“I Don’t Care If You’re Vaccinated, You Dink!” – Wisconsin Teacher Put On Leave After Verbally-Abusing Maskless Student
Amid all the confusing guidance spewed by Fauci and Walensky in the last two weeks, one teacher’s verbally-abusive rage against a maskless student in her class sums up the nation’s science-denying (masked or unmasked?), virtue-signalers ongoing cognitive dissonance as the pandemic that gave many of them purpose in life is quickly fading from top of mind.
A video of the scene went viral after a Poynette, Wisconsin teacher (with clearly severe comorbodities) blasted a student for not wearing a mask.
“I don’t care if you’re vaccinated you little dink,” the belligerent teacher says during the exchange.
“I don’t want to get sick and die. There’s other people you can infect. Just because you’re vaccinated.”
The student, sitting against the wall, politely and calmly repeatedly says “okay” in response to the verbal abuse.
“You know what? You’re not a special person around here. You should hear how everybody talks about you around here. YOU’RE A JERK,” the increasingly aggressive teacher shouts.
The student replies that he doesn’t care what people are saying about him, which appears to further enrage the teacher…
“You’re a jerk,” she repeats. “You need to have respect for other people in your life.”
“You’re not a big man on campus,” she says as the video cuts off.
Shortly after the clip went viral, the teacher was place on administrative leave…
District Administrator Matthew Shappell posted on Facebook that the district “is aware” of what occurred and that the unnamed teacher will remain on leave “pending the outcome of the investigation.”
Dear Families,
The School District of Poynette is aware of an incident that occurred today, May 11th, involving a teacher and student at the Poynette High School. The District is initiating an investigation and the teacher involved has been put on administrative leave pending the outcome of the investigation. The District contacted the parents and we are taking steps to provide the appropriate support for the student involved.
Thank you,
Matthew Shappell District Administrator
* * *
Still some prefer to keep wearing their masks, denying the science, as a signal of their virtue for all to admire…
I feel like this is something you can especially understand if you’re in a very liberal area where 99% of the people you see are wearing masks.
States and stores on Friday said they were largely dropping their mask requirements after a top U.S. health agency advised that people fully vaccinated against the virus that causes COVID-19 could stop donning face coverings.
The governors of at least 10 states and officials at a slew of retail giants, like Walmart, announced they would no longer require masks, at least for those fully vaccinated against the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.
Delaware’s governor, Democrat John Carney, said effective May 21 residents will not be forced to wear masks anytime they are indoors with people they do not live with.
“It’s clear that the COVID-19 vaccines are extremely safe and protective against infection and serious illness,” he said in a statement.
“Delawareans who are fully vaccinated have significant protection against this virus and can feel comfortable getting back to the things they loved to do before this pandemic. For our neighbors who aren’t vaccinated, the message is clear. The COVID-19 vaccine is the best protection we have against the virus. Getting vaccinated is the best way to protect you and those you love. In the meantime, Delawareans who are unvaccinated, including children, should continue to wear masks in public places,” he added.
Kentucky, Louisiana, New Mexico, North Carolina, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Vermont, and Virginia also relaxed or eliminated masking requirements.
Some also eased or rescinded social distancing mandates.
“Today is the day that so many of us have been waiting for and working toward. We finally do clearly see the light at the end of that tunnel. Our long, hard-fought battle against the worst global pandemic in more than a century is finally nearing an end,” Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, told a press conference.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced Thursday that it was rolling back its strict masking guidance. People who are fully vaccinated against the CCP virus no longer have to wear masks indoors, its director said.
Fully vaccinated means a person has received the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine or both doses of vaccines from Moderna or Pfizer, and two weeks have elapsed.
The CDC guidance is not binding but is followed closely by many states across the nation, though some governors had relaxed masking and similar COVID-fueled restrictions earlier, citing the steep drop in COVID-19 cases and other metrics and the rise in the number of vaccinated.
Over 120 million Americans, or 36 percent of the population, have been fully vaccinated against the CCP virus as of May 14.
