Wretchard.com

Polls show that

• 56% of Americans agree with the statement that “Journalists and reporters are purposely trying to mislead people by saying things they know are false or gross exaggerations.”
• 58% think that “most news organizations are more concerned with supporting an ideology or political position than with informing the public.”
• When Edelman re-polled Americans after the election, the figures had deteriorated even further, with 57% of Democrats trusting the media and only 18% of Republicans.

The answer? Journalists should prevail on CEOs, who are more trusted, to assure the public the press is not lying to them. “Reversing the decline is a monster task — and one that some journalists and news organizations have taken upon themselves. They’re going to need help — perhaps from America’s CEOs.”

Trust in media hits new crisis low

Fewer than half of all Americans trust traditional media.

The standard explanation for this collapse in credibility is that the public is too stupid to resist the disinformation peddled by fringe groupss. But maybe the media deserves to be mistrusted. When a viewership discovers by subsequent experience that they’ve been fed false expectations and questionable facts they tend to become cynical.

For example:

Surge of Student Suicides Pushes Las Vegas Schools to Reopen

Firmly linking teen suicides to school closings is difficult, but rising mental health emergencies and suicide rates point to the toll the pandemic lockdown is taking.

Germany to use corona meds that helped Trump

Germany will become the first European Union country to start using the same experimental antibodies treatment credited with helping Donald Trump recover from COVID-19, health minister Jens Spahn said Sunday.

Note: Behind paywall.

Biden’s Culture War Aggression

He may have needlessly crippled his chances for lowering the temperature already.

“But none of that can or will happen if the president fuels the culture war this aggressively, this crudely, and this soon. You don’t get to unite the country by dividing it along these deep and inflammatory issues of identity.”

I was not surprised. Biden couldn’t be a healer. He sold his soul to the company store to gain office. As I wrote in mid-December of 2020:

Nowhere to Go

Self-encirclement

A position with strategic potential is one full of opportunities for improved prospects. By contrast, a strategic trap is where every path leads to a worse outcome. Although the American liberals seem poised to restart all projects abandoned in 2016, in reality, they may be leaving themselves with nowhere to go. …

The big dilemma of the Democrats is they can’t compete with China while simultaneously satisfying the Woke and populist halves of the public. The objective of their foreign and domestic interests run counter to each other. There is no direction in which they can advance from their position that does not expose them to risk from another. This leaves them in a trap from which there is little chance of easy escape. The year 2020 may be remembered as a time when liberal politicians sought tactical advantage without regard to strategic continuity.

It is beginning to dawn on even Biden supporters that there’s nowhere for him to go and there are hostiles all around. The Los Angeles Review of Books rhetorically asks: “Now that Joe Biden has won his restoration candidacy, where do we go from here? Should we rebuild the system the way we left it?”

That won’t work because there’s not enough money to do it. He’s stuck good and tight. The consequences of being too weak to govern from the center is that we will pass directly from one crisis to another without even a respite.

Biden was carried into office by a coalition to whom he is now indebted. They lent him everything, including his media personality. But what is loaned can be repossessed.

Let the healing begin.

The places where anything goes, including kidnapping and blackmarket coronavirus vaccinations. Your mileage may vary.

: Philippines casinos catering to illicit Chinese gamblers causing kidnappings in Manila

In the past three years, the Philippines has emerged as a major hub for online gaming, according to Filipin…

Dozens of scantily dressed Filipina croupiers stand in booths shuffling cards in front of a webcam, their faces softly illuminated by professional lighting.
Nearby, rows of Chinese nationals sit at desks chatting on cellphones with potential clients back in China.
This is what a typical POGO — or a Philippine Offshore Gaming Operator — looks like, according to descriptions provided to CNN by several gaming experts. Some are based in abandoned malls, while others are found in converted parking lots or cheap rented offices, they say.

COVID-19 Vaccine Black Market Thriving Among Chinese Workers Employed In The Philippines

Talks of a gaining black market of coronavirus vaccines have been lurking in the shadows in the Philippines after a Filipino-Chinese civic leader said nearly 100,000 Chinese expat workers in the country have already received their shots.

