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evienyx · 3 years

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I, for one, am glad that someone actually noticed that Tommy's character in the SMP is quite absurd in the way he views himself. Actually, if you look Nov 16th video, after Tubbo became the president, Tommy confronted Dream and said to him (in paraphrase), "How does it feel to always be the villain?" Anyways, my actual question is how do you feel and view L'manburg's independence? Why is it shaky? I have my own opinions but I am very eager to get yours. Thank you.

L’Manburg makes me so upset, because I have so much emotional attachment to it and it is one of the worst active systems of government I’ve ever seen.

That’s not what you asked me, though, so I’ll answer your actual question instead of just ranting about how awful the system of government is (seriously, I’m surprised it hasn’t collapsed, yet).

Anyway, yeah, L’Manburg’s independence is incredibly shaky. I would say that this stems from tension from both internal issues and external threats.

Let’s go back to the beginning of the country. I would say that the L’Manburg Revolution and the time from then up until around the announcement of the election would be when L’Manburg was the most stable. Of course, this isn’t saying much, considering the fact that this is right after the country is established, but, despite everything, everyone in the nation was working together.

Everyone stood behind Wilbur, and respected his authority. He was listened to, and he still listened to other people while still maintaining that authority. While people were still partially riding on the thrill of victory and independence, everyone was also focused on improving L’Manburg and helping it grow. Wilbur, at the time, was diplomatic, and he was a leader that everyone believed in. Part of this was likely because he had been the one to lead them to independence in the first place, but when the Revolution was won, Wilbur was officially declared president without any argument from any of the remaining members of the nation.

People stood together, and they listened to and respected the leader. Despite the fact that this shook a bit when the election was declared and other political parties began to emerge, up until the election, Wilbur’s authority was still strong and respectable.

When the election happened and Schlatt won, internal problems in the government itself arose in a way that they never had before, and yet L’Manburg’s independence still wasn’t shaky. Why is this?

Because both sides in this conflict (Manburg and Pogtopia) wanted for the country to stay standing at the end of it. Taking Wilbur out of the equation after his mental break, both Manburg and Pogtopia wanted L’Manburg at the end of it, and both of them had Dream sided with them at one point or another in the conflict. Even more, though, L’Manburg’s independence wasn’t shaky because, through all of it, up until the end, Schlatt kept a firm grip on his power over the people. He may not have been necessarily respected, but he was feared, and that was enough. At the end of the day, people listened to him, and he knew it.

When Schlatt said that when he goes down, the country goes down with him, he’s right.

On paper, Tubbo being president seems like a great idea.

Theoretically, it should have been.

Tubbo has always worked to make the country the best it can be. He follows the rules first and puts his own desires second. People tend to like him, and he has good ideas, and he has only the country’s best interests at heart.

After L’Manburg is retaken and blown up, in the aftermath, Tubbo speaks of dreams of a city sitting above the rubble, a country raised from the ashes, better than before. He calls on those who have been disrespected and torn down by previous administrations and raises them to stand with him. He wants their ideas, and opinions, and he makes himself as equal to them in power as soon as he possibly can.

This is when those little shakes in L’Manburg’s independence begin to become tremors.

Tubbo should have been the best president the country had to date, but he can’t be, because he can’t even be president.

No one respects his authority. People go against what he says when they don’t align with their own interests. One of Tubbo’s main goals, even if it doesn’t seem that way, is to separate himself as much as possible from Schlatt. We see this right from the beginning with how he says everyone gets equal say in what happens. However, because of this, any time Tubbo tries to exercise the presidential power he has, people don’t respect it, and it doesn’t work, because they simply call him ‘the new Schlatt’ and ignore his pleas to just think.

These internal issues become even more pressing when one considers the external issues. In particular, conflicts with other nations. While L’Manburg is not in conflict with any other nations as a whole, necessarily, they have been at odds with Dream (who, at this point, is a faction all on his own).

L’Manburg’s independence is shaky because they do not respect their leader in any situation, not even ones of conflict, with great consequences. Ones where it is the president’s job to make a choice.

We see this the most clearly at play would be on the day of December fourth, the Exile of TommyInnit.

Before the Meeting with Dream, Tubbo, Tommy, Quackity, and Fundy all talk about what the plan is. Tommy declares that exiling him gives Dream exactly what he wants (and Tommy’s right, but that’s a whole other thing), and that instead they need to make a stand and fight. Basically, Tommy is saying that they should go to war. Quackity and Fundy agree. Tubbo, though, who is the president, says that he doesn’t like this plan. Dream always has the upperhand. They can’t just fight their way out of this one.

As we’ve seen for the two weeks up until this point, no one listens to Tubbo. He attempts to be the voice of reason in the conversation where he should be the one leading. He is the president, after all. The lack of respect that everyone present has for Tubbo’s authority is even more apparent if you consider the fact that just two days before the only reason they got into this situation in the first place was because nobody listened to Tubbo.

If we take all relationships, all emotions and connections, out of the equation and look at the choice that Tubbo needs to make logically, the answer of what to do becomes incredibly clear.

Logically, the right choice to make is to exile Tommy.

This is a choice that the leader of a country is being asked to make that either hurts one person or hurts the country as a whole. I have a whole other thing on the motivations and justifications on Tommy’s character that I’m not going to get into at the moment, but, logically, Tubbo made the right choice.

Tubbo had to make a choice between saving his friend who, despite being justified and having his reasons and the like, still did burn the home of the leader of the enemy nation, and saving his country, full of innocent people who have already lost lives, who are just looking to live in peace and safety, from a war that they would not win. As a friend, the choice he made was not the right one, but as a president, it most certainly was. He cannot sacrifice the good of the entire nation, he cannot pull his country into war, all for the sake of one person who did, technically, make a mistake.

Still, though, when Tubbo ultimately makes the choice (which is, in the end, his choice to make, regardless of what anyone else says), Tommy, Quackity, and Fundy argue against it. As Tommy is led away by Dream, Quackity and Fundy scream at Tubbo, tell him he’s acting like Schlatt, and, despite everything they’ve been saying before, do not respect Tubbo’s authority or the fact that this is his choice to make. They only say that, in the end, it is his choice when Tubbo seems to be on their side.

Tubbo, Fundy, and Quackity are, at the moment, the top authorities in L’Manburg. Quackity, though, is also running his own nation, and engaging in possible wars and acts of terrorism, while Fundy is preoccupied with things like visiting Tommy and working through his own issues. Tubbo is trying to lead the nation, but he isn’t able to because nobody respects his power or authority anyway, so he is unable to do anything because he isn’t able to be president.

There is a reason why L’Manburg’s independence is so shaky, and why whenever he felt like it, Dream could take down the nation and reclaim the land for himself, and that is because Tubbo, as president, does not have the respect of the people, no matter how much they may insist that he does. If a war was to happen, the country would collapse very quickly the way it is, because unlike before with the Revolution and the Pogtopia Rebellion, they would not have a leader who everyone respected and listened to. Instead, they’d have Tubbo, a boy who started off his presidency by watching his home be blown sky-high, who has not gained the respect of the people, who people do not listen to or respect the authority of, and, no matter how much it hurts to admit it, L’Manburg, in this case, would fall.

I have so many problems with just the system of government that L’Manburg is founded upon, but that’s not what you asked, so I won’t go into that right now, lmao.

I hope this answered your question without feeling too much like aimless rambling.

...I’m too invested in these block people.

#mcyt #ask #ask away #dream smp #l'manburg #that is how i spell it #ive decided #tubbo #tommyinnit #dream #quackity #fundy #dreamwastaken #wilbur soot #technoblade #jschlatt #a lot of ppl agree w techno #and this does nOT MAKE IT ANY BETTER #JUST MAKE A WORKING SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT PLZ

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 3 years

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* * * * LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

January 10, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

Unbelievably, it was only a week ago—last Sunday—that we learned Trump had called Georgia’s Secretary of State and pressured him to change the results of the 2020 election. Trump demanded that Brad Raffensperger “find” the 11,780 votes Trump needed to win Georgia. The news of the attempt to get an election official to overrule the will of the people was astonishing: at the time, it was the worst domestic attack on our democracy ever, coming, as it did, from a sitting president.

At the time.

Over the past several days, the picture of what happened on Wednesday, January 6, 2021, has become clearer, and it’s bad. While Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser gave a press conference Wednesday night, there has been not a single official briefing from the White House, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, or Capitol Police.

The federal government has gone dark.

