program will not be led by law enforcement, nor driven by threats of arrest or incarceration. We will offer what works: housing, with counseling, or mental health services, substance abuse recovery services, and anything else needed to successfully transition people into housing,” Bonin wrote in an email to recipients on June 22.
Bonin plans to reach every person on the boardwalk by deploying outreach workers from St. Joseph Center for six weeks under the new plan. Residents are thankful for the help, but say it comes on the heels of ignored cries for help.
A month before the pandemic, Bonin championed A Bridge Housing just a few blocks away from the boardwalk. It’s unclear how many homeless people on the boardwalk are being connected to that supportive housing unit. Encampments, trash, and RVs line the sidewalks surrounding the unit and neighbors say they fear for their safety.
LAPD Capt. Steve Embrich told the Venice Neighborhood Council earlier this month that felony arrests are up 68 percent and misdemeanor arrests are up 355 percent, but it doesn’t make much of a difference when they’re released the same day.
According to the Sheriff’s Department, there have been zero arrests made during the HOST efforts.
Lt. Geff Deedrick, who leads the HOST team, told The Epoch Times “we do what we do regardless of the other issues surrounding this topic, in a political effort, in a sense that politics doesn’t factor into the human condition.”
He said so far, they’ve done seven outreaches and connected 15 people to housing, and four people have been reunified with their families through West Coast Care.
“We’ve talked to roughly 140, we’re at 10 percent right there, but it’s a preliminary conversation,” he said.
As Independence Day draws near, Villanueva and his team have been in Venice for the last two weeks talking to business owners and homeless individuals to better understand their concerns. The goal is to have all the encampments cleared by that date, with every homeless person connected to housing or rehabilitation resources.
And for the “nomadic travelers” who don’t want to move? Villanueva said they will once again enforce the “laws that exist already.”
“You don’t have a right to negatively impact the community and claim public space as your own,” he said.
Villanueva cited California Gov. Code 26.600 as reason for the department’s authority to act. The code says that the sheriff “shall preserve peace, and to accomplish this object may sponsor, supervise, or participate in any project of crime prevention, rehabilitation of persons previously convicted of crime, or the suppression of delinquency.”
“The assumption is that every single subdivision of L.A. County has a police force and they’re doing their job, or better yet they’re permitted to do their job by the political oversight,” he said.
“In this case, we have an absolute failure of political oversight, who has handcuffed the LAPD [who] was more than capable to get the job done and regulate public space.”
Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/26/2021 – 16:45 - Larry Summers Sees 5% Inflation At The End Of 2021
Larry Summers Sees 5% Inflation At The End Of 2021
It may not be quite hyperinflation – loosely defined as pricing rising at a double-digit clip or higher – but if former Treasury Secretary and erstwhile democrat Larry Summers is right, it will be halfway there in about six months.
One day after Bank of America warned that the coming “hyperinflation” will last at least 2 and as much as 4 years – whether or not one defines that as transitory depends on whether one has a Federal Reserve charge card to fund all purchases in the next 4 years – Larry Summers, who is this close from being excommunicated from the Democrat party, predicted inflation will be running “pretty close” to 5% at the end of this year and that bond yields will rise as a result over the rest of 2021.
Considering that consumer prices already jumped 5% in May from the previous year, his forecast is not much of a shock.
Speaking on Bloomberg TV, Summers said that “my guess is that at the end of the year inflation will, for this year, come out pretty close to 5%,” adding that “it would surprise me if we had 5% inflation with no effect on inflation expectations.” If he is right, the recent reversal in one-year inflation expectations which dipped from 4.6% to 4.2% according to the latest UMich consumer sentiment survey, is about to surge to new secular highs.
This is not the first time Summers has predicted that the firehose of fiscal and monetary stimulus will unleash soaring inflation. While career economists at the White House and Fed – who have peasants doing their purchases for them – urge Americans to ignore the current hyperinflation episode, saying that the recent inflation surge will soon pass, Summers has been unique among his fellow Democrats in predicting that massive monetary and fiscal stimulus alongside the reopening of the economy would spark considerable price pressures.
