The Trials of Rasmea Odeh, Part One — Joining the PFLP 

Many thanks to Eugene for giving me an opportunity to blog about my new book, The Trials of Rasmea Odeh. It is the story of a Palestinian woman who faced two wrenching trials in her lifetime, over forty years apart. The first trial was for the bombing of a Jerusalem supermarket in 1969, which took the lives of two Hebrew University students. She was convicted in that case, partly on the basis of a coerced confession, and sentenced to life in prison. Odeh was released after ten years in a prisoner exchange with the PFLP. She immigrated to the United States in 1996 and became a naturalized citizen in 2005, both times falsely denying that she had ever been convicted of a crime or imprisoned (as well as other false denials on the visa and citizenship applications).

Rasmea Odeh was born in 1947 in the village of Lifta, on the outskirts of Jerusalem. Her family was evacuated to Ramallah in early 1948, shortly before the fighting began between the nascent state of Israel and Arab and Palestinian forces. As refugees, the Odeh family lived for a time in a tent, eventually becoming prosperous enough to buy a house in nearby al-Birah.

Odeh grew up in the West Bank, which was then under Jordanian rule. According to a 1980 interview she gave to a Lebanese journalist, she began attending Communist Party meetings, which were illegal under Jordanian law, as a young teenager.

Israel occupied the West Bank, including Ramallah/al-Birah, in the June 1967 war. Odeh almost immediately became involved in resistance activities, such as organizing and stone throwing, but she had become, in her words, “convinced that military action was more important than social or political work” as the means of Palestinian liberation. She joined the Arab National Movement, a precursor of the PFLP, and undertook clandestine weapons training with arms abandoned by the fleeing Jordanians.

Soon, however, Odeh decided that she could best serve the movement by attending medical school in Lebanon. She obtained an exit permit from the Israeli military government and left for Beirut that fall. In fact, she had a dual agenda. With assistance from her contacts in the ANM, she arranged to meet with Dr. Wadi Haddad, a Palestinian physician who was then, together with Dr. George Habash, in the process of founding the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Odeh became one of the PFLP’s early West Bank recruits. She returned home at the end of the academic year, traveling through Jordan, where she met with other PFLP operatives. Back in Ramallah, she continued her clandestine activities, which included preparations for “military operations” that her accomplices would carry out in the late winter of 1969.

Unbeknownst to Odeh, Israeli intelligence operatives were aware of her meetings with Haddad in Beirut and guerrilla leaders in Amman. She was under scrutiny from the time she returned to Ramallah from Lebanon, making her a logical suspect when a bomb ripped through the Jerusalem Supersol, the largest supermarket in Israel.

The following posts will cover Odeh’s apprehension and trial in Israel, her arrest in the U.S. for immigration fraud, the rallying of American progressives to her defense, and the prosecution and defense cases at her U.S. criminal trial.

The post The Trials of Rasmea Odeh, Part One — Joining the PFLP  appeared first on Reason.com.

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Ukraine Frustrated At ‘Low Level’ Russian Delegation As Ceasefire Talks Kick Off In Belarus

Ukraine Frustrated At ‘Low Level’ Russian Delegation As Ceasefire Talks Kick Off In Belarus

In the fifth day since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, talks have kicked off between a Ukrainian delegation and Kremlin delegation somewhere inside Belarus at a precise location that’s being kept secret – though it’s somewhere along the border. The Russians have not sent anyone top level from the Foreign Ministry, instead its delegation is reportedly headed by an aide to President Putin and former culture minister named Vladimir Medinsky.

Belarusian Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei in welcoming the Ukrainian leadership assured the group they are “completely safe” and that it’s Belarus’ “sacred duty” to ensure it. Initial photos have come out of the meeting, which President Zelensky’s office described as having the ultimate aim of achieving an immediate ceasefire and total withdrawal of Russian troops, however unlikely that remains at this moment.

Image source: TASS/Reuters

“Dear friends, the President of Belarus asked me to welcome you and to provide everything for your work, as agreed with President Zelensky and President Putin. You may feel completely safe here. This is our sacred duty,” Belarusian FM Makei introduced

“President Lukashenko sincerely hopes that, during today’s talks, it will be possible to find solutions to all the questions of this crisis. All Belarusians are praying for this. Any proposals, in terms of organizing today’s meeting, will be considered and absolutely fulfilled,” Makei said. “We look forward to the results.”

Zelensky has described the talks as occurring with “no preconditions” while also noting they were unlikely to produce results. Additionally as Bloomberg describes“The low profile of the Russian delegation, at deputy ministerial level, further weighed on expectations of any breakthrough.”

The Ukrainian president said Sunday he “doesn’t really believe” there will be a breakthrough with the Russians, but expressed there could be “a chance, however small, to de-escalate the situation” – according to his words carried in regional media. 

Heavy fighting continued Monday as the talks kicked off, particularly in neighborhoods on the outskirts of Kiev, and in the cities of Kharkiv and Chernihiv. “They are fighting against everyone and everything alive, against kindergartens, against residential buildings and ambulances,” Zelenskiy said of the Russians in a Sunday statement, which the Kremlin rejected, saying it is only targeting military sites and movements. 

And as for weekend reports that Kiev had been surrounded, which was widely reported due to statements attributed to the mayor of the capital city, Zelensky’s office issued the following statement:  “Russians can only dream about it. Kyiv is completely controlled by the Ukrainian forces, arrivals to Kyiv are available. Yes, in some suburbs the confrontation continues, there were heavy battles. But we will not give up the capital.”

Meanwhile on Monday the Vatican has offered “to facilitate” dialogue between Moscow and Kiev toward ending the war, with Vaitcan Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin saying “there is still and always room for negotiation. It is never too late.” 

Tyler Durden
Mon, 02/28/2022 – 07:31

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Russia More Than Doubles Interest Rate To 20% To Halt Rouble Collapse, Suspends Stock Trading On Moscow Exchange

Russia More Than Doubles Interest Rate To 20% To Halt Rouble Collapse, Suspends Stock Trading On Moscow Exchange

With the ruble plunging overnight after the West imposed tough new sanctions over the war in Ukraine, crashing as low as 115 against the dollar with the USDRUB last seen just south of 100…

… early on Monday, Russia’s central bank more than doubled interest rates to 20% from 9.5% in an effort to halt the collapse of the ruble, which has gone into freefall. The Bank of Russia also said on Sunday that it would resume buying gold in the domestic market as it tries to shore up its finances and find ways around sanctions on its activity.