What we do know is that on Wednesday, January 6, 2021, egged on by Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, Alabama Representative Mo Brooks, Don Jr., and especially Trump himself, Trump supporters stormed the Capitol just as Congress was meeting in joint session to confirm Democrat Joe Biden as our new president. They overpowered the Capitol Police—perhaps with the help of some of the officers—breached the doors, and smashed their way through the historic building, shouting for Vice President Mike Pence—whom Trump insisted was at fault for not overturning the count-- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and “traitors” who were counting the electoral votes for Biden. While many of the early pictures from inside the Capitol showed rioters gawking like tourists, ones released this weekend showed violent thugs, carrying plastic handcuffs and seeming to have information about where to find specific members of Congress. They breached the Senate chamber at 2:16, just a minute after the senators made it out.

The Capitol Police got the lawmakers to safety, but were not in control of the building. Lawmakers huddled quietly behind barricaded doors waiting for police that took hours to come. When they did arrive, they cleared the area and regained control of the Capitol. After janitors had cleaned the building, lawmakers counted the electoral votes that established Democrats Biden and Kamala Harris as the next president and vice president of the USA.

As videos have emerged and timelines been established, it has become apparent we came perilously close to seeing our elected representatives taken hostage or even executed on the makeshift gallows the rioters set up outside the building.

But here’s the thing: these were not outside insurgents; they were supporters of the Republican president. Trump enflamed the insurgents but he did not create them: years of demonizing Democrats and suggesting they must not be allowed to govern did that. As NPR reporter Kirk Siegler noted, Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, infamous for years of standoffs with the federal government, wrote on Facebook that Trump “pointed towards Congress and nodded his head… [and said] go get the job done.” Republicans are now caught in a vise of their own making. They have to stand either with their own voters or with democracy.

The night of the attack, more than 100 Republican members of the House of Representatives and several senators, led by Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Ted Cruz (R-TX), continued to endorse Trump’s lies by voting to reject the electoral votes for Biden in key states. The next day, Trump’s supporters tried to argue that the rioters were “Antifa,” despite their Trump garb and the fact Trump invited them, incited them, urged them to go to the Capitol, and after the riot told them he loved them. (An AP investigation establishes that they were right-wing agitators.) When that didn’t take, supporters tried “whataboutism,” comparing the Black Lives Matter protests of this summer to the storming of the Capitol.

They are trying to rewrite the history of this week to downplay that we have suffered an attempted coup that killed at least five people, and that the people behind it are still in the highest levels of our government.

The realization that we are in the midst of a coup, abetted by Trump’s use of social media, prompted Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram to ban Trump permanently, and to take down QAnon accounts. That, not the Capitol attack and the murder of a police officer, has created outrage among Trump, who is allegedly “ballistic,” and Trump supporters. Republican lawmakers spent the weekend noting how many followers they were losing as Twitter took down QAnon, Nazi, and fake accounts. (Trump opponents noted that this was not actually a good thing to call attention to.) Parler has lost almost all of its supporting businesses and might go out of business itself.

Democrats are appalled by what Trump has wrought, and they are joined by plenty of Republicans. In the National Review, for example, Ed Whelan called the Capitol attack “an outrage that ought to have every genuinely patriotic American seething with anger.” He blamed Trump for inciting the attack, and said that “impeachment and conviction of Trump is an appropriate, and probably a necessary, response.”

In a powerful video, former Republican Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger called the Capitol attack the American equivalent to Kristallnacht, which marked the beginning of German Nazis’ systemic destruction of the Jews. To puncture the idea that the sort of behavior on display on Wednesday was manly, Schwarzenegger told the private story of his abuse at the hands of his father, who had been swept up in the Nazi movement in Austria, and celebrated the sword from his starring role in the 1982 film Conan the Barbarian as a symbol not of toxic masculinity but of democracy, tempered by adversity. He called on all Americans to rally around Biden and to work to make his administration a success.

White House appointees’ resignations show which way the wind is blowing. Trump’s former Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney took to Fox News Sunday to say he had no idea that people might actually do something like attack the Capitol. “People took him literally,” Mulvaney told MSNBC. “I never thought I’d see that.”

Similarly, the rioters themselves, once found and arrested, are either apologizing and saying they were swept up in the moment, or denying they were part of the mob. One man apologized for his “indiscretion.”

Both Marriott, the world’s largest hotel chain, and health insurer Blue Cross Blue Shield have suspended their donations to lawmakers who voted against the counting of Biden’s electoral votes late Wednesday or early Thursday morning. The anti-Trump Lincoln Project has promised to target companies that donate to any lawmakers who voted against the counting of the electoral votes. Hitting closer to Trump, Stripe, the vendor that handles online credit card payments for Trump’s campaign, has announced it will no longer handle his account. And tonight, the Professional Golfers Association of America Board of Directors took the 2022 PGA Championship away from Trump Bedminster, his New Jersey club.

At the end of last week, Democratic leaders set out a three-part plan to punish the president for inciting an insurrection. They gave Pence an option to begin the process of invoking the 25th Amendment, which, considering the president had tried to get him killed, was not necessarily a long shot. Pence refused. They gave McConnell the weekend to convince Trump to resign. Trump refused. They announced that, if both of those things failed, they would begin impeachment proceedings on Monday.

McConnell promptly noted that the Senate could not take up such a proceeding until the day before Biden’s inauguration at the earliest. He is bargaining. It is possible to hold an impeachment trial even after a president is out of office, but he knows that Biden does not want the beginning of his term crowded with more Trump business, especially as coronavirus is raging and Biden wants to get it under control. McConnell doesn’t want Republicans to have to vote either for or against the president because such a vote will slice the Republicans in two and make it clear that some of them stand for insurrection. In the Senate, only Republicans Mitt Romney (R-UT), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), and Pat Toomey (R-PA) have endorsed impeachment.

McConnell is hoping Pelosi will blink and the moment will pass.

She will not, and it will not. She notes, correctly, that the president is “an imminent threat” to “our Constitution and our Democracy,” and she is trying to give the Republicans cover to do the right thing. Tonight, she announced that the House tomorrow will begin proceedings on a resolution by Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD) calling on Pence to mobilize the Cabinet to activate the 25th Amendment within 24 hours. If he declines, the House will turn to impeachment. She has asked for unanimous consent for the resolution to enable the Republicans to avoid a vote. If they refuse, the measure will go forward the next day anyway.

She also fired a shot across the bow of Republican lawmakers by asking her colleagues for their views on the third section of the 14th Amendment, the one that prohibits anyone who “shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the United States, “or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof,” from serving in Congress.

As I watch Republican lawmakers try to slip away from the crisis they have made, I think of Black Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman, armed only with a nightstick, luring the insurgents in the wrong direction to buy the time Senators needed to escape with their lives.

—-

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#sedition #national emergency #Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson #insurrection #political #election 2020 #corrupt GOP #criminal GOP

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amphtaminedreams · 3 years

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COVID-19, Negligent Manslaughter, and a Timeline of Tory Indifference

“I feel sorry for Boris Johnson. He is doing the best he can in the situation and I don’t think anybody else could have done a better job.”

[exhibit A: a gem somebody that I’m Facebook friends with reposted earlier]

It’s a sentiment that I cannot quite wrap my head around. I sit here hopeless and furious and trying to hold back tears because it’s been almost a year since England first went into lockdown and yet here we are, almost 100,000 dead, in an even worse position than we were before whilst other countries begin to slowly return to normality. It is clear to me who is to blame for this, however there are a large proportion of people who don’t want to “politicise” the actions of the PRIME MINISTER with regards to his approach towards handling a virus sweeping the country he GOVERNS.

Typically, these kind of posts making the rounds on social media will be accompanied by some kind of photo of Boris Johnson looking somber as if to suggest that the way things have played out were beyond his control and that he is some kind of broken man beleaguered by the suffering he has, despite good intentions, inadvertently caused.

This one in particular of Johnson with his head in his hands is a staple. In reality, this is a photo taken back in 2018 whilst he was receiving flack from party members for comparing Theresa May to a suicide bomber (for her handling of Brexit, ironically) as well as from the papers due to his rumoured (now also proven, in a completely non-surprising turn of events, to be true) affair with his former aide, Carrie Symonds.

So let’s shut this narrative-where we should feel for Boris because he’s doing his best, and apparently a better job than anybody else could’ve done in his situation- down right here. In a supposedly developed country with one of the world’s largest economies, if we’re talking by proportion, our COVID-19 death toll is up there with the worst of them. It seems that every other state figurehead (bar a small handful), and I mean almost every single one of them, is doing a better job. People love to throw figures out there about how densely populated we are to combat damning statistics as if we haven’t got just as many factors playing to our advantage, as if it’s unfair to compare our response to Germany’s or Japan’s or Singapore’s (both of which are far more densely populated) or New Zealand’s or Vietnam’s, but we are an ISLAND with world-leading technology and infrastructure and healthcare equipment and professionals and a relatively high standard of living. In what world is almost 70,000 dead in a country with abundant time and means to prepare a response reflective of said country’s leaders doing a good job?