Asked how financial markets may behave in the rest of 2021, Summers said “there will probably be more turbulence” as traders react to faster inflation by pushing up bond yields. “We’ve got a lot of processing ahead of us in markets,” he said.
Ironically, Summers – who now teaches at Harvard University whose president he was not too long ago when he hung out with his buddy Jeffrey Epstein…
… also praised President Joe Biden’s tentative deal with a bipartisan group senators on a $579 billion infrastructure plan (which has virutally no chance of passing) and echoed the White House’s call for even more to be spent on “human infrastructure.”
“There is a lot that is left to do that should be supported,” Summers said. “The investment will strengthen our economy.”
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told lawmakers this week that she expected annual inflation to be below that level by the end of this year.
Putting the stimulus tsunami in context, on Friday Bank of America’s Michael Hartnett calculated that with the latest $600BN Biden infrastructure plan, the running tally of global monetary & fiscal stimulus rises to $30.5 trillion in the past 15 months, an amount equivalent to entire Chinese & European GDP’s.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/26/2021 – 16:15 - "Blow Up Republicans": UNC (Wilmington) Professor Triggers Firestorm With Call For Killing Conservatives
“Blow Up Republicans”: UNC (Wilmington) Professor Triggers Firestorm With Call For Killing Conservatives
Dan Johnson is an associate professor at the School of Health and Applied Human Sciences at University of North Carolina Wilmington with apparently equal interest in politics and polytechnics. He posted a short but clear message on Facebook: “Blow Up Republicans.”
The detonation of people seems to be in vogue with professors this year.
As will come as little surprise to many on this blog, I do not believe Johnson should face discipline for his violent political ideations.
Campus Reform reports objections to the handling of the controversy by the school, which only stated that “[t]he university was made aware of the post and has appropriately addressed it.” Johnson took down the posting.
Haylie Davis, a former student of Johnson’s, is quoted as objecting to the lack of more serious action and notes that the school would not be so circumspect “if the word ‘Republican’ was replaced with any other word. If the post stated ‘Blow up women,’ ‘Blow up homosexuals,’ ‘Blow up Catholics,’ etc.”
That is a good point.
We have discussed the sharply different treatment given statements by faculty depending on their political or social perspectives.
I have defended faculty who have made similarly disturbing comments denouncing police, calling for Republicans to suffer, strangling police officers, celebrating the death of conservatives, calling for the killing of Trump supporters, supporting the murder of conservative protesters and other outrageous statements. These comments were not protested as creating an “unsafe environment” and were largely ignored by universities. However, professors and students are routinely investigated, suspended, and sanctioned for countervailing views. There were also controversies at the University of California and Boston University, where there have been criticism of such a double standard, even in the face of criminal conduct. There was also such an incident at the University of London involving Bahar Mustafa as well as one involving a University of Pennsylvania professor. Some intolerant statements against students are deemed free speech while others are deemed hate speech or the basis for university action. There is a lack of consistency or uniformity in these actions which turn on the specific groups left aggrieved by out-of-school comments. There is also a tolerance of faculty and students tearing down fliers and stopping the speech of conservatives. Indeed, even faculty who assaulted pro-life advocates was supported by faculty and lionized for her activism.
As we have previously discussed (with an Oregon professor and a Rutgers professor), there remains an uncertain line in what language is protected for teachers in their private lives. A conservative North Carolina professor faced calls for termination over controversial tweets and was pushed to retire. Dr. Mike Adams, a professor of sociology and criminology, had long been a lightning rod of controversy. In 2014, we discussed his prevailing in a lawsuit that alleged discrimination due to his conservative views. He was then targeted again after an inflammatory tweet calling North Carolina a “slave state.” That led to his being pressured to resign with a settlement. He then committed suicide
The efforts to fire professors who voice dissenting views on various issues including an effort to oust a leading economist from the University of Chicago as well as a leading linguistics professor at Harvard and a literature professor at Penn. Sites like Lawyers, Guns, and Money feature writers like Colorado Law Professor Paul Campus who call for the firing of those with opposing views (including myself). Such campaigns have targeted teachers and students who contest the evidence of systemic racism in the use of lethal force by police or offer other opposing views in current debates over the pandemic, reparations, electoral fraud, or other issues.