President Joe Biden in March called rescinding mask mandates “Neanderthal thinking” and top health officials like Dr. Anthony Fauci condemned the easing by governors like Greg Abbott of Texas. But the states that relaxed or removed restrictions saw a drop in cases, befuddling Fauci.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters in Washington on Friday that Biden “has been listening to the guidance of our health and medical experts and teams, and that’s exactly what we’re doing in this case” when asked about his earlier criticism of removing mask mandates.
The CDC’s experts “were the ones who determined what this guidance would be, based on their own data, and what the timeline would be,” she added.
People with no masks pose for photos in Times Square in the Manhattan borough of New York City on May 14, 2021. (Carlo Allegri/Reuters)
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky was on television just one day before the updated recommendations defending guidance that had fully vaccinated people wear masks both indoors and in some situations outdoors.
New research on the efficacy of the vaccines and the severity of COVID-19 in so-called breakthrough cases, or cases among the fully vaccinated, compelled the change, officials say.
Large retailers followed the CDC’s lead.
Walmart, Costco, Sam’s Club, Publix, and Trader Joe’s all announced that they would not force customers who are fully vaccinated to wear masks in states that do not require the coverings.
Costco, in a similar update to the other retailers, said that they will not check for proof of vaccination but hope that customers abide by the revised policy.
Walmart told associates in a note that they would also not need to wear masks unless they are not vaccinated.
Other businesses, like Target, CVS, Kroger, and Walgreens, said their requirements are staying the same for now.
A handful of governors are not altering masking mandates as of now.
“We have received the newly revised guidance from the CDC regarding mask wearing and social distancing for those with vaccinations and are reviewing them,” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, said in a statement.
[ZH: Of course, some Americans just can’t help themselves and admit to the need to wear a mask to signal theuir virtue despite the ‘science’]
I feel the need to continue wearing my mask outside even though I’m fully vaccinated because the inconvenience of having to wear a mask is more than worth it to have people not think I’m a conservative 😬
Israeli Airstrike Destroys Gaza Media HQ Building That Housed AP & Al Jazeera
Israel has targeted yet another large office and residential tower in the Gaza Strip, but this time its warplanes have destroyed the 12-story building housing the media offices of the U.S.-based Associated Press and Qatar-based broadcaster Al Jazeera, the AP itself as well as Reuters eyewitnesses confirm.
The outlets have said that Israel issued advanced warning of the airstrikes of up to one hour before the attack. Representatives with the AP had reportedly pleaded with IDF officials to give more time to enable a safe evacuation and also to take out crucial media equipment.
Oh my god. The building where al Jazeera’s office is housed has just been taken down by Israeli airstrikes. There was a warning and evacuated. It houses offices and private homes. I can’t believe it. pic.twitter.com/Q4luRYk9H9
However, eyewitnesses say they were not given extra time, but merely made it out with whatever they had in hand and with their own lives.
The building can be seen essentially collapsing in its own footprint, the same way that three prior residential apartment buildings did during days past.
⭕ LIVE footage of the moment an Israeli air raid bombed the offices of Al Jazeera and The Associated Press in Gaza City ⬇️
“The strike on the high-rise came nearly an hour after the military ordered people to evacuate the 12-story building, which also housed Al-Jazeera, other offices and residential apartments. The strike brought down the entire structure, which collapsed in a gigantic cloud of dust,” AP writes.
“There was no immediate explanation for why it was attacked,” AP adds.
The IDF in a later follow-up statement alleged the media offices contained Hamas military intelligence units:
After providing advance warning to civilians & time to evacuate, IDF fighter jets struck a multi-story building containing Hamas military intelligence assets.
The building contained civilian media offices, which Hamas hides behind and deliberately uses as human shields. pic.twitter.com/zeDjEquePD
The devastating attack brought swift condemnation by various international media organizations and advocates, with a number of prominent journalists expressing their shock, saying they “can’t believe” the media building was so blatantly targeted by Israel’s military.
“Journalists who worked there had been reporting on the Israeli attacks on Gaza,”Al Jazeera said in a social media statement. “Targeting journalists is a war crime.”
