It may be getting close, although realistically the plug can't be pulled until the restrictions have pretty well all been swept away.
We might not be far off that point though. Today's Covid death count is, yet again, in single figures. Enormous numbers of vaccinations have been done. The Indian variant appears to be spreading through parts of Lancashire but, crucially, it is fanning out very slowly and the increase in pressure on the local hospitals is very modest.
There is increasing evidence to suggest that Covid, as an emergency and as a cause of mass hospitalisation and death, has been beaten in this country. I don't think that all the anti-Covid measures will go on June 21st - I expect we'll be lumbered with masks on public transport and in clinical settings for some time to come, the test and trace system and restrictions on international travel will continue, and it is possible that some form of work from home advice will also remain in place - but unless something goes unexpectedly and seriously wrong in the next fortnight then the case for dumping social distancing and the widespread use of masks will become unanswerable.
On topic, the problem in the US is that politicians at various levels are allowed to micromanage the process of elections. So we see state governors controlling numbers of polling stations, ID requirements accompanied by making it difficult to get ID, and the straightforward gerrymandering of districts.
The U.K. should be thankful for the electoral commission and boundary commission - even those the former has skirted the line of impartiality in recent years, ask Darren Grimes.
The problem was, that in the founding of the US, they attempted to redress the issue of hierarchy and inherited position by making lots of the positions elected. Much of this was pre-Constitutional.
For example, in the UK, the local courts and elections were run by the Squireachy. As was local law enforcement.
So, in the US, they had elected judges and sherifs instead.
Indeed. As we’ve seen this week with the elected Attourney General in New York going after Trump with legal investigations - because her base loves her going after Trump, and she wants to be re-elected next year.
The problem with the Lab Leak theory for Covid 19, as I am half remembering from an article I read last year, by the time the putative leak might have occurred, the virus was already out there and gone through at least one mutation.
Covid 19 came to notice with a number of cases connected with an open market in Wuhan. The Virology Institute is nearby. The theory is that the virus got out of the institute and infected people in the open market.
As I understood the article, virus strains have lineage, so you can look at two strains and tell the order of mutations and, working backwards, roughly how long each strain came into existence. There were two early strains of Covid 19: the Wuhan strain and another strain centred on Northern Guangdong province from which the Wuhan strain mutated. The Guangdong strain eventually died out. The probability is that Covid 19 originated further south than Wuhan and earlier than the market outbreak.
‘[in the NYT] Wade points out that the “consensus” that Covid must have an entirely natural origin was established by two early pronouncements, one in The Lancet in February 2020 and the other in Nature Medicine in March 2020. These were op-eds, not scientific papers. Both spoke with certainty about matters which it was impossible to be certain about. Wade writes: “It later turned out that the Lancet letter had been organized and drafted by Peter Daszak, president of the EcoHealth Alliance of New York. Dr Daszak’s organisation funded coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. If the SARS2 virus had indeed escaped from research he funded, Dr. Daszak would be potentially culpable. This acute conflict of interest was not declared to the Lancet’s readers. To the contrary, the letter concluded, “We declare no competing interests.”’
The Lancet has been poisonous throughout this crisis. A devalued journal
The Lancet seems to have been particularly unlucky/badly-run for some time. Weren't they the people who published the MMR-autism rubbish? At what stage do reputable authors start to avoid it?
Now, I’d say. That’s an incredibly damaging revelation there. They lied. About the origins of a pandemic which has killed millions.
In the interests of accuracy - they lied about the links somebody had to a lab which was implicated by some unconfirmed sources as a possible source of the outbreak.
Which isn’t good, but isn’t as bad as what you are saying.
Actually, what they did was WORSE than my initial suggestion
The virus probably came from the lab. So a guy that funds coronavirus research at the lab, in his panic, sent a deceptive letter to the Lancet, hoping to close down all investigation of the lab, and divert attention. And for a year he was successful, only now does it all crumble
This isn't some small conspiracy either. This is an attempt to hide the truth about the greatest human crisis since World War 2. This is jailtime territory.
You’ve started early. Flint knapping business a bit slow?
Yawn. Please point out any factual errors in my remark
Do you not think people should be held responsible for the plague, if there is evidence? We hold people responsible for nasty tweets. Facilitating the death of 10m people is worse than a nasty tweet
Is it actually established now it came from a lab or is it just a theory that is now gathering momentum. FWIW I agree with you about the lancet.
Not established. But growing in probability by the day
This is a verrrrry long but very compelling analysis
This guy Daszak, who funded the lab, seems like a nice chap
"One can only imagine Daszak’s reaction when he heard of the outbreak of the epidemic in Wuhan a few days later. He would have known better than anyone the Wuhan Institute’s goal of making bat coronaviruses infectious to humans, as well as the weaknesses in the institute’s defense against their own researchers becoming infected.
"But instead of providing public health authorities with the plentiful information at his disposal, he immediately launched a public relations campaign to persuade the world that the epidemic couldn’t possibly have been caused by one of the institute’s souped-up viruses. “The idea that this virus escaped from a lab is just pure baloney. It’s simply not true,” he declared in an April 2020 interview."
Thanks for posting this, Leon. The Bulletin is a very serious publication, and knows its stuff when it comes to arms control, dual-use capabilities, and risk management.
Weren't you one of the idiots who dismissed the lab leak theory? I believe so. Unless I am confusing the Tims
The reason it runs in the Bulletin is because of the enforced and absurd virological consensus that "it has a natural origin" - so mainstream medical journals, which have been pushing the wet market bullshit for a year, cannot suddenly and easily volte face, by publishing this.
I suppose he could have tried to get it in The Lancet?
Anyway the Consensus of Stupid, including you, has now been blown out of the water. Good
No, I never dismissed the lab leak theory. On the initial, now clearly inaccurate, data, the market hypothesis did seem the most reasonable, but as far back as 2015 I warned of the potential culture issues with regards to safety in BSL4 labs (quoted as such in Nature, no less).
I dismissed the design for purpose theory, but not other possibilities, such as accidental release or even the virus evolving in the lab. Indeed, back in April last year, I wrote a risk management scenario for use in lab training on the possibility of unintended evolution of the virus through propagation in human lung epithelial cells.
There are multiple instances of me saying similar to the NYT, WP and NPR, but I can't be bothered to find them. I have also consistently pointed out Peter Daszak's conflicts of interest and how absurd it was that he was on the WHO team.
That is one of the least surprising poll responses that I’ve ever seen. It’s been years, if not decades in the making. Meanwhile, I see that there are still people trying make this about the left/centre- left. Ultimate both sideism out in force today.
Yet it is both sides.
Now we can say whether one side is worse than another.
But the gerrymandering etc does take place from both sides.
What I would say the GOP certainly has a problem with is its lack of ideas and the fundamental problem that having supported a reduction of tax and regulations on the rich and big business (plus an over-eagerness to engage in warmongering) it now struggles to reconcile that with the voters it has.
GOP doesn’t lack ideas. Its ideas haven’t really changed much over the last few decades. They are socially Conservative party with a randian view of capitalism. GOP’s problem is that the party has fascist tendencies, from the politicians to the voters.
The Democrats for all their many (many) flaws - still believe in democracy.
Has there ever been a more boring race than today's Monaco Grand Prix
Has there been an exciting monaco grand prix in recent history? The track just makes it impossible for much to happen.
The one year a car ended up in the harbour was quite an event
I did think you might have been thinking of James Garner's car in the film Grand Prix, although a quick Google suggests Alberto Ascari went in in 1956, four days before he died in an unrelated event.
I am old you know !!!!!!
I remember the likes of Graham Hill and Jim Clark but Ascari and Fangio were before my time.
Other than the non-existant safety precautions that took the lives of the talented and famous without favour it was a golden era.
Priti Patel tells #Marr the reputation of the BBC has been damaged. Says we are in “multi-media age” now, says this is the “Netflix generation”. “How relevant is the BBC?” she asks. https://twitter.com/SophiaSleigh/status/1396385830680281089
Interesting to see the fallout from the live streaming of the #Glastonbury event last night. People complain about the license fee but the BBC coverage of Glastonbury is always amazing. https://twitter.com/sallybogg/status/1396382996568084482
Was she challenged on the report she is sitting on that may indicate malpractice in News International?
