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A Public Art Project Near Londons Grenfell Tower Presents the Spiritual Work of Artist Khadija Saye, Who Died in the Tragic Fire – artnet News

Posted on July 14, 2020 by Danzig

A new public art exhibition in London is remembering the work of Khadija Saye, an artist who died in thetragic Grenfell Tower fire in 2017. Works by the artist have been installed in Notting Hill, near the site of the fire-gutted tower block where a 24-year-old Saye and 71 other victims lost their lives in the blaze.

Saye, whose work was featured in the 2017 Venice Biennales Diaspora Pavilion, often explored her own Gambian-British identity and the migration of traditional Gambian spiritual practices. Nine large-scale prints of her photographs are now being shown in the outdoor exhibition on the faade of 236 Westbourne Grove, through August 7.

The series was created from a personal need for spiritual grounding after experiencing trauma, Saye wrote of the works in a catalogue before she died. The search for what gives meaning to our lives and what we hold onto in times of despair and life changing challenges.

Khadija Saye, Andichurai(2017). Image courtesy of the estate of Khadija Saye.

The show is the first of three site-specific exhibitions spearheaded by art collector Eiesha Bharti Pasricha and curated by Sigrid Kirk as part of a series titled Breath Is Invisible, which aims to present work that addresses issues of social inequality and injustice (through October 9).

Sayes work will be replaced with new commissions by artists Martyn Ware, Zachary Eastwood-Bloom, and Joy Gregory later this summer. Portfolio sets of Sayes silkscreen prints will be sold to raise money for the program as well as the artists estate.

See some more views of Sayes work below.

Khadija Saye, Tr(2017). Image courtesy of the estate of Khadija Saye.

Khadija Saye, Kurus(2018). Image courtesy of the estate of Khadija Saye.

Khadija Saye, installation view of in this space we breathe, part of the exhibition series Breath is Invisible, 2020. Image courtesy of the estate of Khadija Saye, photo by Jeff Moore.

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A Public Art Project Near Londons Grenfell Tower Presents the Spiritual Work of Artist Khadija Saye, Who Died in the Tragic Fire - artnet News

The Far-Right Revolution Was Waiting for an Opportunity. Now, It’s Here. – The Intercept – First Look Media

Posted on July 14, 2020 by Danzig

Members of the so-called Boogaloo movement, attend a demonstration against the lockdown over concerns about Covid-19 on April 18, 2020 at the State House in Concord, N.H.

Photo: Michael Dwyer/AP

Mutated through new information technologies and drawing strength from feelings of economic and demographic dislocation, fascist and sectarian ideologies have found a home in the hearts of members of a new generation of Americans.

Whether most people have connected the dots or not, a violent struggle is already playing out. Over the past few years, a steady drumbeat of massacres have been carried out by extremists associated with the new far-right. These attacks have targeted synagogues, mosques, and communities where immigrants are concentrated. In their wake, the shooters left behind manifestos damning a world that they claimed was shrinking in space for people like them.

What these ideologues drifting within the currents of this movement have really been waiting for, however, is a real crisis, one that would give them an opportunity to put their ideas of racial warfare and ethnic purification into full effect. That crisis is here.

The combination of the coronavirus and the sudden collapse of the American economyhas given society an exogenous shock unseen in generations. The pandemic and the social tensions it has unleashed are likely to supercharge the forces that gave rise to the new far-right extremism, even as they produce countervailing energies that could revive the best promises of liberalism.

Engaging in political predictions is a foolish, high-risk, low-reward activity. But having followed the iterations of this new extremist ideology at home and abroad and grappled with the fact that there is a pool of young men who have proven themselves willing to die for it it strikes me as irresponsible to not advise people to brace for what is on the horizon.

Although some have yet to accept it, the U.S. is in the midst of an unstoppable cultural and demographic transition into multiculturalism. The natural challenges entailed in such a shift should not be ignored. It is incumbent upon everyone to do their part to make it a success, whileensuring that everyonefeels they have a place in this country.

This demographic shift, though, has also given rise to serious anxieties among some within the majority community anxieties that helped enable the rise of a white nationalist named Donald Trump to the presidency. These majoritarian sentiments are likely to escalate as minority groups grow to embrace their own forms of racial consciousness, often based on redressing past injustices suffered at the hands of the majority.

The current wave of national protests was triggered by a killing with strong sectarian overtones another Black man killed by a white police officer. From a historical perspective, countries that have experienced wholesale economic collapse at the same time as exploding ethnic tensions have often had a difficult time dealing with that, to put it mildly. The United States still has a lot of resources at its disposal to handle these challenges, but the gravity of the present situation should not be understated.

Americans are experiencing levels of unemployment unprecedented in their modern history. According to some estimates, nearly half of these jobs may never return. At the same time, stunning acts of symbolic cultural transformation are playing out in real time. As statues of polarizing figures tied to Americas European founding come crashing down one after another, often with the support of liberal white Americans, the political project of those on the extremes particularly white nationalists is simultaneously jeopardized and emboldened.

On the surface, it seems that events are driving the U.S. in the opposite direction of white nationalist goals and that they will likely taste defeat. But, on the other hand, a structural collapse of American society that fractures it along ethnic lines is the prerequisite for their own dark vision of a society purified by the fires of racial violence.

For white nationalists, this is a crisis as well as an opportunity.

One of the things that white nationalists have always been interested in is imposing their own understanding of time: a narrative of what the past looked like and what the future should look like, said Alexandra Minna Stern, the author of Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate: How the Alt-Right is Warping the American Imagination. In that sense, the coronavirus and the protests have destabilized time. History is being rewritten and the marginalized are being recognized.

For white nationalists, this is a crisis as well as an opportunity, Stern said. In their opinion, movements like Black Lives Matter are a form of identity politics par excellence. If it is succeeding and gaining currency, then in their view white racial consciousness might rise as well.

This is not to equate the Black Lives Matter movement with white nationalists of course. But amid the roiling social changes we are now witnessing, many of them progressive, far-right identitarians also see an opportunity at hand.

It should go without saying that it is a choice to view things from an ethno-nationalist perspective. In the U.S., that choice is today not an obviously popular one. A large proportion perhaps even the majority of the tens of millions who came out into the streets in the unprecedented protest movement triggered by the killing of George Floyd were white Americans. It remains to be seen how long this support will last, but the spontaneous outrage over the murder of an unarmed Black man by a white police officer is noble and encouraging.

However, those white people who are ethno-nationalists and there are many of them will likely view these developments much more darkly: as a sign that they are on the verge of being displaced from their privileged historical role in American society, or, even worse, reduced to a marginalized minority. In a country with loose social bonds and easy access to weaponry, it doesnt take many people thinking that way to do serious harm.

If you peer into the shadows, you can already see the contours of a threat that will be with us for years to come. In early May, a group of men, described by prosecutors as having U.S. military experience, were arrested and charged with trying to spark violence as part of a broader plot to cause the collapse of the federal government and trigger a civil war. A number of shootings and car-ramming attacks carried out during the recent protests should signal that there are people ready for their most extreme beliefs to reach praxis.

Even more ominously, for a state hollowed out by years of elite corruption, there are signs that law enforcement agencies and the U.S. military have been infiltrated by individuals adhering to far-right ideologies. If a serious crisis comes, history suggests that it will be people like this with access to training and guns whose defection to the side of the extremists would have the most dire implications.

At the same time, just as it is wrong dangerous even to promote essentialized racial categories that lump together huge numbers of diverse people, it would be a mistake to impute onto the far-right movement a unity that it does not possess. Not all of the various subgroups are willing to engage in violence nor do they all hold the same views on every issue. To the extent that the far right can be described as having a unified perspective, it is on the issues of race and immigration. On this count, the spread of the coronavirus and the minority-led protest movement in the U.S. are two sides of the same coin: both products of globalization, which is the one force that they are united in their desire to destroy.

We should expect the far right to continue waging this battle to undo globalization with whatever tools are at its disposal, legal and illegal, violent and nonviolent. Those of us who have to live with the reality of a complex, cosmopolitan world including the tens of millions of Americans and Europeans of minority backgrounds whose very existence and identity is a product of that reality must negotiate an appropriate response. The one thing we cant do is fall into a trap of believing that this conflict doesnt exist, or that it can be ignored.

For those whose ultimate goal is a multipolar world where everyone is siloed and in their own place, recent events are seen as a rebuke against globalization, said Benjamin Teitelbaum, an expert on the far right at the University of Colorado, Boulder and the author of a new book about former Trump guru Steve Bannon called War for Eternity: Inside Bannons Far-Right Circle of Global Power Brokers.

If one takes the view that the primary expression of decadence in our age is cosmopolitanism, said Teitelbaum, the only way to survive that age is through a militant anti-cosmopolitanism.

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The Far-Right Revolution Was Waiting for an Opportunity. Now, It's Here. - The Intercept - First Look Media

Antifa is anonymous, militant and ill-defined but there’s still little evidence they’re to blame for riots in Spokane | Local News | Spokane | The…

Posted on July 14, 2020 by Danzig

click to enlarge

Antifa activists do exist, like this woman in Bulgaria, but evidence of antifa at recent Spokane protests is questionable at best.

Antifa was planning to riot in Spokane and North Idaho.

That, at least, was the claim put forth in the widely shared images that set local right-wing circles in a tizzy in November of 2017. Antifa never showed. The same claim was shared in November of 2018. Antifa didn't show.

But this year, there actually were riots, including in Spokane.

While Spokane's protest on May 31 was largely peaceful, there were exceptions. Windows at downtown businesses like Nike were shattered and merchandise was stolen by looters. Protesters threw water bottles and other objects at police officers. A man threw a crude attempt at a Molotov cocktail. And that night, Spokane Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich blamed "a group of antifa socialists" for the destruction.

He doubled down in a press conference the next morning.

"There's a lot of reporters that have contacted me this morning: 'Are you sure it was antifa?'" Knezovich said. "I'm going to give you one definitive answer. And the answer is yes."

He says he had information from confidential informants. He says that officers had seen antifa T-shirts. He says that antifa came here in the three vehicles and were communicating with Motorola headsets.

"We had all the earmarks from the Portland area," Knezovich says. "Let's just stop the nonsense. Let's own what's happened here."

Today, more than a month has passed since the initial protests in Spokane.