An Israeli airstrike destroyed the Al Jazeera office in Gaza. The Israeli military warned they would hit the building that houses media organizations including the AP.
Journalists who worked there had been reporting on the Israeli attacks on Gaza. pic.twitter.com/fZVo3TFEoO
Alongside some observations we made earlier on tech stocks vs commodities, Deutsche Bank credit strategist Jim Reid writes that while inflation and commodities have dominated the financial airways this week, “although commodities prices have been a big part of the current inflation scare, they have actually dipped since the mid-week US CPI shock which has helped markets adjust to the high print”, something else we pointed out earlier.
So is the commodities run now over, asks Reid rhetorically?
To answer, he updates a chart which he first showed in January (and which he called “Trade of the Decade”) showing the long-term relationship between the S&P 500 (price only) and a long-term commodity series. At the start of 2021 this relationship was the most stretched in history. Four and a half months later and the ratio has moved in favor of commodities but in the context of long-term history there’s not been too much change as the S&P 500 has seen a solid c.10% YTD gain itself.
As Reid concludes, “if you think we’re at a secular turning point for hard assets versus financial assets there is still plenty of time to get on board on a relative basis. Note though that history tells us that commodities tend to under-perform inflation over the long-run and equities out-perform. So commodities have never been a great buy and hold investment. However the one major criteria that flips this relationship is inflation. In these periods commodities dramatically out-perform.“
I’m biased, because I know Antonio Garcia-Martinez and something like the same thing once happened to me, but the decision by Apple to bend to a posse of internal complainers and fire him over a passage in a five-year-old book is ridiculous hypocrisy. Hypocrisy by the complainers, and defamatory cowardice by the bosses — about right for the Invasion of the Body Snatchers-style era of timorous conformity and duncecap monoculture the woke mobs at these places are trying to build as their new Jerusalem.
Garcia-Martinez is a brilliant, funny, multi-talented Cuban-American whose confessional memoir Chaos Monkeysis to big tech what Michael Lewis’s Liar’s Poker was to finance. A onetime high-level Facebook executive — he ran Facebook Ads — Antonio’s book shows the House of Zuckerberg to be a cult full of on-the-spectrum zealots who talked like justice activists while possessing the business ethics of Vlad the Impaler:
Facebook is full of true believers who really, really, really are not doing it for the money, and really, really will not stop until every man, woman, and child on earth is staring into a blue-framed window with a Facebook logo.
When I read Chaos Monkeys the first time I was annoyed, because this was Antonio’s third career at least — he’d also worked at Goldman, Sachs — and he tossed off a memorable bestseller like it was nothing. Nearly all autobiographies fail because the genre requires total honesty, and not only do few writers have the stomach for turning the razor on themselves, most still have one eye on future job offers or circles of friends, and so keep the bulk of their interesting thoughts sidelined — you’re usually reading a résumé, not a book.
Chaos Monkeys is not that. Garcia-Martinez is an immediately relatable narrator because in one breath he tells you exactly what he thinks of former colleagues (“A week before my last day, I had lunch with the only senior person at Goldman Sachs who was not an inveterate asshole”) and in the next explains, but does not excuse, the psychic quirks that have him chasing rings in some of the world’s most rapacious corporations. “Whenever membership in some exclusive club is up for grabs, I viciously fight to win it, even if only to reject membership when offered,” he wrote. “After all, echoing the eminent philosopher G. Marx: How good can a club be if it’s willing to have lowly me as a member?”
The irony is that if Garcia-Martinez has a failing as a writer, it’s that he’s too nice. Universally, the best writers are insane egomaniacs obsessed with staring at the great mirror that is the page. Garcia-Martinez, on the whole, would rather be sailing. I believe the reason he decided to go back to tech is that he preferred a quiet life of flying a desk to make mortgage payments to the never-ending regimen of self-salesmanship that the literary life requires (and which, again, is the easy part for most egocentric writers).
