Category Archives: Germ Warfare

While Spiffys and Farm Boy Drive-in were in court Tuesday, protesters rallied outside the Lewis County Law and Justice Center in support of the restaurants that have become icons in the push to lift restrictions meant to curb the spread of COVID-19.

Although Spiffys was issued a continuance and will be back in court next week, Farm Boy Drive-in was found in contempt of court, with Thurston County Superior Court Judge Chris Lanese ruling in favor of the Department of Labor and Industries (L&I) and levying a fine of $2,000 for each day the restaurant continues to offer indoor dining, imposed retroactively from the first day the court issued its temporary restraining order, Dec. 15. Both restaurants have continued to offer indoor dining even after being issued an order of immediate restraint by L&I and then a temporary restraining order by their respective county courts.

Attorney Jason Celski, who is representing both restaurants, dismissed claims that the restaurant is offering indoor dining as hearsay, and said that I honestly do not know if theyre offering (indoor dining).

That did not convince Lanese, who said it was not a legal argument and that it was difficult to believe that Celski hadnt asked his client that question. Online, Farm Boy Drive-in has made it clear that they are choosing to offer indoor dining in defiance of Gov. Jay Inslee, who ordered a stop to the activity at the states restaurants and bars until Jan. 4. Lanese also noted that the declarations letters of support written by customers and supporters and submitted to the court by the defense made it abundantly clear that the restaurant has been willfully flouting statewide orders by allowing patrons to eat indoors.

My order did not prohibit Farm Boy from being open. My order did not prohibit them from employing individuals to prepare food to sell to customers nor did it prohibit anyone from being inside that dining establishment to acquire that food, he said. The only thing that my order prohibited was for those things to occur, and then for an individual, a customer, to remain inside that building to consume that food.

If Farm Boy Drive-in is able to prove that theyve come into compliance, Lanese ruled, the fines will be dropped.

But that doesnt appear to be the restaurants plan. Almost immediately after the judges ruling, owner Brian Robbins appeared at the Lewis County protest and was cheered on by a crowd of hundreds, some of who chanted dont pay it in regards to the new fines.

Earlier, Spiffys General Manager Rob Grant took to Facebook, urging supporters to attend and saying weve done nothing wrong.

We love you guys and we just want you to know that everything youve been doing, weve appreciated, Grant said. All you patriots, man, I tell you. We love you and we thank you and you guys are right on.

Since L&I first contacted Spiffys, far-right groups such as Patriot Prayer, militia group the Three Percenters and Ammon Bundys newest group Peoples Rights, formed to protest coronavirus mandates, have put their organizations support behind the restaurant and shown up to rallies. Spiffys continues to offer indoor dining despite having racked up over $100,000 in fines.

Patriot Prayer founder Joey Gibson helped organize the rally, directing supporters through Parler, a new social media site many conservatives have flocked to. Gibson also helped organize the recent freedom rally that drew in hundreds of out-of-towners to Mossyrock, where the citys mayor has said, without authority, that Inslees orders will not be recognized.

Last week, Gibson led Patriot Prayer members in an attempt to force their way into the Oregon state Capitol a demonstration that turned violent and led to several arrests. The Three Percenters, who have followed Gibson to protests in and around the county, were reported this week to have a similar plan for the Washington state Capitol.

Although some protesters were armed Tuesday and sheriffs office deputies were deployed to guard alternative entrances to the building, the protest remained peaceful. Several speakers denounced restrictions on businesses, questioned the science of the pandemic and called Inslee a tyrant. Some protesters peddled conspiracy theories about the pandemic, including that the virus is an attempt by China to engage in germ warfare.

The continued drama around Spiffys has in some instances gotten ugly. As promised, Peoples Rights identified an L&I employee involved in the Spiffys investigation, and this month protested outside his home.

In a video posted by Peoples Rights Washington, organizer Kelli Stewart, who was present at the first armed protest outside Spiffys, publicized the state employees name, age and address, comparing L&I to the Gestapo and encouraging viewers to take off your mask and open your business.

By the time were done we hope every neighbor out here understands what a little tyrant they have living in their neighborhood, Stewart said. Wed like you to leave Spiffys alone. We do not consent to the harassment of these businesses. Were paying your salary, were paying your mortgage, we pay for that spiffy little car in your driveway.

L&I spokesperson Dina Lorraine confirmed that it was the first time an employee had been identified and singled out by protesters.

You wouldnt have believed the emails that poor man has received, Lorraine said Tuesday. Were no longer putting our inspectors names on (orders of immediate restraint) because of that. So thats a change that has happened because of Spiffys.

Its a strategy Patriot Prayer has used before. In November, the group identified an Oregon Occupation Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) employee involved with the fining of a gym that had defied COVID-19 restrictions and protested outside their home.

Even with Spiffys court-ordered restraining order still in effect, and the restaurant still vulnerable to contempt of court charges, potential imprisonment and more fines, theres little sign that the establishment has plans to comply with state law. Last week, Lewis County Sheriff Rob Snaza publicly threw his support behind Spiffys, echoing ideas popular among protesters, that reopening businesses is a matter of constitutional rights. It was a public statement quickly and enthusiastically picked up by Spiffys owner and staff.

Link:

Protesters Gather as Spiffy's and Farm Boy Drive-in Go to Court - Centralia Chronicle

Protesters gather at the Lewis County Law and Justice Center in support of Spiffys, which is going to court over remaining open despite the states COVID-19 restrictions. (Jared Wenzelburger photo)

(CLAUDIA YAW/Centralia Chronicle)

While Spiffys and Farm Boy Drive-in were in court Tuesday, protesters rallied outside the Lewis County Law and Justice Center in SW Washington in support of the restaurants that have become icons in the push to lift restrictions meant to curb the spread of COVID-19.

Although Spiffys was issued a continuance and will be back in court next week, Farm Boy Drive-in was found in contempt of court, with Thurston County Superior Court Judge Chris Lanese ruling in favor of the Department of Labor and Industries (L&I) and levying a fine of $2,000 for each day the restaurant continues to offer indoor dining, imposed retroactively from the first day the court issued its temporary restraining order, Dec. 15. Both restaurants have continued to offer indoor dining even after being issued an order of immediate restraint by L&I and then a temporary restraining order by their respective county courts.

Attorney Jason Celski, who is representing both restaurants, dismissed claims that the restaurant is offering indoor dining as hearsay, and said that I honestly do not know if theyre offering (indoor dining).

That did not convince Lanese, who said it was not a legal argument and that it was difficult to believe that Celski hadnt asked his client that question. Online, Farm Boy Drive-in has made it clear that they are choosing to offer indoor dining in defiance of Gov. Jay Inslee, who ordered a stop to the activity at the states restaurants and bars until Jan. 4. Lanese also noted that the declarations letters of support written by customers and supporters and submitted to the court by the defense made it abundantly clear that the restaurant has been willfully flouting statewide orders by allowing patrons to eat indoors.