Ms Patel is a most infuriating politician. I have a sneaking regard for her, despite everything. She is often awful. But every so often she has the right instincts and tries to do the right thing. For instance, she is now consulting Sir Richard Henriques, the judge, who wrote the excoriating report on what the police got wrong in Operation Midland, on what needs to be done to put matters right.
I hope she overcomes resistance from the Home Office and the police on this. The police need their arses kicked - and hard - on this.
I'm not a great fan of the Home Secretary but much of the flak directed her way seems personally rather than politically offensive: she is too short to see over the lectern; she drops her g's; her backside is too broad. Her critics play the woman, not the ball.
Ms Patel is hated because she has strayed off the left's plantation.
People of Asian descent are to be represented, and have their ambitions interpreted, exclusively by white middle class daughters of university lecturers or other senior public sector role occupiers.
Weirdly, Rishi doesn’t get the same treatment. Ergo; your theory is bollocks.
Patel is hated because she’s a nasty piece of work.
He absolutely has been....it has been called an uncle tom and no idea what it is really like to be an ethnic minority as he isn't a proper asian. Same with the likes of javid and Badenoch
Rishi Sunak ‘looks like Prince Charles in brownface’, says BBC guest sparking race row
There’s a certain section of the commentariat, who really dislike conservatives from ethnic minority backgrounds. It’s lazy racism, and needs to be called out as such.
You may be right, but equally there are sections of the commentariat who really dislike socialists from ethnic minority backgrounds. Diane Abbott has received more (racist) abuse than any other politician over the last 10 years. It's lazy racism, and needs to be called out as such.
Do you have a cite to demonstrate that "(racist) abuse" statement. I have never seen that researched, though am aware of a lot of media claims about DA as most abused female or BME MP.
If you look at the more mainstream academic research, it puts a question mark over that narrative. One thing missing is a relation to prominence, and also to what are current issues. There has been a group at Sheffield Uni studying this with longer periods and bigger datasets for some years. Plus of course categorisation varies.
‘[in the NYT] Wade points out that the “consensus” that Covid must have an entirely natural origin was established by two early pronouncements, one in The Lancet in February 2020 and the other in Nature Medicine in March 2020. These were op-eds, not scientific papers. Both spoke with certainty about matters which it was impossible to be certain about. Wade writes: “It later turned out that the Lancet letter had been organized and drafted by Peter Daszak, president of the EcoHealth Alliance of New York. Dr Daszak’s organisation funded coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. If the SARS2 virus had indeed escaped from research he funded, Dr. Daszak would be potentially culpable. This acute conflict of interest was not declared to the Lancet’s readers. To the contrary, the letter concluded, “We declare no competing interests.”’
The Lancet has been poisonous throughout this crisis. A devalued journal
The Lancet seems to have been particularly unlucky/badly-run for some time. Weren't they the people who published the MMR-autism rubbish? At what stage do reputable authors start to avoid it?
Now, I’d say. That’s an incredibly damaging revelation there. They lied. About the origins of a pandemic which has killed millions.
In the interests of accuracy - they lied about the links somebody had to a lab which was implicated by some unconfirmed sources as a possible source of the outbreak.
Which isn’t good, but isn’t as bad as what you are saying.
Actually, what they did was WORSE than my initial suggestion
The virus probably came from the lab. So a guy that funds coronavirus research at the lab, in his panic, sent a deceptive letter to the Lancet, hoping to close down all investigation of the lab, and divert attention. And for a year he was successful, only now does it all crumble
This isn't some small conspiracy either. This is an attempt to hide the truth about the greatest human crisis since World War 2. This is jailtime territory.
You’ve started early. Flint knapping business a bit slow?
Yawn. Please point out any factual errors in my remark
Do you not think people should be held responsible for the plague, if there is evidence? We hold people responsible for nasty tweets. Facilitating the death of 10m people is worse than a nasty tweet
Is it actually established now it came from a lab or is it just a theory that is now gathering momentum. FWIW I agree with you about the lancet.
Not established. But growing in probability by the day
This is a verrrrry long but very compelling analysis
This guy Daszak, who funded the lab, seems like a nice chap
"One can only imagine Daszak’s reaction when he heard of the outbreak of the epidemic in Wuhan a few days later. He would have known better than anyone the Wuhan Institute’s goal of making bat coronaviruses infectious to humans, as well as the weaknesses in the institute’s defense against their own researchers becoming infected.
"But instead of providing public health authorities with the plentiful information at his disposal, he immediately launched a public relations campaign to persuade the world that the epidemic couldn’t possibly have been caused by one of the institute’s souped-up viruses. “The idea that this virus escaped from a lab is just pure baloney. It’s simply not true,” he declared in an April 2020 interview."
Thanks for posting this, Leon. The Bulletin is a very serious publication, and knows its stuff when it comes to arms control, dual-use capabilities, and risk management.
Weren't you one of the idiots who dismissed the lab leak theory? I believe so. Unless I am confusing the Tims
The reason it runs in the Bulletin is because of the enforced and absurd virological consensus that "it has a natural origin" - so mainstream medical journals, which have been pushing the wet market bullshit for a year, cannot suddenly and easily volte face, by publishing this.
I suppose he could have tried to get it in The Lancet?
Anyway the Consensus of Stupid, including you, has now been blown out of the water. Good
No, I never dismissed the lab leak theory. On the initial, now clearly inaccurate, data, the market hypothesis did seem the most reasonable, but as far back as 2015 I warned of the potential culture issues with regards to safety in BSL4 labs (quoted as such in Nature, no less).
I dismissed the design for purpose theory, but not other possibilities, such as accidental release or even the virus evolving in the lab. Indeed, back in April last year, I wrote a risk management scenario for use in lab training on the possibility of unintended evolution of the virus through propagation in human lung epithelial cells.
OK, fair enough. I am , as may be apparent, quite angry about this. Because there HAS been an attempt to suppress a wholly plausible hypothesis: the lab leak
These paragraphs from the Bulletin article particularly struck me
"Much of Shi’s work on gain-of-function in coronaviruses [in Wuhan] was performed at the BSL2 safety level, as is stated in her publications and other documents. She has said in an interview with Science magazine that “[t]he coronavirus research in our laboratory is conducted in BSL-2 or BSL-3 laboratories.”
“It is clear that some or all of this work was being performed using a biosafety standard — biosafety level 2, the biosafety level of a standard US dentist’s office — that would pose an unacceptably high risk of infection of laboratory staff upon contact with a virus having the transmission properties of SARS-CoV-2,” Ebright says."
And these:
"Concern about safety conditions at the Wuhan lab was not, it seems, misplaced. According to a fact sheet issued by the State Department on January 15, 2021, “The U.S. government has reason to believe that several researchers inside the WIV became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses.”
"David Asher, a fellow of the Hudson Institute and former consultant to the State Department, provided more detail about the incident at a seminar. Knowledge of the incident came from a mix of public information and “some high end information collected by our intelligence community,” he said. Three people working at a BSL3 lab at the institute fell sick within a week of each other with severe symptoms that required hospitalization. This was “the first known cluster that we’re aware of, of victims of what we believe to be COVID-19.” Influenza could not completely be ruled out but seemed unlikely in the circumstances, he said."
Has there ever been a more boring race than today's Monaco Grand Prix
Has there been an exciting monaco grand prix in recent history? The track just makes it impossible for much to happen.
The one year a car ended up in the harbour was quite an event
I did think you might have been thinking of James Garner's car in the film Grand Prix, although a quick Google suggests Alberto Ascari went in in 1956, four days before he died in an unrelated event.
I am old you know !!!!!!
I remember the likes of Graham Hill and Jim Clark but Ascari and Fangio were before my time.
Other than the non-existant safety precautions that took the lives of the talented and famous without favour it was a golden era.
That is one of the least surprising poll responses that I’ve ever seen. It’s been years, if not decades in the making. Meanwhile, I see that there are still people trying make this about the left/centre- left. Ultimate both sideism out in force today.
Yet it is both sides.
Now we can say whether one side is worse than another.
But the gerrymandering etc does take place from both sides.
What I would say the GOP certainly has a problem with is its lack of ideas and the fundamental problem that having supported a reduction of tax and regulations on the rich and big business (plus an over-eagerness to engage in warmongering) it now struggles to reconcile that with the voters it has.