Apparently we’re supposed to believe that Johnson feels some sense of moral responsibility for this astronomical failure. A man who refuses to acknowledge the multiple children he has fathered outside of his marriages and who has had repeatedly engaged in affairs and one-night stands throughout said marriages. A man who continued to cheat whilst his most recent wife was receiving treatment for cervical cancer, for fuck’s sake. Yep, a real stand-up guy.

So where does this idea that Johnson must feel remorseful for this catastrophe come from? We haven’t seen a second of remorse or a hint of accountability for the lives lost from him nor any members of his cabinet. That much is really no surprise; I have this hypothesis, and it’s not a stretch, that these people do not have an ounce of empathy in their bodies. These ridiculously privileged, privately-educated individuals who have had everything handed to them their entire lives simply cannot put themselves in the shoes of the average working person and that is the problem. Unable to recognise that what distinguishes them from most others is little more than the luck of being born into wealth and the abundance of recourses and connections that has entailed throughout their lives, they see us as beneath them-as less intelligent, less driven, and thus less deserving of the status and respect they enjoy. They see us as a bunch of whining, unmotivated idiots who do not recognise the chokehold they have over our media nor the fact that everything they do is a desperate grab to keep money and power within the hands of a select group of people, an exclusive members club from which most of us are barred (just take a simple Google search and watch Jacob Rees-Mogg’s opinion of the Grenfell victims or the buried Johnson speech where he talks about how inequality is essential). They know that we will squabble amongst ourselves about who is to blame rather than wising up to the truth which is that every decision they make is fuelled by cronyism and the inability to make and follow through with difficult choices, the pandemic being no exception. The supposedly self-made elite see the life of the average working class person as having far less value than their own, and their parties actions over the last 10 years have made that very clear.

It was in December 2019 that the first case of COVID-19 was declared to the World Health Organisation and on March the 11th that they announced they considered it as a pandemic. In Wuhan, people were dying of pneumonia in their clusters. And what was Boris Johnson doing in this time? Well for starters, here in the UK we didn’t even have a pandemic committee-Johnson had scrapped it six months before. If years of benefits cuts and defunding of the NHS in favour of funding nuclear weapon programs, keeping British troops on other people’s lands, and tax breaks for the mega corporations that donate to their party didn’t convince you that the Conservatives have little regard for human life, them getting rid of this committee-whilst a pandemic has been declared year after year as the greatest threat to mankind-should have been the first sign of trouble. As if that wasn’t enough, he also skipped five of the COBRA (meetings are made up of a cross-departmental committee put together to respond to national emergencies and PMs routinely attend those pertaining to crises on the scale of COVID-19) meetings addressing the situation. Whilst other countries were closing their borders and stocking up on PPE, Johnson and his ministers were selling PPE abroad and simply telling people to wash their hands to the length of the tune of happy birthday. Their only policy was one of “herd immunity”, which was in fact not a policy but just an abandonment of their party’s public duty disguised as one, intentionally obfuscated with pseudoscientific jargon.

Even thinking the absolute worst of politicians you would hope that when it came to the point where the UK’s non-response to COVID-19 was becoming an international disgrace, Johnson and his ministers would take proper protective measures if only to save face. But when they eventually seemed to do so, it became clear that the priority was not the safety of the ordinary people affected by the virus. Outsourcing their test and traces system to companies such as Serco, Sitel, Deloitte and G4S rather than public health services, Conservative ministers could not resist attempting to line the pockets of their friends and benefactors in the process. According to the Guardian, instead of reaching out to the experts or using publicly funded services to handle COVID containment measures, the Conservative party has awarded a disgusting £1.5 BILLION WORTH of contracts to businesses with explicit connections to its MPs and donors, the majority of which lack any relative experience of the tasks they’ve been trusted to carry out. Unsurprisingly, the National Audit office found that when awarding contracts relating to the production of COVID-19 protection measures and treatment needs, there was a “high-priority lane” for suppliers referred by senior politicians and officials; companies with a political referral were 10 times more likely to end up winning a government contract than those without. On top of this, it is not hard to draw a link between the late initiation of lockdown measures and preemptive openings of pubs and restaurants against scientific advice to the interests of frequent donors such as Wetherspoons owner Tim Martin. Even if one chooses to ignore the blatantly obvious correlation between the owners of the businesses whose profits were prioritised over safety concerns and the number of those owners who donate to the Conservatives, party officials at the very least were reluctant to follow the lead of many other countries in financing furlough schemes themselves and instead avoided this responsibility by using loose lockdown measures to leave it down to the discretion of small business owners, who couldn’t themselves afford to furlough staff, whether or not to stay open.

Time and time again, as the government flounder and fuck about, favouring personal desires to keep their powerful, high-paying jobs and to satisfy the corporate allies who make this possible, blame has been shifted from the public to care homes to NHS workers and back again whilst we, the public, make the biggest sacrifices of all under the illusion that we were being guided out of this pandemic rather than lied to and thrown under the bus. Whilst the elite continue to pick and choose what rules apply to them, it’s students and the elderly and the vulnerable paying the fines and scrabbling to afford basic living costs and hoping that they don’t lose someone dear to them.

Don’t get me wrong, a large proportion of the public have contributed to the spread too with their selfishness and entitlement and the arrogance it takes to develop a sudden refusal to acknowledge basic science from experts who have studied in the field their whole lives so that they can justify their need to go to the pub (speaking of, it’s absolutely HILARIOUS how many “mental health advocates” are suddenly coming out of the woodworks on football avi Twitter after they’ve spent years calling people on mental health Twitter attention seekers). And don't get me wrong, there were inevitably going to be casualties of this pandemic. But it didn't have to spread to this many people, and there didn’t have to be so many deaths due to a lack of preparation, and this wouldn’t have been the case if it weren’t for the inherent apathy of the Conservative party towards the lives of people of lesser status than them, the reluctance to put those lives before party interests. I wish I felt like there was an end in sight, I wish there was some positive takeaway from all of this, but even now, we continue to see corners being cut with the vaccine lauded as our saving grace and anti-maskers gathering outside hospitals to chant about how “oppressive” it is to be urged to wear a bit of cloth over their faces for the short periods of time in which they leave their houses and all I can think of is the selfishness that runs like poison through our country. It makes me sick and leaves me to question desperately where we go from here. I don’t like unanswered questions, I don’t like feeling politically directionless, and I don’t like the growing fear I have about the state of the world which seems to intensify every single day. In the UK at least, it’s starting to feel like nothing will ever change-we’re told we live in a democracy and yet mainstream media is owned by the people whose interest is to keep their Conservative friends in power. The stronghold they have over print media in particular allows them to continually get away with smearing and defaming every person who comes along and seems to want to actually help ordinary people, without being challenged, to the point where the only kind of “opposition” we’re left with promises nothing but a big boss approved tactical reshuffling of the status quo (which they call “electability”); it doesn’t feel like democracy when the majority of the country are being fed misleading information and convinced against voting in their best interests.

This is the result of that. The state we find ourselves in is the inevitable result of being manipulated into helping the elite build their protective wall whilst the rest of us scrabble to get in and step on each others heads along the way, the people inside shouting over that it’s those even more vulnerable than ourselves that are taking our places. Outside the wall, the earth is falling from beneath our feet, and instead of throwing over the ropes to help us out, the people inside are stockpiling them so they can secure their firm place above ground and then later flog the rest. How many more people have to die before we reach some kind of widespread realisation of that? Where do we go from here and what do we do? Well for one, we can stop spreading those god-fucking-awful textposts on Facebook and get our heads out of our arses. Wear our masks over and wear them over our fucking noses. Have some fucking consideration for others. Don’t wait til an issue affects you personally to give a fuck about it. AND START HOLDING THE FUCKING PRIME MINISTER AND HIS MINISTERS AND HIS ENTIRE PARTY AS WELL AS THE OPPOSITION MPS THAT HAVE SAT BY THE SIDELINES AND ALLOWED THIS TO GO ON WITHOUT PROTEST ACCOUNTABLE. That would be a good start.