Anyway: Chaos Monkeys contains scenes from Antonio’s private travails. Characteristically, they’re painted as comedies, where his personal life is depicted as an unpredictable third party over which he has little control — only occasionally, it seems, does it even listen to his suggestions. He meets a woman via Match.com whom he calls British Trader, “an imposing, broad-shouldered presence, six feet tall in bare feet, and towering over me in heels.”
He’s enthralled, but everything about her is a surprise that keeps him off balance, from the fact that her “strapping and strutting” South African ex-boyfriend docks a boat next to his not long after their first date, or that she sleeps on “a cheap foam mattress about the width of an extra-jumbo-sized menstrual pad” above a floor covered from detritus from a recent renovation. She dis such work herself because, Antonio explains, “she made Bob Vila of This Old House look like a fucking pussy.” Even this side of her life has him tiptoeing. “Postcoitally it was all I could do to balance myself on the edge of the pad and off the drywall dust,” he noted.
At one point, as a means of comparing the broad-shouldered British DIY expert favorably to other women he’d known, he wrote this:
Most women in the Bay Area are soft and weak, cosseted and naive despite their claims of worldliness, and generally full of shit. They have their self-regarding entitlement feminism, and ceaselessly vaunt their independence, but the reality is, come the epidemic plague or foreign invasion, they’d become precisely the sort of useless baggage you’d trade for a box of shotgun shells or a jerry can of diesel.
Out of context, you could, I guess, read this as bloviating from a would-be macho man beating his chest about how modern “entitlement feminism” would be unmasked as a chattering fraud in a Mad Max scenario. In context, he’s obviously not much of a shotgun-wielder himself and is actually explaining why he fell for a strong woman, as the next passage reveals:
British Trader, on the other hand, was the sort of woman who would end up a useful ally in that postapocalypse, doing whatever work—be it carpentry, animal husbandry, or a shotgun blast to someone’s back—required doing.
Again, this is not a passage about women working in tech. It’s a throwaway line in a comedic recount of a romance that juxtaposes the woman he loves with the inadequate set of all others, a literary convention as old as writing itself. The only way to turn this into a commentary on the ability of women to work in Silicon Valley is if you do what Twitter naturally does and did, i.e. isolate the quote and surround it with mounds of James Damore references. More on this in a moment.
After trying the writer’s life, Antonio went back to work for Apple. When he entered the change on his LinkedIn page, Business Insider did a short, uncontroversial writeup. Then a little site called 9to5Mac picked up on the story and did the kind of thing that passes for journalism these days, poring through someone’s life in search of objectionable passages and calling for immediate disappearance of said person down a cultural salt mine. Writer Zac Hall quoted from Apple’s Inclusion and Diversity page:
Across Apple, we’ve strengthened our long-standing commitment to making our company more inclusive and the world more just. Where every great idea can be heard. And everybody belongs.
Hall then added, plaintively, “This isn’t just PR speak for Apple. The company releases annual updates on its efforts to hire diversely, and it puts its money where its mouth is with programs intended to give voice to women and people of color in technology. So why is Apple giving Garcia Martinez a great big pass?”
From there the usual press pile-on took place, with heroes at places like The Verge sticking to the playbook. “Silicon Valley has consistently had a white, male workforce,” they wrote, apparently not bothered by Antonio’s not-whiteness. “There are some in the Valley, such as notorious ex-Googler James Damore, who suggest this is because women and people of color lack the innate qualities needed to succeed in tech.”
Needless to say, Antonio never wrote anything like that, but the next step in the drama was similarly predictable: a group letter by Apple employees claiming, in seriousness, to fear for their safety. “Given Mr. García Martínez’s history of publishing overtly racist and sexist remarks,” the letter read, “we are concerned that his presence at Apple will contribute to an unsafe working environment for our colleagues who are at risk of public harassment and private bullying.” All of this without even a hint that there’s ever been anything like such a problem at any of his workplaces.
Within about a nanosecond, the same people at Apple who hired Antonio, clearly having read his book, now fired him, issuing the following statement:
At Apple, we have always strived to create an inclusive, welcoming workplace where everyone is respected and accepted. Behavior that demeans or discriminates against people for who they are has no place here.