No evidence has been released by law enforcement to support the notion that anybody connected to the antifa movement was directly responsible for any of the looting, destruction or violence at the May 31 rally in Spokane. Nearly all of the arrests that have been made have been locals, including several who already had a criminal background.

Antifa is a very loose assortment of secretive groups and anonymous individuals dedicated to aggressively and occasionally violently opposing white supremacists and other far-right groups. In the last few years, footage of squads of black-clad and masked antifa activists brawling with right-wing Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer hooligans in the streets of Portland repeatedly made national news.

But ever since the protests against racism and police brutality cropped up in May, antifa has taken on a new role in the public imagination: riot scapegoat. Antifa agitators have repeatedly been blamed for the fires, violence, vandalism and looting that have been perpetuated by a fraction of protesters. And local protest organizers like longtime left-wing activist Dustin Jolly worried that all the antifa blame could obscure their police reform message.

"You have a lot of scared people," Jolly says. "[A Black Lives Matters protest] isn't something to be scared of. This isn't antifa trying to come in and burn all your businesses down."

ANTIFA EVERYWHERE AND NOWHEREThe claim that antifa was to blame for the protest violence was a national phenomenon, put forward by figures like President Donald Trump and Attorney General William Barr.

On June 22, the Washington Post's Fact Checker column, in a "Four Pinocchio" fact-check, noted that there hadn't yet been a "single confirmed case in which someone who self-identifies as antifa led violent acts at any of the protests across the country."

While a self-proclaimed antifa supporter was subsequently arrested for trying to tear down the Andrew Jackson statue in Washington, D.C., Jessica Reaves, editorial director with the Anti-Defamation League's Center on Extremism, tells the Inlander that "we have not seen any evidence of substantial or organized, quote, 'antifa' presence at these rallies," she says.

In Spokane, however, Jolly confirmed he did see a few people at the week's first protests wearing gear with antifa logos and not local activists he recognized. Kurtis Robinson, the president of the local NAACP, says that he referred concerns about potential antifa violence to the Police Department before the first protest.

And Knezovich, who accuses journalists locally and nationally of scrambling to try to shield antifa from responsibility, hasn't altered his original conclusions. He claims that agitators were accomplices to crimes by directing the young people who committed the violence and destruction using communication gear. So far, however, nobody arrested in Spokane has been tied to antifa.

"We're still putting cases together on some of those folks," Knezovich says. "I'm not gonna be able to give you a lot of information."

To bolster his claims of antifa violence, Knezovich connects Spokane Police Chief Craig Meidl into a conference call with the Inlander.

But Meidl doesn't go nearly as far with his claims. There was an incident, Meidl says, where a number of protesters surrounded a police car, including a woman with a megaphone who identified herself as antifa. However, in that incident, nobody was harmed and no property was damaged.

"We know there were people claiming to be antifa, and seemed to be trying to rally and stir things up," Meidl says. But at this point, he says, he hasn't been able to say they were specifically involved in any damage.

"We've never come out and said it was 'this group' or 'that group,'" Meidl says. "Unless we were able to physically make that arrest, it was challenging to identify people involved."

Even then, it's not like antifa activists generally carry membership cards in their wallets.

Reaves says the days of being able to identify antifa activists or anarchists by their black clothing, helmets, or masks are over they've been widely adopted by protesters of all stripes. And with the spread of coronavirus, masks are often a sign of following the law, not breaking it.

Spokane Street Aid founder Rebecca Daignault-Walker passes out fliers to protesters that tell people to mask up for multiple reasons: "Not only are masks and goggles vital for slowing the spread of COVID-19, but they're also good for helping to remain anonymous while protesting."

To Knezovich and Meidl, carrying gas masks, wearing body armor, and lugging around jugs of tear-gas neutralizing milk is evidence protesters are ready to riot. But some protesters say it's more about being prepared for violence from the police.

"Police have shown they are not afraid to fire on peaceful protesters," Daignault-Walker says.

WHAT DOES ANTIFA MEAN TO YOU?Even for those who proclaim their allegiance to antifa's principles, the meaning is amorphous.

To Knezovich, antifa is a leaderless terrorist group, the latest incarnation of anarchists "dedicated to the overthrow of the capitalist system of America."

"Antifa is a domestic terrorist threat," Knezovich told an Idaho GOP group this March during one of his signature "Threats We Face" presentations. "There's no ifs ands or buts about it."

The radical who was killed last year while trying to bomb the ICE detention center in Tacoma with a propane tank claimed in a manifesto to be antifa.

But to others, "antifa" is more of a philosophy or a tactic than an organization. Anyone opposed to neo-Nazis and white supremacists is antifa, a definition so broad as to include Martin Luther King Jr., Indiana Jones and Knezovich himself.

"Everyone at a Black Lives Matter protest is antifa because they're all there to protect black people from fascism," says Jeremy Logan, vice-chair of the Spokane's Democratic Socialists of America.

Still, the Inlander reached out to the established antifa groups in the region and asked for comment.

A message sent to the Emerald City Antifa Facebook page resulted in a response that the Inlander's questions sounded like they came from "either a grifter or a fed" and that we should accept "the copious amounts of evidence and reports showing that cops are lying sacks of shit."

"What do you want, a schedule of where all the antifas were and what we were all doing instead of plotting made-up shit in Spokane?" the Emerald City Antifa wrote.

("You're expecting these groups to say, 'Yeah, we are involved in starting riots?'" Knezovich scoffs.)

A voicemail message left with the website associated with Portland's Rose City Antifa resulted in a phone call a week later from an antifa activist who uses the pseudonym "Morgan." Citing the risk of right-wing backlash or law enforcement repression, her group is strictly anonymous, making it difficult to verify any of their claims.

Still, when asked if Rose City Antifa sent anyone to the protests in the Inland Northwest, Morgan laughs.

"No," she says. "We respect the autonomy of organizers and activists in Spokane and Northern Idaho to determine how they want to respond to things."

But Jolly and other progressive activists the Inlander spoke with weren't aware of any local antifa groups.

Morgan says there had been a group with a similar philosophy to antifa Spokane Anti-Racist Action but wasn't aware if it was still active. Their last Facebook post was nearly a year ago.

Morgan suggests Rose City Antifa has been involved in the protests in Portland, but stresses that they haven't led them or organized them. But she won't talk details. As a matter of principle, antifa won't reveal tactics, even to condemn them. They won't say who's a part of antifa and who's not.

Asked how I should know, then, if any action is associated with antifa, Morgan is blunt.

"You don't," Morgan says.

And yes, she knows that can be a problem.

"As long as we remain anonymous, which we will forever, people can choose to think whatever they would like about the group of mystery people," Morgan says. "It does open us up to a lot of unfounded conspiracy theories and attempts to make us out to be boogeymen."

Groups like antifa are used as an excuse, she adds, to "avoid addressing the actual concerns of black people and black organizers."

"People were saying 'antifa is everywhere,' but we're saying 'No, they're not.' They're not driving everywhere."

THE MASQUERADEAnyone can wear the antifa mask. Even far-right trolls.

On May 31, @Antifa_US Twitter account announced that "tonight's the night, comrades" that they would attack residential areas and "take what's ours." It was a hoax perpetrated by Identity Evropa, a genuine white supremacist group.

Fake Twitter and Facebook accounts with names like "Beverly Hills Antifa" have abounded in the last three years, including in Spokane.

"What we are seeing is a fair amount of disinformation from right-wing extremists targeting antifa," says Reaves, with the ADL.

In early June, the rumor that antifa was traveling from town to town in vans or buses, starting riots, was pervasive in right-wing circles across Idaho, Washington and Montana. In Forks, Washington, locals cut down trees to prevent a multiracial Spokane family of campers from leaving, believing them to actually be a busload of antifa members.

On June 2, the Washington Fusion Center, a public safety intelligence hub for Washington state agencies, warned police chiefs and sheriffs to be wary about putting out information about antifa without verifying it, warning of an ongoing "disinformation campaign."

"Information like antifa was driving around in vans everywhere and coming to every little community," Washington State Patrol Lt. Curt Boyle, director of the Fusion Center, tells the Inlander. "People were saying 'antifa is everywhere,' but we're saying 'No, they're not.' They're not driving everywhere."

The incorrect info was so pervasive and coming from so many different directions, Boyle says, that they weren't able to determine whether it was intentional disinformation or simply mistakes that went viral.

To this day, Knezovich says, his department hasn't been able to "nail down" any of the three antifa vehicles he claimed had arrived in Spokane. While he says that vehicles with Seattle-based license places parked in "strategic locations" in Spokane during the third week's protest, there wasn't any violence during the third week protest.

But once currently confidential information comes to light, Knezovich is certain that he will be vindicated.

"Eventually, I hope we can release some of this," Knezovich says. "I want to have that conversation. It's time. I've never seen people work so hard to discredit anything."

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Antifa is anonymous, militant and ill-defined but there's still little evidence they're to blame for riots in Spokane | Local News | Spokane | The...

Govt calls on UK to ‘seize opportunities’ of Brexit in transition campaign – CampaignLive

Posted on July 13, 2020 by Danzig

The UK government has launched a campaign preparing businesses for a "new relationship" with the European Union, following last years widely mocked100m "Get ready for Brexit" activity.

Created by MullenLowe ahead of the end of Britains transition period on 31 December, "Check, change, go" urges businesses to "get moving" and "seize new opportunities".

Addressing a need to "plan ahead" and check government guidelines for changes following Brexit, the ad calls on companies to "set our course as we transition to our new relationship" with the EU.

Making its TV debut tonight (Monday) at 7:45pm during Coronation Street on ITV, activity also includes radio, out-of-home, digital and print, as well as SMS and webinars all of which direct businesses to the government website to find out more about how to adapt to a post-Brexit economy.

However, with negotiations between the UK and EU yet to conclude (and, in the eyes of some commentators, yet to make any meaningful progress), much remains unknown about how the relationship will actually look come January 2021.

The work was written by David Parker, art directed by Laila Milborrow and directed by Simon Ratigan through HLA. Media strategy is led by Wavemaker and media buying is handled by OmniGov.

"Were delighted to have extended our relationship with the government and to be given responsibility for such nationally critical communication," Tom Knox, executive partner at MullenLowe, said.