The Keystone pipeline cancellation will force Canadians to find overseas markets for oil.

Keystone Pipeline Cancellation Raises Pressure on Canadian Producers

President Biden’s revocation of a permit for the Keystone XL pipeline is spurring Canada’s energy industry to seek new markets for its top export.

Mr. Biden revoked the Keystone XL permit on Wednesday, hours after taking office, effectively shutting down a 12-year, cross-border project that would have carried 830,000 barrels a day from Alberta to Nebraska and eventually to refiners on the Gulf Coast. His executive order, which fulfilled a campaign promise, cited concerns about climate change.

However the NYT thinks the cancellation will shame China into cutting emissions by reasserting American climate leadership.

“China has laid out its concrete goal but not the concrete steps to meet it,” said Byford Tsang, an analyst who focuses on China’s climate policy at E3G, a research organization based in London. “So, if Biden lays out a goal and takes concrete steps, it could put pressure on China.”

First the easy part.

Now the hard part.

AstraZeneca Warns of Covid-19 Vaccine Shortfall in Europe

The drugmaker blamed an unspecified manufacturing issue. EU leaders are facing scrutiny over what critics say has been a slow vaccine rollout.

The AstraZeneca disclosure also threatens a fresh reputational hit to the British pharmaceutical giant, which partnered with the University of Oxford in developing the vaccine. AstraZeneca is responsible for manufacturing and distribution of the vaccine, as well as regulatory approvals.

We never notice the lights that stay on, planes that fly on schedule, servers that stay up. Competence is inconspicuous.

Well there’s always the online Chinese gambling casino black market vaccination center.

Amazon “believes the best approach to an election would be conducting it in person, saying it ‘provided the NLRB with a safe, confidential and convenient proposal for associates to vote on-site, which is in the best interest of all parties—associate convenience, vote fidelity and timeliness of vote count.'”

Amazon Seeks to Postpone Alabama Unionization Vote

The technology company is pushing for in-person union ballots in place of a mail-in option that was allowed due to the pandemic.

Everybody comes … well not to Rick’s.

If you want to get a shot for the ‘Rona in the Philippines try the online Chinese gambling casino.

Black market for illegal coronavirus vaccines thriving in the Philippines

No coronavirus vaccine has been approved for general use in the Philippines, nor is one expected to arrive, officially, until at least February. But soaring demand among Chinese workers is driving a black market where vaccine doses are sold for many times the standard $30 price in China.

The bootleg vaccines aren’t limited to Chinese workers. In late December, President Rodrigo Duterte said members of the Philippine military had already taken the coronavirus vaccine from Sinopharm, a Chinese state-owned pharmaceutical company. Members of the president’s security group admitted they had received the shots, angering ordinary Filipinos who are grappling with one of the region’s worst outbreaks yet lack access to vaccines. (Sinopharm’s vaccine has been approved for general use in China, but not in the Philippines; the company did not respond to requests for comment.)

Harry Lime’s speech on selling blackmarket drugs.

Martins: Have you ever seen any of your victims?
Harry: You know, I never feel comfortable on these sort of things. Victims? Don’t be melodramatic. [gestures to people far below] Tell me. Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever? If I offered you twenty thousand pounds for every dot that stopped, would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money, or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare? Free of income tax, old man. Free of income tax – the only way you can save money nowadays.

Ideals are inevitably embodied in institutions made up of people. But since people are flawed institutions consequently betray our trust in them.

The problem every man faces is how to maintain faith in a world full of betrayal. The dilemma can be avoided by denial but only temporarily. Unless it is eventually faced and solved it will lead to terminal cynicism where the only thing left to optimize is what you will sell out for.

Since nothing in the lying institutional world can be accounted fully trustworthy the only semi-solid footing left is culture. It may not be much but it is what’s left. In the end people are loyal, perhaps irrationally to their friends, the memories of childhood and of home.

‘One good memory ‘ wrote Dostoevsky, ‘can save you all your days’. What preserves us through the trauma of betrayal is not the rational but the irrational. In the end neither love nor salvation is a matter of calculation but of choice.

Shocking.

As the palmist said:

Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help. His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish.