“External conditions for the Russian economy have drastically changed,” the Bank of Russia said in a statement. “The increase of the key rate will ensure a rise in deposit rates to levels needed to compensate for the increased depreciation and inflation risks. This is needed to support financial and price stability and protect the savings of citizens from depreciation.”

While the idea is that higher interest rates increase the return to investors, luring foreign capital to the country and pushing up the exchange rate, it is unlikely that investors will flood back into the “safety” of the ruble as long as sanctions are ongoing.

Overnight, the Russian central bank also banned brokers from selling securities on behalf of non-residents, with an eye to halting the decline in domestic asset prices.

In a statement on its website, the Bank of Russia said the foreign exchange, money and repo markets of the Moscow Exchange will open at 10 a.m. local time and that it will “evaluate the timely opening of trading in other markets depending on how the situation develops.” The decision will be announced by 1 p.m. Moscow time (7 p.m. in Tokyo), and trading will start at 3 p.m. if it decides to open.

At the time of writing, the market was still closed.

On Saturday, the U.S. and major European nations said select Russian banks will be removed from SWIFT, the key financial infrastructure banks use to send money across borders. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Sunday said Japan will join the sanctions.

As the NIkkei notes,, Japanese brokerages stopped accepting new buy orders for the ruble amid liquidity concerns. Traders Securities, which operates online foreign exchange services, said it expects difficulties in executing trades and providing rates, warning it “may be forced to close our customers’ Russian ruble/yen positions.”

Asian stock and currency markets were volatile in the morning as investors weighed new sanctions on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, as well as developments on peace talks between the two countries. Japan’s benchmark 225 stock index closed 0.19% higher after falling as much as 0.8% in early morning trading as investors weighed the sanctions as well as developments of potential peace talks between Ukraine and Russia. South Korea’s Kospi stock index opened slightly lower but ended 0.84% higher. The Japanese yen swung against the U.S. dollar, strengthening to around 115.06 to the greenback before weakening to 115.60.

Oil prices rallied in the morning amid rising concerns over supplies from the world’s leading oil producer. North Sea Brent futures on the London market, an international benchmark, rose to $105 per barrel immediately after the start of trading Japan time, about $7 higher than the settlement price last week.

Tyler Durden
Mon, 02/28/2022 – 07:22

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Putin’s “Billions” In Hidden Wealth De-Fang US, EU Financial Sanctions

Putin’s “Billions” In Hidden Wealth De-Fang US, EU Financial Sanctions

It’s a question that has long plagued ordinary Americans and Russians, as well as the US Treasury Department: how much hidden wealth does Russian President Vladimir Putin actually hold?

Before 2016, the personal wealth of the Russian leader was shrouded in mystery, but a series of leaks from inside the law firms and banks that dominate “offshore” finance – including the 2016 Panama Papers and the Pandora Papers released in October 2021 have offered some clues that the president’s vast wealth stretches well beyond Russia’s borders. The only problem is that, since most of this “hidden wealth” is officially registered in the names of others (often close friends and even former lovers of the Russian president whom he has known for years) it makes it difficult for US sanctions to truly be effective.

Officially, Putin earns about $140K per year (much less now given the moves in the ruble in FX markets), and owns a modest apartment in Moscow. But several  assets believed to belong to the Russian president, including a yacht known as “Putin’s yacht” and a massive, billion-dollar dacha on the Black Sea known as “Putin’s palace”, have now been widely publicized.

Let’s start with the palace.

Details about Putin’s Black Sea palace were first publicized by imprisoned Russian dissident Alexei Navalny. The palace includes a movie theater, strip club, palatial bedrooms, hot tubs, and much more.

Here are some photos originally published by Navalny’s organization and shared with Insider and the Associated Press:

Source: Insider

All told, more than 400 photos of the palace’s exterior and interior have been published by Navalny.

Now, let’s move on to “Putin’s yacht”.

Estimated to have cost $100 million, the luxury vessel, named Graceful, has long been tied to the Russian leader. Ship-tracking services captured the vessel leaving Germany for Russia just weeks before the invasion into Ukraine.

Source: NYT

There’s also the question of several luxury properties, including a $4.1M apartment in Monaco, and a palatial villa in the South of France. The apartment in Monaco is registered to a woman suspected of being an ex-lover of Putin, while the French villa is registered to his ex-wife, Lyudmilla Putin, and her new husband.

Here’s a photo of the villa.

Source: OCCRP

And a photo of the Monaco apartment building taken from inside one of its hallways.

Source: Washington Post

There’s also the question of Sergei Roldugin, a cellist and longtime friend of Putin’s (their friendship reportedly dates back to their childhoods in St. Petersburg), who was identified by the Panama Papers as holding tens of millions of dollars in assets supposedly on Putin’s behalf (though he himself has denied this in interviews with the western press).

One advisor to the US government’s efforts to sanction Putin and his allies and cut them off from the US financial system acknowledged in an interview with the NYT that the vast troves of hidden wealth belonging to Putin and allied Russian oligarchs are just “glorified press releases”.

Paul Massaro, a senior adviser at the U.S. Helsinki Commission who has been counseling members of Congress on Russia sanctions, said it was not always clear to American officials what assets would be affected.

“It means that the sanctions that we hit these people with are largely going to be glorified press releases, because without knowing what these assets are, we can’t freeze them,” he said.

Still, even if the United States has only a limited picture of Mr. Putin’s wealth, sanctions are worthwhile “just to freeze what we can, freeze what we know, and let people know that these people aren’t welcome in our system,” Mr. Massaro said.

Estimates of Putin’s wealth vary widely. But perhaps the largest ever recorded was shared by Bill Browder, a western financier who has become a prominent Putin critic (most notorious for sheparding the “Magnitsky Act” to fruition in the US), has testified before the US Congress that Putin’s hidden wealth is more than $200 billion, making Putin the wealthiest man in the world, even moreso than Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the NYT reports.

The Kremlin has denied all allegations that any of these assets belong to Putin, insisting that the Russian President is a man of “simple tastes” who has “no need for luxury”.