My order did not prohibit Farm Boy from being open. My order did not prohibit them from employing individuals to prepare food to sell to customers nor did it prohibit anyone from being inside that dining establishment to acquire that food, he said. The only thing that my order prohibited was for those things to occur, and then for an individual, a customer, to remain inside that building to consume that food.

If Farm Boy Drive-in is able to prove that theyve come into compliance, Lanese ruled, the fines will be dropped.

But that doesnt appear to be the restaurants plan. Almost immediately after the judges ruling, owner Brian Robbins appeared at the Lewis County protest and was cheered on by a crowd of hundreds, some of who chanted dont pay it in regards to the new fines.

Earlier, Spiffys General Manager Rob Grant took to Facebook, urging supporters to attend and saying weve done nothing wrong.

We love you guys and we just want you to know that everything youve been doing, weve appreciated, Grant said. All you patriots, man, I tell you. We love you and we thank you and you guys are right on.

Since L&I first contacted Spiffys, far-right groups such as Patriot Prayer, militia group the Three Percenters and Ammon Bundys newest group Peoples Rights, formed to protest coronavirus mandates, have put their organizations support behind the restaurant and shown up to rallies. Spiffys continues to offer indoor dining despite having racked up over $100,000 in fines.

Patriot Prayer founder Joey Gibson helped organize the rally, directing supporters through Parler, a new social media site many conservatives have flocked to. Gibson also helped organize the recent freedom rally that drew in hundreds of out-of-towners to Mossyrock, where the citys mayor has said, without authority, that Inslees orders will not be recognized.

Last week, Gibson led Patriot Prayer members in an attempt to force their way into the Oregon state Capitol a demonstration that turned violent and led to several arrests. The Three Percenters, who have followed Gibson to protests in and around the county, were reported this week to have a similar plan for the Washington state Capitol.

Although some protesters were armed Tuesday and sheriffs office deputies were deployed to guard alternative entrances to the building, the protest remained peaceful. Several speakers denounced restrictions on businesses, questioned the science of the pandemic and called Inslee a tyrant. Some protesters peddled conspiracy theories about the pandemic, including that the virus is an attempt by China to engage in germ warfare.

The continued drama around Spiffys has in some instances gotten ugly. As promised, Peoples Rights identified an L&I employee involved in the Spiffys investigation, and this month protested outside his home.

In a video posted by Peoples Rights Washington, organizer Kelli Stewart, who was present at the first armed protest outside Spiffys, publicized the state employees name, age and address, comparing L&I to the Gestapo and encouraging viewers to take off your mask and open your business.

By the time were done we hope every neighbor out here understands what a little tyrant they have living in their neighborhood, Stewart said. Wed like you to leave Spiffys alone. We do not consent to the harassment of these businesses. Were paying your salary, were paying your mortgage, we pay for that spiffy little car in your driveway.

L&I spokesperson Dina Lorraine confirmed that it was the first time an employee had been identified and singled out by protesters.

You wouldnt have believed the emails that poor man has received, Lorraine said Tuesday. Were no longer putting our inspectors names on (orders of immediate restraint) because of that. So thats a change that has happened because of Spiffys.

Its a strategy Patriot Prayer has used before. In November, the group identified an Oregon Occupation Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) employee involved with the fining of a gym that had defied COVID-19 restrictions and protested outside their home.

Even with Spiffys court-ordered restraining order still in effect, and the restaurant still vulnerable to contempt of court charges, potential imprisonment and more fines, theres little sign that the establishment has plans to comply with state law. Last week, Lewis County Sheriff Rob Snaza publicly threw his support behind Spiffys, echoing ideas popular among protesters, that reopening businesses is a matter of constitutional rights. It was a public statement quickly and enthusiastically picked up by Spiffys owner and staff.

Read more here:

STATE NEWS: Protesters gather as Washington restaurants go to court - The Independent

Our Manhattan trio are enjoying the Super Bowl on TV when the power mysteriously disappears, disrupting not only the match but the plane conveying their expected guests (happily, Jim and Tessa survive, duly arriving at the party).

The cause of the disturbance is opaque: Germ warfare? Cryptocurrency? [A] selective internet apocalypse?

Is this, Diane asks, the casual embrace that marks the fall of world civilisation? The casual embrace: a very particular phrasing (then again, all of DeLillo is a particular phrasing) suggesting the incomprehensibility of failure itself, particularly in its late-capitalist American iteration. Systems are collapsing, but we are so enveloped in them we cannot perceive it even if we did, we probably wouldnt know what to do about it.

In this, as ever, DeLillos subject remains the same: the search for lost systems in the crux of everyday life. Like Bret Easton Ellis, underneath all the hip contemporaneity, a curiously old-fashioned humanism is discernible, seeking out organising principles (football in End Zone, maths in Ratners Star).

The only true north lies in modernitys aggregate detail, which DeLillo remains adept at cataloguing (plane conversation is described as an automated process, remarks generated by the nature of airline travel itself; you wonder sometimes if DeLillo carries a notebook scribbled black with these kind of riffs his modernity stanzas, his late-capitalist couplets).

In the original galley copies of The Silence, a stray line about COVID-19 found its way in, smuggled by a rogue editor. Apparently, someone hoped to make the book seem more contemporary (DeLillo excised the offending reference).

Whoever it was would have been better off picking up the occasional infelicities that were left behind. At page 39, Tessa reflects of Jims occupation, Why was this so reassuring?; 10 pages later, Diane looks at a blank screen and thinks, She could not understand why this was reassuring to her.

Credit:

One thing is clear: it is not reassuring to the reader.

There is a recurrent tendency in late-period DeLillo to invoke such rhetorical questions. They are typified by a distressing banality: What happens to people who live inside their phones?; All our lives, all this looking. People looking. But seeing what? It is a tic that hardly appears in the early work. Unfortunately, it afflicts his more recent novels with discouraging frequency, like some poor guest being repeatedly trotted out on Q&A.

When the novelist loses his talent, he dies democratically, there it is for everyone to see [...] the shitpile of hopeless prose. This is Bill Gray in Mao II, running from his own failed novel. Thankfully, DeLillo is not Gray not yet. His power isnt diminished, exactly (the strength of language remains irrepressible); but it does feel straitened, zen koanic to the point of vanishing.

How does DeLillo feel about all this? For more than 20 years, he has been saddled with the accusation of not producing anything to rival Underworld, his magnum opus, despite the myriad global cataclysms that have occurred since 1997 (many of which felt tailor-made for DeLillos brand of zeitgeist cartography). The Silence could almost be read as a cheeky shout out to James Wood, who in 2000 wrote: There are many enemies, seen and unseen, in Underworld, but silence is not one of them.

This critic (he doubts he is alone) yearns to wield such power over an authors output. Trapped in the rooted procedure, the glittering paranoias and anxieties of modernity, DeLillo can only travel hermetically inward.

A weekly read for book lovers from Jason Steger. Coming soon, sign up now.