‘I Was Lied To’: Meghan McCain Lashes Out At Biden, Fauci And Amazon Over COVID Hypocrisy

Meghan McCain lashed out Friday at President Joe Biden, Dr. Anthony Fauci and Amazon, saying that everyone was sending mixed messages with regard to COVID-19.

McCain went on to say that she had been disappointed to see Biden and his family without masks just hours after he had signed an executive order mandating that masks be worn on federal property.

Gradually it is becoming clear that we’re living through the end of an era. The enormity of it is only now hitting home. The old certitudes are gone. We are adrift with no way back.

As governments contemplate managing the biology of entire populations, embark on social engineering and remolding the climate one might ask: what could go wrong?

Biosphere 2: What Really Happened?

More than two decades ago an alum joined seven other explorers to boldly go where no one had gone before: into a sealed, miniature Earth where they would have to survive two years on their own.

In the fall of 1991, I was sealed into an airtight, three-acre mini-world called Biosphere 2, a $150-million futuristic facility near the aptly named town of Oracle, Arizona. I joined seven other explorers in a daring, high-profile study of sustainability and the new science of biospherics—the study of closed systems that mimic Earth’s environment.

It was right out of a science fiction movie, and unlike anything previously attempted on such a scale. Our goal was to spend those two years studying how a mini-biosphere—complete with wilderness areas, a farm and a group of humans—would work with as few outside inputs as possible. A privately funded venture, Biosphere 2 had three main goals—education, eco-technology development and learning how well our eco-laboratory worked. We also hoped to help NASA and other space agencies learn more about life-support systems for long-term space missions.

The Lost History of One of the World’s Strangest Science Experiments (Published 2019)

The hummingbirds were dying. Cockroaches were everywhere. And then Steve Bannon showed up.

The scientists Joel Cohen and David Tilman wrote, “No one yet knows how to engineer systems that provide humans with the life-supporting services that natural ecosystems produce for free.”

Melting icebergs key to sequence of an ice age: New study unravels long-standing climate mystery and provides insight into how our planet may change in the future

Scientists claim to have found the ‘missing link’ in the process that leads to an ice age on Earth.

In their study, the team propose that when the orbit of Earth around the sun is just right, Antarctic icebergs begin to melt further and further away from Antarctica, shifting huge volumes of freshwater away from the Southern Ocean and into the Atlantic Ocean.

As the Southern Ocean gets saltier and the North Atlantic gets fresher, large-scale ocean circulation patterns begin to dramatically change, pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere and reducing the so-called greenhouse effect.

This in turn pushes the Earth into ice age conditions. …

Lead author of the study Aidan Starr, from Cardiff University’s School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, said: “We were astonished to find that this lead-lag relationship was present during the onset of every ice age for the last 1.6 million years. Such a leading role for the Southern Ocean and Antarctica in global climate has been speculated but seeing it so clearly in geological evidence was very exciting.”

Antarctic icebergs reorganize ocean circulation during Pleistocene glacials

Iceberg-trajectory models along with multi-proxy evidence from sediment cores from the Indian Ocean show that northward shifts in Antarctic iceberg melt redistributed freshwater in the Southern Ocean during the Pleistocene.

New scientific model solves mystery: how could climate change occur without Republicans?

Without the vaccines the world would be in a bad place. The monster didn’t go away as we hid in the basement, it just made itself at home in the kitchen. The only way out is to shoot it with drugs.

Until a few months ago the authorities weren’t really sure the vaccines would work. Perhaps “two weeeks to flatten the curve” was a psychologically necessary device to mitigate our fears.

You can give it away, but can you invent it? It wasn’t govt that ultimately rode to the rescue, but human capital.

Biden says nothing can change the trajectory of Covid pandemic over the next several months

Biden warned on Friday that as the outbreak continues, “there’s nothing we can do to change the trajectory of the pandemic in the next several months.” The president has repeatedly warned that the situation is likely to worsen before it improves.

From the Epilogue, HG Well’s War of the Worlds:

At any rate, whether we expect another invasion or not, our views of the human future must be greatly modified by these events. We have learned now that we cannot regard this planet as being fenced in and a secure abiding place for Man; we can never anticipate the unseen good or evil that may come upon us suddenly out of space. It may be that in the larger design of the universe this invasion from Mars is not without its ultimate benefit for men; it has robbed us of that serene confidence in the future which is the most fruitful source of decadence.