I’m so tired. Things didn’t need to be this way, and yet because of the selfishness of the few, thousands upon thousands are dead. It’s not about “throwing around blame”, it’s not about “throwing around” anything, it’s about expecting a leader to do his best to protect lives. If that is “throwing blame”, let’s get things clear, I have no issue with hurtling it torpedo style at those who handed out a death sentence to so many in this country rather than do anything that might compromise their own privilege. Honestly, pass me the shovel after and I’ll happily bury the wreckage in the ground. Who wants to join?:-)

#rant #politics #anti capitalism #anticapitalist #covid-19 #covid #england #labour #socialism #fuck the tories #fuck the torys #fuck boris #rant post

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96thdayofrage · 3 years

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Since 2008, McKinsey & Company has regularly advised the Food and Drug Administration’s drug-regulation division, according to agency records. The consulting giant has had its hand in a range of important FDA projects, from revamping drug-approval processes to implementing new tools for monitoring the pharmaceutical industry.q

During that same decade-plus span, as emerged in 2019, McKinsey counted among its clients many of the country’s biggest drug companies — not least those responsible for making, distributing and selling the opioids that have ravaged communities across the United States, such as Purdue Pharma and Johnson & Johnson. At times, McKinsey consultants helped those drugmaker clients fend off costly FDA oversight — even as McKinsey colleagues assigned to the FDA were working to bolster the agency’s regulation of the pharmaceutical market. In one instance, for example, McKinsey consultants helped Purdue and other opioid producers push the FDA to water down a proposed opioid-safety program. The opioid producer ultimately succeeded in weakening the program, even as overdose deaths mounted nationwide.

Yet McKinsey, which is famously secretive about its clientele, never disclosed its pharmaceutical company clients to the FDA, according to the agency. This year ProPublica submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the FDA seeking records showing that McKinsey had disclosed possible conflicts of interest to the agency’s drug-regulation division as part of contracts spanning more than a decade and worth tens of millions of dollars. The agency responded recently that “after a diligent search of our files, we were unable to locate any records responsive to your request.”

Federal procurement rules require U.S. government agencies to determine whether a contractor has any conflicts of interest. If serious enough, a conflict can disqualify the contractor from working on a given project. McKinsey’s contracts with the FDA, which ProPublica obtained after filing a FOIA lawsuit, contained a standard provision obligating the firm to disclose to agency officials any possible organizational conflicts. One passage reads: “the Contractor agrees it shall make an immediate and full disclosure, in writing, to the Contracting Officer of any potential or actual organizational conflict of interest or the existence of any facts that may cause a reasonably prudent person to question the contractor’s impartiality because of the appearance or existence of bias.”

Agency officials rely on disclosure to ensure that they have the information they need to consider whether a contractor’s other business relationships risk slanting its judgment. “Contractors have the obligation to disclose potential conflicts, and then the government has an obligation to figure out how to deal with it,” said Jessica Tillipman, an assistant dean and government procurement law expert at George Washington University Law School.

Asked for comment, McKinsey did not assert that it disclosed potential conflicts to the FDA. But a spokesperson for the firm, Neil Grace, nonetheless maintained that “across more than a decade of service to the FDA, we have been fully transparent that we serve pharmaceutical and medical device companies. McKinsey’s work with the FDA helped improve the agency’s effectiveness through organizational, resourcing, business process, operational, digital, and technology improvements. To achieve its mission, the government regularly seeks support from additional experts who understand both the government’s mission and the industries’ practices. We take seriously our commitment to avoid conflicts and to serve the best interests of the FDA.” (McKinsey is a sponsor of ProPublica’s local virtual events programming.)

McKinsey’s failure to disclose its industry engagements deprived the FDA of the opportunity to consider whether, for example, the overlap between McKinsey’s government and pharmaceutical industry projects and the potential financial incentives at play constituted a conflict, experts said.

“For a contractor like McKinsey not to disclose the companies it is working for has all the appeal of the Addams Family on Halloween hiding Uncle Fester in the basement so as not to scare the neighborhood,” said Charles Tiefer, a professor of government contracting at the University of Baltimore Law School.

An FDA spokesperson, Shannon Hatch, said: “The FDA’s procurement activities are governed by the Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR). The agency takes our role awarding contracts seriously and we work to ensure the agency maintains high standards of integrity as set forth in the FAR.”

McKinsey’s extensive opioid company consulting eventually began coming to light, starting with a 2019 ProPublica report. The firm’s opioid work has provoked widespread criticism, spawned a welter of lawsuits and led the firm to pay nearly $600 million this year to settle legal claims made by all 50 states, as well as five U.S. territories and the District of Columbia. It also prompted McKinsey to issue a statement in which the firm acknowledged that it “fell short” of its standards in advising opioid makers while also denying that it “sought to increase overdoses or misuse and worsen a public health crisis.” The firm pledged not to work on opioid-related projects going forward.

The lawsuits and public outrage have focused on the consulting firm’s efforts to help increase (or “turbocharge,” in McKinsey’s parlance) sales of Purdue Pharma’s highly addictive flagship opioid, OxyContin. But lately, concerns have begun to emerge about McKinsey’s parallel assignments, which were worth upward of $50 million over about 12 years, for the nation’s primary drug regulator. In a letter to the FDA in August, a bipartisan group of senators led by Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., asked the regulator to address “potential conflicts of interest that may have arisen” from McKinsey’s work for both the agency and “a wide range of actors in the opioid industry, including many of the companies that played a pivotal role in fueling the opioid epidemic that our country now faces.”

McKinsey, which has focused on counseling the CEOs of leading corporations for much of its nearly 100-year history, began expanding its public-sector practice in the United States around the time of its earliest FDA projects. McKinsey prides itself on its ability to act quickly and with discretion, and in its largely unregulated engagements for corporate clients, there are few impediments to the firm doing so.

In government consulting, however, the rules are far more stringent, and on several recent occasions, the firm has been caught refusing to abide by such strictures, including disclosure rules. Over the past couple of years, for example, McKinsey’s bankruptcy-advisory practice has paid more than $30 million to the Justice Department and one client’s creditors to settle allegations that it failed to disclose potential conflicts, as required by the federal bankruptcy rules. Those allegations also prompted a federal criminal investigation of the firm. McKinsey has denied wrongdoing, and the investigation, which came to light in 2019, has not led to charges.

There are signs of overlap between McKinsey’s government and industry engagements, though publicly available information about the firm’s work for drug companies is limited. In one instance in 2008, which surfaced in a lawsuit against Purdue, the FDA told Purdue that it planned to require the company to submit a drug-safety plan for its bestselling drug, OxyContin. The company recognized that regulation of this sort threatened to cut into its sales margins, and according to McKinsey documents filed in federal court, top Purdue executives tasked the consultancy with devising a response to the FDA.

According to McKinsey PowerPoint slides, the firm proposed four options, among them suing the FDA to “delay” the imposition of a safety plan and to “band together” with other opioid producers to “formulate arguments to defend against strict treatment by the FDA.” Purdue selected the latter, with McKinsey helping to implement the strategy. In 2009, McKinsey emails and slides show, its consultants prepared Purdue executives for at least two meetings with FDA officials. (One suggested answer to questions about who at Purdue would take personal responsibility for OxyContin overdoses: “We all feel responsible.”)

In the meantime, according to a 2011 FDA contract, the agency’s drug-regulation division hired McKinsey to develop a “new operating model” for the office responsible for developing drug-safety plans of the sort Purdue and its allies were fighting against, with the consultancy’s help. Among McKinsey’s tasks were defining the office’s “strategic goals and objectives,” including its “role in monitoring drug safety.”

In 2012, the FDA issued a substantially watered-down version of the opioid-safety plan.

There’s no evidence to suggest McKinsey’s consultants at the FDA influenced the opioid-safety plan. But this apparent overlap between a government contract and an assignment for a commercial client reflects the type of issue an agency would want to consider when assessing whether a potential conflict of interest exists. Agencies are likeliest to identify a conflict “where an outside business venture is related directly to the subject matter of the procurement and structured such that there is a real economic incentive for biased performance,” Keith Szeliga, a partner at the law firm Sheppard Mullin, wrote in a 2006 article in the Public Contract Law Journal.

A number of other McKinsey projects at the FDA, contracting records show, were also likely to have a financial impact on its pharmaceutical industry clients. In 2010, for example, the FDA hired the firm to help it develop a system to track and trace the distribution of potentially harmful prescription drugs. The contract required the firm to consult with “supply chain stakeholders,” a category that potentially included a number of long-standing McKinsey clients. Hassan and her fellow senators, in their recent letter to the FDA, called this “an obvious conflict of interest.”

Another contract, from 2014, tasked McKinsey with assessing the “strengths, limitations and appropriate use” of Sentinel, a system meant to monitor the safety of drugs once they’re on the market. That project likewise called for McKinsey to interview “external stakeholders,” including “industry organizations” and “drug and device industry leaders.”

The news of McKinsey’s opioid work apparently did little to dampen the FDA’s enthusiasm for the consultancy. In March 2019, just after the news broke, the agency signed a new contract with McKinsey — extending the firm’s multiyear effort to help the FDA “modernize” the process by which it regulates new drugs.