The Verge triumphantly reported on Apple’s move using the headline, “‘Misogynistic’ Apple hire is out hours after employees call for investigation.” Other companies followed suit with the same formulation. CNN: “Apple parts ways with newly hired ex-Facebook employee after workers cite ‘misogynistic’ writing.” CNET: “Apple reportedly cuts ties with employee amid uproar over misogynistic writing.”
Apple by this point not only issued a statement declaring that Antonio’s “behavior” was demeaning and discriminatory, but by essentially endorsing the complaints of their letter-writing employees, poured jet fuel on headline descriptions of him as a misogynist. It’s cowardly, defamatory, and probably renders him unhirable in the industry, but this is far from the most absurd aspect of the story.
I’m a fan of Dr. Dre’s music and have been since the N.W.A. days. It’s not any of my business if he wants to make $3 billion selling Beats by Dre to Apple, earning himself a place on the board in the process. But if 2,000 Apple employees are going to insist that they feel literally unsafe working alongside a man who wrote a love letter to a woman who towers over him in heels, I’d like to hear their take on serving under, and massively profiting from, partnership with the author of such classics as “Bitches Ain’t Shit” and “Lyrical Gangbang,” who is also the subject of such articles as “Here’s What’s Missing from Straight Outta Compton: Me and the Other Women Dr. Dre Beat Up.”
It’s easy to get someone like Antonio Garcia Martinez fired. Going after a board member who’s reportedly sitting on hundreds of millions in Apple stock is a different matter. A letter making such a demand is likely to be returned to sender, and the writer of it will likely spend every evaluation period looking over his or her shoulder. Why? Because going after Dre would mean forcing the company to denounce one of its more profitable investments — Beats and Beats Music were big factors in helping Apple turn music streaming into a major profit center. The firm made $4.1 billion in that area last year alone.
Speaking of profits: selling iPhones is a pretty good business. It made Apple $47.9 billion last year, good for 53% of the company’s total revenue. Part of what makes the iPhone such a delightfully profitable product is its low production cost, which reportedly comes from Apple’s use of a smorgasbord of suppliers with a penchant for forced labor — Uighurs said to be shipped in by the thousand to help make iPhone glass (Apple denies this), temporary “dispatch workers” sent in above legal limits, workers in “iPhone city” clocking excessive overtime to meet launch dates, etc. Apple also has a storied history of tax avoidance, offshoring over a hundred billion in revenues, using Ireland as a corporate address despite no physical presence there, and so on.
Maybe the signatories to the Apple letter can have a Chaos Monkeys book-burning outside the Chinese facility where iPhone glass is made — keep those Uighur workers warm! Or they can have one in Dublin, to celebrate the €13bn tax bill a court recently ruled Apple didn’t have to pay.
It’s all a sham. The would-be progressives denouncing Garcia-Martinez don’t seem to mind working for a company that a Democrat-led congressional committee ripped for using “monopoly power” to extract rents via a host of atrocious anti-competitive practices. Whacking an author is just a form of performative “activism” that doesn’t hurt their bottom lines or their careers.
Meanwhile, the bosses who give in to their demands are all too happy to look like they’re steeped in social concern, especially if they can con some virtue-signaling dink at a trade website into saying Apple’s mechanically platitudinous “Shared Values” page “isn’t just PR speak.” You’d fire a couple of valuable employees to get that sort of P.R.
When I was caught up in my own cancelation episode, I was devastated, above all to see the effect it had on my family. Unlike Garcia-Martinez, I had past writings genuinely worth being embarrassed by, and I felt that it was important, morally and for my own mental health, to apologize in public. I didn’t fight for my career and reputation, and threw myself on the mercy of the court of public opinion.
I now know this is a mistake. The people who launch campaigns like this don’t believe in concepts like redemption or growth. An apology is just another thing they’d like to get, like the removal of competition for advancement. These people aren’t idealists. They’re just ordinary greedy Americans trying to get ahead, using the tactics available to them, and it’s time to stop thinking of stories like this through any other lens.
JPMorgan Already Has 30 To 40 Investment Bankers Traveling Daily Again
Investment bankers at J.P. Morgan are back to flying the friendly skies.