But in the end, most of these estimates might be considered irrelevant. Given his immense power in Russia, and the unlikelihood that he will be “retiring” anytime soon. Even if he owns the French villa, or the Monaco apartment, does the Russian leader ever have an opportunity to use them? Or are these properties merely concrete repositories of supposedly “ill gotten” gains?

As Nate Sibley, a researcher at the Hudson Institute’s Kleptocracy Initiative, put it: Putin doesn’t really need a vast fortune because he “controls everything” in Russia. “When people say he’s worth such and such, what does that mean?” he asked. “Are they really saying that he’s going to cash in and retire to St. Tropez?”

Tyler Durden
Mon, 02/28/2022 – 07:00

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Are There Some Secret Gems Hidden Inside The ARKK ETF At These Prices?

Are There Some Secret Gems Hidden Inside The ARKK ETF At These Prices?

Submitted by QTR’s Fringe Finance

A funny thing has happened over the last couple of days: I’ve started to look at several technology companies (whose names I will disclose later in this article) that I think are becoming attractively priced as the market continues its plunge. 

For example, on yesterday’s massive market plunge during the morning, I told my subscribers that my game plan was to sell of some of my exposure to oil, gold and index shorts, in order to nibble at a potential M&A target I like, a retail name that I think is too cheap to ignore and two “falling knives” I continue to catch as they move lower.

I also still think it’s a great time to look at one sector I think is primed for M&A, several ETFs that I think can reduce risk and a little noticed sector I think could catch a bid as part of the “wartime” trade.

But yesterday morning, chatting with friends about my gameplan for the day, I started discussing the state of tech stocks and, even though I think the NASDAQ still has lower to fall as an index, there are some names that have started to interest me.

These names included Microsoft (MSFT) at $270/share, a name I have been buying in a long-term dividend portfolio I have since it reported great earnings and fell under $300, Zoom (ZM), which actually trades at a somewhat normal PE of about 33x now at $125 a share and PayPal (PYPL), which I think is an interesting asset in the payment space worth a look at under $100 per share (and also now with a PE under 30x). Robinhood (HOOD) is a name I have been also buying from $14 and below and I find Palantir (PLTR) – which is expensive any way you look at it but has important ties with national security apparatuses – interesting at $10 or under.

I nibbled on some of these names yesterday in addition to purchasing some of the stocks and ETFs I talked about in my note yesterday. 

I couldn’t help but laugh: I was starting to dabble in names (HOOD, PLTR, ZM) that Cathie Wood has tucked into her ARK Innovation Fund (ARKK), I realized.

I had to look in the mirror and have an internal dialogue with myself. Was I, too, becoming the world’s worst asset manager, simply buying whatever tech bullshit I wanted to because it offered the appearance of being cheap, even though maybe it wasn’t?

Clown Does A Makeup In Front Of The Mirror Stock Photo - Download Image Now  - iStock

More specifically, how could I be writing to my subscribers about the fact that I think ARKK is going to move lower when I’m sitting here purchasing some of its components?

Then, I figured it out. It’s entirely possible for numerous ARKK components to be cheap and for the fund to still plunge, because so much of ARKK’s performance still depends on Tesla. Tesla, as of today, is an 8.59% weighting in ARKK.

Source: Cathie’s Ark

And while the rest of ARKK’s components have been torched, Tesla is still up 7.9% over the last year.

This tells me several key things.

The first is that it is definitely possible for some components of ARKK to be undervalued or fairly valued here. Ex-Tesla, many names in ARKK are down 60% to 80% off highs. Don’t get me wrong, many of these names are still wildly overvalued and being “off highs” doesn’t mean shit when your “highs” (1) should have never happened in the first place or (2) were the result of gamma squeezes/other artificial prices.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean all of them are overpriced.

But regarding ARKK’s performance, this also tells me that if Tesla runs into some type of material negative event that forces the stock to re-rate lower and the rest of the components of ARKK stay relatively flat or move lower, it could be a treacherous blow to ARKK.

I’ve written before that Tesla is the only string ARKK is holding onto to prevent total collapse. I know this isn’t entirely brand new news, but the future of ARKK really seems to be teetering on the brink and Tesla will ultimately be the catalyst that will force it down the waterfall or prevent its plunge.

I couldn’t help but think of this later in the day yesterday, after headlines came out that the Securities and Exchange Commission was probing both Kimbal and Elon Musk regarding their November 2021 stock sales.

While I’m not sure that the outcome of this investigation will have a material impact on Tesla’s business (unless maybe Elon is forced to consent to some type of officer bar as part of a settlement), it goes to suggest that there are still significant risks bubbling under the surface with regard to Tesla.

On top of these types of unknown risks, there’s also legacy business risks for Tesla: the company is running face first into full scale global EV adoption. While the company deserves a lot of credit for breaking ground in the EV space first, the competition has never been more fierce than it is right now.

Cathie Wood’s funds were offered up a little bit of fresh air yesterday during the market’s face melting short squeeze, wherein the NASDAQ swung a wild 6% from trough to peak.

Wood is sticking to the same old “innovation is in ‘deep value’” bullshit she has been peddling for months now. You can listen to her entire 1 hour long interview with Scott Wapner from last week (why is she getting an hour to talk her book?) at this link on Spotify.

But now, it’s time to stop and look around again. From the $65 level ARK sits at today – with the ETF still down almost 40% in just 3 months, what levers need to be pulled for it once again to reverse the trend and start gaining ground?

If Tesla holds steady and some of the undervalued or attractive names that have already sold off in ARKK start to rebound, that could act as a tailwind. But if the broader overall tech sector stays flat and Tesla winds up running into any type of materially negative news, ARKK may still have room to plunge.

For now, ARKK remains in “stock pickers” territory. I am looking at some names in the ETF I like and adding them when opportune. Pair trades like being short ARKK and TSLA, while being long select components of the ETF, are extremely interesting to me. The fact that Cathie Wood recently got scared out of Palantir altogether is also interesting to me as I look to add the name around $10. I take this all with a grain of salt as I genuinely think the NASDAQ may still have at least 10% to 15% lower to move this year.

The rest of ARKK, for now, teeters on the brink of Tesla’s performance.