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kiev4am · 5 years

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The AU that nobody asked for. Really, nobody.

Okay, so (a) this is a terrible idea and I'm a terrible person, but please consider (b) Brexit is legitimately horrifying if you live in the UK and aren't a xenophobic 'rah rah Blitz spirit' wingnut, because if we leave the EU without a trade deal we will have a degree of difficulty importing essentials like fresh food and medicines that has 100% not been honestly evaluated. Supermarkets, hospitals, factories etc. have been stockpiling supplies for months in preparation for a possible no-deal Brexit in six weeks' time and our political leaders are so busy chasing their slim margins of power that they'd rather run the clock down while trumpeting jingoistic slogans than materially protect the country. People are writing unironically in the papers about stockpiling food at home and it scares the crap out of me. So much of the language of Brexit harks back to imperial nostalgia, mythical glory days when Britain supposedly forged ahead and didn't answer to anyone, and I'm already obsessed with a TV show whose major theme is 'people finding out in cruelly short order that Britishness isn't magical and you can't eat patriotism' so, well, here we are: with bitter sincerity and many apologies, I give you the Terror No-Deal Brexit AU. Feel free to skip this if you feel it's too close to the bone. I've split it into three posts to try and spare mobile users some pain - it's loooong because apparently I derived catharsis from this wreck of a concept.

Part 2 | Part 3

Setting: 2 years into a no-deal Brexit. Imports into the UK are subject to catastrophic delays and huge cost increases, which means demand for anything home-produced or home-grown is far in excess of supply. The wealth/quality of life gap hasn't been this stark since the 1800s, and nobody in power is losing sleep over this since most of them are hard-right Tories who've spent their careers fetishising the undeserving-poor Victorian model of society. Almost all the EU citizens who were living here have gotten the Tories' 'hostile environment' message loud and clear and departed, leaving many sectors struggling to survive without that workforce; this especially impacts healthcare, agriculture and local councils. Non-critical clinical and surgical care is almost non-existent, medicines are being rationed (officially only non-essential ones, but there's increasing reportage of insulin, heart drugs etc. being withheld, plus things like anti-depressants and contraceptives are ruled 'non-essential', fun times), waste collection and water purification in cities is compromised, fresh food is a luxury, unrest and rioting is commonplace with typically harsh response by overstretched but well-armed police and security services who've been given the 'state of emergency' nod to use extreme force. Schools are on a three-day week with much depleted class sizes (the research into why those numbers have gone down makes grim Dickensian reading) and many local authorities have introduced water and electricity rationing. There is rhetoric about 'temporary measures' and 'light at the end of the tunnel' and 'Britain once more proud and independent' but the politicians who engineered the mess have all moved to their second homes in Spain and Italy, and in their few carefully curated television appearances the ones who are left speak with ghostly, heartsick cheerfulness. Every local council is effectively on a wartime footing and their offices are like seige towers; with fuel, transport and public safety compromised, people frequently sleep at their workplaces rather than chance their route home every night. There's a sense of everything being one explosion, one riot away from full-blown dystopia; of society hanging in the balance, trying to stay polite and bureaucratic on the very doorstep of anarchy. No-one sleeps well. Everyone who isn't super-rich has nutrition problems and is obsessed, on one level or another, with food.

Erebus House is one of those brutal 1960s office blocks with grandiose names that typically house local government departments; surrounded by the closed shops and boarded-up arcades that once made Barrow city centre a cheerful hive of activity, it is Northwest Council's last remaining administrative hub. From these chilly beige rooms, shuffling in the dead-grey flicker of the last few striplights and guarded by a ragtag division of local police and army, a skeleton staff attempts to maintain law, order and some kind of subsistence for this once-prosperous Middle England town.

John Franklin was the local Tory MP who campaigned vigorously in favour of Brexit and was re-elected comfortably on the strength of his rich, confident visions of independence and national pride. A keen amateur historian specialising in Victorian industry and exploration, he was also among those whose intransigence and hubris propelled the country towards a no-deal Brexit, convinced as he was that home-grown manufacturing and invention would flourish in adversity. Unfortunately, he and his confederates were so sure of this outcome that they never underpinned it with any realistic contingency planning. As the consequences unravelled so did Franklin, succumbing to a heart attack eighteen months in. His widow Jane now channels her grief into fierce party activism, stubbornly insisting that the problems are transitional and that her husband's legacy will be a stable, thriving Northwest county. Driven into town by her personal security staff, Jane Franklin visits Erebus House every fortnight to plead support for her causes and stress the need for 'visible, inspiring' gestures.

Francis Crozier was never a politician. The closest link he ever had to government was his heartfelt but ill-advised attachment to Franklin's niece Sophia - an attachment which has mellowed now into genuine, if wry friendship. An outsider, he always meant his stay in Barrow to be temporary, his job at the council a purposely dull stop-gap until he collected himself and moved on, preferably back to Ireland or to the itinerant sailing life he'd enjoyed so much in his youth. Two things have held him back from this goal: his frequent bouts of debilitating depression, self-medicated with alcohol, and the fact that - against all expectation - he turned out to have an excellent, intuitive grasp of town council management and infighting, combining logistical and bureaucratic shrewdness with an angry compassion that keeps him from walking away even at his most despairing. His bold advocacy and fairness made him well-liked by activists and local grassroots organisations while setting him at odds with Franklin's complacency; their relationship became strained in the run-up to Brexit, then disastrous in its aftermath. On his worst days Francis holds himself responsible for aggravating the stress that led to Franklin's death (his closest staff have offered to bar Jane Franklin from the building, but he doesn't have the heart). On his best days he runs Erebus House like a ship in a squall, holding the shreds of the town's welfare in both shaking fists.

#as all the other brits in the fandom yell at me #i'm so sorry #the terror #francis crozier #this has legit been gnawing at my mind for weeks #brexit is a last dying cough of imperial madness so as a terror au it practically writes itself #i wish it didn't fit so well but it fits like a fingerless glove on a frozen corpse #it's really something to watch your alleged leaders intentionally walking the country towards dystopia #sorry about the politics #terror modern au #terror brexit au #kiev rants #kiev is really worried

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bountyofbeads · 5 years

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Ohio Governor Proposes Gun Law After Dayton Shooting https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/06/us/mass-shootings.html

El Paso is punctured by the ‘unfounded hatred’ that stole 22 lives.

Published August 5, 2019 | New York Times | Posted August 6, 2019 |

The gut punch of shock and horror that immediately followed the massacre in El Paso has morphed into a new kind of grief. It is a jumble of emotion — sadness, anger, wrestling with loss and, now a few days into this painful new reality, exhaustion.

“It’s too hard right now,” Edie Hallberg, her eyes weary, said of reckoning with the death of her mother, Angelina Englisbee, 86, who was killed in the shooting.

After days of waiting and uncertainty, El Paso now knows the names of the 22 people who were killed when a gunman stormed into a Walmart and opened fire on Saturday, apparently targeting Mexicans and Mexican-Americans, having written a manifesto sounding his alarm over what he called an “invasion of Hispanics,” the authorities said.

The death toll increased as two who were wounded died, the police said.

At first, the vigils in El Paso mourned a general sense of loss, knowing that lives had been claimed in what investigators described as a hate-filled rampage and that a blanket of safety this city has cherished had frayed. But by Monday, the nature of gatherings shifted, as they became more about pain over the individuals who had been killed.

Hundreds filled the stadium at Horizon High School just outside El Paso for a memorial for Javier Rodriguez, who was 15.

“In a time like this, I can’t help but feel angry that this young man was robbed of his potential, robbed of his future and robbed of his life because of someone’s unfounded hatred,” said Adrian Barrios, who had taught Javier in middle school. “However, I know that if I truly want to pay tribute to Javier’s life, anger has no place in honoring his memory.”

The police say the suspect in El Paso has not shown any remorse.

Investigators, after extensive interviews with the suspect, are now piecing together more about the hours before the attack.

In a news conference on Monday, Chief Greg Allen of the El Paso Police Department said it took the gunman more than 10 hours to reach the city after leaving Allen, Tex., where he lived. He got lost in a neighborhood as soon as he arrived, the chief said.

Chief Allen said that the suspect, identified as Patrick W. Crusius, 21, had cooperated with investigators. But, he added, he had not shown any remorse. Instead, Chief Allen said, “he appears to be in a state of shock and confusion.”

“We’re dealing with a tragedy with 22 people who have perished by an evil, hateful act of a white supremacist that has no bearing or no belonging in El Paso,” Mayor Dee Margo said at the Monday news conference. “It was not done by an El Pasoan. No El Pasoan would ever do this. I don’t know how we deal with evil. I don’t have a textbook for dealing with evil, other than the Bible.”