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DeLillo delves into the mysteries at the heart of late capitalism - Sydney Morning Herald

India is witnessing transformations at an unpreceedented speed and scale. The transformations are across all spheres of activity, impacting the socio-economic and political fabric of this country. There is clearly a move towards improving livability, making it easier to do business and improving the economy. From a governance perspective, the role of the people are evovling from being a mere voter, tax-payer and a general bystander on majoity of the issues to an active participant and influencer on majority of policy issues. There has been a renewed focus on global issues such as environment and sustainability, thereby bringing about strong measures to comply with global best practices. There have been visible audacious plans proposed and implemented by the government which have helped address the pressing issues plaguing the countrys development. The nature of the economy has also evolved from being a highly monsoon dependent to being virtually drought proof, that has helped provide the policy headspace to the government to drive growth & development. Many initiatives launched by the government have led to a phenomenon of Competitive Federalization thereby promoting country-wide development.

The enablement through wide-scale technology adoption (growing usage of drones, wireless technology etc.) and innovative processes has led to improved efficiency and greater success. The growth in opportunities and urbanization in India has led to a large population being attracted to move to India. India is now being perceived as a land of opportunities and the destination of the future.

It is also leading to friction being created among the old and the young, the traditional versus the forward looking, the Haves and the Have-Nots.

Below are nine trends that I see will be shaping India in 2021.

1. Changing demographics of the most youthful nation

Demographics continue to be a major driving force for the growth and much else in India. India accounts for nearly 17% of the worlds population[1] and is experiencing rapid demographic changes, with wide implications not only for the country but also across other regions of the world.

The key demographic trend is the increasing youthfulness of the country. Roughly 50% of the population is less than 24 years old. The implications of this demographic structure have started playing out on the key trends in this country. Cable TV was introduced in the country around 25 years ago. Internet came about 20 years ago. So, we have a large part of the population that has grown up with significantly higher exposure to information and global trends. Hence, their higher levels of aspirations are driving the direction in which this country is going.

This youthful population is technologically more skilled, socially more aware, politically more involved and economically more aspirational. Many of them are what is popularly called the Digital Natives. This enables a greater penetration of technology, leading to a Digital Pervasiveness in the country. Their economic aspirations are leading to rapid urbanization and also the trend of large number of start-ups and entrepreneurship flowering.

Indias working-age population is expected to balloon up, making India the largest contributor to the global working population. This would also make India an even larger market.

It will also provide a global workforce required for Make in India. However, we need to capitalize on this demographicsin the coming decade, through human resource development on an urgent basis, else India will be left in chaos with a high population and no growth.

2. People participation

Increasingly we are observing a greater participation of the people in issues of policy making, governance and change. The advent of social media and interactive mediums has given rise to increasing velocity of citizens interactions with policy makers on various issues. Again, the trend is being primarily driven by a more aware and politically active youthful population. Correspondingly, public administration is increasingly looking to place the citizen at the centre of policymakers considerations. Citizens are increasingly questioning the leaders they elect to the national, state and local levels on a wide range of issues which range from affordable housing to international relations.

The RTI Act has also been considerably utilized as a tool by citizens groups to influence and shape government functioning over the last decade. The inflow of information through this medium has empowered citizens to ask questions on various aspects of policies and programmes, especially with regards to accountability and governance.

We have also seen people movements in the form of candle-light vigils and participation in new forms of political movements which has not only pressurized the government machinery to act on certain issues, but also has created new political forces. We are witnessing largescale people movements such as the movement by the affluent Punjab farmers to put pressure on the government to change its recently enacted laws.

In tandem with a more pervasive television access and access to social media tools such as Twitter, people movement is both feeding into and feeding off a more realtime news transmission and opinion creation. It has forced the government machinery at Centre, State and local levels to take action on matters that would have traditionally been swept under the carpet, out of public memory and considerations. This is also helping break the stranglehold of a few powerful influencers on the government machinery, increasing accountability into all arms of the government the executive, the legislative and the judiciary. This is one single most transformative trend that will continue to have considerable influence on how India transforms.

3. Urbanization

The economic aspirations, coupled with squeezing out of excess labour from agriculture, is leading to rapid urbanization of India. The urbanization is being fuelled by both, mass migration from rural areas to urban areas and rural habitations evolving into semi-urban and urban habitations.

According to World Bank estimates, an unprecedented 50% of the Indian population would be residing in urban areas by 2041. Natural growth continues to be the significant element (approx. 40 million) of urban population growth during the period 2001 to 2011, as compared to net rural urban migration (approx. 22 million).

A report by IIHS in 2011 estimates that the top 100 largest cities produce 43% of the countrys GDP, with 16% of the population and just 0.24% of the land area. Apart, from serious challenges related to habitat, transport and other facilities, it has also generated high expectations, especially among educated youth. Indias urbanization is thus playing a significant role in social transformation and economic mobility.

Urbanization in India has necessitated a phenomenal demand for land, thereby resulting in the formation of urban agglomerations. Managing population densities within Indian cities is a significant challenge in accommodating urban expansion, as is financing urban expansion and city renewal thereby calling for innovative urban planning frameworks and regulations.

The trend of urbanization is expected to kick off larger consumption of steel, cement and other commodities and manufactured goods. It would also lead to more efficient cities, thus leading to larger consumption of services. It would thus feed into the economic aspirations of a burgeoning youthful population.

The government has also stepped in to support the urbanization trend, after relative apathy for much of the first 65 years of this country. Programs of Smart City, AMRUT, Swachh Bharat and Housing for All are expected to significantly contribute to the urbanization trensd in this country.

4. Pervasive Digitization

Over the past two decades, there has been an exponential proliferation of digital technologies in the country. There are over 276 million mobile phone internet users in India as compared to 48 million users in 2012.The number of Internet users in India grew at an even more rapid rate, from 150million in 2012 to almost 350 millionin 2015, listing India on the 3rd rank globally. Again, it seems to be that a digitally more adaptable youthful population is driving the higher digital penetration in the country.

All information, things and spaces are getting digitized. We notice that not only is legacy information being digitized but also that new information is generated and consumed in a digital form. Governments are moving towards a regime where no paper certificates are required. Certificates will be digitally created and hosted.

Things are getting connected to the internet. From meters, to vehicles to pollution sensors, to shoes, glasses, watches, pacemakers, embedded medical devices everything is getting digitized and connected to the Internet under the framework of Internet of Things (IOT). And hence everything can be remotely monitored and managed, increasing the levels of automation to unprecedented levels.

Spaces are getting connected. From homes and offices to public spaces getting free WiFi and 4G connectivity. Even spaces such as cars and public transportation are getting connected, and things, spaces and information are freely communicating with each other in an all pervasive digital fabric. With technologies such as 3D printing creeping in, even products are getting digitized, with the designs being sent over to homes to be printed and created, and hence if someone is short of a cup for a dinner party, all that the person has to do is print it out without stepping out from home.

This is transforming how we work, interact, transact and live.