In September 2019, the government launched its 100m Brexit preparedness campaign, "Get ready for Brexit" (created by Engine), that aimed to prepare the public for the possibility of a no-deal departure from the EU on 31 October.

The campaign received an onslaught of complaints from viewers who claimed the ads were "misleading", before eventually being paused following the government's decision to extend the date of the UK's departure to 31 January 2020.

More than half of the campaign's planned 100m budget remained unspentand areport from the National Audit Office later revealed that the campaigns 46m adspend was largely ineffective.

In February, the government unveiled the "Ready to trade" campaign, led by the Department for International Trade, a day after the UK formally left the EU.

Campaign reported in May that agencies on the government roster had pitch for a brief on the Brexit transition process.

Govt calls on UK to 'seize opportunities' of Brexit in transition campaign - CampaignLive

Liz Truss is suddenly worried about a Brexit deal but for the wrong reason – The Guardian

Posted on July 13, 2020 by Danzig

The international trade secretary, Liz Truss, joins a long list of people concerned that the UK may not be as ready for Brexit on 1 January 2021 as it needs to be.

In a letter to cabinet colleagues this week, she has reportedly raised concerns that the UK will not be operating a World Trade Organization (WTO) compliant border when we leave the EU. It was an embarrassing revelation, particularly coming on the same day as the UK was nominating her predecessor, Liam Fox, as the man to lead the WTO into a new era.

Truss joined an array of business groups in the UK, as well as the Scottish and Welsh governments and the Northern Ireland Assembly, who have argued Britain needs more time: either to seek an extension to the transition period, or to seek an adjustment period once transition ends to allow business to get ready.

On 1 July, the UK lost its right to ask for an extension to the transition period, under the terms of the withdrawal agreement with the EU. It might be able to engineer more time at a later point, but that is more risky legally and will depend on a heap of EU goodwill. For now, the only basis on which to plan is that we need to be ready on 31 December at 11pm to complete the process of Brexit, deal or no deal.

The immediate crunch is that this means government and business need to be ready to operate on two new borders: a border with the EU27 across the Channel, and a border between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

The shape of the Irish sea border is clearer. The text was agreed last October. But the UK government initially refused to acknowledge the political inconvenience of what it had actually conceded, impeding proper preparation. The government is gradually admitting what was in the small print when it signed up to the deal: there will be customs forms, there will be border inspection posts.

But there are big issues outstanding. Two weeks ago, Michel Barnier told the House of Lords EU committee that detail in key areas was still lacking. It was a long list: customs, tax, VAT, duty, sanitary and phytosanitary arrangements, and fisheries. The thing Truss is most worried about is the readiness of the dual tariff regime; designed to allow Northern Ireland to stay behind the EU external customs border but remain part of the UK customs territory and benefit from new trade deals that may be negotiated. That promise was important to unionists in Northern Ireland.

The depth of the Irish sea border also depends on the UK-EU deal. But even if the EU simply signed on the dotted line of the UKs draft texts, businesses trading with the EU or Northern Ireland will have to be ready for big changes.

On Monday we will find out the detail of the UKs border operating model, but we know now that the EU will treat the UK as a third country with new checks, forms and bureaucracy. The negotiations will determine how intrusive they are and whether there are tariffs on top. Whatever happens, it will be very different.

Some businesses will already be preparing; others will have pushed it down the to-do list as they struggle with Covid-19. Expect a Get ready for Brexit this time its for real campaign soon to persuade businesses who sensibly banked on a transition last year that they cant put it off any longer.

Meanwhile, the UK government has already admitted that it wont be able to operate a fully functioning border between Great Britain and the EU on 1 January (not a luxury it has for the Great Britain-Northern Ireland border). Instead changes will be phased in, so only this time next year, 1 July 2021, will it be fully operational.

Truss is worried that before then, by waving EU imports through, we will face complaints in the WTO. There may be reputational damage, but the WTO will not act fast and by the time it does, we should have a functioning border up and running.

She should be more worried that many of the businesses she wants to benefit from her new trade deals beyond the EU will instead be struggling to cope with the disruption they face in maintaining trade with the UKs biggest export market.

Jill Rutter is a senior research fellow at UK in a Changing Europe

Liz Truss is suddenly worried about a Brexit deal but for the wrong reason - The Guardian

The Guardian view on Brexit and trade: an expensive geography lesson – The Guardian

Posted on July 13, 2020 by Danzig

It is possible that Boris Johnson meant it when he said last year that Brexit would not involve checks on goods moving between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, but only if he did not understand the deal he had signed. His position made sense as dishonesty or ignorance. It was never true.

As Brexit talks continue in London this week, it turns out the government has submitted to the EU its application to put border control posts at Irish Sea ports. That is a necessary act of compliance with the Northern Ireland protocol in the withdrawal agreement.

Since Brussels demands that the single market boundary be policed, and the UK made a commitment not to police it on the island of Ireland, a sea border was inevitable. That did not stop Mr Johnson pretending otherwise. On Wednesday a leaked cabinet letter revealed that the border risks being dysfunctional even after the prime ministers scheme is enacted. The root of these problems is the failure to grasp the importance of the single market to the European project and a refusal to acknowledge the cost of Britains departure from it.

Eurosceptic arguments asserted the primacy of markets elsewhere in the world, in search of which Britain needed release from burdensome Brussels rules. The fact that more than 40% of UK exports go to the EU was dismissed as a relic of membership. The geographical proximity of those markets was belittled as an obsolete 20th-century metric.

But proximity matters to the EU, which sees in Brexit the prospect of commercial rivals trading into the single market from a low-cost entrept on their doorstep. Brussels wants to write guarantees against that scenario into a trade deal. UK negotiators resent conditions that they say are more onerous than those applied to Canada, for example. But Canada is thousands of miles further away.

Setting aside the question of how reasonable the two sides are being (each could yield a little), the essential problem is that distance matters to trade, and a Brexit model that was conceived in denial of that fact puts the UK at a disadvantage in the negotiations. Fantasy still stalks UK trade policy, as evidenced in Downing Streets nomination of Liam Fox as a candidate to be director general of the World Trade Organization. Dr Foxs cabinet record of resignation in disgrace, then rehabilitation through ineffectual jet-setting, will not be taken seriously in the competition.

Mr Johnson defers encounters with reality, but cannot avoid them indefinitely. He will compromise over Brexit, just as he did last year. The only question is whether it happens before or after transitional arrangements end in December. The terms of a deal with Brussels are not so different either side of the deadline, but the cost is higher if it is missed. In either case, Brexit is proving to be a slow and expensive way to teach the prime minister about geography.

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The Guardian view on Brexit and trade: an expensive geography lesson - The Guardian

The Observer view on post-Brexit UK-China relations – The Guardian

Posted on July 13, 2020 by Danzig

Anger and alarm about China is mounting rapidly in government circles and especially among Tory rightwingers, anxious about national security, unfair trade practices and Hong Kong. Its certainly true that the increasingly aggressive behaviour of President Xi Jinpings authoritarian regime is deeply worrying. Its a pity that the Tory grandees who are making the most noise now did not raise their concerns much earlier, before Britain became dependent on Beijings favours to escape its Brexit mess.

As pressure grows on Boris Johnson to exclude the telecoms company Huawei from the UKs 5G rollout and to review Chinese investment in nuclear, transport and other security-related projects, Iain Duncan Smith and former ministers David Davis, Liam Fox and Owen Paterson are backing an interparliamentary alliance to scrutinise Chinas activities. Separately, Tories in the new China Research Group, modelled on Westminsters pro-Brexit European Research Group, are boldly promising greater vigilance.

China believes it can exploit British economic, financial and political neediness to get its own way

Of immediate concern is Chinas draconian national security law in Hong Kong. Beijings curt dismissal of British protests was followed by threats of unspecified consequences should the UK open its borders to millions of British overseas passport holders in the former colony. This in turn has focused Tory attention on wider problems, including Chinas escalating intimidation of Taiwan and its punitive measures against Australia following Canberras call for an independent inquiry into the pandemic.

In an interview with the Hudson Institute last week, Duncan Smith was rich in hindsight. In a race for trade and investment over the past decade, he said, the free world has marched somewhat blindly into the embrace of [the] Chinese Communist party. Unfortunately, it was now clear that China was intent on complete dominance globally. Speaking to the BBC last month, he went so far as to suggest that revolution was afoot: While China is a great nation, its posing a threat to the natural order.

Leaving aside what Duncan Smith meant by the natural order, all this Tory angst comes a bit late, and sounds a tad hypocritical. Why on earth, if the threat is so great, did these people not speak out when David Cameron and the then chancellor, George Osborne, launched their bogus golden era in UK-China relations, promising ever closer ties? Where were they in 2015 when Dave took Xi down the pub for a pint? Providing the crisps, perhaps.

Even if they had not yet heard of the brutal treatment of Xinjiangs Uighurs, were they truly unaware of Chinas long record of oppression and social engineering in Tibet? Were they themselves among those blind free world decision-makers who wilfully disregarded the anti-democratic nature of Communist rule, Chinas predatory trade and debt practices, its industrial espionage, intellectual property theft and systematic persecution of dissidents, writers, academics, Christians and journalists?

Its hard to imagine that such eminent parliamentarians were oblivious. So why did they not object earlier? One possible explanation is that Duncan Smith, Davis, Fox, Paterson and other new-minted human rights defenders were ardent Brexiters, before and after the 2016 referendum. Their overriding priority was pushing Brexit through and for this the appearance of a friendly relationship with economically powerful China was crucial.

A key argument perhaps the key argument of Brexit ministers and their supporters was that Britain, freed from the EUs shackles, would forge independent, mutually beneficial and respectful trade, business and investment relationships with the worlds leading powers, principally the US and China. Predictions that leaving the EU would, on the contrary, weaken Britains sovereign control and freedom of action were rejected out of hand.

Yet now, six months after Britain formally left the EU and only a few short months away from a calamitous no-deal crash, what is Britains position? It is some way off even a basic trade pact with the EU. Desperate to cut a deal with Washington, its ability to resist unpalatable US demands declines by the day. Donald Trump is even pushing Britain to sign a loyalty oath, giving preference to the US over China. He wants UK backing for his dangerous new cold war narrative. Therein lies another huge trap.