Amid debate as to whether or not business travel would eventually pick back up to pre-Covid levels, it appears as though the largest lender in the U.S. is doing its part to help steady the air travel industry. The company already has about 30 to 40 investment bankers traveling daily, according to a new report from Bloomberg.
In-person meetings help banks win lucrative mandates and show their interest to potential clients.
Jim Casey, J.P. Morgan’s co-head of global investment banking, said: “Business travel has picked up as people become more comfortable. You’re not winning new business without in-person connectivity.”
CEO Jamie Dimon said last week: “There are a bunch of clients who gave business to somebody else because the bankers from the other guys visited and ours didn’t. OK, well, that’s a lesson. It’s got to work for the clients — it’s not about whether it works for me. And I have to compete.”
Recall, about a week ago we noted that business travel likely wouldn’t improve back to pre-Covid levels as investment banks mulled the idea of more dealingmaking via video chat for convenience and in order to save money.
Nordea Bank Chief Executive Officer Frank Vang-Jensen said last week that there “will definitely be much less traveling.”
His sentiments were echoed by the likes of other major investment banks HSBC and Standard Chartered. Andy Halford of Standard Chartered said: “We see a step change down in the level of travel once we normalize out of this.”
HSBC Holdings Chief Financial Officer Ewen Stevenson also said the same this week, noting that the bank will increase reliance on “video technology and having people go on fewer, longer trips when they do travel.”
And for banks, less travel is actually a good thing. HSBC saw its travel costs down $300 million in 2020, which could amount to annual savings of $150 million if the bank keeps reining in travel.
But, recall, J.P. Morgan’s Jamie Dimon said at the time that he hadn’t quite given up on air travel: “If I’m the gung-ho person, I want to get the business, taking that trip may be much different than saying I’ll meet you in a Zoom. I think people like me will travel as much and Zoom more.”
A government-run British train company has issued an apology after one of its conductors used the phrase ‘ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls’ during an announcement, causing a passenger identifying as ‘non-binary’ to take offence and make a complaint.
The passenger, who happens to be a ‘LGBT rep’ for the Rail, Maritime and Transport Union, immediately took to Twitter to whine about the ‘incident’.
The company, London North Eastern Railway, immediately apologised and said “Train Managers should not be using language like this.”
A train company has apologised following a complaint from a non-binary passenger after the conductor greeted customers by saying “good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls.” pic.twitter.com/E1kmtmMh56
— Mark Jenkinson MP (@markjenkinsonmp) May 12, 2021
Stop pandering to this nonsense. Your announcer said nothing wrong. Laurence’s complaint is ridiculous. No one was excluded or discriminated against. Just do your job of running trains on time and leave the woke politics to someone else with nothing better to do.
Perhaps LNER should decide who its core customer base is before going full woke:
Hi – regular passenger here. I really like it when your staff are human and light hearted like this, and would very much prefer it if you didn’t forbid them from doing so or require them to talk like scripted robots. Thanks!
I am concerned that you say train managers should not be using language ‘like this’. Can you clarify please? Why are you asking the service this person was on? Do you intend telling the train manager that they are not to use normal language that everybody understands?
That’s because companies like this don’t actually care about real inconvenience & hardship. What they care about is the perception of it, and the fleeting recognition they get from pandering to people who are, ultimately, impossible to please. Sorry to hear about your situation.
— Jason From Merivale (@FromMerivale) May 14, 2021
It seems the hurt feelings of a spoilt little brat are more important 😕
Perhaps the Department For Transport and the train company should be focusing more on getting its trains running again after massive disruption caused by severe safety issues, rather than pandering to woke Twitter trolls.
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“Go Back To England” – Prince Harry Elicits Backlash After Criticizing “Bonkers” First Amendment
Prince Harry is still new to North America, and perhaps is still adjusting to some of its customs. For example, the First Amendment, which he dismissed as “bonkers” during a recent interview.
The comments inspired backlash online, with some critics calling for the young prince (who will almost certainly never be king) to “go back to England” in a series of hostile tweets.