5. Job creators vs job seekers

The economic aspirations of the youth are driving a larger number of startups being conceived, than ever before. They are moving away from the traditional aspiration of a comfortable job to high risk, high pay off world of startups. The youthful energies of the startups are transforming the business ecosystems and having a deep impact on our lives.

Many of the startups are supported by digital technologies and are hence in the domain of e-commerce and m-commerce. This startup ecosystem is being made possible due to the fact that a more youthful population is digitally enabled. It is interesting to note that more than 70 percent of the entrepreneurs are less than 35 years of age.

With nearly three to four startups emerging every day, India ranks third in the world in terms of the number of startups. It has been estimated that the in the year 2015, the number of startups grew at a rate as high as 40%. This increase in the number of startups has, in turn, led to a sharp increase in the number of employment opportunities within India.

However, there are a large number of startups that are not necessarily in the domain of e-commerce and m-commerce, but are definitely contributing to larger job creation in the country. These are services and manufacturing companies that are emboldened by the series of business process reforms being introduced by the central and state governments, which is making it easier to do business in India.

Clearly, the movement away from being job seekers towards being job creators, is one of the most significant trends in the country.

6. The conscious citizen - environmentally sensitive responsible consumption

The combined pressures of population growth, economic growth and climate change is placing increased stress on essential natural resources in India and globally. These issues have made people sensitive towards sustainable resource management. There is a movement towards adopting policies and practices that help reduce unnecessary consumption, reversing a trend of unfettered consumption as a mark of development. Slowly but surely, people are moving towards environmentally sensitive, responsible consumption. The awareness of the majority youthful population of India to the issues of climate destruction, is pushing the political and social thought process and policy making.

The trend is clearly demonstrated by the people support received by the odd-even cars scheme by Government of Delhi, for reducing the air pollution impact by vehicles. Even at greater personal discomfort, people moved onto public transportation and car-pooling.

This is in lock-step with the global trend that has being brewing for more than a decade, fueled by the youth, who have now come to occupy places of decision making.

Indian government is getting the political space, supported by this more-aware population, to boldly put forth its Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). India has committed to reduce the emissions intensity of GDP by 33-35 per cent by 2030 from the 2005 level, achieve about 40 per cent cumulative electric power installed capacity from non-fossil fuel based energy resources with a target of 175 GW by 2022 and creating an additional carbon sink of 2.5 to 3 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent through additional forest and tree cover by 2030.

India is furiously adopting solar energy, in one of the most ambitious plans globally. Other renewable sources are also being tapped into, with cities trying to adopt more environmentally friendly transportation systems. With these ambitious yet achievable renewable energy, energy efficiency and emission reduction targets India is leading and walking the talk on the movement towards a more resourceful India and the planet.

7. Interconnectedness with the rest of the globe

With almost 40% of the GDP linked to global trade, India has rapidly become interconnected with the global economy. The interconnectedness is not just economic, but also in terms of culture, skills, technology, medicine, policy making, language and in almost all domains of life. The process that was kicked off over a hundred years ago, with Indias participation in World War I, where modern ideas and concepts started flowing into India at a much more rapid pace, has snowballed, and India is set to come back to global centre stage, by not only being influenced by global trends, but also by influencing the global trends.

As the veterans of World War I came back to India, they carried their thoughts and outlooks back into the society, transforming society. In a similar process, in pursuit of economic objectives, we are observing large movements of people from rural India (and urban India), to other countries and their interactions with the society back in their villages, is fundamentally altering age-old traditions, some even leading to aggravated class and caste frictions.

Indias cultural industry movies, music, art etc is also having deep impact globally. New words, forms of dance, forms of music, cinematography etc are evolving globally, with significant influence from India.

Similarly, Indian movies, music, art, theatre, lingua franca, are all getting deeply impacted by the global trends.

Economically, we see a continued increase in the levels of international trade and capital flows for India. We are observing that the voracious appetite of capital by India, is beginning to have noticeable influence on global capital flows.

This can have both positive and negative impacts for the economy. Indias merchandise trade as a percentage of GDP is currently hovering around 40%[2] which can substantially impact the economy. Though with the dropping oil prices the import bills are reducing and helping India maintain the targeted current account deficit as well as fiscal deficit of 3.9% of the GDP and overall inflation, however with the reduced global demand due to slowdown of Europe and China, there has been drop in exports as well. However, as the trend toward increased economic interconnectedness is expected to continue, Government of India is ensuring that they have the right policy frameworks in place to capture the benefits of trade and manage the risk through ongoing and upcoming fiscal policies like increase FDI limits in insurance, railways, defense, encouraging privatization of loss making public sector companies.

These policies are also helping in trade liberalization, economic reforms and freer movement of capital and technology from the developed world to India and helping India becoming increasingly important player in international finance, being one of the most sort after destination for investment for global investors.

8. Transformational national initiatives

The government has taken up a slew of initiatives that have been audacious in scale and transformational in nature. These initiatives have shaped the governance within the country. These initiatives are driven by the aspirations of the youthful population aspirations for better living conditions and pursuit of happiness. Unless India is able to rapidly develop and transform, it could possibly stare at an implosion driven by the disgruntled youth. And hence the urgent need for the large national initiatives.

Government programs address the wide range of issues in a structured manner. A set of programmes is aimed to provide the safety net to the vulnerable sections of the society as the nation goes through the upheavals that will emerge from such rapid transformation. These programmes include financial inclusion, targeted subsidy delivery etc. another set of programmes are focused on creating a vibrant economy that will lead to the wealth creation necessary for fueling the transformation and to meet the aspirations of the burgeoning youth. This includes programmes such as improving Ease of Doing Business in India, enabling the startup ecosystem, Make in India, largescale infrastructure development etc. A third set of programmes focus on providing a better life to its people through initiatives such as housing for all, toilets for all etc.

The scale at which the initiatives are been implemented has been audacious and transformational. For instance, a record setting 360 million bank accounts have been opened within the country under Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana. In addition to being audacious in scale, the implementation methodology has been innovative. Under improving Ease of Doing Business initiative and Smart City initiative, the country witnessed the phenomenon of Competitive Federalism. This innovative mechanism to have the Centre and the states work in alignment, is being extended to many other programmes. Furthermore, more than 30,000-40,000 citizens are giving up LPG subsidy every day for contributing to nation building. This demonstrates that the cynicism in the society is giving way to youthful morality and exuberance. Such unprecedented response from the citizens is reshaping governance within the country into a more participatory governance. It has led to the emergence of a new trend which would significantly influence the countrys future.

9. Asymmetric warfare

For a long time, India has been at the receiving end of asymmetric warfare, in the form of terrorism. A much smaller amount of effort (in the form of crafting and running terror infrastructure) from adversaries was tying down a disproportionate amount of Indian defence assets and forces. However, we witness new dimensions of asymmetric warfare emerging in the country.