President Trump is expected to visit Dayton and El Paso on Wednesday.

The politics surrounding the shootings gathered more attention, especially as Mr. Trump planned to visit El Paso on Wednesday, as well as Dayton. But Mr. Margo of El Paso stressed that the enormity of the shooting was something that loomed far larger than politics, and that it would take time for the city, and for him, to grapple with what happened.

He said that Mr. Trump had called him, and “it was what I would consider a true presidential call to a community suffering greatly.”

Still, Mr. Margo, a Republican, stressed a specific point: He said he did not invite the president. The relationship between El Paso and the president has been strained since Mr. Trump said in his State of the Union address this year that, before a barrier went up on its border with Mexico, the city had been “one of the nation’s most dangerous cities” — an assertion that is not supported by evidence.

For many, things did not get any better when Mr. Trump visited El Paso to hold a campaign rally in February. City officials are still pushing the campaign to pay an unpaid bill of $569,204 for municipal services related to the event and late fees.

“The president can go anywhere he wants,” Mr. Margo said. “He’s president of the United States. I will greet him accordingly.”

Mr. Trump on Monday denounced white supremacy in the wake of the twin mass shootings, and citing the threat of “racist hate,” he summoned the nation to address what he called a link between the recent carnage and violent video games, mental illness and internet bigotry.

But he stopped well short of endorsing the kind of broad gun control measures that activists, Democrats and some Republicans have sought for years, including tougher background checks for gun buyers and the banning of some weapons and accessories such as high-capacity magazines.

And while he warned of “the perils of the internet and social media,” he offered no recognition of his own use of those platforms to incite fears of an “invasion’’ at the southern border, language he has repeatedly used in campaign ads and tweets.

How State Laws Allowed Military-Style Guns Used

in Dayton and El

Paso Shootings

By Larry Buchanan and K.K. Rebecca Lai | Published Aug. 5, 2019 | New York Times | Posted August 6, 2019 |

22 people were killed when

a shooter in El Paso, Tex.,

opened fire with this gun:

In Texas and Ohio, it’s legal to buy military-style firearms, use them with large-capacity magazines and carry them in public with a permit.

Gun laws vary from state to state, but more often than not, states do not restrict the type of military-style weapons and large-capacity magazines that were used in two mass shootings over the weekend.

In both shootings, the weapons

were acquired legally.

In Ohio and Texas, there is no ban on the type of military-style rifles that are often used in mass shootings. These types of semi-automatic weapons let gunmen fire rapidly, as quickly as they can pull the trigger, allowing an active shooter to kill a lot of people quickly.

“A normal individual seeing that type of weapon might be alarmed, but technically it was in the realm of the law,” Greg Allen, the El Paso police chief, told reporters.

Only six states and the District of Columbia have enacted bans on military-style weapons. Many cities, including Dayton, ban these types of weapons.

In both states, carrying

rifles in public is allowed.

While a lot of states have bans or restrictions on carrying firearms in public, only six states and the District of Columbia generally prohibit openly carrying rifles.

States that allow open carry of rifles

After the mass shooting in Parkland, Fla., in 2018, the number of new state gun laws rose sharply, including new restrictions on concealed-carry and magazine capacity. But even if you live in a state with strict gun laws, the current patchwork of state regulations means that military-style weapons with large-capacity magazines can still be purchased in a neighboring state.

The Dayton gunman bought his AR-style weapon online and had it shipped from Texas to a gun store in Ohio, where he picked it up, according to the Dayton Police Department. The weapon was modified with a brace to improve stability, which means that it functioned identically to a short-barreled AR-style rifle. The modification was legal, according to the Police Department.

Mass shooters have also circumvented state law by traveling to neighboring states with fewer gun restrictions to purchase weapons, or by making small modifications to other legal weapons.

The gunman who killed three people in Gilroy, Calif., in July bought his military-style rifle in Nevada. The weapon was configured in a way that is illegal in California.

In both states, large-capacity

magazines are allowed.

Both gunmen appeared to use magazines that can hold at least 30 rounds of ammunition, the standard capacity for assault rifles used by military personnel as well as many semi-automatic military-style rifles used by civilians. These magazines allow for shooters to fire a large number of bullets without having to reload.

“This type of high-volume fire is really originally contemplated for a battlefield,” said Laura Cutilletta, managing director at the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. “They can kill huge numbers of people in such a short time.”

In states like Texas and Ohio, these weapons can be legally configured to quickly swap out magazines — allowing someone to continue firing another 30 (or 100) rounds in short order.

Only eight states and the District of Columbia have laws that restrict the capacity of magazines, most limiting them to 10 to 15 rounds, depending on the state.

The Dayton gunman had a drum magazine that can carry up to 100 rounds of ammunition, and he had enough magazines with him in total to hold up to 250 rounds. He open fired and killed nine people and injured 27 others in the span of 30 seconds before the police shot him down, according to the Dayton Police Department.

El Paso Shooting Victims: Here Are Some of Their Stories

By Jose A. Del Real and Kate Taylor |

Published Aug. 4, 2019 | New York Times | Posted August 6, 2019 |

In many ways, it was a Walmart like all the others: a place to buy groceries, to pick up new school supplies and sometimes even to splurge on cosmetics. But then an ordinary Saturday morning for shoppers in El Paso was abruptly upended when a gunman opened fire in the store.

He killed 22 people and wounded more than two dozen others.

Most of the victims have yet to be identified publicly. But as their names and stories emerge, the rhythms of bicultural life in the Texas border town come into clearer view. The store, less than 10 miles north of the southern border, attracted Americans and Mexicans alike.

These are some of the victims’ stories.

Jordan and Andre Anchondo

Jordan and Andre Anchondo were at Walmart with their 2-month-old baby boy when the gunfire began.

The baby, Paul, was grazed by a bullet and has two broken fingers, most likely from the moment his mother’s body fell on him. He is being treated by doctors.

But Jordan and Andre, the parents of Paul and two other young children, were both killed, according to their family. Jordan was 24, and Andre was 23.

“She was so funny and her laugh was contagious,” said Monique Terry, Mr. Anchondo’s cousin. “I know everyone says that, but hers was really contagious. And she was so beautiful and just so smart. This is a really big loss.”

Arturo Benavides

Mr. Benavides, 60, was grocery shopping on Saturday at the Walmart with his wife, Patricia. He was paying at the register when the shooting happened, according to his goddaughter, Jacklin Luna. His wife, who survived, was sitting on a bench by the bathroom and was pushed into a bathroom stall during the shooting, separating her from her husband.

Ms. Luna said Mr. Benavides was an Army veteran and a retired bus driver for Sun Metro, El Paso’s public transit system, where he had worked for two decades. She said he had lived in El Paso his whole life and had been married to Patricia for over 30 years. Mr. Benavides had four brothers and three sisters, Ms. Luna said.

Ms. Luna said her godfather could be stubborn but was very sociable and would talk to anyone. “He would tell them about the military or his army days,” she said. “He was super-super giving, caring.”

Mr. Benavides loved listening to oldies and was full of obscure music trivia about rock music from the 1960s and 70s, said Carlos Dominguez, a former colleague at Sun Metro.

Known to many as “Turi,” Mr. Benavides used to drive a special bus service to help people with mobility issues before he moved to a job on the revenue side of Sun Metro, Mr. Dominquez said.

“He had such a wonderful personality. And he loved food, he always talked about how much he loved food, all kinds,” Mr. Dominquez said. “He was such a joyful person. He was strong willed and always happy.

Angelina Englisbee

Ms. Englisbee, 86, who was known as Angie, was on the phone with one of her sons just before 10:30 a.m. on Saturday when she told him that she had to hang up because she was in the checkout line at Walmart.

That was the last the family heard from her, according to her granddaughter, Mia Peake, 16.

Mia said the family learned on Sunday evening that Ms. Englisbee was among the victims of the shooting. When the news came, Mia and her mother were in the car, driving to El Paso from their home in New Mexico.

“My mom could not stop crying, and I remember thinking, I can’t cry until we get there, I can’t cry until we stop,” Mia said.

Ms. Englisbee had eight children, one of whom, a son, died in infancy, Mia said. Her husband died of a heart attack, leaving her to raise the children on her own.

Mia said her grandmother had loved watching sports and “General Hospital.”

“She was a very strong person, very blunt,” she said.

The family gathered on Sunday at Ms. Englisbee’s house. Mia said they were thinking of going on Monday to see a video of the shooting, to find out exactly what happened to Ms. Englisbee.

“It feels like hell — it doesn’t feel real,” Mia said.