GOP doesn’t lack ideas. Its ideas haven’t really changed much over the last few decades. They are socially Conservative party with a randian view of capitalism. GOP’s problem is that the party has fascist tendencies, from the politicians to the voters.
The Democrats for all their many (many) flaws - still believe in democracy.
Perhaps I should have said that the GOP lacks new ideas.
Its ideas don't seem to be working for either its voters or the country as a whole.
The problem with the Lab Leak theory for Covid 19, as I am half remembering from an article I read last year, by the time the putative leak might have occurred, the virus was already out there and gone through at least one mutation.
Covid 19 came to notice with a number of cases connected with an open market in Wuhan. The Virology Institute is nearby. The theory is that the virus got out of the institute and infected people in the open market.
As I understood the article, virus strains have lineage, so you can look at two strains and tell the order of mutations and, working backwards, roughly how long each strain came into existence. There were two early strains of Covid 19: the Wuhan strain and another strain centred on Northern Guangdong province from which the Wuhan strain mutated. The Guangdong strain eventually died out. The probability is that Covid 19 originated further south than Wuhan and earlier than the market outbreak.
Jesus. Read the article linked. It's down there. It's right in front of you
The problem with the Lab Leak theory for Covid 19, as I am half remembering from an article I read last year, by the time the putative leak might have occurred, the virus was already out there and gone through at least one mutation.
Covid 19 came to notice with a number of cases connected with an open market in Wuhan. The Virology Institute is nearby. The theory is that the virus got out of the institute and infected people in the open market.
As I understood the article, virus strains have lineage, so you can look at two strains and tell the order of mutations and, working backwards, roughly how long each strain came into existence. There were two early strains of Covid 19: the Wuhan strain and another strain centred on Northern Guangdong province from which the Wuhan strain mutated. The Guangdong strain eventually died out. The probability is that Covid 19 originated further south than Wuhan and earlier than the market outbreak.
From the influenza-like infectious disease surveillance network, in retrospect we learned that COVID probably started circulating in Wuhan in mid-November 2019, long before any link with the market.
I don't think the Republicans have thought through what comes next if they try and game an election result where they're clearly the minority in the country.
Good article on the Lab Leak hypothesis, and how everyone is quietly pretending they believed it all along. They didn’t
‘At the start of the pandemic, prestige US media outlets were quick to dismiss the hypothesis as a Dangerous Republican Lie. “The claim is inaccurate and ridiculous. We rate it pants on fire,” ruled the Pointer Institute’s notionally nonpartisan, Pulitzer Prize winning fact-checking operation, Politifact, on the lab leak hypothesis. The Washington Post accused Senator Tom Cotton of spreading “conspiracy theories” for wanting to investigate the theory. NPR enthusiastically “debunked” the claim.’
‘Articles are edited, tweets are deleted, excuses are readied and yet there is little evidence of any soul searching. Because they know they’ll get away with it.’
You are right to push on this. The evidence for a lab leak is v strong.
I’ve said all along: it came from the lab
Apparently sane posters on here snootily dismissed this as nonsense. A ‘conspiracy theory’. Trumpite Fake Truth. I could dig up their comments but I’ll spare their blushes
Anyone who actually sits down and thinks about this properly, a novel bat coronavirus emerging in a city with the world’s only lab researching novel bat coronavirus, quickly realises it probably came from the lab. It takes a strange kind of closed, frightened mind to reject this thesis.
Even that drunken idiot SeanT, ex of this manor, realised it came from the lab, FFS
That article majors against the idea that the virus was genetically engineered, perhaps deliberately, by the Chinese.
But that’s not the central claim of the “lab leak” hypothesis.
I agree.
The problem is that if you were to expect an outbreak of a natural bat virus from the Wuhan area, it would be in Wuhan anyway. So how would you know which route it took?
You'd need to do a very detailed phylogenetic analysis of the RNA sequence and plug in known isolates and what the lab was working on.
My understanding was that the closest bat virus match was many hundreds of miles away. That’s for me the central hypothesis here - the Chinese collected it, took it to their specialist coronavirus lab and it escaped.
There’s no proof of anything worse than negligence AIUI.
Now I know it is up to US instead of us Brits, but I must say I think a House of Reps election every 2 years is ridiculous. I assume this was determined 200 years ago just like the Presidential Electoral College and cannot be amended due to the US Constitution?
What about individual States? Is it every 2 years there also? Why not every 4 years?
I am aware Senators serve 6 years and one third at a time (similar to most of our Councils).
As regards UK, I am sorry that both major parties wish to repeal Fixed Term Parliament Act. I think Fixed Term of 4 years or 5 years is fair to prevent party in power gaining advantage by selecting date themselves.
The lab leak theory is the only one of @Leon 's conspiracy theories I'm open-minded about to be honest.
We know the lab is in Wuhan. We know the virus originated in Wuhan. We know they do viral research at the lab in Wuhan. We know China won't let the WHO anywhere near the lab. And we know China silenced scientists and doctors who tried to speak out earlier.
Probably still correlation not causation but possibly not too.
The problem with the Lab Leak theory for Covid 19, as I am half remembering from an article I read last year, by the time the putative leak might have occurred, the virus was already out there and gone through at least one mutation.
Covid 19 came to notice with a number of cases connected with an open market in Wuhan. The Virology Institute is nearby. The theory is that the virus got out of the institute and infected people in the open market.
As I understood the article, virus strains have lineage, so you can look at two strains and tell the order of mutations and, working backwards, roughly how long each strain came into existence. There were two early strains of Covid 19: the Wuhan strain and another strain centred on Northern Guangdong province from which the Wuhan strain mutated. The Guangdong strain eventually died out. The probability is that Covid 19 originated further south than Wuhan and earlier than the market outbreak.
From the influenza-like infectious disease surveillance network, in retrospect we learned that COVID probably started circulating in Wuhan in mid-November 2019, long before any link with the market.
Didn't the CIA prepare a "WTF is happening in Wuhan?" report in November based on what they were seeing there in October?
Andrew Sullivan has drawn comparisons with both the closing years of the Roman Republic, and Weimar Germany, and neither is hysterical. A healthy democracy is one where the losers accept that their opponents can win legitimately, and one where the winners accept that they might lose next time, and are prepared to accept defeat with good grace.
Both sides in the US simply want power at all costs, but the Republicans are the worst offenders of the two.
Andrew Sullivan has drawn comparisons with both the closing years of the Roman Republic, and Weimar Germany, and neither is hysterical. A healthy democracy is one where the losers accept that their opponents can win legitimately, and one where the winners accept that they might lose next time, and are prepared to accept defeat with good grace.
Both sides in the US simply want power at all costs, but the Republicans are the worst offenders of the two.
I take it that’s not with the closing years of Weimar? It never really had an opening.
I don't think the Republicans have thought through what comes next if they try and game an election result where they're clearly the minority in the country.
Good article on the Lab Leak hypothesis, and how everyone is quietly pretending they believed it all along. They didn’t
‘At the start of the pandemic, prestige US media outlets were quick to dismiss the hypothesis as a Dangerous Republican Lie. “The claim is inaccurate and ridiculous. We rate it pants on fire,” ruled the Pointer Institute’s notionally nonpartisan, Pulitzer Prize winning fact-checking operation, Politifact, on the lab leak hypothesis. The Washington Post accused Senator Tom Cotton of spreading “conspiracy theories” for wanting to investigate the theory. NPR enthusiastically “debunked” the claim.’
‘Articles are edited, tweets are deleted, excuses are readied and yet there is little evidence of any soul searching. Because they know they’ll get away with it.’
You are right to push on this. The evidence for a lab leak is v strong.
I’ve said all along: it came from the lab
Apparently sane posters on here snootily dismissed this as nonsense. A ‘conspiracy theory’. Trumpite Fake Truth. I could dig up their comments but I’ll spare their blushes
Anyone who actually sits down and thinks about this properly, a novel bat coronavirus emerging in a city with the world’s only lab researching novel bat coronavirus, quickly realises it probably came from the lab. It takes a strange kind of closed, frightened mind to reject this thesis.
Even that drunken idiot SeanT, ex of this manor, realised it came from the lab, FFS
That article majors against the idea that the virus was genetically engineered, perhaps deliberately, by the Chinese.
But that’s not the central claim of the “lab leak” hypothesis.
I agree.