In China itself, meanwhile, Britain faces a vastly more powerful, scornful opponent that lacks respect for its values, believes (with some justice) that it can exploit British economic, financial and political neediness to get its own way, and which does as it likes in Hong Kong as evidenced by last weeks withering tirade from its London ambassador, Liu Xiaoming.

How to understand the contradiction between the hard Tory Brexiters previous positive take on China as a partner for global Britain and their open hostility now? Its not difficult. As international trade secretary, for example, Fox boasted in 2018 of cutting lucrative deals during successive visits to Beijing. This, they said, was the future. In their blind fervour for Brexit at any cost, they did not think things through.

Britain requires balanced, boundaried relationships. Yet thanks to these short sighted Tories, the UK is more limply beholden than ever to not one but two overbearing foreign powers with hegemonistic tendencies and nasty tempers. Too late they realise their mistake.

The Observer view on post-Brexit UK-China relations - The Guardian

No-deal Brexit will raise cost of UK household staples, say retailers – The Guardian

Posted on July 13, 2020 by Danzig

The cost of household staples, ranging from meat and cheese to school uniforms and drinking glasses, will substantially increase if there is no Brexit trade deal, British retailers have warned.

With just six months to go before the UK leaves the EU entirely by exiting the single market and the European customs union, retailers fear further damage to a sector already reeling from the coronavirus crisis, with 5,600 job losses announced on Thursday from Boots and John Lewis alone.

In a report on the prospect of a no-deal Brexit, the British Retail Consortium (BRC) said the public should be aware that no deal will mean a hike in the prices of not just luxury goods but ordinary household goods that every consumer has to buy and replenish.

Its not foie gras that were talking about, its mince, its cheese, its oranges, you know, said Aodhn Connolly, the director of the Northern Ireland Retail Consortium in a Brexit press briefing.

It doesnt matter whether its Great Britain, or its Northern Ireland, the people who will suffer most because of these cost rises will be those people who are most economically vulnerable.

The BRC has calculated that beef, which is imported in huge quantities from the Republic of Ireland, will go up in price by 48%, with cheddar cheese, another staple imported from across the Irish Sea, expected to cost 57% more.

Oranges from Spain will cost 12% more, while the price of cucumbers will rise by 16%. Trousers imported from Italy will have a 12% levy slapped on them , porcelain kitchenware will also go up by 12% and drinking glasses made in Poland up 10%.

Connolly said it was a misunderstanding to think that retailers and their suppliers had built up huge Brexit war chests and added that Covid-19 had exposed the fragility of the supply chain.

The ability and bandwidth, both financially and time-wise, of retailers to deal with a no-deal Brexit at the end of this year has been greatly diminished, he said.

About half of all food consumed from restaurants or shops comes from the EU, with 30% of produce in supermarkets from the bloc.

Trade deal talks continued this week in London, with the second face-to-face meeting between negotiators Michel Barnier and David Frost. Little was said to suggest that progress had been made and public pronouncements last week suggested they were a long way from a deal.

Deal or no deal, the UK is facing a new trading regime from 1 January as the country exits the single market and the customs union, forcing customs and food health checks on goods entering the country.

That is going to increase a level of friction that we havent seen since 1972, said the BRC trade expert William Bain.

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No-deal Brexit will raise cost of UK household staples, say retailers - The Guardian

Government’s costly Brexit media blitz shows ‘Project Fear’ is becoming reality – The New European

Posted on July 13, 2020 by Danzig

Opinion

PUBLISHED: 16:47 13 July 2020 | UPDATED: 17:35 13 July 2020

Layla Moran

The government's new Brexit media blitz. Photograph: UK Government/PA.

Archant

Liberal Democrat MP LAYLA MORAN points out the governments information Brexit blitz comes from the same politicians who have spent years spinning and lying about the reality of the UKs withdrawal from the EU.

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Even by the standards weve come to expect from this government, the latest announcement of a 93 million Brexit publicity campaign is particularly brazen. At a time when the NHS urgently needs more support and people who rely on welfare are struggling to pay the bills, ministers are spending millions of pounds on a self-indulgent advertising blitz. This comes on top of another 705 million being spent on new infrastructure at the border to cope with leaving the EU customs union at the end of the year.

This is a shockingly irresponsible use of taxpayers money at a time we should be focusing our resources on tackling this pandemic. Ministers had to be forced kicking and screaming to spend 120 million on free school meals for deprived children over the summer. Yet when it comes to promoting the supposed benefits of Brexit, it appears that no expense is being spared. The government sadly seems more interested in promoting Brexit propaganda than helping vulnerable families get through this crisis.

The reality is though that no amount of slick marketing can cover for the fact that the governments stubborn pursuit of Brexit is going to cost us all. The new campaign talks about ensuring we are all ready to seize the opportunities that the end of the transition period on 31 December 2020 will bring. But if you look at the detail, the only real opportunities being offered are to pay higher travel insurance and mobile roaming charges when going on holiday to the EU.

Back during the referendum in 2016, the Vote Leave campaign claimed that warnings about Brexit making holidays abroad more expensive was talking Britain down. Now this Vote Leave government is spending millions of pounds telling UK citizens thats exactly whats going to happen. You really couldnt make it up. This is a government led by people who built their careers on spin and lies. Its vital that all progressive parties work together to hold them to account.

First of all, that means continuing to fight to stop a no deal Brexit at the end of the year. I have tabled legislation in Parliament that has received cross-party backing and which would give MPs a vote on extending the transition period. The official deadline to request an extension may now have passed, but as academics have pointed out there are still imaginative solutions that could be found to get round this issue. I am strong believer that in politics, where theres a will theres a way. We must not let the government steamroller us into a damaging no deal Brexit that the majority of the public dont support and that nobody voted for.

Second, we must continue protecting the rights of EU nationals and others from abroad who have made the UK their home, including the thousands working in the NHS and social care. The announcement that care workers will not qualify for the governments new Health and Care visa was a worrying sign of what is to come. It is disgraceful that those risking their lives each day helping vulnerable people during this pandemic are being told theyre not skilled enough to qualify for a visa. Our social care system relies on overseas carers, we should be welcoming them in not shutting them out.

Finally, we must keep up the fight to maintain close ties with our European neighbours, including in securing the medical supplies our NHS needs. On Friday, the Government inexplicably announced it would be walking away from a joint EU vaccination scheme that could have helped drive down costs and secure supplies of a vaccine once one is developed. Its crucial that these decisions are properly scrutinised, and that opposition MPs work together to ensure ministers cannot get away with putting political dogma over public health.

Layla Moran is a Lib Dem MP and a contestant in the partys leadership race.

Almost four years after its creation The New European goes from strength to strength across print and online, offering a pro-European perspective on Brexit and reporting on the political response to the coronavirus outbreak, climate change and international politics. But we can only rebalance the right wing extremes of much of the UK national press with your support. If you value what we are doing, you can help us by making a contribution to the cost of our journalism.

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Government's costly Brexit media blitz shows 'Project Fear' is becoming reality - The New European

Scotland TERRIFIED: Fears of Brexit economic chaos as EU talks reach deadlock – Express.co.uk

Posted on July 13, 2020 by Danzig

The Scottish Governments latest economic report reveals a no deal Brexit would have significant impact on economic activity in Scotland.The fears are now being raised less than six months before the end of the Brexit transition period when the UK will no longer have to follow EU rules.

The Scottish Government has repeatedly called for the transition period to be extended with First Minister Nicola Sturgeon writing to Boris Johnson warning that "fundamental issues" still remained between the UK and EU negotiators.

Scottish Government sources told Express.co.uk that the economy north of the border was in jeopardy stressing it was a delicate time especially after a deadlock in recent negotiations.

They added there was severe concern especially at the six month mark adding the coronavirus pandemic had already left businesses in a vulnerable state stressing that no deal and no extension to the transition period would make things significantly worse.

The monthly economic report added: As we also move towards formally exiting the EU transition period (31 December 2020) uncertainty regarding future trade arrangements with key markets has the potential to impact already weakened business sectors and have a significant impact on economic activity, particularly if there is no deal.

READ MORE:SNP shamed: Thousands of British Troops to be compensated by Boris

Dr Liz Cameron, chief executive of the Scottish Chambers of Commerce, told Express.co.uk that many businesses still lack clarity as to what the future holds.

Dr Cameron stressed that Scottish businesses required detailed answers on a wide number of issues if they are able to plan properly for the changes that will come when the transition period comes to an end.

She concluded: Our Scottish Chamber Network continues to call upon the UK Government to prioritise flow across the border, not adding costs or bureaucracy to businesses who are already dealing with major trading challenges due to the coronavirus crisis.

Whatever deal is done, Scottish businesses must be able to compete effectively.

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The Scottish Chamber of Commerce is actively involved in talks involving trade with new markets.

The report also revealed Scotlands GDP fell by 2.5 percent in the first quarter of 2020 which was mainly driven by a 5.0 percent fall in output in March as the spread of coronavirus and introduction of lockdowns slowed economic activity.

It continued: COVID-19 has resulted in an economic crisis in Scotland, through the direct impact on the economy but also the secondary impacts on health and society from a weaker economy.

The impact of COVID-19 is not constant, and will be changing over time, depending on the prevalence of the virus and the severity of the restrictions required to protect against it.

Scotland has already felt the impact of the pandemic after figures showed GDP fell 18.9 percent in April, the first full month of lockdown, and around 23 percent over March and April combined.

However, figures for the month of May are due to be published by the Scottish Government next week.

Scottish Finance Secretary Kate Forbes has already spurred into action and asked the Treasury to give Holyrood extra tax powers or 500m in further funding.

She warned there was a 500million hole between the extra cost of the COVID-19 pandemic and the funding given to Scotland from Westminster.

Chancellor Rishi Sunak gave 800m to Scotland through his Summer Mini-Budget however but the MSP dismissed this stressing it didnt meet Scotlands needs specifically.

Ms Sturgeon wrote in her letter to Boris Johnson: "No-one could reproach the UK Government for changing its position in the light of the wholly unforeseeable Covid-19 crisis, particularly as the EU has made it clear it is open to an extension request.

"We therefore call on you to take the final opportunity the next few weeks provide to ask for an extension to the transition period in order to provide a breathing space to complete the negotiations, to implement the outcome, and the opportunity for our businesses to find their feet after the enormous disruption of recent months.