The country is facing asymmetric warfare in the form of fake currencies being pumped in (economic warfare), cyberattacks, large cale migrations (which may be unintended but is exposing the country to demographic challenges), water diversion from key river systems and social warfare enabled through technology (MMS being circulated leading to social disturbances). The ability to withstand such attacks is not limited to the abilities of the military forces but require a larger capacity building within the financial institutions, diplomatic institutions an common people (possibly through curriculum change to enable them to withstand cyberattacks, such as phising, and social attacks such as the one that was witnessed in Bangalore that targeted Northeasterners), and corporates.

The trend of asymmetric warfare is only going to be amplified and emanate in several more dimensions. We have already witnessed what is possibly a global scale germ warfare, if the allegations of Covid-19 being China-made are true.

In summary, demographics, technology and governance will shape the coming year and the decade. Will it also propel India into a major prosperous economy and power that India has been striving for?

(Dr Jaijit Bhattacharya is President of Centre for Digital Economy Policy Research. Views are personal, and do not necessarily reflect those of Outlook Magazine)

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The Drivers Of 2021 - Outlook India

The Bioterrorism market study collated by researchers at Brand Essence Market Research is a detailed sketch of the business sphere in terms of current and future trends driving the profit matrix. The report also indicates a pointwise outline of market share, market size, industry partakers, and regional landscape along with statistics, diagrams, & charts elucidating various noteworthy parameters of the industry landscape.

This Bioterrorism Market report additionally covers the effect of COVID-19 on the worldwide market. The pandemic brought about by Coronavirus (COVID-19) has influenced each part of life all inclusive, including the business segment. This has brought along a several changes in economic situations.

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Latest research report on Bioterrorism Market delivers a comprehensive study on current market trends. The outcome also includes revenue forecasts, statistics, market valuations which illustrates its growth trends and competitive landscape as well as the key players in the business.

Bioterrorism is terrorism involving the intentional release or dissemination of biological agents. These agents are bacteria, viruses, fungi, or toxins, and may be in a naturally occurring or a human-modified form, in much the same way in biological warfare.

Bioterrorism refers to form of terrorism that involves intentional dissemination or release of biological agents. The agents can be viruses, bacteria or toxins and can also be referred to as germ warfare. Biological agents are mainly found in nature but sometimes they can be modified by the terrorist as to make agents more toxic. Biological agents are used by the terrorists to attain their social or political goals and are used for killing or injuring people, plants and animals. Biological weapons are dangerous as some of these agents are transmitted from one person to another and infection might take hours or days to become noticeable.

Bioterrorism is an invaluable tool as biological agents are relatively inexpensive and can cause widespread fear beyond the actual damage they can cause. They are mainly used by the terrorists to create mass panic and disruption of state or economy. The global market for bioterrorism is segmented on the type of different biological agents currently being used and their mode of delivery. Agents such as anthrax, tularemia, small pox, bubonic plague, botulinum toxin and viral hemorrhagic fevers pose a high threat to national security.

This report focuses on the global Bioterrorism status, future forecast, growth opportunity, key market and key players. The study objectives are to present the Bioterrorism development in United States, Europe and China.

The key players covered in this study Altimmune Bavarian Nordic DynPort Vaccine Company (DVC) Emergent BioSolutions Acambis Achaogen Cleveland BioLabs Elusys Therapeutics

Market segment by Type, the product can be split into Anthrax Smallpox Botulism Radiation/Nuclear defense Others

Market segment by Application, split into Military Government

Market segment by Regions/Countries, this report covers United States Europe China Japan Southeast Asia India Central & South America

The study objectives of this report are: To analyze global Bioterrorism status, future forecast, growth opportunity, key market and key players. To present the Bioterrorism development in United States, Europe and China. To strategically profile the key players and comprehensively analyze their development plan and strategies. To define, describe and forecast the market by product type, market and key regions.

In this study, the years considered to estimate the market size of Bioterrorism are as follows: History Year: 2014-2018 Base Year: 2018 Estimated Year: 2019 Forecast Year 2019 to 2025

For the data information by region, company, type and application, 2018 is considered as the base year. Whenever data information was unavailable for the base year, the prior year has been considered.

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The published report is compiled using a vigorous and thorough research methodology. A complete picture of the competitive scenario of Bioterrorism market is depicted by this report.The report consists of a vast amount of data about the recent product and technological developments in the markets.The extensive spectrum of analysis regarding the impact of these advancements on the future of market growth.The insights in the report are easy to understand and include a graphical representation of the numbers in the form of histograms, bar graphs, pie charts, etc.Components such as market drivers, restraints, challenges, and opportunities for Bioterrorism market are explained in detail.It also provides a complete assessment of the expected behavior about the future market and changing market scenario.Making an informed business decision is a tough job; this report offers several strategic business methodologies to support you in making those decisions.

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Read more from the original source:

Bioterrorism Market Report 2020 by Key Players, Types, Applications, Countries, Market Size, Forecast to 2026 (Based on 2020 COVID-19 Worldwide...

Mr Burns is probably The Simpsons biggest villain, having trodden on the town more times than Barney has belched or Disco Stu has burst into dance. He has used his riches to try and get his way on countless occasions, including blocking out the sun, enticing Bart to become his heir and killing animals just so he can wear their fur. So how much is the apple of Mr Smithers' eye really worth?

There are numerous explanations as to how Mr Burns came to be so rich.

The first one goes back to his childhood where he was the second youngest of 12 children to poor but joyful parents.

Due to his cheerful nature as a child, Montgomery Burns was called "Happy" by his loved ones.

However, everything changed when he left his family to live with a heartless billionaire who turned out to be his grandfather and former slaveholder Colonel Wainwright Montgomery Burns.

So when his grandfather died, Burns inherited all of his money and became the cruel tycoon he is today.

READ MORE:The Simpsons: What happened to The Simpsons' pet cat Snowball?

Another theory to explain his wealth is Mr Burns is a shrewd businessman who has owned several companies over the years.

This includes the Germ Warfare Laboratory, Springfield Convert Hall and the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant where Homer works.

In a small town like Springfield, Mr Burns does have the monopoly on some of its biggest and most thriving businesses so it does make sense why he is so rich.

A funnier and more absurd explanation for Mr Burns' riches is that he owns the rights to festive song White Christmas.

He gained the rights after he failed to buy Pablo Picassos Guernica but White Christmas ended up making him billions in the end with money undoubtedly still seeping into his pockets as a result.

In 2006, business magazine Forbes listed the world's richest fictional characters.

Mr Burns came in at number two with a whopping net worth of $17billion (12,752,890).

He was pipped to the post by Daddy Warbucks from the classic musical Annie who is worth around $36.2billion (27,156,154).

This has massively decreased over the years though as Mr Burns lost a lot of his fortune.

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From losing money through a market crash, to wild and unnecessary spendings, Mr Burns hasn't been the most economical.

So in 2010, Forbes revealed the wealthy Springfield resident's net worth had gone down to around $1.3billion (975,221,000).