The problem is that if you were to expect an outbreak of a natural bat virus from the Wuhan area, it would be in Wuhan anyway. So how would you know which route it took?
You'd need to do a very detailed phylogenetic analysis of the RNA sequence and plug in known isolates and what the lab was working on.
My understanding was that the closest bat virus match was many hundreds of miles away. That’s for me the central hypothesis here - the Chinese collected it, took it to their specialist coronavirus lab and it escaped.
There’s no proof of anything worse than negligence AIUI.
There's no proof of anything worse, but the lab WAS working on gain-of-function: trying to make the virus as infective to humans as possible. Dangerous shit
I don't think the Republicans have thought through what comes next if they try and game an election result where they're clearly the minority in the country.
In particular a country filled with guns.
I think their reasoning is that their supporters have most of the guns.
The lab leak theory is the only one of @Leon 's conspiracy theories I'm open-minded about to be honest.
We know the lab is in Wuhan. We know the virus originated in Wuhan. We know they do viral research at the lab in Wuhan. We know China won't let the WHO anywhere near the lab. And we know China silenced scientists and doctors who tried to speak out earlier.
Probably still correlation not causation but possibly not too.
I get that you don't buy "aliens", (I don't think I do, either), but I'm not aware I punt out any other conspiracy theories, unless you think I am blaming Putin for the crap weather
Andrew Sullivan has drawn comparisons with both the closing years of the Roman Republic, and Weimar Germany, and neither is hysterical. A healthy democracy is one where the losers accept that their opponents can win legitimately, and one where the winners accept that they might lose next time, and are prepared to accept defeat with good grace.
Both sides in the US simply want power at all costs, but the Republicans are the worst offenders of the two.
It would be near terminal for the West too.
Both China and Russia would enthusiastically leap into the vacuum caused by a 2nd US civil war, and start real wars of their own off the back of it.
If? The whole point of forcing the plane down was to arrest the journalist on board. Expect Belarus to be given a wide berth by European airlines now.
Yes, the implications of this are nuts. Any airspace over Russia or Belarus is dangerous. And China?
If the reports are correct, the Belarus government conspired use violence by it's agents on the plane to divert the plane from it's original destination.
I don't think the Republicans have thought through what comes next if they try and game an election result where they're clearly the minority in the country.
What comes next?
It worked out fine in 2000 and 2016 for them, and if they had been better organized the assault on the Capitol Building might have seen Trump past inauguration day.
What would have happened if the Commander in Chief had gone rogue with the party machine and the SC behind him? More hand wringing from the Democrats and letters of outrage to the Washington Post and New York Times.
I don't think the Republicans have thought through what comes next if they try and game an election result where they're clearly the minority in the country.
In particular a country filled with guns.
My sense is that a form of American democracy would re-emerge out the other side, with many constitutional amendments, but it would be bloody for them and for the world.
The trouble is both sides are convinced the other is out to destroy them at the moment, so all tactics are justified.
Our safety really does depend upon American leadership and their vast military arsenal.
It's worth remembering that we paddled our own canoe for the first few years in both WW1 and WW2 with an isolationist USA over the pond.
We're simply in no position to do that today whilst they sort themselves out.
If? The whole point of forcing the plane down was to arrest the journalist on board. Expect Belarus to be given a wide berth by European airlines now.
Yes, the implications of this are nuts. Any airspace over Russia or Belarus is dangerous. And China?
If the reports are correct, the Belarus government conspired use violence by it's agents on the plane to divert the plane from it's original destination.
Andrew Sullivan has drawn comparisons with both the closing years of the Roman Republic, and Weimar Germany, and neither is hysterical. A healthy democracy is one where the losers accept that their opponents can win legitimately, and one where the winners accept that they might lose next time, and are prepared to accept defeat with good grace.
Both sides in the US simply want power at all costs, but the Republicans are the worst offenders of the two.
Agreed, but there's an extreme Democratic wing obsessed with tearing down the founding fathers and the story of the republic as well.
What really strikes me about the poll is the shortage of people who actually put democracy first before their preferred political outcomes.
I think Brexit is terrible. I disapprove of the Tory government. But it would never cross my mind to deny their right to win majorities, and I've always thought most people on the centre-right agree - and in Britain, I think they do. But in the US, about a quarter of the electorate are willing to put up with anything to get their way.
Yeah, but the Left "does the same", in America
I don't think you grasp how intense the Woke agenda is, in the USA, and how it is being forced on a lot of unhappy people. The right think the Left is trying to destroy the country and remake it in a Woke style. A kind of cultural coup is underaway, and whites, Republicans and "patriots" are the target
If you believe there is a coup against your democracy, then democracy can go hang, for a while. First you need to fight and WIN
I'm not justifying this stance, of course, but I think this explains the poll above
FWIW we’ve just changed schools for our daughter because of the political agenda being imposed at ASL
I don't think the Republicans have thought through what comes next if they try and game an election result where they're clearly the minority in the country.
I’m not sure the current Republican Party is capable of thinking.
What really strikes me about the poll is the shortage of people who actually put democracy first before their preferred political outcomes.
I think Brexit is terrible. I disapprove of the Tory government. But it would never cross my mind to deny their right to win majorities, and I've always thought most people on the centre-right agree - and in Britain, I think they do. But in the US, about a quarter of the electorate are willing to put up with anything to get their way.
Yeah, but the Left "does the same", in America
I don't think you grasp how intense the Woke agenda is, in the USA, and how it is being forced on a lot of unhappy people. The right think the Left is trying to destroy the country and remake it in a Woke style. A kind of cultural coup is underaway, and whites, Republicans and "patriots" are the target
If you believe there is a coup against your democracy, then democracy can go hang, for a while. First you need to fight and WIN
I'm not justifying this stance, of course, but I think this explains the poll above
FWIW we’ve just changed schools for our daughter because of the political agenda being imposed at ASL
Andrew Sullivan has drawn comparisons with both the closing years of the Roman Republic, and Weimar Germany, and neither is hysterical. A healthy democracy is one where the losers accept that their opponents can win legitimately, and one where the winners accept that they might lose next time, and are prepared to accept defeat with good grace.
Both sides in the US simply want power at all costs, but the Republicans are the worst offenders of the two.
Agreed, but there's an extreme Democratic wing obsessed with tearing down the founding fathers and the story of the republic as well.
If? The whole point of forcing the plane down was to arrest the journalist on board. Expect Belarus to be given a wide berth by European airlines now.
Yes, the implications of this are nuts. Any airspace over Russia or Belarus is dangerous. And China?
Any private citizen from this country who travels to, through or over China needs their fucking head examining. It's no different from doing the same with Iran: you invite the Government to use you as a hostage if it has any kind of disagreement with you. They've already done that to Canada.
Leftist parties outside the US have tried to learn from Biden's victory by adopting some of his 'popular' agenda....
Result?
Disaster.
I know the Tories are renationalising the railways (incompetently) and throwing printed money at their supporters, but I wouldn’t call them a ‘leftist’ party.
Andrew Sullivan has drawn comparisons with both the closing years of the Roman Republic, and Weimar Germany, and neither is hysterical. A healthy democracy is one where the losers accept that their opponents can win legitimately, and one where the winners accept that they might lose next time, and are prepared to accept defeat with good grace.
Both sides in the US simply want power at all costs, but the Republicans are the worst offenders of the two.
Tragedy in Northern Italy as cable car plunges to the ground killing 12
Is “breaking” really the appropriate headline…
On reflection no but no offence was meant
It looks a strange as well as tragic accident. The cable appears to be intact, so it may be a failure on the car itself. But that’s a very rare accident, surely?
Andrew Sullivan has drawn comparisons with both the closing years of the Roman Republic, and Weimar Germany, and neither is hysterical. A healthy democracy is one where the losers accept that their opponents can win legitimately, and one where the winners accept that they might lose next time, and are prepared to accept defeat with good grace.
Both sides in the US simply want power at all costs, but the Republicans are the worst offenders of the two.
Agreed, but there's an extreme Democratic wing obsessed with tearing down the founding fathers and the story of the republic as well.
Check this.
There's been a spate of horrible attacks on Asian people in the US and Canada. Unhappily, evidence shows that quite a lot of this violence, some murderous, comes from black people. There are videos.