Leonardo Campos, Jr.

Mr. Campos, who was killed along with his wife, Maribel, was remembered by classmates as a great athlete and dancer.

“The P.S.J.A. Family is sad to hear reports of the loss of one of our own, P.S.J.A. High School Class of 1996 alum Leonardo Campos, Jr., during yesterday’s tragic shooting in El Paso,” the Pharr-San Juan-Alamo Independent School District said in a statement on Sunday.

The school board president, Jesse Zambrano, also offered his thoughts in a statement. “This is a devastating time for our state and nation, and our P.S.J.A. Family, especially our Bears,” Zambrano said, referring to the high school teams’ nickname. “Leo was a great athlete during his time at Bears, the goalie for the soccer team and the kicker for the football team. He was well liked and a role model to athletes like me that looked up to him. We pray for him, his wife and his entire family.”

A classmate and friend, Asael Alanis, said that Mr. Campos had a big heart and a great sense of humor. “He was just a great human being,” he said.

Mr. Alanis Mr. Campos’s sister-in-law told him that Mr. Campos’s wife, Maribel, also died in the shooting.

Jorge Ortiz, whom Mr. Alanis identified as the school’s soccer coach, wrote on Facebook that Mr. Campos had been his best goalie.

“He was also a heck of a folkloric dancer with great elasticity,” Mr. Ortiz wrote. “Even the cheerleaders were amazed with his splits on top of two chairs. We will miss you Leo! May you continue playing soccer in heaven!”

Javier Rodriguez

Javier Rodriguez, 15, was a student at Horizon High School in El Paso, where he was being mourned by classmates as well as his family. Elvira Rodriguez, whom The Arizona Republic identified as Javier’s aunt, confirmed on Facebook that he was among the victims.

“Learning to live with this pain will be hard,” she wrote in Spanish. “And there is nothing that can console us.”

David Johnson

A series of messages posted on Facebook by Mr. Johnson’s nephew Dominic Patridge over the weekend showed the anguish of a family that did not know for a full day what had happened to a loved one. They thought at one point that they had found him and that he was alive, only to learn that it was a case of mistaken identity.

On Sunday morning, nearly 24 hours after the shooting, Mr. Patridge said the family was still searching for Mr. Johnson, 63, who he said had been shot several times while protecting his aunt and 9-year-old cousin.

“I previously posted that we had located him, but there was a mix-up and the man in surgery was not him,” Mr. Patridge wrote.

By Sunday evening, the family knew that the worst had happened.

In a message titled “Final Update,” Mr. Patridge wrote that they had been notified that Mr. Johnson had died.

“His last words directing my aunt to ‘run towards Sam’s if something were to happen to him’ before being gunned down by a coward speaks volumes of the bravery he never once had to boast about, but instead lived every day of his life,” Mr. Patridge wrote.

“He smiled with his eyes and always addressed you with a high-pitched warm welcome,” he added. “I’ll never forget that.”

Sara Esther Regalado and Adolfo Cerros Hernández

Mr. Hernandez and Ms. Regalado, of Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, were among eight Mexican citizens who died in the shooting.

Their daughter, Sandra Ivonne Cerros, described them as loving parents in a post on her Facebook account.

“I don’t know how long it will take for my soul to heal,” she wrote in Spanish. “Your deaths leave us with a great vacuum. I’m so grateful I was your daughter. Rest in peace my beloved parents.”

Mexico’s foreign minister, Marcelo Ebrard, identified several other Mexican citizens who were among the dead. They include: Gloria Irma Márquez and Ivan Filiberto Manzano of Ciudad Juárez, in the Mexican state of Chihuahua, which borders Texas and New Mexico; Juan de Dios Velázquez Chairez of Zacatecas; and Jorge Calvillo García of Torreón, in Coahuila, another state that borders Texas.

Elsa Mendoza Márquez

Ms. Mendoza, a schoolteacher who lived in Ciudad Juárez, was also among the Mexican victims. Her husband, Antonio de la Mora, wrote an emotional farewell to his wife on Facebook. “I say goodbye to my partner, the most wonderful of women, a being full of life who will continue to light our path for the time that life gives us ... we will miss you love.!!!!”

According to El Diario, a Ciudad Juárez newspaper, Ms. Mendoza was inside the Walmart store and her husband and son were waiting outside in the car when the gunman opened fire.

Ms. Mendoza was 57, according to La Verdad, an investigative website based in Ciudad Juárez, and was the mother of two children. Tributes spread across social media from colleagues and former students.

“The Mexican education community is in mourning for the irreparable loss of Maestra Elsa Mendoza Márquez in the deplorable events in El Paso, Texas,” wrote Mexico’s education minister, Esteban Moctezuma Barragan, using the honorific that Mexicans use for teachers.

Juan de Dios Velázquez Chairez

Mr. Velázquez, 77, who was born in the Mexican state of Zacatecas, had followed the same path as many Mexican immigrants to the United States, according to his son, Cruz Velázquez. He moved first to Ciudad Juárez, along the southwest border, and then to Denver, where he lived for 30 years. He eventually moved south again, to El Paso, because it was peaceful. “He fought to get ahead in the United States,” said his son, who noted the elder Mr. Velázquez had become a United States citizen. “My father was very healthy, very hardworking.”

Cruz Velázquez drove more than 400 miles through the night on Saturday to look for his father after he learned he may have been injured in the shooting. He found the elder Mr. Velázquez, who was registered at the hospital under another name, but the injuries were severe and he died. Afterward, Cruz Velázquez and his four siblings kept vigil for their mother, Nicolasa Estela Velázquez, who was also injured in the Walmart attack but was expected to survive.

This story is developing and will be updated as more information becomes available.

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olko71 · 3 years

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New Post has been published on All about business online

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Boeing Moved to Fix 777 Engine Covers Before Failures

Boeing Co. BA -5.62% was planning to strengthen protective engine covers on its 777 jets months before a pair of recent serious failures, including one near Denver last weekend, according to an internal Federal Aviation Administration document.

Because potential modifications to 777 external engine covers, commonly known as cowlings, had various shortcomings, “Boeing has decided to redesign the fan cowl instead of trying to modify existing fan cowls to address both the structural strength concerns” and moisture issues, according to the internal FAA document reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

“Boeing will be manufacturing new fan cowls and providing service instructions for operators to remove and replace the fan cowls,” according to the document, part of a routine Aug. 6, 2020, update on efforts under way at the agency’s Seattle-area offices. Boeing and the FAA declined to comment on the engine-cover plan’s status Wednesday.

Such changes to airplane parts can require years of design, testing and regulatory approvals. Some aviation-safety experts and regulators have been growing increasingly concerned about whether engine covers are robust enough to withstand the impact of a fan blade’s breaking off and shooting outward during flights.

While rare, such engine-cover damage has come up in a handful of recent engine failures. Pilots train to land a plane operating on one engine, which can be done safely, but large pieces of metal from covers can put other parts of the aircraft––and passengers––at risk. The engine-testing process hasn’t been fully accounted for that possibility, according to some safety experts and reports by the National Transportation Safety Board.

The FAA ordered inspections of some Boeing 777s and the plane maker recommended they be grounded, after an engine on a United jet broke apart in flight. WSJ’s Andrew Tangel reports on how Boeing’s quick response contrasts with its handling of past safety issues. Photo: Chad Schnell via Storyful

Jim Hall, chairman of the NTSB from 1994 to 2001, said recent incidents should have prompted regulators to look “very aggressively“ at issues surrounding engine covers.

“I have yet to see indication this was done,” he said.

Boeing said it would continue to follow the FAA’s guidance on 777 engine covers, and it is “engaged in ongoing efforts to introduce safety and performance improvements across the fleet.”

An FAA spokesman said reducing the risk of engine fan-blade failure that could lead to cowling damage has been a priority—the focus of agency directives following the 777 incidents in 2018 and last week. FAA officials have said the agency was working with Boeing on a design change for a different type of engine that failed on the 2018 Southwest flight—killing a passenger—and reviewing the need for changes to other engines.

“Any proposed design change to a critical piece of structure must be carefully evaluated and tested to ensure it provides an equivalent or improved level of safety and does not introduce unintended risks,” the agency spokesman said.

The 777 engine failure last weekend came shortly after the plane—as in one of the 2018 incidents, operated by United—took off from Denver International Airport. An apparently weakened fan blade broke off and seemed to have sheared a second blade roughly in half, according to the NTSB, which is leading the investigation. The engine’s cover was ripped away, leaving a trail of debris in the town below.