This still makes him by far the richest person in town but Mr Burns is nowhere near as well off as he once was.

Like the majority of the cast, Mr Burns is back for the new season of The Simpsons.

The Simpsons has started airing its 32nd season on Fox in America.

UK fans sadly won't be treated to this new series until next year on Sky One.

But so far, no release date has been announced so UK viewers may have to wait some time until the comedy crosses the pond once more.

The Simpsons is available to watch on All4, Disney+ and Sky One.

Read more:

Mr Burns net worth: How much is The Simpsons' Mr Burns worth? - Daily Express

In October 2018, Davide Tanasi was off the coast of Italy, pulling teeth. His dental patients were 34 Sicilians who had been dead for the better part of 2,000 years. These Roman Christians were buried in the catacombs of St. Lucia in Syracuse, an underground city of some 8,000 dead stretched across an area about the size of the White House. Concealed among their no-longer-so-pearly whites was Bartonella quintana, a bacteria that causes a disease called trench fever, and which arrived in Roman mouths via the guts of lice.

The bacteriaits name a reference to the recurring, five-day fevers it is known to causehad likely sped some of its hosts to their graves. Tanasis subjects were just a few of the infected chronicled in a recent paper tracing the history of trench fever, published in the open-access journal PLOS One.

The vernacular name (trench fever) was coined for the diseases prevalence around the unsanitary battlegrounds of World War I. In the trenches, lice and rats capitalized on a dense concentration of humanity, and soldiers constantly got infections. The ankle-deep exposure to muck didnt help, and thoughts of a shower may as well have been fever dreams. Trench fever had a reprisal in World War II, as well, but the Sicilian cemetery precedes those conflicts by 15 centuries. World War I was the perfect storm for a major outbreak of trench fever, but the bacteria was always very much prevalent, says Tanasi, an archaeologist at the University of South Florida and a co-author of the paper.

Tanasis team was looking at 13 civilian and military sites from the last 5,000 years to study the prevalence of trench fever in different populations in France, Italy, Lithuania, Ukraine, and Russia, and see how the bacteria that causes the infection may have changed over time. The researchers didnt notice much difference in prevalence among civilians versus military groups, despite its association with warfare. The fact that the bacteria showed up on the teeth of those 34 civilian Roman Christians buried in the catacombs suggests that their living conditions were squalid, Tanasi says. When a louse starts feeding on an infected host, the bacteria proliferates in the parasites intestine. Then, when the louse moves on to a new host, it poops the virus into its host through the skin. The bacteria easily moves through the bloodstream of the infected, which is how the Romans ended up with telltale bacteria in their teeth.

Trench fever wasnt officially identified until after germ theory developed in the late 19th century, according to Carol Byerly, a historian of U.S. Army medicine who was unaffiliated with the recent paper. Besides the hallmark fever, symptoms include headaches, abdominal and shin pain, dizziness, and more.

Trench fever had been around, it was in the environment, but it was just one in a whole suite of fevers and diseases that people couldnt identify very well, Byerly says. No one wanted it, but people werent terrified of it.

Among the near-800 American soldiers in World War I who were confirmed to have the fever, two died, according to a U.S. Army medical department report. Of greater concern to troops were the other illnesses plaguing the Great Wars battlefields, including typhus, dysentery, and the flu pandemic of 1918. Trench fever has hardly gone the way of the dodo: the last outbreak in the United States was in Denver this July. Its one of several old-school bacterial infections that crop up now and again: Elsewhere in Colorado this July, a squirrel tested positive for bubonic plague.

Once the connection with unsanitary conditions and trench fever was clear, militaries made efforts to clean up their acts. The United States Army began routine delousings for their troops, Byerly says, which likely helped keep the American caseload at a fraction of that of their European counterparts, whose cases topped half a million.

The thread from the Sicilian catacombs to the wartorn fields of Europe is simple: Cleanliness is key. You put two million men in trenches and dont let them do the laundry, Byerly says. Thats how epidemics happen.

Read the original post:

Found: Cases of Trench Fever in Ancient Rome - Atlas Obscura

In the best scene of any California pandemic-era entertainment to date, a middle-aged man named Roy (played by J.K. Simmons) sits in his Irvine backyard and advises Nyles (Andy Samberg) on coping with an unthinkable apocalyptic reality.

I mean, it doesnt get any better than that, Roy says, surveying his suburban idyll in Orange Countys great master-planned community. Youve gotta find your Irvine.

Nyles, who is in existential despair, is dubious. I dont have an Irvine.

We all have an Irvine, Roy says.

The apocalypse, for Roy and Nylescharacters in the genre-bending sci-fi comedy film Palm Springs -- is the result of wandering into the wrong cave in the Coachella Valley, after which they find themselves stuck re-living the same day over and over again. Roy, who bitterly blames Nyles for their Groundhog Day predicament, at first spends this endless time loop traveling from Irvine to the desert, where he tortures and kills Nyles, over and over again.

But late in the film, Nyles for the first time goes to Irvine, where he finds Roy unexpectedly content. Roy explains that he has overcome his homicidal impulses and learned to accept his strange existence. His peace of mind comes from embracing the chance to re-live the same day with his wife and twin children.

Do we all have that place, our own Irvine? And if so, how can we access it?

Those might be the great questions of this moment. What does it take to find some space and contentment as the world collapses around us? How does one find solace as basic social structures melt down?

Its hard to be optimistic. After all, few of us could afford the real Irvine -- where the median home price is north of $900,000, and the average monthly rent is approaching $2,500 -- even before COVID scrambled our lives, jobs, and schools. For Californians, the struggle to hold on to whatever meager piece of this state we currently have is an exhausting one.

Indeed, the version of the human predicament that Palm Springs offers usstuck in a never-ending day of anxiety, phony love, violence, and bad weddingsis frightening, but nowhere near as scary as Californias future prospects.

Earlier this fall, the Institute for the Future, a Palo Alto-based think tank, constructed four future scenarios based on workshops and extensive study. The visions are pretty dark.

Do we all have that place, our own Irvine? And if so, how can we access it? Those might be the great questions of this moment. What does it take find some space and contentment as the world collapses aroundus?

The map and documents produced by the institute describe California, and American society more broadly, as stuck in its own endless loop. Our public spaces have been privatized and commercialized, undermining the civic sphere. Our educational institutions may produce some skilled workers, but not well-informed citizens. Our culture has been consumed by celebrity and polarized. The health system is wasteful, expensive, ineffective, and unequal. Skepticism has been weaponized against science. And our political system is devolving into authoritarianism.

The pandemic has exposed these failures, and deepened them, laying bare the underlying fragility of our institutions. Our economic losses have erased the last decades growth, and our job losses are likely to be worse than other states. Inequality is growing under COVID and our social fabric and supply chains are breaking. Californias ability to recover is deeply dependent on a robust and thoughtful pandemic response from our politically divided national government.

Even the more optimistic of the Institute for the Futures four scenarios are dark.