It is not just universities. Almost on the one-year anniversary of its condemning its own publication of a column by Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark. (and forcing out its own editor), the New York Times published an academic columnist who previously defended the killing of conservative protesters. Over at the Washington Post this week, the newspaper promoted a columnist, Karen Attiah, who last summer caused an outrage after she tweeted “White women are lucky that we are just calling them Karens. And not calling for revenge.”
Despite the bias and hypocrisy shown by universities, I still would defend Johnson and his right to express such views on social media. Unfortunately, such hyperbolic and violent language is common today. While academics should be examples of greater tolerance and civility, the danger of such regulation is greater than the cost of such speech. Indeed, this week, the free speech community secured a significant victory in the ruling in Mahonoy on out-of-school speech by a high school student.
The failure of many on the left to support diversity of viewpoints does not mean that the rest of us are relieved of our own obligation to support free speech. While many of us are repulsed by Professor Johnson’s dreams of blowing up Republicans, sanctions on such speech could easily become a nightmare for free speech.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/26/2021 – 15:45 - 'No Substantial Outbreaks' After Researchers Track Sports, Music And Clubbing
‘No Substantial Outbreaks’ After Researchers Track Sports, Music And Clubbing
A new report out of the UK which studied several types of gatherings with large groups of people in close proximity found ‘no substantial outbreaks‘ of COVID-19 following the events, according to Sky News.
A club night in Liverpool was one of the test events (via Sky News) The combined events were attended by 58,000 people, resulting in just 28 known cases, according to the Events Research Programme (ERP). Of the 28 cases, 11 were identified as “potentially infectious at an event,” while another 17 were marked as “potentially infected at or around the time of the event.”
The Brit Awards, which had an audience of 3,500 people, had zero linked cases of COVID-19. No word on vaccination status.
No cases were detected at the Brits, despite its audience of 3,500 people (via Sky News) Breakdown of events and COVID cases (via Sky News):
- Circus Nightclub in Liverpool hosted almost 7,000 people over two nights and recorded 10 cases
- The World Snooker Championship, which welcomed more than 10,000 over 17 days, recorded six cases
- The Brit Awards, which hosted 3,500 music fans at London’s O2 arena, found zero cases
- The FA Cup semi-final and final, and the Carabao Cup final, recorded a combined total of eight cases out of almost 30,000 attendees
- An outdoor festival pilot at Sefton Park in Liverpool, attended by more than 6,000 people, recorded two cases.
- The Reunion 5k run at Kempton Park, Surrey, recorded two cases out of 2,000 people present.
The events were monitored via cameras and using Wi-Fi data, while participants were also asked to take a series of tests.
The FA Cup Final was another of the pilot events The program’s chief advisers, Nicholas Hytner and David Ross, were careful to warn the report “does not make conclusive public health recommendations on the reopening of events at this stage,” and added that the studies took place when COVID-19 outbreaks were low.
“Future public health measures need to adapt to prevailing levels and patterns of the virus,” they said.
“Mitigation measures” – such as wearing face coverings, ventilation, testing, social distancing and food and drink restrictions – could help to manage risks at events.
Large crowd events do have the potential for “increased pressure on pinch points”, such as toilets and food and drink outlets, the report said.
Areas which have an “increased density of people”, including half time at a football match, have been identified as higher risk.
The report found compliance with wearing masks and social distancing was “mostly high”, with an average of 96.2% of people in test areas wearing face coverings correctly while seated.