So. This is a $250m anti-Asian-hate group that has been set up. Their angle on this is that the problem is really white people (of course) but also Asians are at fault, for being "white adjacent" - ie "too white"
She also exists in a parallel universe where no data on the ethnicity of perpetrators is collected. But it is, as everyone knows.
Here is the deliciously ludicrous endpoint of Critical Race Theory: black violence on Asian people does not exist, even though it does, and even when it rarely does, it is the fault of whites; and any data that disagrees with this does not actually exist, even though it does
Andrew Sullivan has drawn comparisons with both the closing years of the Roman Republic, and Weimar Germany, and neither is hysterical. A healthy democracy is one where the losers accept that their opponents can win legitimately, and one where the winners accept that they might lose next time, and are prepared to accept defeat with good grace.
Both sides in the US simply want power at all costs, but the Republicans are the worst offenders of the two.
Agreed, but there's an extreme Democratic wing obsessed with tearing down the founding fathers and the story of the republic as well.
Is there, bollocks!
So the statues coming down all over the USA are totally made up then?
We'll know America is able to avoid a civil war when Republicans speak out against ballot rigging and people like you speak out against ripping apart its cultural fabric rather than exclaiming it's all made up.
Andrew Sullivan has drawn comparisons with both the closing years of the Roman Republic, and Weimar Germany, and neither is hysterical. A healthy democracy is one where the losers accept that their opponents can win legitimately, and one where the winners accept that they might lose next time, and are prepared to accept defeat with good grace.
Both sides in the US simply want power at all costs, but the Republicans are the worst offenders of the two.
Attempting to "both sides" this is wank.
No, it's absolutely essential if you want to avoid the USA descending into civil war.
What really strikes me about the poll is the shortage of people who actually put democracy first before their preferred political outcomes.
I think Brexit is terrible. I disapprove of the Tory government. But it would never cross my mind to deny their right to win majorities, and I've always thought most people on the centre-right agree - and in Britain, I think they do. But in the US, about a quarter of the electorate are willing to put up with anything to get their way.
Yeah, but the Left "does the same", in America
I don't think you grasp how intense the Woke agenda is, in the USA, and how it is being forced on a lot of unhappy people. The right think the Left is trying to destroy the country and remake it in a Woke style. A kind of cultural coup is underaway, and whites, Republicans and "patriots" are the target
If you believe there is a coup against your democracy, then democracy can go hang, for a while. First you need to fight and WIN
I'm not justifying this stance, of course, but I think this explains the poll above
FWIW we’ve just changed schools for our daughter because of the political agenda being imposed at ASL
Ah, the American School in London. And yes the website pulsates with Wokiness
The lab leak theory is the only one of @Leon 's conspiracy theories I'm open-minded about to be honest.
We know the lab is in Wuhan. We know the virus originated in Wuhan. We know they do viral research at the lab in Wuhan. We know China won't let the WHO anywhere near the lab. And we know China silenced scientists and doctors who tried to speak out earlier.
Probably still correlation not causation but possibly not too.
I get that you don't buy "aliens", (I don't think I do, either), but I'm not aware I punt out any other conspiracy theories, unless you think I am blaming Putin for the crap weather
A guy sitting next to Roman Protasevich on the plane: "They took us out of the plane, the dogs sniffed our luggage. They took that guy (Roman) aside, threw his belongings on the runway. We asked him what’s going on. He told me who he is and added, “They'll execute me here”(1/2)
He was calmer by then, but he was still trembling. An officer was standing next to him all the time, soon the soldiers came and took him away". (2/2) via
Andrew Sullivan has drawn comparisons with both the closing years of the Roman Republic, and Weimar Germany, and neither is hysterical. A healthy democracy is one where the losers accept that their opponents can win legitimately, and one where the winners accept that they might lose next time, and are prepared to accept defeat with good grace.
Both sides in the US simply want power at all costs, but the Republicans are the worst offenders of the two.
Agreed, but there's an extreme Democratic wing obsessed with tearing down the founding fathers and the story of the republic as well.
Check this.
There's been a spate of horrible attacks on Asian people in the US and Canada. Unhappily, evidence shows that quite a lot of this violence, some murderous, comes from black people. There are videos.
So. This is a $250m anti-Asian-hate group that has been set up. Their angle on this is that the problem is really white people (of course) but also Asians are at fault, for being "white adjacent" - ie "too white"
She also exists in a parallel universe where no data on the ethnicity of perpetrators is collected. But it is, as everyone knows.
Here is the deliciously ludicrous endpoint of Critical Race Theory: black violence on Asian people does not exist, even though it does, and even when it rarely does, it is the fault of whites; and any data that disagrees with this does not actually exist, even though it does
Its also worth remembering in the US, the official demographic grouping of "Asian" describes a very large disparate grouping...from those of Indian decent to Chinese decent, even Pacific Islanders.
According to that video then, all of them are "white adjacent"...and a large proportion of them in the US are originally refugees, so had none of the "white privilege", in fact even more disadvantaged at the outset than black people...no money, unable to speak the language, fled from persecution.
I don't think the Republicans have thought through what comes next if they try and game an election result where they're clearly the minority in the country.
What comes next?
It worked out fine in 2000 and 2016 for them, and if they had been better organized the assault on the Capitol Building might have seen Trump past inauguration day.
What would have happened if the Commander in Chief had gone rogue with the party machine and the SC behind him? More hand wringing from the Democrats and letters of outrage to the Washington Post and New York Times.
I know I can safely disregard your contributions on this subject when you post stuff like that.
The Republicans the Presidential elections in 2000 and 2016 (yes yes, i know not the national popular vote but they did in the electoral college and it was therefore perfectly legal and constitutional).
A guy sitting next to Roman Protasevich on the plane: "They took us out of the plane, the dogs sniffed our luggage. They took that guy (Roman) aside, threw his belongings on the runway. We asked him what’s going on. He told me who he is and added, “They'll execute me here”(1/2)
He was calmer by then, but he was still trembling. An officer was standing next to him all the time, soon the soldiers came and took him away". (2/2) via
So, after global plague, an attempted coup in Washington, the arrival of Artificial Intelligence, the arrival of aliens, a really chilly spring, we get war between the EU and Russia
Andrew Sullivan has drawn comparisons with both the closing years of the Roman Republic, and Weimar Germany, and neither is hysterical. A healthy democracy is one where the losers accept that their opponents can win legitimately, and one where the winners accept that they might lose next time, and are prepared to accept defeat with good grace.
Both sides in the US simply want power at all costs, but the Republicans are the worst offenders of the two.
Agreed, but there's an extreme Democratic wing obsessed with tearing down the founding fathers and the story of the republic as well.
Check this.
There's been a spate of horrible attacks on Asian people in the US and Canada. Unhappily, evidence shows that quite a lot of this violence, some murderous, comes from black people. There are videos.
So. This is a $250m anti-Asian-hate group that has been set up. Their angle on this is that the problem is really white people (of course) but also Asians are at fault, for being "white adjacent" - ie "too white"
She also exists in a parallel universe where no data on the ethnicity of perpetrators is collected. But it is, as everyone knows.
Here is the deliciously ludicrous endpoint of Critical Race Theory: black violence on Asian people does not exist, even though it does, and even when it rarely does, it is the fault of whites; and any data that disagrees with this does not actually exist, even though it does
Its also worth remembering in the US, the official demographic grouping of "Asian" describes a very large disparate grouping...from those of Indian decent to Chinese decent, even Pacific Islanders.
According to that video then, all of them are "white adjacent"...and a large proportion of them in the US are originally refugees, so had none of the "white privilege".
Critical Race Theory is a repulsive doctrine which should be thrown in the sea
What really strikes me about the poll is the shortage of people who actually put democracy first before their preferred political outcomes.
I think Brexit is terrible. I disapprove of the Tory government. But it would never cross my mind to deny their right to win majorities, and I've always thought most people on the centre-right agree - and in Britain, I think they do. But in the US, about a quarter of the electorate are willing to put up with anything to get their way.
Yeah, but the Left "does the same", in America
I don't think you grasp how intense the Woke agenda is, in the USA, and how it is being forced on a lot of unhappy people. The right think the Left is trying to destroy the country and remake it in a Woke style. A kind of cultural coup is underaway, and whites, Republicans and "patriots" are the target
If you believe there is a coup against your democracy, then democracy can go hang, for a while. First you need to fight and WIN
I'm not justifying this stance, of course, but I think this explains the poll above
FWIW we’ve just changed schools for our daughter because of the political agenda being imposed at ASL
Ah, the American School in London. And yes the website pulsates with Wokiness
"global citizen" and "diversity is central" are big giveaways as introductory phrases.