The Growth: Saving Capitalists scenario shows fiscal stimulus restoring much of the economy, but without badly needed structural change. Employment would be slow to recover, in part because companies would turn to job automation rather than re-hiring workers. Educational and income divides would grow, and the benefits of the recovery would predominantly go to rich people and politically powerful sectors, like the tech companies and airlines. Low-wage workers would be shadowed by greater debt, mental illness, and unstable employment.

A Constraint: Germ Pods scenario envisions the reorganization of society around data systems and algorithms that entrench existing wealth and racial inequalities and introduce new inequalities. This would be a segregated health dystopia. Under the guise of protecting people from disease and new pandemics, society would segment into geographic and digital clusters, or germ pods, separating those with access to testing and treatment from those without. The resulting discriminationwith separate schools, jobs, and public facilities based on your health statuswould be justified on the basis of protecting public health and safety.

That sounds like paradise compared to the darkest scenario, Collapse: Ungoverning, in which military-style confrontation becomes routine in our streets. COVID-19 triggers more systemic collapses across the country, and the battle lines are drawn: Red Hats against Blue Masks, militant police against unprecedented numbers of protestors, armed vigilantes against all calls for unity and a new order. Mass deaths becomes acceptable, and with Red Hats dominating government, every city sees blue geurrilla warfare. Police and military organizations divide and fight each other.

rBy 2030, the union is mortally fractured along political lines: cities, states, and regions are governed not by a single sovereign nation, but by a thicket of tenuous inter-jurisdictional agreements and looming violence, the scenario map document reads.

The only ray of light comes from the Transformation: Social Solidarity scenario, and it feels improbable. Under this scenario, systemic breakdowns during the pandemic inspire a renewed public commitment to broad social agendas, and to greater collective well-being. The mutual aid arrangements of today evolve into new income and health supports, and society begins to transform and redesign its broken systems. Public education is reinvented around experiential learning, while new digital governance structures, including data unions, protect privacy and marshal digital power for civic purposes.

By 2030, a Global New Deal has emerged around universal basic assets -- every humans right to the core resources that are essential to well-being.

All four scenarios suggest that the future will turn on how we address our broken systems and faltering institutions. And the Institute for the Future argues for replacement over repair of systems.

Whether we simply shore them up as best we can or make major structural changes, will largely determine whether we see a decade of renewed growth or collapse, a reckoning with long-term limits to growth, or a deep shift in both economy and culture, reads the Institutes map of the scenarios.

The next decade, the map adds, will call on us to find our way through the multiple collapsing systems. And as these systems fail, they also open pathways to something newto truly bold visions of transformation that reinvent the way we work as a society, as an economy, and as friends and neighbors.

California does have success in creating master planned communities, like Irvine. Now we need a plan for recreating essential social systems. In other words, our Irvine isnt just sitting out there waiting for us to find it. Instead, well have to imagine and build new Irvines for ourselves.

(Joe Mathews writes the Connecting California column for Zcalo Public Square.) Photo: Courtesy of Hulu. Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

Continued here:

We All Have an Irvine - City Watch

Flash! Nuclear bombs and warheads have just joined landmines, germ and chemical bombs and fragmentation bombs as illegal weapons under international law, as on Oct. 24a 50th nation, the Central American country of Honduras, ratified and signed a U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

Of course, the reality is that despite this outlawing of landmines and fragmentation bombs by the U.N., the U.S. still uses them routinely and sells them to other countries, has not destroyed its stockpile of chemical weapons, and continues with controversial research on weaponized germs which critics say has a potential dual defensive/offensive utility and purpose (the U.S. is known to have used illegal germ warfare against both North Korea and Cuba during the 50s and 60s).

That said, the new treaty outlawing nuclear weapons, which the U.S. State Department and Trump administration strenuously opposed and which it has been pressuring countries not to sign or to withdraw their endorsement of, is a big step forward towards the goal of abolishing of these horrific weapons.

As Francis Boyle, professor of international law at the University of Illinois, who helped author the international law against germ and chemical weapons, tells ThisCantBeHappening!, Nuclear weapons have been with us since they were criminally used against Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. We are only going to be able to get rid of them when people realize that they are not just illegal and immoral but also criminal. So for that reason alone this Treaty is important in terms of criminalizing nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence.

David Swanson, author of several books arguing for a ban not just on nuclear weapons but to war itself, and a U.S. director of the global organizationWorld Beyond War, explains how the new U.N. treaty against nuclear weapons, by making the weapons illegal under international law under a U.N. Charter that the U.S. is both an author of and an early signatory to, will help the popular global movement to eliminate these ultimate weapons of mass destruction.

Says Swanson, The treaty does several things. It stigmatizes defenders of nuclear weapons and countries that have them. It aids the divestment movement against companies involved in nuclear weapons, since nobody wants to invest in things of dubious legality. It aids in pressuring nations that align with the U.S. military to join in signing the treaty and abandoning the nuclear umbrella fantasy. And it aids in pressuring the five nations in Europe that currently illegally allow the stockpiling of U.S. nukes within their borders to get them out.

Swanson adds, It may also aid in encouraging nations around the globe with U.S. bases to start putting in place more restrictions on what weapons the U.S. can deploy at those bases.

Thelist of 50 nations that have thus far ratified the U.N. Treaty, as well as the other 34 that have signed it but have yet to have their governments ratify it, is available for inspection here.Under U.N. the Charters terms ratification of an international U.N. treaty requires ratification by 50 nations in order for it to go into effect. There was considerable motivation to get the final required ratification by 2021, which will mark the 75th anniversary of the dropping of the first and thankfully the only two nuclear weapons in war the U.S. bombs dropped in August 1945 on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.With the Honduras ratification, the Treaty will now go into effect on January 1, 2021.

In announcing the ratification of the treaty, which was drawn up and approved by the U.N. General Assembly in 2017, U.N. Secretary General Antnio Guterres praised the work of civil society groups around the world that pushed for ratification. He singled out among them theInternational Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, which received a Nobel Peace Prize in 2017 for its work.

ICANWs Executive Director Beatrice Fihn declared the treatys ratification, a new chapter for nuclear disarmament.She added, Decades of activism have achieved what many said was impossible: Nuclear weapons are banned.

Indeed, effective Jan. 1, the nine nations with nuclear weapons (the U.S., Russia, China, Great Britain, France, India, Pakistan, Israel and the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea), are all outlaw states until they eliminate those weapons.

When the U.S. was racing to develop the atomic bomb during World War II, initially out of concern that Hitlers Germany might be attempting to do the same thing, but later, with the object of obtaining a monopoly on the super weapon to gain control over adversaries like the then Soviet Union and Communist China, a number of the Manhattan Projects senior scientists, including Nils Bohr, Enrico Fermi and Leo Szilard, opposed its use after the war and attempted to get the U.S. to share the bombs secrets with the Soviet Union, Americas ally during WWII. They called for openness and for an effort to negotiate a ban on the weapon. Others, like Robert Oppenheimer himself, the scientific director of the Manhattan Project, strenuously but unsuccessfully opposed the subsequent development of the vastly more destructive hydrogen bomb.