During a Thursday appearance on Hollywood actor Dax Shepard’s “Armchair Expert” podcast, Prince Harry (who lives in California with wife Meghan Markle and his young son Archie after stepping down from his royal duties) declared: “I’ve got so much I want to say about the First Amendment. I still don’t understand it, but it is bonkers.”
He also lamented the “genetic pain” of growing up a royal, implying that he was “mistreated” by his family, the latest in an unceasing string of criticism that has sparked talk about Harry becoming estranged from the family (he renounced his royal duties before leaving England after his wife engaged in a controversial lawsuit against British tabloids).
The comment elicited a stream of angry tweets.
Hey, go home! We fought a war to get rid of Royals on our soil. No need to understand anything we do. Bye!!
Texas Rep. Dan Crenshaw even weighed in, joking that he “just doubled the size of my Independence Day party.”
Moving on, the prince criticized self-made podcast host Joe Rogan for entertaining the notion that young health people don’t need to get the vaccine – something Rogan has apologized for doing, even calling himself “a moron” for sharing the ideas on his podcast.
Harry mused that “in today’s world, with misinformation just endemic,” people have “got to be careful about what comes out of your mouth.” Celebrities like Rogan (who Harry mentioned by name) should just “stay out of it” and “not say anything at all if they don’t have anything useful to say.”
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have mostly occupied their time in the US with making pointed criticisms of the royal family in interviews like their blockbuster sit down with Oprah.
Given the reaction his comments inspired, Maybe Harry can pitch Netflix on a series where he breaks down and criticizes the Bill of Rights?
Seventy-eight percent of businesses in the UK have no plans to check evidence of vaccination, a new study indicates.
The British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) Thursday published the results of its survey of more than 1,000 businesses across a variety of sectors and in the UK.
When asked whether their business had any plans to require proof of vaccination from customers, suppliers, or employees, 78 percent of respondents said they had no plans to do so. Among larger firms with more than 50 staff, the number dropped to 69 percent.
Only 5 percent of the respondents said they had already implemented their own requirements for proof of vaccination, and 6 percent said they were likely to do so in the future. These were more likely to be firms with more than 50 staff. The other 11 percent said they needed more information.
Asked about what safety measures businesses expect to implement or keep in place during the next 12 months, 76 percent of the respondents chose social distancing, while 61 percent of the businesses expected to have hand sanitiser in place, and 54 percent expected to require face coverings.
Almost half (46 percent) of the firms expected continued changes to their workspace, such as screens or socially distanced desk arrangements, and 45 percent said they intended to limit access to their offices/premises.
Only 9 percent of firms expected to have no measures at all in place over the next 12 months.
The study comes as the UK approaches its final steps of the government’s roadmap to reopen the country.
Easing the lockdown in England. (PA Graphics)
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said this week that the government will be “saying more later this month about exactly what the world will look like and what role there could be—if any—for certification and social distancing,” so businesses could have more clarification.
Hannah Essex, co-executive director of the BCC, said its study indicated that the government needs to hurry up.
“This research shows that government must quickly clarify what measures will be required for businesses to maintain safety standards after we reach the final stage of the road map on June 21,” Essex said in a statement.
“In particular, they must resolve the ongoing debate around the use of vaccine certification, providing clear and decisive guidance to [businesses],” she said.
“There has been a great deal of mixed signals on the issue of businesses being required to demand proof of vaccination from customers, suppliers, or employees.
“Our figures show that as it stands the vast majority of firms have no plans in place for such a scenario. So, if [the] government is indeed planning to make this a requirement in any sector, then it must act rapidly to inform businesses so that they can adjust and prepare,” she said.
“Many businesses are working on the assumption that they will be continuing with a variety of COVID-secure measures over the next 12 months including social distancing, mask-wearing, and various other interventions,” she added.
People walking during the morning rush hour in the Canary Wharf amid the outbreak of the CCP virus in London on Oct. 15, 2020. (Hannah McKay/Reuters)
Some businesses are concerned that such a measure, if introduced, would be “challenging” to implement.