This afternoon - last games of the season - is the perfect example of the tension about getting into the European places that was absent with the automatic places in the ESL. It has changed several times.
What really strikes me about the poll is the shortage of people who actually put democracy first before their preferred political outcomes.
I think Brexit is terrible. I disapprove of the Tory government. But it would never cross my mind to deny their right to win majorities, and I've always thought most people on the centre-right agree - and in Britain, I think they do. But in the US, about a quarter of the electorate are willing to put up with anything to get their way.
Yeah, but the Left "does the same", in America
I don't think you grasp how intense the Woke agenda is, in the USA, and how it is being forced on a lot of unhappy people. The right think the Left is trying to destroy the country and remake it in a Woke style. A kind of cultural coup is underaway, and whites, Republicans and "patriots" are the target
If you believe there is a coup against your democracy, then democracy can go hang, for a while. First you need to fight and WIN
I'm not justifying this stance, of course, but I think this explains the poll above
There’s a lot of incentive for commentators on the right to 'big up' the woke threat in order to justify undermining democracy in the US. From the outside it seems that without rampant gerry mandering & voter suppression, the Republican Party in it’s current form would have no chance of victory in any national election - it’s only through a continuous campaign of fear & loathing targetting their own supporters that they can justify these anti-democratic policies.
The Left AND the Right in America are engaged in an insane Arms Race of Stupidity. One minute the Left does something crazy and Woke which will only provoke Republicans, a minute later the Republicans are duly provoked, and they do something crazy, in response.
I really fear for the country. So polarised. Social media must take a lot of the blame
The solution is a moderate Republican president. To calm the Right, but make peace with the Left. Doesn't seem likely
The problem being that 'moderate' Republicans pander to the rich and big business.
In many ways Trump, while being deranged and corrupt, was more moderate than the traditional GOP.
'Moderate' republicans strike me as having a similar problem to 'moderates' in the UK Labour Party.
This afternoon - last games of the season - is the perfect example of the tension about getting into the European places that was absent with the automatic places in the ESL. It has changed several times.
And after they had that mass gathering, to stop the deportation of two illegal immigrants:
According to the latest figures by Public Health Scotland, Glasgow's seven-day average case rate has increased to 133.3 cases per 100,000 population. This is based on people who were tested between May 14 and 20.
It comes amid concern about the new Indian covid variant, which is believed to be driving an outbreak in the south side.
The figure is not too far off the 150 cases per threshold for when a local authority in Scotland is likely to end up under level four lockdown restrictions as per the Scottish Government's latest strategic framework which was revised back in March this year.
The city could be plunged into the Level 4 lockdown threshold if cases continue to rise.
This afternoon - last games of the season - is the perfect example of the tension about getting into the European places that was absent with the automatic places in the ESL. It has changed several times.
An opponent of Belarus’s authoritarian president has been arrested after a Ryanair plane was diverted because of a "bomb threat".
A spokesman said President Alexander Lukashenko personally ordered that a MiG-29 fighter jet accompany the plane – which was travelling from Athens to Vilnius, Lithuania – to an airport in Minsk. The Belarusian Interior Ministry said Raman Pratasevich was arrested at the airport.
Mr Pratasevich is a co-founder of the Telegram messaging app’s Nexta channel, which Belarus last year declared as extremist after it was used to help organise major protests against Mr Lukashenko.
Andrew Sullivan has drawn comparisons with both the closing years of the Roman Republic, and Weimar Germany, and neither is hysterical. A healthy democracy is one where the losers accept that their opponents can win legitimately, and one where the winners accept that they might lose next time, and are prepared to accept defeat with good grace.
Both sides in the US simply want power at all costs, but the Republicans are the worst offenders of the two.
Attempting to "both sides" this is wank.
When one of the gamier PB reactionaries says 'the Republicans are the worst offenders of the two', I think you have to accept that as the equivalent of GOP are totally corrupt cnuts and take the win.
The lab leak theory is the only one of @Leon 's conspiracy theories I'm open-minded about to be honest.
We know the lab is in Wuhan. We know the virus originated in Wuhan. We know they do viral research at the lab in Wuhan. We know China won't let the WHO anywhere near the lab. And we know China silenced scientists and doctors who tried to speak out earlier.
Probably still correlation not causation but possibly not too.
We know Trump withdrew CDC scientists who were working with Chinese scientists in Wuhan ...
The last sentence of @vonderleyen 's post must have meaning. Closing the border between the EU (Latvia, Lithuania, Poland) to all commercial traffic would be one possibility. It would also grab Russia's attention since much of the traffic is in transit with Russia.
I don't think the Republicans have thought through what comes next if they try and game an election result where they're clearly the minority in the country.
What comes next?
It worked out fine in 2000 and 2016 for them, and if they had been better organized the assault on the Capitol Building might have seen Trump past inauguration day.
What would have happened if the Commander in Chief had gone rogue with the party machine and the SC behind him? More hand wringing from the Democrats and letters of outrage to the Washington Post and New York Times.
I know I can safely disregard your contributions on this subject when you post stuff like that.
The Republicans the Presidential elections in 2000 and 2016 (yes yes, i know not the national popular vote but they did in the electoral college and it was therefore perfectly legal and constitutional).
It will be perfectly "legal" if they were to suppress voting through state legislatures to give them the results they required in the EC.
Andrew Sullivan has drawn comparisons with both the closing years of the Roman Republic, and Weimar Germany, and neither is hysterical. A healthy democracy is one where the losers accept that their opponents can win legitimately, and one where the winners accept that they might lose next time, and are prepared to accept defeat with good grace.
Both sides in the US simply want power at all costs, but the Republicans are the worst offenders of the two.
Agreed, but there's an extreme Democratic wing obsessed with tearing down the founding fathers and the story of the republic as well.
Is there, bollocks!
So the statues coming down all over the USA are totally made up then?
We'll know America is able to avoid a civil war when Republicans speak out against ballot rigging and people like you speak out against ripping apart its cultural fabric rather than exclaiming it's all made up.
There you go again with your statues. The AOC wing of the Dems see the statues issue as relevant to the subjugation of a vast swathe of US society. Perhaps AOC will concede your statues when an innocent guy no longer gets shot in his own apartment because a lady cop assumes he is in hers, or Sandra Bland doesn't die in a police cell because she had a broken tail light.
And after they had that mass gathering, to stop the deportation of two illegal immigrants:
According to the latest figures by Public Health Scotland, Glasgow's seven-day average case rate has increased to 133.3 cases per 100,000 population. This is based on people who were tested between May 14 and 20.
It comes amid concern about the new Indian covid variant, which is believed to be driving an outbreak in the south side.
The figure is not too far off the 150 cases per threshold for when a local authority in Scotland is likely to end up under level four lockdown restrictions as per the Scottish Government's latest strategic framework which was revised back in March this year.
The city could be plunged into the Level 4 lockdown threshold if cases continue to rise.
Oh well. If it happens then Sturgeon will be praised to the rafters for her caution, the ongoing role of the English taxpayer in paying for furlough (and everything else) will continue to go entirely unrecognised, and the whole thing will somehow be found to be the fault of the Tories. In other words, business as usual in Scotland.
Andrew Sullivan has drawn comparisons with both the closing years of the Roman Republic, and Weimar Germany, and neither is hysterical. A healthy democracy is one where the losers accept that their opponents can win legitimately, and one where the winners accept that they might lose next time, and are prepared to accept defeat with good grace.
Both sides in the US simply want power at all costs, but the Republicans are the worst offenders of the two.
Attempting to "both sides" this is wank.
No, it's absolutely essential if you want to avoid the USA descending into civil war.
Democrats: We want people to be able to vote Republicans: We don't want people to be able to vote
I don't think the Republicans have thought through what comes next if they try and game an election result where they're clearly the minority in the country.
What comes next?
It worked out fine in 2000 and 2016 for them, and if they had been better organized the assault on the Capitol Building might have seen Trump past inauguration day.