Disclaimer: This is not a recommendation to buy or sell any stocks or securities. I own or will own all names I mentioned or linked to in this piece. I own both ARKK puts and calls. I own TSLA puts and calls. I have nominal exposure to ARKG and ARKF in a long term dividend portfolio I own. I own, or will own, or have owned, all other names mentioned in this piece. I often lose money on positions I trade/invest in. I may add any name mentioned in this article and sell any name mentioned in this piece at any time, without further warning. None of this is a solicitation to buy or sell securities. These positions can change immediately as soon as I publish this, with or without notice. You are on your own. Do not make decisions based on my blog. I exist on the fringe. The publisher does not guarantee the accuracy or completeness of the information provided in this page. These are not the opinions of any of my employers, partners, or associates. I get shit wrong a lot.

Tyler Durden
Mon, 02/28/2022 – 06:30

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Two Years To Slow the Spread


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On December 6, 2021, in his last major act as mayor of New York City, Democrat Bill de Blasio announced that, to stop the spread of the omicron variant of COVID-19, all 184,000 private businesses in the city would henceforth be commanded to enforce vaccine mandates on their employees, and all children ages 5 and up (including tourists from countries that hadn’t yet approved pediatric vaccines) would need to show proof of full immunization before entering most indoor venues.

“Look at a country like Germany right now—shutdowns, restrictions,” de Blasio explained in a follow-up interview. “We cannot let that happen. So we had to take decisive action.”

Five days later, as the Northeast was experiencing a third consecutive winter surge of coronavirus cases, Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul announced that all businesses in New York would be required to ensure their employees and customers were either provably vaccinated or masked indoors at all times; each violation would be subject to a $1,000 fine. The new rules were applicable through January 15, “after which the State will re-evaluate based on current conditions.”

Hochul’s announcement came almost six months to the day after her predecessor, Andrew Cuomo, had lifted almost all statewide COVID restrictions, including most indoor masking, on the occasion of New York meeting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) target of having 70 percent of adults receive at least one vaccination dose. “We can now return to life as we know it,” Cuomo crowed then. By the time of Hochul’s reversal, the one-shot rate among adult New Yorkers had risen to 93 percent.

The goal posts on pandemic policy haven’t just been shifted, they’ve been uprooted, hitched to a helicopter, and transported to a different county. Joe Biden as president-elect on December 4, 2020, said, “I don’t think [vaccines] should be mandatory.” His spokeswoman Jen Psaki on July 23, 2021, added, “That’s not the role of the federal government.” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky stated unequivocally on July 31 that “there will be no federal mandate.”

Biden announced a federal vaccine mandate on private employers with 100 or more workers five weeks later.

“I’ve tried everything in my power to get people vaccinated,” the president maintained. “But even after all those efforts, we still had more than a quarter of people in the United States who were eligible for vaccinations but didn’t get the shot….So, while I didn’t race to do it right away, that’s why I’ve had to move toward requirements.” Look at what you made him do.

It was easier to make fun of presidential dissembling about pandemic policy back when Donald Trump was holding extemporaneous bull sessions about COVID every day on the White House lawn, or when he infamously unveiled on March 16, 2020, a bullet-pointed presentation titled “15 Days to Slow the Spread.” Even factoring in hindsight bias, that was an absurdly irresponsible prediction to make about a virus already ripping through every continent at a time when testing (especially in the U.S.) was woefully inadequate.

But Trump back then, like his then-lionized, now-disgraced rival Cuomo, was operating in an environment exponentially more impoverished, in terms of both knowledge and mitigation strategies, than what public officials enjoy now. The one-shot vaccination rate for American adults was not 86 percent (as it is as this magazine goes to press) but 0 percent. We were still being reminded to wash our hands several times a day for 20 seconds at a time and implored to studiously avoid touching our faces. And perhaps because the idea of government dictating most human activity outside the home was then still novel, politicians tended to tether restrictions to specific metrics. (Cuomo’s “flatten the curve” mantra referred to the trajectory of hospitalizations vs. the hard number of hospital beds.) Immediate-term discomforts were routinely sold with visions of long-term relief.

“If everyone makes…these critical changes and sacrifices now,” Trump said on “Slow the Spread” day, as a phalanx of top public health officials looked on, “we will rally together as one nation, and we will defeat the virus, and we’re going to have a big celebration all together. With several weeks of focused action, we can turn the corner and turn it quickly.”

As the families of 800,000 dead Americans can grimly attest, no such corners were ever turned. Yet what has replaced those naive and prematurely optimistic projections is something no less cruel.

Benchmarks for lifting restrictions have been serially rewritten or quietly dropped, often with little explanation. Major policy promises have been made and broken within the same week. And you can’t just blame the capriciousness on the shifting viral facts on the ground—bureaucrats have been agonizingly slow to recognize advances in knowledge that support policy loosening yet lightning-fast when reacting to any new source of fear. It took the Biden administration and his fellow Democrats in New York no time at all to put the clampdown on the omicron variant, but it took the CDC and most coastal state governments more than a year to internalize that people are not catching COVID-19 outdoors.

By making a zig-zagging series of arbitrary and far-reaching edicts, officials have squandered public trust in allegedly neutral scientific institutions and effectively abandoned persuasion for coercion. Instead of a light at the end of the tunnel—or even endemic coping at the end of pandemic panic—we’re being offered a future of politicians reluctantly handing out a carrot or two before reaching once again for the stick.

The 1-2 Punch in the Mouth

“Everybody has a plan,” former heavyweight boxer Mike Tyson famously said, “until they get punched in the mouth.” Not only did COVID-19 punch millions of people in the mouth, but government reaction to the virus proved a second blow from which scores of millions of businesses and families have been painfully slow to recover.

In December 2020, Gavin Newsom, California’s Democratic governor, banned outdoor dining in regions where available hospital ICU capacity was below 15 percent. A judge opined (accurately) within a week that the policy was “not grounded in science, evidence, or logic.” Newsom then rescinded the order seven weeks later without the threshold having been met in most of the state.

De Blasio shut down New York City public schools in November 2020 because the rate of positive tests among all New Yorkers had risen above 3 percent, even though that community spread threshold was far below those recommended by international health authorities, and weekly tests inside school buildings were showing a miniscule positivity rate of 0.18 percent. The mayor removed that consideration for elementary schools 10 days later and for middle schools and high schools four months later. Science!