The ERP will continue to gather evidence from future events.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/26/2021 – 15:15 - UK Lockdown Architect Quits After Breaking Own COVID Rules During Secret Affair With Aide
UK Lockdown Architect Quits After Breaking Own COVID Rules During Secret Affair With Aide
And just like that, one day after claiming he won’t quit, he is out.
Matt Hanock, the minister charged with eradicating Britain’s biggest postwar health crisis, quit on Saturday night in the face of an avalanche of fierce criticism of his secret affair with an adviser whom he put on the public payroll.
— Matt Hancock (@MattHancock) June 26, 2021
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“We have worked so hard as a country to fight the pandemic,” Hancock, 42, said in his letter of resignation to Johnson one day after pictures of him kissing and groping his top aide – a friend hired last year – at a time he forced everyone else into mandatory lockdowns were splashed on the front page of the Sun newspaper.
“The last thing I want is for my private life to distract from the single-minded approach that is leading us out of this crisis.”
Hancock’s resignation came after The Sun published photos of Hancock and Gina Coladangelo, whom he’d appointed to his team, apparently embracing in his Whitehall offices last month. Initially Hancock tried to keep his job and Johnson backed him on Friday, saying the matter was closed.Initially Hancock tried to keep his job and Johnson backed him on Friday, saying the matter was closed.
Matt Hancock was pictured in a passionate embrace with close aide Gina Coladangelo (Picture: Getty/Nigel Howard/The Sun) But pressure continued to mount on Saturday after senior officials in Johnson’s Conservative Party said the minister’s behavior was beyond the pale, with one highlighting the hypocrisy of Hancock flouting the same rules that he helped create.
Hancock’s departure is a fresh blow for Johnson’s humiliated administration and puts a renewed focus on “sleaze” allegations – a British media shorthand for dubious actions ranging from corruption to secretive financial arrangements to sex scandals – in his party. It also means that another major offshore distraction – like sending US warships in Russian territory may be imminent.
The controversy has also destroyed any hope the UK health department has of tackling the pandemic as the affair has terminally undermined its messaging about the importance of maintaining social distancing. The latest official figures show new coronavirus cases in the U.K. have climbed to their highest level since early February, with 18,270 new infections, although at this point nobody believes any “scientific” data. And this episode surely won’t help.
The prime minister will now need to hire a new health secretary and has the option of conducting a broader reshuffle of his cabinet. He will be hoping Hancock’s relatively quick exit will draw a line under the episode, minimizing the damage to his government’s reputation.
In his resignation letter, Hancock said he owed it to all the health workers, volunteers and military personnel who had worked on the U.K.’s pandemic response to resign.He also publicly apologized to his own family. “I want to reiterate my apology for breaking the guidance, and apologise to my family and loved ones for putting them through this,” Hancock wrote. “I also need to be with my children at this time.”
It was unclear if either his wife or children wanted him to be with them at this time.
Hancock, who ran against Johnson for the Tory leadership in 2019, had already been under pressure over his handling of the crisis. Johnson’s former aide, Dominic Cummings, earlier this month published text messages he said showed the premier regarded Hancock as “hopeless.” For once, BoJo may have been right. Cummings also accused Hancock of lying and incompetence at the height of the Covid outbreak last year.
As Bloomberg notes, Hancock and Coladangelo had been friends since their time together at Oxford University and both are married with children. At the time the photos were taken, pandemic rules advised against meeting people from different households indoors.
Coladangelo, a former director at lobbying firm Luther Pendragon and current shareholder, was appointed by Hancock as an unpaid adviser to the Department of Health last year. She was later made a non-executive director at the department. Hancock chairs the departmental board.
Johnson’s administration has battled various “sleaze” accusations during the pandemic, including over whether lucrative government contracts were awarded to people with connections to the Conservative Party, and whether Johnson used underhand methods to fund a refurbishment of his Downing Street flat.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/26/2021 – 14:36
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