"At the time the Withdrawal Agreement was signed, no-one could have imagined the enormous economic dislocation which the Covid 19 pandemic has caused - in Wales, Scotland, the whole of the UK, in the EU and across the world."

The letter claimed that, at best, there would only be a "bare bones" trade deal in place by December, or a move to a no-deal exit from the EU.

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Scotland TERRIFIED: Fears of Brexit economic chaos as EU talks reach deadlock - Express.co.uk

Scotland threatens to defy UK’s post-Brexit legislation – FT – Reuters UK

Posted on July 13, 2020 by Danzig

File Photo: Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon reacts after delivering a speech on 'Scotland's European future after Brexit', in Brussels, Belgium, February 10, 2020. REUTERS/Yves Herman

(Reuters) - The Scottish government has warned it would defy a proposed UK legislation that will allow Westminster unilaterally to set food and environmental standards, the Financial Times newspaper reported on Wednesday.

The Scottish National Party will challenge in the courts the legislation that will give London unilateral control to police the UK's "internal market", Michael Russell, Scotland's cabinet secretary for constitutional affairs, told the newspaper on.ft.com/3favMWy.

The proposed UK internal market bill is going to give London the powers to force Wales and Scotland to accept whatever new standards were agreed in future trade agreements on environment, animal welfare and food, the report added, citing a source.

Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Christian Schmollinger

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Scotland threatens to defy UK's post-Brexit legislation - FT - Reuters UK

Anne Applebaum: how my old friends paved the way for Trump and Brexit – The Guardian

Posted on July 13, 2020 by Danzig

Anne Applebaum can look at the wreck of democratic politics and understand it with a completeness few contemporary writers can match. When she asks who sent Britain into the unending Brexit crisis, or inflicted the Trump administration on America, or turned Poland and Hungary into one-party states, she does not need to search press cuttings. Her friends did it, she replies. Or, rather, her former friends. For if they are now embarrassed to have once known her, the feeling is reciprocated.

Applebaums latest book, Twilight of Democracy: The Failure of Politics and the Parting of Friends, opens with a scene a novelist could steal. On 31 December 1999, Applebaum and her husband, Radosaw Sikorski, a minister in Polands then centre-right government, threw a party. It was a Millennium Eve housewarming for a manor house in the western Poland they had helped rebuild from ruins. The company of Poles, Brits, Americans and Russians could say that they had rebuilt a ruined world. Unlike the bulk of the left of the age, they had stood up against the Soviet empire and played a part in the fall of a cruel and suffocating tyranny. They had supported free markets, free elections, the rule of law and democracies sticking together in the EU and Nato, because these causes surely were the best ways for nations to help their people lead better lives as they faced Russian and Chinese power, Islamism and climate change.

They were young and happy. Historys winners. At about three in the morning, Applebaum recalls, one of the wackier Polish guests pulled a pistol from her handbag and shot blanks into the air out of sheer exuberance.

Applebaum was at the centre of the overlapping circles of guests. For the Americans, she was a child of the Republican establishment. Her father was a lawyer in Washington DC and she was educated at Yale and Oxford universities. Now her Republican friends are divided between a principled minority, who know that defeating Trump is the only way to save the American constitution, and the rest, who have, to use a word she repeats often, collaborated as surely as the east Europeans she studied as a historian collaborated with the invading Soviet forces after 1945.

Even when she was young, you could see the signs of the inquiring spirit that has made her a great historian. She went to work as a freelance journalist in eastern Europe while it was still under Soviet occupation and too drab and secretive a posting for most young reporters. She then made a standard career move and joined the Economist. But it was too dull for her liking and she moved to the Spectator in the early 1990s. The dilettante style of English conservatism charmed her. These people dont take themselves seriously and could never do serious harm, she thought, as she watched Simon Heffer and his colleagues compete to see who could deliver the best Enoch Powell impersonation. She came to know the conservative philosopher Roger Scruton and Margaret Thatchers speechwriter John OSullivan, figures taken with unwarranted seriousness at the time. They had helped east European dissidents struggling against Soviet power in the 1980s and appeared to believe in democracy. Why would she doubt it? How could she foresee that Scruton and OSullivan would one day accept honours from Viktor Orbn, as he established a dictatorship in Hungary, whose rigged elections and state-controlled judiciary and media are now not so far away from the communists one-party state.

What was life in the English right like then, I asked in a call to her Polish lockdown in that restored manor house in the countryside between Warsaw and the German border. It was fun, she said.

It isnt now.

Her husband knew Boris Johnson. They were both members of the Bullingdon Club at Oxford. She assumed that he was as much a liberal internationalist as Sikorski was. When the couple met Johnson for dinner in 2014, she noted his laziness and all-consuming narcissism, as well as the undoubted charisma that was to seduce and then ruin his country. In those days, Johnson appeared friendly. He was alarmed by the global challenge to democracy, he told them, and wanted to defend the culture of freedom and openness and tolerance. They asked about Europe. No one serious wants to leave the EU, he replied, which was true enough as Johnson was to prove when he came out for Brexit.

As for the Poles at the party, they knew Applebaum as a friend who had co-authored a Polish cookbook, and published histories of communism, which never forgot its victims.

Today she is a heretical figure across the right in Europe and America. Many of her guests would damage their careers if they admitted to their new masters they had once broken bread at her table.

Heretics make the best writers. They understand a movement better than outsiders, and can relate its faults because they have seen them close up. Religions can tolerate pagans. They are mere unbelievers who have never known the way, the truth and the light. The heretic has the advantages of the inside trader. She can use her knowledge to expose and betray the faithful. One question always hangs in the air, however: who is betraying whom? Although Applebaum has left the right, and stopped voting Conservative in Britain in 2015 and Republican in the US in 2008, she can make a convincing case that the right betrayed her.

In person, Applebaum combines intense concentration with an exuberant delight in human folly. You can be in the middle of a deadly serious conversation and suddenly she will break into a grin as the memory of a politicians hypocrisy or an incomprehensible stupidity hits her. As the western crisis has deepened, the intensity has come to dominate her writing as she provides urgently needed insights.

You can read thousands of discussions of the root causes of what we insipidly call populism. The academic studies arent all wrong, although too many are suspiciously partial. The left says austerity and inequality caused Brexit and Trump, proving they had always been right to oppose austerity and inequality. The right blames woke politics and excessive immigration, and again you can hear the self-satisfaction in the explanation.

Applebaum offers an overdue corrective. She knows the personal behind the political. She understands that the nationalist counter-revolution did not just happen. Politicians hungry for office, plutocrats wanting the world to obey their commands, second-rate journalists sniffing a chance of recognition after years of obscurity, and Twitter mob-raisers and fake news fraudsters, who find a sadists pleasure in humiliating their opponents, propelled causes that would satisfy them.

Applebaum let out a snort that must have been heard for miles around her Polish home when I mentioned the journalist and author David Goodharts pro-Brexit formulation that we are living through an uprising by the people from somewhere against the people from nowhere a modern variant on the old communist condemnations of rootless cosmopolitans, incidentally. Its a war of one part of the elite against another part of the elite, she says. Brexit was an elite project. The game was to get everyone to go along with it. Were all the southern Tories who voted for it a part of the oppressed masses? And who do you think funded the campaign?

She is as wary of the commonplace view that supporters of Trump, say, are conformists, who have been brainwashed online or by Fox News. They may be now in some part, but brainwashing does not explain how populist movements begin. Their leaders werent from small towns full of abandoned shops and drug-ridden streets. They were metropolitans, with degrees from Oxford in the case of Johnson and Dominic Cummings. The men and women Applebaum knew were not loyal drones but filled with a dark restlessness. They may pose as the tribunes of the common people now but they were members of the intellectual and educated elite willing to launch a war on the rest of the intellectual and educated elite.

Populist activists are outsiders only in that they feel insufficiently rewarded. And their opponents should never underestimate what their self-pitying vanity can make them do.

One of Applebaums closest Polish friends, the godmother of one of her children, and a guest at the 1999 party, provided her with the most striking example. She moved from being a comfortable but obscure figure to become a celebrated Warsaw hostess and a confidante to Polands new rulers. She signalled her break and opened her prospects for advancement with a call to Applebaum within days of the Smolensk air crash of April 2010. She let her know she was adopting a conspiracy theory that would make future friendship impossible.

Outsiders need to take a deep breath before trying to understand it. Among the dead was Lech Kaczyski, the president of Poland, who controlled the rightwing populist party Law and Justice with his twin brother, Jarosaw Kaczyski. The party has grown to dominate Polish politics, and the supposedly independent courts, media and civil service. The flight recorder showed that the pilot had come in too low in thick fog, and that was an end to it. Jarosaw Kaczyski and his underlings insist that the Russians were behind the crash, or that political rivals in Warsaw, including Applebaums husband, allowed the president to fly in a faulty plane, or that it was an assassination. Repeating the lie was the price of admission to Law and Justices ruling circles and the public sector jobs they controlled. As Applebaum noted in the Atlantic magazine: Sometimes the point isnt to make people believe a lie its to make people fear the liar. Acknowledge the liars power, and your career takes off without the need to pass exams or to display an elementary level of competence.

Other friends from the party showed their fealty to the new order by promoting antisemitic conspiracy theories. The darker their fantasies became, the more airtime Polish state broadcasters gave them. They had not suffered or been left behind in any way, Applebaum says. Yet they happily worked for propaganda sites that targeted her family. Because she is married to a political opponent of Law and Justice, and because she writes critical pieces in the international press, Applebaum, who had faced no racism in Poland until Law and Justice came to power, was turned by the regimes creatures into the clandestine Jewish coordinator of anti-Polish activity.

I once believed you should never let politics destroy a friendship. But that maxim depends on politics not turning into a danger to you and those you love. Applebaum could not stay friends with women who would not protest as the state they supported went for her and husband.

The Anglo-Saxon world is not so different from Poland and Hungary. Britain has handled Covid-19 so disastrously because only servile nobodies, willing to pretend that a no-deal Brexit would not harm the country, could gain admittance to Boris Johnsons cabinet. As Johnson politicises the public sector, showing fear of the liar looks like becoming the best way to secure a job in the higher ranks of the civil service as well. American Republicans have had to go along with every lie Trump has told since his birther slur on Barack Obama. As for breaking friendships, British Jews broke theirs when they watched friends in Labour cheer on Jeremy Corbyn and thought: If they ever came for me and my family, you would stand by, wouldnt you?