Imagine being a landlord during the past two years. First, COVID suddenly increases the chances that your tenants will be unable to pay their rent and prompts millions of renegotiated leases. Then, six months later, the Trump administration makes the absurd and facially unconstitutional decision to put the CDC in charge of enforcing a federal moratorium on evictions. Set aside for a moment that gross violation of property rights, and visualize instead what it must have been like to try to make any plan at all about residential real estate.

On June 24, 2021, the CDC made what it described as “the final extension of the moratorium,” pushing it out to July 31. At an August 2 White House press briefing, Psaki announced that “CDC Director Rochelle Walensky and her team have been unable to find legal authority for a new, targeted eviction moratorium.” Literally the next day, the CDC announced a new, targeted eviction moratorium covering 90 percent of the country. (The Supreme Court would at the end of month swat that reversal down.)

With the exception of the occasional court ruling, governmental bodies have largely given up on the idea that there is any limiting principle to their vast new pandemic powers. Relatedly, they no longer sell today’s restrictions as a ticket to tomorrow’s freedoms. Whenever a new wave forms, politicians brace constituents for a quick slap now to put off yet another mouth-punch later.

Hochul portrayed her December mask-and-vaccine crackdown as a way to “prevent business disruption”; de Blasio sold his new mandates by saying, “We cannot let those restrictions come back. We cannot have shutdowns here in New York City. We’ve got to keep moving forward.”

Vaccinations have helped decouple infections from hospitalization and death, especially with the more infectious but less lethal omicron variant. Yet elites kept focusing on case rates instead of serious illness, sowing panic and clampdowns in the process. “Massachusetts is the most vaccinated state in the country and yet here we are in a surge of COVID that is just as bad as where we were last year at this point,” University of Massachusetts Memorial Health Care President Eric Dickson said in an NBC Nightly News scare story in December. At the time of Dickson’s startling claim, the Bay State’s seven-day average of deaths was 17, compared to 51 the year before.

All of which contributes to the suspicion that governmental interventions will just stretch out forever. “It is good policy and practice to establish off-ramps for interventions that aren’t meant to be permanent,” Johns Hopkins epidemiologist Jennifer Nuzzo wrote in November 2021. “We should be able to answer what conditions would enable an end.”

But politicians and public health officials, particularly in Democratic-controlled institutions, are increasingly unable to spell out any such conditions. For them there is no end in sight.

Ripping the Mask Off

The first vaccine shots for 5- to 11-year-olds were made available November 3. On November 5 came reports that a new therapeutic from Pfizer preliminarily demonstrated a remarkable ability to prevent serious illness and death in people already sick from COVID. That same day, Walensky chose to release an “Ask the Expert” video replying to the question, “Why do I still need to wear a mask?”

“The evidence is clear,” responded the country’s highest-ranking public health scientist. “Masks can help prevent the spread of COVID-19 by reducing your chance of infection by more than 80 percent, whether it’s an infection from the flu, from the coronavirus, or even just the common cold. In combination with other steps, like getting your vaccination, hand washing, and keeping physical distance, wearing your mask is an important step you can take to keep us all healthy.”

It was a breathtakingly irresponsible remark.

For two years, as the country has engaged in bitterly partisan and intensely moralistic debates over nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs)—masking, social distancing, business closures—the single greatest difference maker by far in blunting the lethal impact of the virus has been vaccination. Unvaccinated Americans were 10 to 20 times more likely to die from COVID-19 in fall 2021 than those who had received their shots.

Yet here was Walensky, the very week immunization became available to most elementary school kids, putting vaccination on the same list as the mostly (and rightfully) forgotten NPIs of hand washing and social distancing, in order to counteract any possible erosion in support for a far inferior NPI. By relegating the vaccine to the status of an afterthought, not only did the CDC director snuff out hope among many parents that their children’s masks will ever come off, but she also butchered the science.

There does not exist a study showing masks to reduce wearers’ COVID infectiousness by anything close to 80 percent. In fact, most studies conducted at that time had not even found the vaccines to be 80 percent effective at stopping transmission in the delta era (although they did better at stopping symptomatic cases and hospitalizations). Choosing the arrival of pediatric vaccines as an opportunity to greatly exaggerate the effectiveness of face coverings sent the implicit message to parents that no amount of compliance will free their kids from masks.

In a tweet promoting the video, Walensky touted the non-COVID virtues of wearing face coverings forever. “Masks,” she wrote, “also help protect from other illnesses like common cold and flu.” There was a time when having a smiling government doctor suggest open-ended masking for cold and flu seasons would have been seen as too implausibly authoritarian.

Yet when the CDC talks, governments in the kinds of places where people have “In this house, we believe in science” yard signs tend to rubber-stamp the recommendations. As of mid-December, 15 states had mask mandates for K-12 schools; all 15 voted for Biden in November 2020. (The two states with also problematic school-mask-mandate bans both voted for Trump.) In New York, children 2 and older are required by law to wear masks all day long in any public or private school or daycare setting, despite being in the age cohort with the lowest COVID hospitalization rate, and despite the fact that their teachers must be vaccinated by law. (The vaccinated Hochul, who at age 63 is much more vulnerable to COVID than is an unvaccinated 4-year-old, has infuriated her critics by appearing in countless social media photos indoors, amid crowds, unmasked.)

Colorado, a purple state with a libertarian-leaning Democratic governor, has taken a considerably different approach. “There was a time when there was no vaccine, and masks were all we had, and we needed to wear them,” Democratic Gov. Jared Polis told Colorado Public Radio in December. “The truth is we now have highly effective vaccines that work far better than masks. If you wear a mask, it does decrease your risk of getting COVID, and that’s a good thing to do indoors around others. But if you get COVID and you are still unvaccinated, the case is just as bad as if you were not wearing a mask. Everybody had more than enough opportunity to get vaccinated….At this point, if you haven’t been vaccinated, it’s really your own darn fault.” Was that so hard?

For the rest of the country, the scenes playing out in restrictionist states look alien, dystopian: kids shivering while eating lunch outside in frigid Portland, Oregon; high schoolers in New York City (where the positive COVID rate among regularly tested unvaccinated kids was less than 0.3 percent this fall) still holding debate tournaments on Zoom; glum TV commercials warning parents that “without the vaccine, when your child’s teammates take the field, they’ll miss out. Or when their friends go off to the movies, a concert, or get a bite to eat, your teen will miss out.”