What would have happened if the Commander in Chief had gone rogue with the party machine and the SC behind him? More hand wringing from the Democrats and letters of outrage to the Washington Post and New York Times.
I know I can safely disregard your contributions on this subject when you post stuff like that.
The Republicans the Presidential elections in 2000 and 2016 (yes yes, i know not the national popular vote but they did in the electoral college and it was therefore perfectly legal and constitutional).
It will be perfectly "legal" if they were to suppress voting through state legislatures to give them the results they required in the EC.
Andrew Sullivan has drawn comparisons with both the closing years of the Roman Republic, and Weimar Germany, and neither is hysterical. A healthy democracy is one where the losers accept that their opponents can win legitimately, and one where the winners accept that they might lose next time, and are prepared to accept defeat with good grace.
Both sides in the US simply want power at all costs, but the Republicans are the worst offenders of the two.
Agreed, but there's an extreme Democratic wing obsessed with tearing down the founding fathers and the story of the republic as well.
Is there, bollocks!
So the statues coming down all over the USA are totally made up then?
We'll know America is able to avoid a civil war when Republicans speak out against ballot rigging and people like you speak out against ripping apart its cultural fabric rather than exclaiming it's all made up.
There you go again with your statues. The AOC wing of the Dems see the statues issue as relevant to the subjugation of a vast swathe of US society. Perhaps AOC will concede your statues when an innocent guy no longer gets shot in his own apartment because a lady cop assumes he is in hers, or Sandra Bland doesn't die in a police cell because she had a broken tail light.
Thanks, so you admit it's happening after all. I seen you've now moved onto "but it's all ok because.."
My point is that for a stand-off to end both sides need to be willing to march away from their extremes and be willing to compromise.
What really strikes me about the poll is the shortage of people who actually put democracy first before their preferred political outcomes.
I think Brexit is terrible. I disapprove of the Tory government. But it would never cross my mind to deny their right to win majorities, and I've always thought most people on the centre-right agree - and in Britain, I think they do. But in the US, about a quarter of the electorate are willing to put up with anything to get their way.
Yeah, but the Left "does the same", in America
I don't think you grasp how intense the Woke agenda is, in the USA, and how it is being forced on a lot of unhappy people. The right think the Left is trying to destroy the country and remake it in a Woke style. A kind of cultural coup is underaway, and whites, Republicans and "patriots" are the target
If you believe there is a coup against your democracy, then democracy can go hang, for a while. First you need to fight and WIN
I'm not justifying this stance, of course, but I think this explains the poll above
FWIW we’ve just changed schools for our daughter because of the political agenda being imposed at ASL
Good for you @Charles - did you make your feelings known to ASL?
And after they had that mass gathering, to stop the deportation of two illegal immigrants:
According to the latest figures by Public Health Scotland, Glasgow's seven-day average case rate has increased to 133.3 cases per 100,000 population. This is based on people who were tested between May 14 and 20.
It comes amid concern about the new Indian covid variant, which is believed to be driving an outbreak in the south side.
The figure is not too far off the 150 cases per threshold for when a local authority in Scotland is likely to end up under level four lockdown restrictions as per the Scottish Government's latest strategic framework which was revised back in March this year.
The city could be plunged into the Level 4 lockdown threshold if cases continue to rise.
Where pretty much everyone of a 1000 or so people were wearing masks, followed by 10k plus people, none of whom were wearing masks, pishing and fighting and slobbering over each other for 12 hours. Which 'mass gathering' do you think resulted in most cases?
Just had a look at the detail of the India variant vaccine study, it looks like there is basically no efficacy dilution at all. For Pfizer we move down from 91% to 88% but with a much wider CI and for AZ the data is currently only based on the shorter gap dosing schedule rather than the 10-12 week one and that comes out at 60% just 2% lower than the 62% we have with original COVID on the like for like comparison.
It's also interesting to look at the data from Bolton, the symptomatic case rate seems to have peaked a few days ago and is now falling again. The virus is clearly now running into too many unviable hosts that have been vaccinated to enough of a degree that halts the growth rate.
The last sentence of @vonderleyen 's post must have meaning. Closing the border between the EU (Latvia, Lithuania, Poland) to all commercial traffic would be one possibility. It would also grab Russia's attention since much of the traffic is in transit with Russia.
I have asked @eucopresident to expand tomorrow's #EUCO agenda and discuss immediate sanctions against A. Lukashenka regime. Hijacking of a civilian plane is an unprecedented act of state terrorism. It cannot go unpunished.
Andrew Sullivan has drawn comparisons with both the closing years of the Roman Republic, and Weimar Germany, and neither is hysterical. A healthy democracy is one where the losers accept that their opponents can win legitimately, and one where the winners accept that they might lose next time, and are prepared to accept defeat with good grace.
Both sides in the US simply want power at all costs, but the Republicans are the worst offenders of the two.
Attempting to "both sides" this is wank.
When one of the gamier PB reactionaries says 'the Republicans are the worst offenders of the two', I think you have to accept that as the equivalent of GOP are totally corrupt cnuts and take the win.
I don't think reactionaries get any gamier than you.
Andrew Sullivan has drawn comparisons with both the closing years of the Roman Republic, and Weimar Germany, and neither is hysterical. A healthy democracy is one where the losers accept that their opponents can win legitimately, and one where the winners accept that they might lose next time, and are prepared to accept defeat with good grace.
Both sides in the US simply want power at all costs, but the Republicans are the worst offenders of the two.
Attempting to "both sides" this is wank.
When one of the gamier PB reactionaries says 'the Republicans are the worst offenders of the two', I think you have to accept that as the equivalent of GOP are totally corrupt cnuts and take the win.
I don't think reactionaries get any gamier than you.
At least you've taken a break from blathering about Woke and Green fascists and the vegan plot to put meat eaters in camps.
Comments
We might not be far off that point though. Today's Covid death count is, yet again, in single figures. Enormous numbers of vaccinations have been done. The Indian variant appears to be spreading through parts of Lancashire but, crucially, it is fanning out very slowly and the increase in pressure on the local hospitals is very modest.
There is increasing evidence to suggest that Covid, as an emergency and as a cause of mass hospitalisation and death, has been beaten in this country. I don't think that all the anti-Covid measures will go on June 21st - I expect we'll be lumbered with masks on public transport and in clinical settings for some time to come, the test and trace system and restrictions on international travel will continue, and it is possible that some form of work from home advice will also remain in place - but unless something goes unexpectedly and seriously wrong in the next fortnight then the case for dumping social distancing and the widespread use of masks will become unanswerable.
But there's certainly no huge 'breakout' of the Indian variant.
Meanwhile those vaccinations keep increasing.
Covid 19 came to notice with a number of cases connected with an open market in Wuhan. The Virology Institute is nearby. The theory is that the virus got out of the institute and infected people in the open market.
As I understood the article, virus strains have lineage, so you can look at two strains and tell the order of mutations and, working backwards, roughly how long each strain came into existence. There were two early strains of Covid 19: the Wuhan strain and another strain centred on Northern Guangdong province from which the Wuhan strain mutated. The Guangdong strain eventually died out. The probability is that Covid 19 originated further south than Wuhan and earlier than the market outbreak.
After a row over her Eurovision Tweet, Rhiannon Spear has released the following through the SNP press office:
"I have now deleted this tweet about the UK's results in the Eurovision Song Contest, and apologise for any offence caused."
https://twitter.com/ChrisGreenNews/status/1396458963865120771?s=20
I dismissed the design for purpose theory, but not other possibilities, such as accidental release or even the virus evolving in the lab. Indeed, back in April last year, I wrote a risk management scenario for use in lab training on the possibility of unintended evolution of the virus through propagation in human lung epithelial cells.
There are multiple instances of me saying similar to the NYT, WP and NPR, but I can't be bothered to find them. I have also consistently pointed out Peter Daszak's conflicts of interest and how absurd it was that he was on the WHO team.
42 Covid deaths in the past week.
Next week we might fall below the level of UK road traffic deaths (average of 34 per week in 2019).
It is utterly unacceptable to force @Ryanair flight from Athens to Vilnius to land in Minsk.
ALL passengers must be able to continue their travel to Vilnius immediately and their safety ensured.
Any violation of international air transport rules must bear consequences.
https://twitter.com/vonderleyen/status/1396487685011816449?s=20
The Democrats for all their many (many) flaws - still believe in democracy.