“It could be challenging for us to implement a requirement for proof of vaccination. Safety is paramount to us, but the administrative processes involved would be laborious. We would also have major HR concerns over where this would place individuals not wishing to have the vaccine due to their personal beliefs,” Gareth Jones, Managing Director of In-Comm, a training services provider, said in a statement.
“When it comes to other measures the main issue for us is that numbers are key to our sustainability and growth as a business. Actions that we have to take which reduce our number of learners take a real toll on us, so we would hope to return to our original cohort sizes as soon as it is safe to do so. Measures have to be fit for purpose as well as practicable to implement,” he added.
Phil Calcutt, Director of A&M EDM, an engineering solutions company, said: “We’re concerned that ‘vaccine passports’ would be problematic to implement. We would have no legal sanction to ensure compliance and we’d expect a test case to drag on in the courts. If the NHS and care homes haven’t been able to implement this kind of stuff, then how can businesses be expected to?”
Armenia Requests Russian Military Help Over Renewed Azerbaijan ‘Land Grab’
Following the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war which started six months ago, the border region is again on the brink of conflict, with Armenia charging Azerbaijan with illegally sending its army deep into territory from their prior post-war settlement positions in what’s being viewed as a big land grab and ethnic cleansing campaign targeting ethnic Armenian communities.
Yerevan sees the threat as imminent and dire enough that it’s urging its ally and treaty partner Russia to send military assistance to push back Azeri forces. Currently Russia has a limited peacekeeping force that includes 2,000 troops as part the ceasefire agreement that ended the prior border war. Russia also has a military base in Armenia, but has previously expressed a desire to keep its friendly relations with Baku.
“Armenia said on Friday Azerbaijan had failed to fulfil a promise in full to withdraw troops that had crossed the border in a disputed incident, and it had sought Russia’s military help,” Reuters details.
Armenia is seeking to make the case to Putin that Azerbaijan’s actions are a severe violation of the ceasefire agreement and of Armenia’s sovereign land.
#Azerbaijan‘s armed forces have crossed the state border of #Armenia and have advanced more than three kilometres into southern Armenian territory around the Sev Lich lake… https://t.co/okQ6NuuPLr
But so far Moscow’s response has appeared muted, even after Armenia’s interim prime minister penned an urgent letter to President Putin requesting the military aid:
“The Russian president said that he himself believes that the Azerbaijani armed forces should leave Armenia, and there is a more important part that was stated last night: an agreement was reached that today the Azerbaijani armed forces had to carry out these actions, that is, leave the territory of Armenia,” Pashinyan announced during an extraordinary session of parliament Friday.
Shushi is completely devoid of any life after it was ethnically cleansed from its Armenian population for the third time in the last century. There is only a haunting silence in the city, except for the sounds of heavy machinery being used to destroy the homes of Armenians. https://t.co/2FEijwtzqqpic.twitter.com/uJsfNlt91S
He explained before the parliamentary session why he didn’t make an initial request for troops during a phone call the day prior:
“The reason that I did not appeal yesterday [to Putin for help] Is that the day before it was stated at the highest level that today the troops were to be withdrawn. But since the course of the negotiations showed that, in any case today, the agreement will not be fully implemented, I turned to the Russian president so that Russia would provide assistance to Armenia in this situation, including military assistance,” Pashinyan said.
The Armenian Defense Ministry has accused Azeri forces of attempting “to clean the borders” in the Syunik region – or essentially ethnic cleansing.
Erdogan and Aliyev have gone so far to say Yerevan rightfully Muslim/Azerbaijan, so there is clearly no limit to their expansionism.
Those Western nations with the power to stop this do not seem to care, and are even backing their Caspian gas supplier. Armenia is very alone. https://t.co/KFy7NQrx4B
Whether or not Armenia and Azerbaijan will renew their fierce fighting, which last year killed thousands of troops and civilians, with Armenia bearing the bulk of the casualties, remains another question. It’s unclear whether Yerevan would commit without a signal of Russia’s backing, which so far it doesn’t appear Putin is ready to give.