Asked about some of those images in December, White House spokeswoman Psaki replied, “I will tell you, I have a 3-year-old who goes to school, sits outside for snacks and lunch, wears a mask inside, and it’s no big deal to him….These are steps that schools are taking to keep kids safe.”

Yet the evidence that Psaki’s kid is actually safer because of such precautions has proven damnably difficult for the CDC to produce. America’s school masking guidance is a global outlier—the World Health Organization recommends against masking children aged 5 and younger, and only a handful of countries in the European Union were masking elementary school students in fall 2021. In trying to persuade the public that it’s actually rational and prudent, the country’s public health agency has never once cited a masking study that included a meaningful control group. Officials are operating on intuition, and as a result tens of millions of children are degrading their physical comfort, social development, and language acquisition. All to avoid contracting and spreading a virus they are far less susceptible to than are vaccinated adults.

Misrepresenting science to produce a preferred policy outcome is a terrible way to build trust during a pandemic. Adding to that sense of suspicion is the fact that the CDC at the beginning of the pandemic actively downplayed the effectiveness of masks, out of worry that scared consumers would hoard the then-scarce supply of medical-quality protective equipment needed by doctors and nurses. “Seriously people—STOP BUYING MASKS!” tweeted then–Surgeon General Jerome Adams on February 29, 2020. “They are NOT effective in preventing [the] general public from catching #Coronavirus, but if healthcare providers can’t get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk!”

The Biden administration was supposed to bring more scientific rigor into the building, yet Walensky has repeatedly massaged research findings to fit her policy desires for Americans to be swathed in real and metaphorical prophylactics. The CDC dropped its guidance for outdoor masking only in April 2021, and even then only among vaccinated people. The moderately populated state of Washington, with its spectacular forests, coastline, and mountains, still has an outdoor mask requirement.

As America braced for the omicron wave before Christmas, the blue-state mandates started to emerge: vaccine passports for Philadelphia, booster-shot requirements at several elite universities, a renewed indoor mask mandate in California. “The imperative is to get through this winter surge,” Newsom said. “And to do so in a way where we come out the other side and we have a chance to reevaluate.”

Schools in heavily Democratic districts—Cleveland, Ohio; Newark, New Jersey; West Chicago, Illinois; Prince George’s County, Maryland—preemptively responded to the omicron surge after Christmas break by once again shifting to remote-only learning. At the Brooklyn elementary school that my first-grader is zoned for, teachers staged a post-break sickout that precipitated a last-minute closure. “We are demanding,” they wrote in a letter to outraged parents, “the city and our union take…actions to stop the spread.”

So just a few more weeks to stop the spread. Or months. Or years.

The post Two Years To Slow the Spread appeared first on Reason.com.

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Two Years To Slow the Spread


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On December 6, 2021, in his last major act as mayor of New York City, Democrat Bill de Blasio announced that, to stop the spread of the omicron variant of COVID-19, all 184,000 private businesses in the city would henceforth be commanded to enforce vaccine mandates on their employees, and all children ages 5 and up (including tourists from countries that hadn’t yet approved pediatric vaccines) would need to show proof of full immunization before entering most indoor venues.

“Look at a country like Germany right now—shutdowns, restrictions,” de Blasio explained in a follow-up interview. “We cannot let that happen. So we had to take decisive action.”

Five days later, as the Northeast was experiencing a third consecutive winter surge of coronavirus cases, Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul announced that all businesses in New York would be required to ensure their employees and customers were either provably vaccinated or masked indoors at all times; each violation would be subject to a $1,000 fine. The new rules were applicable through January 15, “after which the State will re-evaluate based on current conditions.”

Hochul’s announcement came almost six months to the day after her predecessor, Andrew Cuomo, had lifted almost all statewide COVID restrictions, including most indoor masking, on the occasion of New York meeting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) target of having 70 percent of adults receive at least one vaccination dose. “We can now return to life as we know it,” Cuomo crowed then. By the time of Hochul’s reversal, the one-shot rate among adult New Yorkers had risen to 93 percent.

The goal posts on pandemic policy haven’t just been shifted, they’ve been uprooted, hitched to a helicopter, and transported to a different county. Joe Biden as president-elect on December 4, 2020, said, “I don’t think [vaccines] should be mandatory.” His spokeswoman Jen Psaki on July 23, 2021, added, “That’s not the role of the federal government.” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky stated unequivocally on July 31 that “there will be no federal mandate.”

Biden announced a federal vaccine mandate on private employers with 100 or more workers five weeks later.

“I’ve tried everything in my power to get people vaccinated,” the president maintained. “But even after all those efforts, we still had more than a quarter of people in the United States who were eligible for vaccinations but didn’t get the shot….So, while I didn’t race to do it right away, that’s why I’ve had to move toward requirements.” Look at what you made him do.

It was easier to make fun of presidential dissembling about pandemic policy back when Donald Trump was holding extemporaneous bull sessions about COVID every day on the White House lawn, or when he infamously unveiled on March 16, 2020, a bullet-pointed presentation titled “15 Days to Slow the Spread.” Even factoring in hindsight bias, that was an absurdly irresponsible prediction to make about a virus already ripping through every continent at a time when testing (especially in the U.S.) was woefully inadequate.

But Trump back then, like his then-lionized, now-disgraced rival Cuomo, was operating in an environment exponentially more impoverished, in terms of both knowledge and mitigation strategies, than what public officials enjoy now. The one-shot vaccination rate for American adults was not 86 percent (as it is as this magazine goes to press) but 0 percent. We were still being reminded to wash our hands several times a day for 20 seconds at a time and implored to studiously avoid touching our faces. And perhaps because the idea of government dictating most human activity outside the home was then still novel, politicians tended to tether restrictions to specific metrics. (Cuomo’s “flatten the curve” mantra referred to the trajectory of hospitalizations vs. the hard number of hospital beds.) Immediate-term discomforts were routinely sold with visions of long-term relief.

“If everyone makes…these critical changes and sacrifices now,” Trump said on “Slow the Spread” day, as a phalanx of top public health officials looked on, “we will rally together as one nation, and we will defeat the virus, and we’re going to have a big celebration all together. With several weeks of focused action, we can turn the corner and turn it quickly.”

As the families of 800,000 dead Americans can grimly attest, no such corners were ever turned. Yet what has replaced those naive and prematurely optimistic projections is something no less cruel.