Careerism is too glib an explanation for selling out, and Applebaum is too good a historian to offer it. Likewise, bigotry and racial prejudice were never enough on their own to move her friends away from liberal democracy. Among Applebaums acquaintances is one of Orbns greatest cheerleaders. She has a gay son, but that has not stopped her espousing the cause of a homophobic regime. Laura Ingraham, a Fox News presenter, became one of the earliest supporters of Trump, despite the fact that she has adopted three immigrant children.

Rather than grab at standard explanations, Applebaum understands that a society based on merit may sound fine if you want to live in a country run by talented people. But what if you are not yourself talented? Since the 1950s, criticisms of meritocracy have become so commonplace they have passed into cliche. Not one I have read or indeed written stops to consider how one-party states represent the anti-meritocratic society in its purest form. Among her friends who became the servants of authoritarian movements, Applebaum sees the consequences of the lust for status among resentful men and women, who believe the old world never gave them their due.

They were privileged by normal standards but nowhere near as privileged as they expected to be. Talking to Applebaum, I imagined a British government abolishing press freedom and the independence of the judiciary and the civil service. I didnt doubt for a moment that there would be thousands of mediocre journalists, broadcasters, lawyers and administrators who would happily work for the new regime if it pandered to their vanity by giving them the jobs they could never have taken on merit. Hannah Arendt wrote of the communists and fascists that they replaced first-rate talents with crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity was the best guarantee of their loyalty. She might have been talking about contemporary Poland, Britain and America.

Given the right conditions any society can turn against democracy, Applebaum says, and explains why better than any modern writer I know. To the political consequences of offended vanity Why am I not more important? Why does the BBC never call? a sense of despair is vital. If you believe, like the American right, that godless enemies want to destroy your Christian country, and prove their malice by not giving you the rewards you deserve, or think, like Scruton and the Telegraph crowd of the 1990s, that English culture and history is being thrown in the bin, and you are being chucked away with it, or agree with the supporters of the new tyrants of eastern Europe that a liberal elite is plotting to extinguish your culture by importing Muslim immigrants, and proving its contempt for all that is decent by laughing at you, then any swine will do as long as the swine can stop it. You will pay any price and abandon any principle in the struggle against a demonic enemy.

Shouldnt she have seen it coming, I ask her. Shouldnt she have realised that the world she inhabited included authoritarians, who would turn on her and everything she believed in. Typically, instead of huffing, puffing, and trying to pretend she has never been in the wrong, she laughs and admits that she probably should have asked harder questions sooner of her former friends.

Readers should be glad she bided her time. Applebaum can bring a candle into the darkness of the populist right precisely because she stayed on the right for so long. She does not know whether it can be beaten. Shes a journalist not a soothsayer. But I know that if you want to fight it, her writing is an arsenal that stores the sharpest weapons to hand.

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Anne Applebaum: how my old friends paved the way for Trump and Brexit - The Guardian

Brexiteers be alert again Whitehall still trying to scupper a real Brexit – briefingsforbrexit.com

Posted on July 13, 2020 by Danzig

Harry Western worries that a series of appointments and leaked pronouncements from the Department of Trade reveal attempts to water down the content of Brexit.

To a casual observer, the UK looks to be on course to leave the EU fully at the end of this year with either no trade deal or a deal of the bare bones sort, either of which would deliver on the governments avowed aim of delivering a genuinely independent trade policy. But over recent days, a series of troubling developments have occurred that cast serious doubt on this. Each individual development can easily be dismissed as minor but taken together they form a clear pattern of a serious and well-organised insurgency aimed at forcing the UK into close alignment with the EU.

The most worrying of the developments is the announcement of a new agricultural commission to advise on food standards and trade policy. This was set up in the wake of an aggressive and well-funded campaign, led by the NFU, which featured a mass of misleading claims and scare stories about food imports. We highlighted just how inaccurate some of these arguments are in recent articles here and here.The names of individuals who will sit on this commission have now been announced and it could hardly be worse. There is an almost total absence of genuine expertise in the field of agricultural trade and economies, with the commission instead top-heavy with NFU representatives (who can be expected to lobby for the status quo or something even worse) and environmental activists with a penchant for taking farming back to some kind of prelapsarian state when peasants toiled happily in wildflower meadows.

There can be little doubt that a commission so constituted will aggressively oppose the kinds of changes to UK agricultural regulations and trade restrictions that are essential if the UK is to cut worthwhile trade deals with the US, Australia, New Zealand and other agricultural producers. If its recommendations are followed, the UKs aspirations to a global free-trading future will soon be snuffed out.Two other bad signals have recently emanated from the Department of International Trade (DIT). The first was the announcement of a review into the DITs modelling of trade deals. In principle we think this is a good idea as we think this modelling has significant weaknesses and misses some of the key channels by which free trade deals could benefit the UK economy.

But the motives behind the setting up of this review look fishy its chair is an economist who is close to very vocal Remainers, one of whom has already announced that the purpose of the panel is to guarantee the integrity of the analytical process and ensure DIT modellers are not pushed into producing results that simply support ministerial views. Apparently, we should also not expect any upgrading of the modelling because it is already very highly regarded.

So, it is pretty clear that what we have here is not a genuine attempt at intellectual inquiry or technical improvement but rather a bureaucratic attempt to circle the wagons and defend the existing approaches. The key point about this is that the existing modelling approaches show very low economic returns to free trade deals that is, they support the argument that Whitehall has been making for years that an independent trade policy isnt worth having.

The second worrying signal from the DIT was a leaked letter from Trade Minister Liz Truss to senior Cabinet colleagues. This strange communication was stuffed full of the obstructionist arguments Whitehall figures have been using for the last four years to try to scupper a genuine Brexit. The governments decision to phase full border controls on EU trade in over six months was attacked as risking a surge in smuggling from the EU, legal challenges at the WTO and damage to Britains reputation all entirely specious claims.

Most worrying though, was that Northern Ireland again reared its head. Northern Ireland has been one of the key leverage points Remainers in government have tried to exploit to frustrate a real Brexit. In this leaked letter, Truss raises the prospect of all GB goods heading to Northern Ireland being subject to the EU external tariff and wrings her hands about damage to the Union as a result.

Where has this claim come from? It is certainly not what the government laid out in its recent publication on the future of GB-NI trade. Apparently, the source of this plan is HMRC, which might start the alarm bells ringing given their record of producing inept and exaggerated analysis in this area. HMRC recently made the outlandish claim that the number of customs declarations made by the UK might rise to 400 million from next year. This is a massive increase from its previous claim of 250 million, which was already extreme. To put in context just how absurd this new estimate is, it is considerably higher than the total number of customs declarations made by all EU countries in 2018 (343 million).

What should we make of all this? You might think that the DIT would be front and centre in supporting the push for an independent UK trade policy. Instead, the Minister appears to be dancing to the tune of officials whose agenda is the precise opposite. The elements in Whitehall who have been trying to prevent a real Brexit and force the UK into a high-alignment relationship with the EU have not gone away and are still using all the same arguments and tactics.

Worryingly, the government shows few signs of doing anything about this, either in terms of countering these arguments and scare stories, replacing the relevant officials or putting in place clear plans and systems (e.g. on NI trade) which would render these arguments redundant. So Brexiteers must again be alert the spectre of a Chequers-style fake Brexit, which we previously warned about, is still roaming the corridors of power.

Harry Western is the pen-name of a senior economist working in the private sector

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Brexiteers be alert again Whitehall still trying to scupper a real Brexit - briefingsforbrexit.com

UK Government ‘planning to withhold power from Scotland after Brexit transition’ – HeraldScotland

Posted on July 13, 2020 by Danzig

The UK Government is planning to withhold power from Scotland and Wales when the Brexit transition ends, according to reports.

The Financial Times reports a 'state aid proposal' is expected to appear in a bill this autumn which would give Westminster statutory powers to control policies for the entire UK.

The potential legislation could see state aid policiesfor all evolved nations controlled solely by Westminster.

READ MORE:Opinion: Mark Smith: Scottish independence is not inevitable, but we all need to change the way we look at it

Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has said this would be 'a full-scale assault on devolution'.

She tweeted on Monday morning: "Make no mistake, this would be a full-scale assault on devolution - a blatant move to erode the powers of the Scottish Parliament in key areas.

"If the Tories want to further boost support for independence, this is the way to do it."

FT reports the legislation would enable Westminster to force both Scotland and Wales to accept whatever new standards regarding food, environment and animal welfare it agrees in future discussions and agreements with other countries.

The transition period ends on December 31, and state aid remains to be one of the most contentious issues in UK negotiations with the EU.

READ MORE:Scottish economy performance worst in the UK in June amid slower reopening from coronavirus pandemic lockdown

The governments in Scotland and Wales have said that this policy should be devolved to them, however, the UK government insists it should be down to them.

Scotland's Constitution Secretary Mike Russell has previously said plans to enshrine a UK "internal market" after Brexit would seriously undermine devolution, describing them as a potential "power grab".

In a letter to Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove, Mr Russell said he is concerned about proposals for an external body that would "test" whether a bill in Holyrood affected the UK's internal market and plans for a "mutual recognition regime", which he said could lower regulatory standards beyond what the Scottish Parliament found acceptable.

In response, Mr Gove accused him of trying to "confect" a political row.

Commenting, SNP Westminster Leader Ian Blackford MP said: "Boris Johnson's outrageous plan for a power grab on the Scottish Parliament is another shameless Tory attack on devolution - and we will resist it every step of the way.

"Yet again, Scotland is being completely ignored by Westminster. If the Tory government goes ahead with this attempt to roll-back devolution they will drive support for independence up even further.

READ MORE:Opinion: Iain Macwhirter: Does Nicola Sturgeon still want independence? Some in the SNP aren't so sure

"Westminster has proved itself to be utterly incapable of acting in Scotland's interests. With the exception of the Scottish Tories, who have completely isolated themselves, the Scottish Parliament is united against moves to erode Scotland's devolution settlement.

"It's time for Jackson Carlaw to come out of hiding, find a backbone, and join the SNP in opposing this completely unacceptable move. Otherwise he will prove the Scottish Tories only exist to do Boris Johnson's bidding - however damaging.