Opposition to the U.S. intention of maintaining a monopoly on the bomb, andfears that it would be used preemptively against the Soviet Union after the end of WWII (as the Pentagon and Truman administration were secretly planning to do once they produced enough bombs and B-29 Stratofortress planes to carry them), motivated several Manhattan Project scientists, including German refugee Klaus Fuchs and American Ted Hall, to become spies delivering key secrets of the uranium and plutonium bombs design to Soviet Intelligence, helping the USSR to obtain its own nuclear weapon by 1949 and preventing that potential holocaust, but launching the nuclear arms race that has continued down to the present day.

Luckily, the balance of terror produced by multiple nations developing enough nuclear weapons and delivery systems to deter any one nation from using a nuclear weapon, has improbably but fortunately managed to keep any nuclear bomb from being used in war since August 1945. But as the U.S., Russia and China continue to modernize and expand their arsenals, including into space, and continue to race to develop unstoppable delivery systems like the new hypersonic maneuverable rockets and super stealthy missile-carrying subs, the risk only grows of a nuclear conflict, making this new treaty urgently needed.

The task, going forward, is to use the new U.N. treaty banning these weapons to pressure the nations of the world to eliminate them for good.

FALL FUNDRAISER

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See original here:

Effective January 1, 2021 nuclear weapons will be illegal - NationofChange

Whoever wins the US presidential election will likely not triumph because of coronavirus.

The pandemic is not among the top three issues on the minds of Americans, according to the Pew Research Centre. First is the economy, then health care (not COVID-related) and then the make-up of the Supreme Court.

Coronavirus is the fourth most pressing concern in this election and it matters more to Democrat voters than Republican.

It makes sense. Despite the tragedy of more than 225,000 dead and 8.6 million infections, there are 328 million people in the US. Most have no personal experience of the virus.

Don't know how many people you can invite over? Not sure about the best way to protect yourself at the shops? Send us a question and we will try to answer it.

According to some estimates, COVID-19 is not among the top 10 killers in the world this year. The majority of people who contract coronavirus successfully recover and many experience no symptoms.

The coronavirus crisis is not unprecedented, nor a once in a century event.

The Asian flu of the 1950s killed more than a million people worldwide. An estimated 35 million people have died from the AIDS virus since it was first identified. Just a decade ago, H1N1 (swine flu) spread far more widely albeit less lethally than COVID-19, with some studies showing it infected more than a billion people worldwide.

That is not to deny or downplay the risks of coronavirus: It is highly contagious and threatening especially to the elderly or vulnerable. To battle the virus, entire societies have gone into lockdown and the global economy has been devastated.

But beyond the numbers, personal tragedies and economic hardship or the debates about who has the most successful mitigation strategy COVID-19 haunts us.

The French philosopher Jacques Derrida coined the term "hauntology" to describe how the past hovers over our present like a ghost.

Buried in our collective memory is the fear of viruses. Throughout history plague and disease have obliterated societies. The 1918 Spanish Flu outbreak killed more people than World War I.

In our fear, we weaken our immunity to another virus that also preys on anxiety and vulnerability. This virus is a killer too, it has been with us throughout human history and there is no permanent vaccine.

It is the virus of tyranny and it is alive and growing in our world now.

To fight coronavirus we have had to surrender our freedom; we have done it willingly and on balance, for good cause. We have saved lives.

But we have to be alert to the creeping intrusion of state control into our lives. History tells us freedom lost is hard to regain.

Freedom was in retreat well before COVID-19. As part of the war on terror, western democracies have eroded civil liberties. In a growing number of countries, would-be autocratic strongmen have seized power; rule of law and freedom of expression and free press have been wound back.

Technology has invaded our privacy; foreign governments meddle in elections and fake news makes it harder to know who to trust or what to believe.

The virus of tyranny has already found itself in the bloodstream of liberal democracies.

Tyrants through the ages have exploited the fear of viruses to justify or incite the most barbarous crimes against humanity. They use the language of germ warfare.

Joseph Stalin's henchman Vyacheslav Molotov said enemies needed to "be isolated" or "society would have been infected". Heinrich Himmler sent millions to the Nazi gas chambers calling his victims "a bacterium", a "sepsis" that needed to be cauterised.

Adolf Hitler called the holocaust a "surgical procedure" to rid Europe of the "Jewish disease".

Comparisons to the Nazis are wisely avoided and Donald Trump is not Adolf Hitler. But Trump exploited fear of outsiders, promising to build a wall to keep out illegal Mexican immigrants who he said were bringing "tremendous infectious diseases" across the US border.

In China, the Communist Party has locked up a million Uighur Muslims in re-education or brainwashing camps, saying they are "infected by an ideological illness".

According to a Communist Party audio recording, the Uighur population is a malignant tumour that must be cut out.

Two years after World War II, the writer Albert Camus published his novel The Plague, about a rat-borne disease that forces an entire city into lockdown.

It was an allegory of authoritarianism. When the plague receded, Camus warned that "the bacillus never dies for good". He wrote that the virus "slumbers ... until one day it will rouse up again".

Philosopher Michel Foucault also made the link between the plagues of the 17th century and authoritarian control. Behind state imposed discipline, Foucault wrote, "can be read the haunting memory of contagions".

One of the world's leading thinkers, Bernard Henri Levy, says we need to heed the warnings of Foucault. In his latest book The Virus in the Age of Madness, Levy stresses that when the virus passes we must quickly put away the masks and return to shaking hands or we will lose some essence of what it is to be human.

He supports compliance with health protocols to deal with this emergency but is sceptical of deferring to "experts" or "science" as if there is just one scientific community and one scientific opinion.

The "scientific community", he says, is "riven with fault-lines ... petty jealousies, esoteric disputes". Levy writes that we should follow the advice of "those who know" the same way that we heed the advice of any experts: "Not blindly."

Scientific truth, he cautions, is never more than a "corrected mistake". Like Foucault or Camus, Levy warns of the dangers of the "virus of tyranny" and the need to balance freedom against the necessity to fight the pandemic.

He says health can become an obsession what he calls a "doctrine of hygienics": "All social and political problems are reduced to infections that must be treated; and the will to cure becomes the paradigm of political action".

After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the world rejoiced at the "triumph of liberal democracy". Thirty years later, democracy is in retreat, and authoritarianism is on the rise. China is fast approaching an authoritarian superpower.

That coronavirus came out of China adds to our fear and vulnerability. COVID-19 forms part of a perfect storm of decades of terrorism, war, instability and economic strife that has battered our world.

The world is haunted by contagion and tyranny; both play on our deepest fears, each feeding into the other. In COVID-19, tyranny may have found a perfect host.

To beat the disease we've all, to some degree, had to become a little more authoritarian.

See the original post:

The virus of tyranny is alive and growing and there's no permanent vaccine - ABC News