The big danger is the elites have learned nothing but that they must build back better and control more .

‘It’s a reality:’ Google threatens to stop search in Australia due to media code

The owner of Australia’s most popular search engine says it is prepared to shut the service down rather than pay media organisations for news content.

The $1.8 trillion search giant’s local managing director Melanie Silva told a Senate committee hearing on Friday that Google would shut off search in Australia if the government’s proposed media bargaining code becomes law. Experts said the threat is not idle, with Google likely fearful the code could set a global precedent.

Their statements need to be broadcast in full reverb.

You you you will will will obey obey obey.

Or else fall into the Pit of Oblivion.

Setting the tone.

Fury as Joe Biden removes bust of Winston Churchill from Oval Office

Downing Street today insisted it is up to Joe Biden how he decorates the Oval Office after the new US President removed a bust of Sir Winston Churchill, prompting fury from critics.

Reaction to Churchill bust removal muted for Biden after outrage for Obama

It had once been a transatlantic art scandal — or at least various actors of questionable intent would have you believe it was.

“You can always judge a man by the quality of his enemies.”
— Oscar Wilde

China Slaps Sanctions On 28 Trump Administration Officials, Including Mike Pompeo

In a statement released just minutes after President Biden took office, China’s foreign ministry said it was sanctioning those “who have seriously violated China’s sovereignty.”

In a statement released just minutes after President Biden took office, China’s foreign ministry said it had decided to sanction those “who have seriously violated China’s sovereignty and who have been mainly responsible for such U.S. moves on China-related issues.”

The list of names features former Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar; former White House trade adviser Peter Navarro; former national security adviser Robert O’Brien; Kelly Craft, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations; and Matthew Pottinger, who recently resigned as deputy national security adviser. Former national security adviser John Bolton and former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon were also included.

New data shows that the Covid-19 vaccines currently on the market may not be as effective in guarding against new, more contagious strains of the coronavirus, giving “all the more reason” to vaccinate people faster, White House health advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci said on Thursday.

Dr. Fauci says new data shows Covid vaccines appear to be less effective against some new strains

Even if the vaccines are less effective against new variants, they’ll still likely provide enough protection to make them worth getting, Dr. Anthony Fauci said.

Boris Johnson says some evidence new Covid variant in the UK may be more deadly

There is “some evidence” a new Covid variant first identified in the U.K. could be more deadly than the original strain, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Friday.

Removed to garage after photo op.

‘We feel incredibly betrayed’: Thousands of Guardsmen forced to vacate Capitol

Guardsmen were later let back into facilities after an outry from lawmakers.

One unit, which had been resting in the Dirksen Senate Office building, was abruptly told to vacate the facility on Thursday, according to one Guardsman. The group was forced to rest in a nearby parking garage without internet reception, with just one electrical outlet, and one bathroom with two stalls for 5,000 troops, the person said. Temperatures in Washington were in the low 40s by nightfall.

“Yesterday dozens of senators and congressmen walked down our lines taking photos, shaking our hands and thanking us for our service. Within 24 hours, they had no further use for us and banished us to the corner of a parking garage. We feel incredibly betrayed,” the Guardsman said.

Photos of National Guard camping in parking garage spark anger as soldiers prepare to head home following inauguration

More than 15,000 National Guard members are preparing to leave Washington, D.C., and head home.

Thousands of Guard troops from all across the country poured into D.C. by the planeload and busload late last week, in response to escalating security threats and fears of more rioting. Military aircraft crowded the runways at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, carrying Guard members into the region in the wake of the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

Guard in DC forced to sleep in garages, sparking outcry

WASHINGTON (AP) — Images of National Guard soldiers camped in a cold parking garage after being sent to protect Washington sparked new calls Friday for investigations of the U.S. Capitol Police,…

Maybe academic freedom and autodidactism is the ultimate source of educational equality.

The Education of Batman

Where do you go to school to become something that hasn’t been invented yet?