Benchmarks for lifting restrictions have been serially rewritten or quietly dropped, often with little explanation. Major policy promises have been made and broken within the same week. And you can’t just blame the capriciousness on the shifting viral facts on the ground—bureaucrats have been agonizingly slow to recognize advances in knowledge that support policy loosening yet lightning-fast when reacting to any new source of fear. It took the Biden administration and his fellow Democrats in New York no time at all to put the clampdown on the omicron variant, but it took the CDC and most coastal state governments more than a year to internalize that people are not catching COVID-19 outdoors.

By making a zig-zagging series of arbitrary and far-reaching edicts, officials have squandered public trust in allegedly neutral scientific institutions and effectively abandoned persuasion for coercion. Instead of a light at the end of the tunnel—or even endemic coping at the end of pandemic panic—we’re being offered a future of politicians reluctantly handing out a carrot or two before reaching once again for the stick.

The 1-2 Punch in the Mouth

“Everybody has a plan,” former heavyweight boxer Mike Tyson famously said, “until they get punched in the mouth.” Not only did COVID-19 punch millions of people in the mouth, but government reaction to the virus proved a second blow from which scores of millions of businesses and families have been painfully slow to recover.

In December 2020, Gavin Newsom, California’s Democratic governor, banned outdoor dining in regions where available hospital ICU capacity was below 15 percent. A judge opined (accurately) within a week that the policy was “not grounded in science, evidence, or logic.” Newsom then rescinded the order seven weeks later without the threshold having been met in most of the state.

De Blasio shut down New York City public schools in November 2020 because the rate of positive tests among all New Yorkers had risen above 3 percent, even though that community spread threshold was far below those recommended by international health authorities, and weekly tests inside school buildings were showing a miniscule positivity rate of 0.18 percent. The mayor removed that consideration for elementary schools 10 days later and for middle schools and high schools four months later. Science!

Imagine being a landlord during the past two years. First, COVID suddenly increases the chances that your tenants will be unable to pay their rent and prompts millions of renegotiated leases. Then, six months later, the Trump administration makes the absurd and facially unconstitutional decision to put the CDC in charge of enforcing a federal moratorium on evictions. Set aside for a moment that gross violation of property rights, and visualize instead what it must have been like to try to make any plan at all about residential real estate.

On June 24, 2021, the CDC made what it described as “the final extension of the moratorium,” pushing it out to July 31. At an August 2 White House press briefing, Psaki announced that “CDC Director Rochelle Walensky and her team have been unable to find legal authority for a new, targeted eviction moratorium.” Literally the next day, the CDC announced a new, targeted eviction moratorium covering 90 percent of the country. (The Supreme Court would at the end of month swat that reversal down.)

With the exception of the occasional court ruling, governmental bodies have largely given up on the idea that there is any limiting principle to their vast new pandemic powers. Relatedly, they no longer sell today’s restrictions as a ticket to tomorrow’s freedoms. Whenever a new wave forms, politicians brace constituents for a quick slap now to put off yet another mouth-punch later.

Hochul portrayed her December mask-and-vaccine crackdown as a way to “prevent business disruption”; de Blasio sold his new mandates by saying, “We cannot let those restrictions come back. We cannot have shutdowns here in New York City. We’ve got to keep moving forward.”

Vaccinations have helped decouple infections from hospitalization and death, especially with the more infectious but less lethal omicron variant. Yet elites kept focusing on case rates instead of serious illness, sowing panic and clampdowns in the process. “Massachusetts is the most vaccinated state in the country and yet here we are in a surge of COVID that is just as bad as where we were last year at this point,” University of Massachusetts Memorial Health Care President Eric Dickson said in an NBC Nightly News scare story in December. At the time of Dickson’s startling claim, the Bay State’s seven-day average of deaths was 17, compared to 51 the year before.

All of which contributes to the suspicion that governmental interventions will just stretch out forever. “It is good policy and practice to establish off-ramps for interventions that aren’t meant to be permanent,” Johns Hopkins epidemiologist Jennifer Nuzzo wrote in November 2021. “We should be able to answer what conditions would enable an end.”

But politicians and public health officials, particularly in Democratic-controlled institutions, are increasingly unable to spell out any such conditions. For them there is no end in sight.

Ripping the Mask Off

The first vaccine shots for 5- to 11-year-olds were made available November 3. On November 5 came reports that a new therapeutic from Pfizer preliminarily demonstrated a remarkable ability to prevent serious illness and death in people already sick from COVID. That same day, Walensky chose to release an “Ask the Expert” video replying to the question, “Why do I still need to wear a mask?”

“The evidence is clear,” responded the country’s highest-ranking public health scientist. “Masks can help prevent the spread of COVID-19 by reducing your chance of infection by more than 80 percent, whether it’s an infection from the flu, from the coronavirus, or even just the common cold. In combination with other steps, like getting your vaccination, hand washing, and keeping physical distance, wearing your mask is an important step you can take to keep us all healthy.”

It was a breathtakingly irresponsible remark.

For two years, as the country has engaged in bitterly partisan and intensely moralistic debates over nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs)—masking, social distancing, business closures—the single greatest difference maker by far in blunting the lethal impact of the virus has been vaccination. Unvaccinated Americans were 10 to 20 times more likely to die from COVID-19 in fall 2021 than those who had received their shots.

Yet here was Walensky, the very week immunization became available to most elementary school kids, putting vaccination on the same list as the mostly (and rightfully) forgotten NPIs of hand washing and social distancing, in order to counteract any possible erosion in support for a far inferior NPI. By relegating the vaccine to the status of an afterthought, not only did the CDC director snuff out hope among many parents that their children’s masks will ever come off, but she also butchered the science.

There does not exist a study showing masks to reduce wearers’ COVID infectiousness by anything close to 80 percent. In fact, most studies conducted at that time had not even found the vaccines to be 80 percent effective at stopping transmission in the delta era (although they did better at stopping symptomatic cases and hospitalizations). Choosing the arrival of pediatric vaccines as an opportunity to greatly exaggerate the effectiveness of face coverings sent the implicit message to parents that no amount of compliance will free their kids from masks.