Flight 328 out of Denver International Airport landed safely shortly after taking off, and none of the passengers or crew members were injured. Photo: Broomfield Police Department

It resembled two recent failures of certain Pratt & Whitney-made engines on a subset of Boeing 777 aircraft—the 2018 United flight and one in December of 2020 operated by Japan Airlines Co. Authorities in the U.S. and Japan attributed both to fan blades that snapped off and battered engine covers.

In all three cases, the planes landed safely without any injuries.

After the 2018 failure on the United 777, the FAA mandated that fan blades on the type of engine involved undergo special thermal-acoustic image inspections—using sound waves to detect signs of cracks—every 6,500 flights. The engine that failed over the weekend had made about 3,000 flights since its last inspection, according to people familiar with the matter.

Engine Overhaul

The FAA on Monday ordered immediate thermal-acoustic image inspections for fan blades on certain Pratt & Whitney engines on some Boeing 777 jets. Pratt & Whitney is a unit of aerospace company Raytheon Technologies Corp. RTX -5.02%

But a design change to fortify engine covers is a longer, more involved process. The internal FAA document said Chicago-based Boeing had presented its 777 engine-cover findings to FAA specialists in the Seattle area in early August.

Aircraft engines and their protective covers are supposed to contain broken fan blades and other metal parts, preventing them from damaging structures needed to keep the plane aloft. Detached engine covers that don’t fall to the ground could create aerodynamic drag, safety experts said. That could increase consumption of fuel if the plane is flying less efficiently, a concern for long flights over water with few options for emergency landings, one of these experts said. The FAA document cites “fuel exhaustion” as a potential safety hazard.

Engines’ certification tests have focused on making sure that broken fan blades don’t shoot out the side of an engine and puncture the plane’s fuselage. Less attention has been paid to the prospect that a blade could shoot forward and damage the front part of the engine covers. Those covers aren’t required to be attached during tests of how engines cope with broken fan blades so the blades remain visible.

“When you lose big pieces like that, that’s a hazard,” said Jeffrey Guzzetti, a former director of the FAA’s accident investigation division. “There was never a requirement to consider this before—it just never really happened that much.”

Write to Andrew Tangel at [email protected] and Alison Sider at [email protected]

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unbstropicalcbdgummies · 3 years

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stephenmccull · 3 years

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Eureka! Two Vaccines Work — But What About the Also-Rans in the Pharma Arms Race?

This story also ran on Daily Beast. It can be republished for free.

As I prepared to get my shot in mid-December as part of a covid vaccine trial run by Janssen Pharmaceuticals, I considered the escape routes. Bailing out of the trial was a very real consideration since two other vaccines, made by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech, had been deemed safe and effective for emergency approval.

Leaving the trial would be a perfectly sane decision for me or anyone who had volunteered for an ongoing covid experiment. Why risk getting covid-19 if I was given a placebo, a shot with no vaccine in it? The way tests are designed, I might not be told whether I received the vaccine until the clinical trial is over, months from now.

Dropping the placebo arm could also be ethically sound from the company’s point of view. Researchers frequently halt trials when they have a product that works — or manifestly doesn’t. And the two approved vaccines are 95% effective.

That very real choice for thousands of people offering to join or remain in the ongoing vaccine tests creates a conundrum for science and for society. If trials can’t go forward, that could very well have an impact on the world’s supply of covid vaccines and eventually on vaccine prices, especially if booster shots are needed in years to come. In markets where there are only two competing drugs, prices can shoot sky-high. If there are four or five on the market, competition usually kicks in to control costs.

In short, the welcome arrival of two covid vaccines deemed safe has uncovered a series of ethical and logistical challenges. And it has governments, companies and scientists scrambling for solutions.

“The world’s vaccine experts are saying the longer we can carry out a placebo-controlled trial the better,” Matthew Hepburn, who runs the vaccine development arm of Operation Warp Speed, the multibillion-dollar federal program to fight covid-19, told me. “But as a volunteer in the Janssen trial, you can always drop out.”

As for the best way to resolve broader problems, “it’s a debate in real time,” he said.

Generally, there are two aspects to the debate. First, what should be done with placebo recipients of the Moderna and Pfizer trials now that it’s clear both shots prevent the disease and appear safe? Second, how can the scores of companies in the United States and overseas that are still testing covid vaccines adapt when there are apparently reliable products already on the market?

The FDA’s advisory committee debated the first question during two meetings in December. They heard Stanford University statistician Steven Goodman argue in favor of a “double-blind crossover” modification of the Pfizer and Moderna trials. Everyone who got placebo shots in the trials would now get two doses of the real vaccine, and vice versa. That way everyone would be protected but still “blind” as to when they were properly vaccinated.

Such a rejigger of the current trial would provide more data on the vaccine’s safety and durability of protection, although the longer-term comparison of vaccine versus placebo would be lost. It’s a marvelous idea in principle, the panelists agreed, but pretty hard to carry out. Neither Moderna nor Pfizer has agreed to it.

Pfizer wants to “unblind” placebo recipients of its vaccine — to reveal they got the saline solution and give them the real thing — once their risk group gets its turn in line for the vaccine. It has already started vaccinating health care workers who got the placebo.

Moderna, which has thousands of soon-to-expire leftover doses from its trial, said it intends to unblind its trial and vaccinate all the placebo recipients. In doing so, it would be recognizing the altruistic service the test subjects made to science and society by joining the trial.

Another proposal would split the placebo recipients in the trial into two groups. In one group, everyone would get a single dose of the vaccine. In the other, each would get two doses. This would be a way of testing evidence that emerged during the Pfizer and Moderna trials that a single dose might provide sufficient protection. If that were true, vaccination of the country could happen nearly twice as fast, because there would be twice as many doses of vaccine to go around.

No one knows to what extent the Food and Drug Administration could force the hands of the two companies, which still expect to get full licensure for their vaccines this year. Moderna is considered more amenable to the suggestion since, unlike Pfizer, it got nearly $1 billion in federal funding to develop its vaccine.

Other vaccine developers — including Operation Warp Speed participants Janssen (owned by Johnson & Johnson), AstraZeneca, Novavax, Sanofi and Merck & Co. — are closely watching to see which path is taken.

They are in a race against time — a race that may not end well for those running late in getting their vaccine out. And halting those efforts could hurt billions of people elsewhere in the world whose lives and livelihoods will depend on the arrival of plentiful, cheap vaccines.

One problem is finding willing test subjects. As increasing numbers of Americans are vaccinated, and the virus recedes from our shores, “the fewer the number of people eligible to participate in trials,” said Susan Ellenberg, professor of biostatistics at the University of Pennsylvania.

For now, AstraZeneca and Janssen appear well situated. Both have closed enrollment in their U.S. trials and are likely to file within a few months for emergency use authorizations, like those that have allowed Moderna and Pfizer to start vaccinating the public.

Novavax officials last week started their late-stage trial in the U.S. and predict they can get full enrollment before the majority of the U.S. population is vaccinated.

Sanofi and Merck, whose timetables are more drawn out, are more likely to conduct most of their trials overseas.

In theory, drug companies could overcome these hurdles by testing multiple vaccines against one another and against approved vaccines. Dr. Steven Joffe, a University of Pennsylvania bioethicist, proposed in a recent JAMA article that Operation Warp Speed pay for such a trial.

Scientists and policymakers batted around the idea of a single U.S. trial, with multiple vaccine candidates competing against one another and a single placebo arm, during initial discussions last spring about the creation of Operation Warp Speed.

The idea went nowhere in the United States. It was taken up by World Health Organization officials and major biomedical research groups, which have tried to create such a vaccine trial in the rest of the world — with little success thus far.

So, for now, future vaccine trials are somewhat up in the air.

“There’s this tension created by getting the first vaccines out there so quickly,” said David Wendler, a senior researcher in bioethics at the National Institutes of Health’s Clinical Center. “For public health it’s good, but it has the potential to undermine our ability to keep going on the research side and really knock out the virus.”

Companies, governments and outside funders need to quickly develop consensus on appropriate trial designs and regulatory processes for additional covid vaccines, added Mark Feinberg, president and CEO of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative.

As for me, I decided I would stay in the Janssen trial. However, the day before I was scheduled to get my injection — real or fake — the research organization running the inoculations called to say I failed to make the cut: J&J had stopped its trial enrollment.

So, I’ll buy some new masks and get in line for my vaccine with everyone else.

This story was produced by KHN, which publishes California Healthline, an editorially independent service of the California Health Care Foundation.

Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

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This story can be republished for free (details).

Eureka! Two Vaccines Work — But What About the Also-Rans in the Pharma Arms Race? published first on https://smartdrinkingweb.weebly.com/

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gordonwilliamsweb · 3 years

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Eureka! Two Vaccines Work — But What About the Also-Rans in the Pharma Arms Race?