Other than the non-existant safety precautions that took the lives of the talented and famous without favour it was a golden era.
A lot of it is based on a very small Amnesty study of 6 weeks of abuse of female MPs on Twitter before the 2017 byelection eg in this Guardian piece - which afaics includes nothing about the 'racist' part of that claim, though it has stuff about 'most abused female MP', and simple claims about racist abuse:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/sep/05/diane-abbott-more-abused-than-any-other-mps-during-election
If you look at the more mainstream academic research, it puts a question mark over that narrative. One thing missing is a relation to prominence, and also to what are current issues. There has been a group at Sheffield Uni studying this with longer periods and bigger datasets for some years. Plus of course categorisation varies.
Here is a BBC piece based on that research about 2019:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2019-50687425
One graph from their paper about 2015 / 2017 below. Link: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/157728455.pdf
These paragraphs from the Bulletin article particularly struck me
"Much of Shi’s work on gain-of-function in coronaviruses [in Wuhan] was performed at the BSL2 safety level, as is stated in her publications and other documents. She has said in an interview with Science magazine that “[t]he coronavirus research in our laboratory is conducted in BSL-2 or BSL-3 laboratories.”
“It is clear that some or all of this work was being performed using a biosafety standard — biosafety level 2, the biosafety level of a standard US dentist’s office — that would pose an unacceptably high risk of infection of laboratory staff upon contact with a virus having the transmission properties of SARS-CoV-2,” Ebright says."
And these:
"Concern about safety conditions at the Wuhan lab was not, it seems, misplaced. According to a fact sheet issued by the State Department on January 15, 2021, “The U.S. government has reason to believe that several researchers inside the WIV became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses.”
"David Asher, a fellow of the Hudson Institute and former consultant to the State Department, provided more detail about the incident at a seminar. Knowledge of the incident came from a mix of public information and “some high end information collected by our intelligence community,” he said. Three people working at a BSL3 lab at the institute fell sick within a week of each other with severe symptoms that required hospitalization. This was “the first known cluster that we’re aware of, of victims of what we believe to be COVID-19.” Influenza could not completely be ruled out but seemed unlikely in the circumstances, he said."
If there was a time for the EU to show it does have a robust foreign policy and an ability to project its power, now would be it
https://twitter.com/HenryJFoy/status/1396488835517894659?s=20
Its ideas don't seem to be working for either its voters or the country as a whole.
I wonder how many asymptomatic cases they were picking up.
There’s no proof of anything worse than negligence AIUI.
What about individual States? Is it every 2 years there also? Why not every 4 years?
I am aware Senators serve 6 years and one third at a time (similar to most of our Councils).
As regards UK, I am sorry that both major parties wish to repeal Fixed Term Parliament Act. I think Fixed Term of 4 years or 5 years is fair to prevent party in power gaining advantage by selecting date themselves.
We know the lab is in Wuhan. We know the virus originated in Wuhan. We know they do viral research at the lab in Wuhan. We know China won't let the WHO anywhere near the lab. And we know China silenced scientists and doctors who tried to speak out earlier.
Probably still correlation not causation but possibly not too.
Both sides in the US simply want power at all costs, but the Republicans are the worst offenders of the two.
https://twitter.com/BBCDanielS/status/1396491643021312006?s=20
Both China and Russia would enthusiastically leap into the vacuum caused by a 2nd US civil war, and start real wars of their own off the back of it.
AKA hijacking.
Because Lukashenko recognises nothing other than brute force.
It worked out fine in 2000 and 2016 for them, and if they had been better organized the assault on the Capitol Building might have seen Trump past inauguration day.
What would have happened if the Commander in Chief had gone rogue with the party machine and the SC behind him? More hand wringing from the Democrats and letters of outrage to the Washington Post and New York Times.
Result?
Disaster.
The trouble is both sides are convinced the other is out to destroy them at the moment, so all tactics are justified.
Our safety really does depend upon American leadership and their vast military arsenal.
It's worth remembering that we paddled our own canoe for the first few years in both WW1 and WW2 with an isolationist USA over the pond.
We're simply in no position to do that today whilst they sort themselves out.
State-directed terrorism. Astonishing, and scary
I'm always anxious on cable cars due to fears over poor maintenance.
There's been a spate of horrible attacks on Asian people in the US and Canada. Unhappily, evidence shows that quite a lot of this violence, some murderous, comes from black people. There are videos.
So. This is a $250m anti-Asian-hate group that has been set up. Their angle on this is that the problem is really white people (of course) but also Asians are at fault, for being "white adjacent" - ie "too white"
She also exists in a parallel universe where no data on the ethnicity of perpetrators is collected. But it is, as everyone knows.
Here is the deliciously ludicrous endpoint of Critical Race Theory: black violence on Asian people does not exist, even though it does, and even when it rarely does, it is the fault of whites; and any data that disagrees with this does not actually exist, even though it does
https://twitter.com/CathyYoung63/status/1396343284965036034?s=20
https://www.washingtonpost.com/gdpr-consent/?next_url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/12/29/lincoln-statue-removed-boston-dc/?outputType=amp&outputType=amp
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1242913
We'll know America is able to avoid a civil war when Republicans speak out against ballot rigging and people like you speak out against ripping apart its cultural fabric rather than exclaiming it's all made up.
He was calmer by then, but he was still trembling. An officer was standing next to him all the time, soon the soldiers came and took him away". (2/2) via
https://twitter.com/TadeuszGiczan/status/1396495581317681158?s=20
According to that video then, all of them are "white adjacent"...and a large proportion of them in the US are originally refugees, so had none of the "white privilege", in fact even more disadvantaged at the outset than black people...no money, unable to speak the language, fled from persecution.
The Republicans the Presidential elections in 2000 and 2016 (yes yes, i know not the national popular vote but they did in the electoral college and it was therefore perfectly legal and constitutional).
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2020-05-13/scientist-suggests-coronavirus-originated-outside-of-wuhan
The 2020s are quite a ride
Looks like Chelsea will miss out.
No idea what the original issue was.
According to the latest figures by Public Health Scotland, Glasgow's seven-day average case rate has increased to 133.3 cases per 100,000 population. This is based on people who were tested between May 14 and 20.
It comes amid concern about the new Indian covid variant, which is believed to be driving an outbreak in the south side.
The figure is not too far off the 150 cases per threshold for when a local authority in Scotland is likely to end up under level four lockdown restrictions as per the Scottish Government's latest strategic framework which was revised back in March this year.
The city could be plunged into the Level 4 lockdown threshold if cases continue to rise.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1440128/Glasgow-lockdown-Covid-cases-latest-figures-Nicola-Sturgeon-level-4-closure
A spokesman said President Alexander Lukashenko personally ordered that a MiG-29 fighter jet accompany the plane – which was travelling from Athens to Vilnius, Lithuania – to an airport in Minsk. The Belarusian Interior Ministry said Raman Pratasevich was arrested at the airport.
Mr Pratasevich is a co-founder of the Telegram messaging app’s Nexta channel, which Belarus last year declared as extremist after it was used to help organise major protests against Mr Lukashenko.
https://www.itv.com/news/2021-05-23/belarus-diverts-ryanair-flight-and-arrests-presidents-opponent-onboard
Yesterday's Daily Express had a William Hill 5 quid free bet voucher.
Today I utilised it to bet on Verstappen to win Monaco grand prix at 6/4
https://twitter.com/FHeisbourg/status/1396500225490046982?s=20
Republicans: We don't want people to be able to vote
Both Sides!
My point is that for a stand-off to end both sides need to be willing to march away from their extremes and be willing to compromise.
At the moment, they just want to win.
It's also interesting to look at the data from Bolton, the symptomatic case rate seems to have peaked a few days ago and is now falling again. The virus is clearly now running into too many unviable hosts that have been vaccinated to enough of a degree that halts the growth rate.
I have asked
@eucopresident
to expand tomorrow's #EUCO agenda and discuss immediate sanctions against A. Lukashenka regime. Hijacking of a civilian plane is an unprecedented act of state terrorism. It cannot go unpunished.
Salah, personally hunting for the golden boot, goes for the assist instead to sent Mane up for Liverpool's second.
Kaspa Schmeicel (sp?) own goal dropping Leicester out of the top 4. Ouch.
What else is to come?