"Scotland has been ignored throughout the Brexit process, shut out of the trade negotiations, and now our interests are being bulldozed for a Tory-Trump deal. It is clearer than ever that the only way to protect Scotland's interests and our place at the heart of Europe is to become an independent country."

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UK Government 'planning to withhold power from Scotland after Brexit transition' - HeraldScotland

A new CEO, Brexit and supply-side exposure may leave Wipros Q1 earnings more dented than others – Business Insider India

Posted on July 13, 2020 by Danzig

So far this year, Wipros share value continues to be down by 8%. However, it has managed to come back from its coronavirus hit by almost 40% since March 19.Advertisement

The product and platforms side of the business may show resilience, expects Nirmal Bang. However, the key segments to keep an eye on will be the impact on engineering research and development (ER&D) and energy, given Wipros large exposure to both.

Like with TCS, there is likely to be a hard impact of Brexit compounding the weakness in Europe on manufacturing. Advertisement

We anticipate that we will resume providing revenue guidance when we have increased certainty of both demand and supply-side factors, Wipro said last quarter.

SEE ALSO:Tech Mahindra, Intel, Wipro and other multinationals hiring engineers

TCS and Infosys to face least impact Indian IT companies likely to report sharp decline in revenue during first quarter

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A new CEO, Brexit and supply-side exposure may leave Wipros Q1 earnings more dented than others - Business Insider India

Web-based platforms provide supporting resources for Penn Medicine staff – Penn: Office of University Communications

Posted on July 13, 2020 by Danzig

At the onset of the coronavirus pandemic in March, Joanna Hart, a pulmonary and critical care physician at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, and her teams livesnot to mention her familyschanged quickly and dramatically. Her job structure looked different, new safety and operational plans were in place, and, at home, she was juggling her career with caring for two young children with her husband.

That challenge felt especially acute when her children, a 7- and 3-year-old, were suddenly home from school and daycare.

I think that particularly women in academics are barely hanging on as it is, Hart, an assistant professor of medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine, explains. And then to have these increased family responsibilities and caregiver responsibilities you didnt anticipate, it felt like walking a tightrope. Like a potentially career-threatening thing to have happen.

Recognizing that, she says Penn reached out to employees like her early on to make PennMedicineTogether known as an available resource. PennMedicineTogether is a central web hub that provides resources in support of Penn Medicine staff. The website links to resources for physical health, access to life necessities, and means to care for their familiesplus, a thank-you page with notes from hundreds of Penn Medicine patients and their families.

For Hart, she says she was able to use the website as a way to connect her 7-year-old sonwho she emphasizes is very socialwith volunteer-facilitated, interactive activities to do through Zoom. He completed a theater program and a session of charades.

I really appreciate that Penn put real thought and resources into making sure people who have kids at home are able to sneak in work time and have provided whatever resources they could in a virtual environment, to support child care and allow me to do meetings and write for 45 minutes, Hart says. And get my workday back.

Were all in this together, and I think thats our most important message. Were here to help each other navigate what is the rest of this crisis. Lisa Bellini, senior vice dean for academic affairs at the Perelman School of Medicine

Lisa Bellini, senior vice dean for academic affairs at the Perelman School of Medicine, credits the success of PennMedicineTogetherit has already accrued more than 91,000 page views and 32,000 usersto Penn Medicines resilient spirit, from the get-go. Planning for the pandemic, at-large, began as early as December, she says, while approximately 20 staff members came together quickly at the onset of the pandemic to create PennMedicineTogether as a staff resource.

People really just came to the table with these wide agendas of, We cant leave until we figure this out, Bellini says. And it was incredibleits still incredible. And part of PennMedicineTogether is giving people the resources to stay resilient, recognizing that we are all going to deal with the anxiety and uncertainty [of the virus] in different ways. Some of this is normalizing the fact that we all have some anxiety and its going to be expressed a little differently in all of us.

Work on PennMedicineTogether began in the third week of March and was launched two weeks later. The mission: to broadly develop new resources and integrate ones that already existed and scale them. Perspectives were sure to include and focus on behavioral health, psychology, and innovation.

I feel good about the progress weve made since this launched, says Stephanie Taitano, director of faculty professional development at Penn Medicine.

Taitano sits on a Wellness Committee that contributes to the development of PennMedicineTogether.

Its been incredible to see the kinds of generosity in the community, from Philly vendors and individuals who want to offer goods and services and words of thanks and gratitude, she says. One of the most popular pages by far is the gratitude page, where people go to not only look at the messages but also submit their own and their images of gratitude.

Many of the sites features and initiatives, she adds, have been ideas submitted by the Penn community. Among examples: a volunteer program that coordinates meals to be delivered to frontline workers, and the kids programming Hart used for her 7-year-old son.

Integral to PennMedicineTogether as a resource is PennCOBALT, a new web-based platform developed in the early weeks of the crisis that matches health care workers to mental health resources and the appropriate level of group and individual mental health and well-being support. It culls a list of potential providers by asking participants to answer questionsthat is, before even entering the appabout their needs in a quick survey format, allowing for targeted care. Its curated compassion.

Everyone is overwhelmed with a barrage of information right now and, even in the best of circumstances, mental health care is challenging to navigate and tends to be generalized, says Cecilia Livesey, chief of integrated services in psychiatry at Penn Medicine and creator of the app, explaining that patients are often pointed to a psychiatrist or therapist in an overly broad way. If you had a torn ACL requiring surgery, you wouldnt want to go to a primary care physician, but often people with a treatable mental illness requiring evidence-based care from a specialist end up seeing multiple providers before they land in the right place. Were really trying to be targeted and get people to the right type and level of care from the get go.

Visitors to the COBALT web app are also shown content tailored to how they answered initial questions. For those not seeking one-on-one care, there are meditation tools, groups to help process traumacrucial to preventing PTSDand an option to create your own group. Additionally, there are podcasts, worksheets, videos, and more. The app is so-named after cobalt as an adaptable metal, as well as a trace element thats essential for neurological health.

Importantly, the app gives users the ability to remain anonymous while using the site, and there is an In Crisis button for those considering self-harm.

Those acute cases where people have safety concerns with people identifying and acting on this has been really critical, Livesey says.

Thea Gallagher, assistant professor of psychology and outpatient clinic director at the Center for the Treatment and Study of Anxiety in Psychiatry, has volunteered to facilitate processing groups. Some workers come to the group having suddenly taken on a role of a first responder without ever thinking they would, and others feel stress over wanting to do more or feeling overwhelmed. There are also many shes worked with, she says, whove experienced exacerbated mental health conditions like anxiety and OCD.

Those people are concerned about contaminating other people, or dying, or worrying in general about their loved ones or feeling uncertain, Gallagher explains. So, I think there are people who were already feeling like this is an anxious time, and yet there are also people who already struggle with anxiety and are struggling even more.

Others, she says, have been redeployed to different jobs within the Health System and are working to manage a new set of stressors associated with that transition. She tries to promote reflection on feelings, coping strategies, self-care, social support, and management of catastrophic thinking. These are essential to making this overwhelming work sustainable for the long-termEspecially as the pandemic is ongoing, she says.

Bellini describes the more seamlessand normalizedapproach to mental health care access through COBALT a game-changer.

I think what weve stumbled upon is a new way of delivering mental health services, period, she says. One of the most interesting parts of this is you can connect to mental health care in a HIAA-compliant way in the privacy of your own home. You dont need to call somebody and describe your situation, to be triaged and get a call back and make an appointment you dont need to show up in a psychologist or psychiatrist waiting room and register, and sit there and get called backtheres none of that. This is all virtual and, honestly, I think this is a model of how to transform mental health care delivery and reduce barriers to care, which is important to this vulnerable workforce.

The resource will stay in place indefinitely, says Taitano. Bellini, meanwhile, expresses a hearty thanks to the Penn Medicine community for their time, spirit, energy, and compassion to patients.

Were all in this together, and I think thats our most important message, Bellini says. Were here to help each other navigate what is the rest of this crisis.

Homepage photo: PennMedicineTogether is a central web hub that provides resources in support of Penn Medicine staff. The website links to resources for physical health, access to life necessities, and means to care for their families.

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Web-based platforms provide supporting resources for Penn Medicine staff - Penn: Office of University Communications

The National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM) Becomes the Official Education Partner for the NBA Athletic Trainers Association (NBATA) – Business…

Posted on July 13, 2020 by Danzig

GILBERT, Ariz.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM), the worldwide leader in fitness, performance, and corrective exercise education, has partnered with the National Basketball Athletic Trainers Association (NBATA) to become its official education partner.

The Athletic Trainers that make up the NBATA work with some of the greatest athletes in the world, and they require the highest standards for evidence-based training methodologies, said Laurie McCartney, President of the National Academy of Sports Medicine. Through this exciting collaboration, NBATA Athletic Trainers will have direct access to the industrys most respected and innovative education programs for developing elite athletes.

As a longtime advocate for and user of NASM education, I know how effective and beneficial the NASM Corrective Exercise and Performance Enhancement Specializations are for athletic training, said Aaron Nelson, Chairman of the National Basketball Athletic Trainers Association and Vice President of Player Care and Performance for the New Orleans Pelicans. NASM education has long been valued amongst our membership, so this partnership is a natural fit.

The NASM Corrective Exercise Specialization (NASM-CES) helps Athletic Trainers program unique and effective workouts tailored to the individual athlete. By leveraging the principles taught inside CES, Athletic Trainers can safely and effectively help athletes move better, avoid injuries, and recover faster.

The NASM Performance Enhancement Specialization (NASM-PES) teaches evidence-based techniques that maximize performance and build stronger, faster, and more resilient athletes.

Both courses are 100% online, which allows for flexible learning schedules that fit into a busy Athletic Trainers lifestyle.

Another element of the long-term partnership between NBATA and NASM will be creating a steering committee in which members from both organizations will work together to develop thought leadership for ongoing optimizations and innovations in fitness and athletic training.

About NASM: Now in its 33rd year, the National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM) has remained the international standard in fitness education due to the high quality of fitness professionals they produce and the scientific rigor of their programs. NASM offers a best in class Certified Personal Training program along with major specializations in Nutrition Coaching (CNC), Sports Performance (PES), and Corrective Exercise (CES).

About NBATA: The NBATA is a professional organization of highly skilled certified athletic trainers who provide specialized health care, performance, and critical support services to the athletes and organizations of the National Basketball Association. Members are committed and uniquely qualified to lead the management of exceptional health care, provide dynamic performance insights, and conduct basketball-related sports medicine research to benefit our athletes and our communities. The NBATAs members uphold the athletic training professions highest moral and ethical standards. For more information about the NBATA, visit http://www.nbata.com.

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The National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM) Becomes the Official Education Partner for the NBA Athletic Trainers Association (NBATA) - Business...

Event recap: Increasing resilience by assuring trust in medicine, credentials, and supply chains – Atlantic Council

Posted on July 13, 2020 by Danzig

Mon, Jul 13, 2020

Event RecapbyHenry Westerman

Related Experts: David Bray, PhD,

On Thursday, June 18, 2020, the Atlantic CouncilsGeoTechCenter andNanotronicshosted YvesDaccord, Former Director General of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Philippe Gillet, Chief Scientific Officer of SIPCA, Toomas HendrikIlves, former President of the Republic of Estonia, IdrisGuessous, MD and PhD, Head of the Division of Primary Care Medicine at the University Hospitals of Geneva, PeterRashish, Senior Fellow and Director of theGeoeconomicsProgram at the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies, DanielleTavino, VP and Co-Founder of Code-X, andDr. DivyaChander, MD and PhD, CEO and Founder oflucidify.

The event wasmoderatedby David Bray, PhD,Director of theGeoTechCenter at the Atlantic Council.

The paneldiscussedthe potential for technological and policy innovationstoenable a greater degree of trust between medical organizations and supply chain providers by following the example of some of the worlds best practitioners.

Personal and public health,as well as the care and medicine required to maintainthem,have always been top priorities for individuals and societies around the world. Amidst the COVID-19pandemic, concernsoverhealth havebecome even more prevalent. Yet, as the panel responded, at the same timeas more people than ever are seeking reliable information andmeasures to protect themselves from the novel coronavirus,healthcare systemsin the UnitedStatesand other countriesareconfronting a crisis of trustemerging in three key ways.

Thepanel emphasizedthe way that, as withall issues of trust,the primary difficultiesareon a personal level.Individuals have found it increasingly difficult todetermine thetrustworthiness ofmedical advicefor dealing with COVID-19. With so muchdisinformationand somany false-but-enticing medical messages floating around themediasphere, ordinary citizensfindit harder than ever toknowwhether recommendationsfrom neighbors, medical professionals, or politicianswill actually protect their health.

Relatedly, medical practitioners themselves have increasingly struggled with trusting the information coming to them from researchers, policymakers, and administrators.The paneldecried that,whether it be a high-profile scandal at prestigiousmedical journals like the Lancet, or a smaller-scale policymix-upor data flaw, doctors struggle to find trustworthyguidelinesto inform theirmedical decisions.

On a systemic level, the medical supply chainrecentlyencounteredserious problemsasindustriesfound their complex, globalsupply chains disrupted by local and international crises. In the name of efficiency, hospitals have outsourced the productionofessential tools, ranging from personal protective equipment (PPE) or respirators topharmaceuticals. Unfortunately, with such adispersed supply chain, itisnearly impossible for hospitals and medical systems to accurately identify their real carrying capacity in times of crisis when many healthcare providers find themselves relying on the same limited suppliers, resulting inunexpectedshortages.

The panel explainedthat, due to the breakdown of trust in the medical system at all three of these levels, the world has failed to effectively respond to COVID-19. Individuals have found themselves unsure of who to trust for medical advice. Doctors are at a lossaboutwhere togetreliable information on the growing pandemic. And hospitals and medical systems have run into shortages andare unabletoutilize theirsurge capacity due to the complexity of theirsupply chains.

Fortunately, the panel advised, new technological tools can help to restore trust in the medical system ateachof these levels. Through the implementation of a data trust for medical and health related information, as envisioned by theGeoTechCenter, researchers couldaccesshard datawhilethe studied individualsremaincertainthat their privacy is notcompromised.Adata trust systemdeveloped by a coalition of public, private, and NGO partners and maintained bycitizen-juriesand transparent regulationscanrestore thesacred trust between medical researchers and practitioners and patients. This framework could store data beyond biometrics as well, including records of suppliers and their sources of devices and equipment, tostreamlinein the medical supply chain.

According to the panels vision, a data trustwouldalso enable individuals to take ownership of their data, deciding how and by whom it can be used. Consideringthetransferof data a transaction in which the individual has equal agency will help build trust in both the dataprovidedand the conclusions drawn from it, as individuals couldchoose to only provide their data to projects that would benefit the commongood.The unified framework of alarge-scaledata collection of this nature would also facilitate easy transfer of information and ideas across communities, states, and nations. In this way, the panel envisionedan economy of trust in health data that couldspread to the entire world, helping build networks of trusted partners within communities and globally. With every medical and data transaction made transparent through the use of technology, medical practitioners couldbridge the gap between patients, doctors, and researchers, restoring lost trust through virtually-enabled person-to-person interaction.

Some of the worlds most advanced medical systems have already begun to develope a system-level data trustor other frameworks for building trust in medicine.

One of the most frequently celebrated examples in recent years has been the country of Estonia, whose esteemed former President, Toomas HendrikIlves,outlined their medical technology innovations for the panel. In Estonia, all medical records and biometric informationarekept on a keyless signature blockchainthrough whichcitizens are granted individual ownership over their data, who accessesit, and for what reasons. The systems design also insulates against potential data manipulation and corruption, meaning doctors and researchers can trust the integrity of the data theyreceive. With high levels of protected data maintainedforevery citizen, Estonia can more effectively prepare for health crises and provide individualized care as needed.

Anotheroft-cited exampleofpervasivesocietaltrustis Switzerland, represented by IdrisGuessous, MD and PhD,of the University Hospitals of Geneva. Though Switzerland is respected around the world foritshighcitizen participation in government, as well asitslow levels of inequality, the UHG system has also begunrollingout technological tools for building trust between citizens, their doctors, and the researchers studying there. Dr.Guessousemphasized how, as the hospital rolled out digitized medical recordsthroughwhichpatientswereasked before their data could be studied, he was surprised by the number of patients who consented to their datas use,so long as their information could be leveragedfor the public good. The panel emphasizedthatmost individuals would be more than willing to provide their data to doctors and researchers,so long as theycouldtrust that the goalsofits use are transparent and worthwhile.

As these examples illustrate, it is technologically feasible even now to develop adata trustakin to the panels vision. Theobstacle, though, is whetherrelevant parties can cooperatetodevelopa system that empowers citizens and builds trust, rather than one that emphasizes individualism, surveillance, and one-sided transactions.

Henry Westerman is an intern with the Atlantic Councils GeoTech Center and a rising senior at Georgetown Universitys School of Foreign Service. His course of study is in Science, Technology, and International Affairs, with a concentration in Security, focusing on the intersection of science and geopolitics, particularly relating to advanced digital infrastructure and outer space development. Previously, Henry has interned at the Library of Congress and the Department of States Office of Science and Technology Cooperation. He also works at Georgetowns writing center, providing free editing and consultations and serves as the historian for Georgetowns student association.

Costly medicine – The Nation

Posted on July 13, 2020 by Danzig

Medicine is so costly that the poor cant bear the heavy prices. Consequently, a majority of the poor die because of a lack of proper treatment and medicine. The price of medicine is highly expensive in Pakistan which contributes to the deterioration of health in low-income families. It is quite normal in public hospitals, especially in Sindh, that doctors recommend private medicine to their patients. To ask doctors about governmental medicine is a waste of time; they continuously blame the government for the lack of medicine.

People, who are well-off and opulent, often try to consult private doctors and take medicines they suggest. However, the poor mainly depend on public hospitals and dispensaries, but a lack of medicine in government hospitals has contributed a lot in making the situation worse for them. Currently, COVID-19 and the high rate of inflation have undoubtedly been a great burden on the pocket of the poor. To survive in this hellacious situation is beyond the poors capability.

Therefore, the government of Pakistan should play its role in making things easier for the poor. The proper set up of medicine in public hospitals and dispensaries should be assured. Likewise, the government should also bring down the cost of private medicine at an accessible level for the poor.

IMTIAZ ESSA HALEPOTO,

Jamshoro.

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Costly medicine - The Nation

Traditional Chinese Medicine for COVID-19 Market: Technological Advancement & Growth Analysis with Forecast to 2025 – Cole of Duty

Posted on July 13, 2020 by Danzig

Global Traditional Chinese Medicine for COVID-19 Market Report provides complete industry analysis, market outlook, size, growth, opportunities and forecast 2025. This report will assist in analyzing the current and future business trends, sales and revenue forecast. It provides top manufacturers information along with Manufacturing Cost Analysis, Industrial Chain, Sourcing Strategy and growth.

The Traditional Chinese Medicine for COVID-19 market is an intrinsic study of the current status of this business vertical and encompasses a brief synopsis about its segmentation. The report is inclusive of a nearly accurate prediction of the market scenario over the forecast period market size with respect to valuation as sales volume. The study lends focus to the top magnates comprising the competitive landscape of Traditional Chinese Medicine for COVID-19 market, as well as the geographical areas where the industry extends its horizons, in magnanimous detail.

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A rundown of the competitive spectrum:

Unveiling the regional landscape:

An outline of the Traditional Chinese Medicine for COVID-19 market segmentation:

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Pivotal highlights of Traditional Chinese Medicine for COVID-19 market:

The Traditional Chinese Medicine for COVID-19 market report enumerates quite some details about the factors impacting the industry, influence of technological developments on the vertical, risks, as well as the threats that substitutes present to the industry players. In addition, information about the changing preferences and needs of consumers in conjunction with the impact of the shifting dynamics of the economic and political scenario on the Traditional Chinese Medicine for COVID-19 market has also been acknowledged in the study.

For More Details On this Report: https://www.marketstudyreport.com/reports/global-traditional-chinese-medicine-for-covid-19-market-research-report-2020

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Traditional Chinese Medicine for COVID-19 Market: Technological Advancement & Growth Analysis with Forecast to 2025 - Cole of Duty