In a tweet promoting the video, Walensky touted the non-COVID virtues of wearing face coverings forever. “Masks,” she wrote, “also help protect from other illnesses like common cold and flu.” There was a time when having a smiling government doctor suggest open-ended masking for cold and flu seasons would have been seen as too implausibly authoritarian.

Yet when the CDC talks, governments in the kinds of places where people have “In this house, we believe in science” yard signs tend to rubber-stamp the recommendations. As of mid-December, 15 states had mask mandates for K-12 schools; all 15 voted for Biden in November 2020. (The two states with also problematic school-mask-mandate bans both voted for Trump.) In New York, children 2 and older are required by law to wear masks all day long in any public or private school or daycare setting, despite being in the age cohort with the lowest COVID hospitalization rate, and despite the fact that their teachers must be vaccinated by law. (The vaccinated Hochul, who at age 63 is much more vulnerable to COVID than is an unvaccinated 4-year-old, has infuriated her critics by appearing in countless social media photos indoors, amid crowds, unmasked.)

Colorado, a purple state with a libertarian-leaning Democratic governor, has taken a considerably different approach. “There was a time when there was no vaccine, and masks were all we had, and we needed to wear them,” Democratic Gov. Jared Polis told Colorado Public Radio in December. “The truth is we now have highly effective vaccines that work far better than masks. If you wear a mask, it does decrease your risk of getting COVID, and that’s a good thing to do indoors around others. But if you get COVID and you are still unvaccinated, the case is just as bad as if you were not wearing a mask. Everybody had more than enough opportunity to get vaccinated….At this point, if you haven’t been vaccinated, it’s really your own darn fault.” Was that so hard?

For the rest of the country, the scenes playing out in restrictionist states look alien, dystopian: kids shivering while eating lunch outside in frigid Portland, Oregon; high schoolers in New York City (where the positive COVID rate among regularly tested unvaccinated kids was less than 0.3 percent this fall) still holding debate tournaments on Zoom; glum TV commercials warning parents that “without the vaccine, when your child’s teammates take the field, they’ll miss out. Or when their friends go off to the movies, a concert, or get a bite to eat, your teen will miss out.”

Asked about some of those images in December, White House spokeswoman Psaki replied, “I will tell you, I have a 3-year-old who goes to school, sits outside for snacks and lunch, wears a mask inside, and it’s no big deal to him….These are steps that schools are taking to keep kids safe.”

Yet the evidence that Psaki’s kid is actually safer because of such precautions has proven damnably difficult for the CDC to produce. America’s school masking guidance is a global outlier—the World Health Organization recommends against masking children aged 5 and younger, and only a handful of countries in the European Union were masking elementary school students in fall 2021. In trying to persuade the public that it’s actually rational and prudent, the country’s public health agency has never once cited a masking study that included a meaningful control group. Officials are operating on intuition, and as a result tens of millions of children are degrading their physical comfort, social development, and language acquisition. All to avoid contracting and spreading a virus they are far less susceptible to than are vaccinated adults.

Misrepresenting science to produce a preferred policy outcome is a terrible way to build trust during a pandemic. Adding to that sense of suspicion is the fact that the CDC at the beginning of the pandemic actively downplayed the effectiveness of masks, out of worry that scared consumers would hoard the then-scarce supply of medical-quality protective equipment needed by doctors and nurses. “Seriously people—STOP BUYING MASKS!” tweeted then–Surgeon General Jerome Adams on February 29, 2020. “They are NOT effective in preventing [the] general public from catching #Coronavirus, but if healthcare providers can’t get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk!”

The Biden administration was supposed to bring more scientific rigor into the building, yet Walensky has repeatedly massaged research findings to fit her policy desires for Americans to be swathed in real and metaphorical prophylactics. The CDC dropped its guidance for outdoor masking only in April 2021, and even then only among vaccinated people. The moderately populated state of Washington, with its spectacular forests, coastline, and mountains, still has an outdoor mask requirement.

As America braced for the omicron wave before Christmas, the blue-state mandates started to emerge: vaccine passports for Philadelphia, booster-shot requirements at several elite universities, a renewed indoor mask mandate in California. “The imperative is to get through this winter surge,” Newsom said. “And to do so in a way where we come out the other side and we have a chance to reevaluate.”

Schools in heavily Democratic districts—Cleveland, Ohio; Newark, New Jersey; West Chicago, Illinois; Prince George’s County, Maryland—preemptively responded to the omicron surge after Christmas break by once again shifting to remote-only learning. At the Brooklyn elementary school that my first-grader is zoned for, teachers staged a post-break sickout that precipitated a last-minute closure. “We are demanding,” they wrote in a letter to outraged parents, “the city and our union take…actions to stop the spread.”

So just a few more weeks to stop the spread. Or months. Or years.

The post Two Years To Slow the Spread appeared first on Reason.com.

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‘Putin’s War’ Moves Germany To Belatedly Boost Defense Spending Above 2% Of GDP

‘Putin’s War’ Moves Germany To Belatedly Boost Defense Spending Above 2% Of GDP

“With the invasion of Ukraine, we are in a new era,” Scholz Chancellor Olaf Scholz said while announcing plans which mark a huge, historic policy shift – drastically ramping up defense spending – in response to the Russian war in Ukraine. 

“Germany will channel 100 billion euros ($113 billion) this year into a fund to modernize the military, Scholz said Sunday in a speech to a special session of the lower house of parliament,” Bloomberg writes of the Sunday announcement. “By 2024, the government will spend at least 2% of gross domestic product each year on defense, he added, in line with a NATO target that Berlin has consistently failed to meet.”

Via FT

“On Thursday, President Putin created a new reality with his invasion of Ukraine. This new reality requires a clear response. We have given it,” Scholz said.

But of course the “reality” of NATO allies needing to carry their fair share of the security burden of Europe was obviously foreseen by Trump. This is yet another area, along with the European energy crisis playing out, where he’s been proven right, ironically enough. This after being scorned in Europe for years. But we won’t hold our breath for MSM pundits to admit this, even though it’s clear some European capitals are scrambling to belatedly enact what Trump called for years ago.

Scholz told parliament“We have to ask ourselves: What capacities does Putin’s Russia have? And which capacities do we need to counter his threats?” Parliament was gathered for an extraordinary session. “It’s clear, we will need to invest a lot more in the security of our country to defend our freedom and our democracy.”

“Putin wants to establish a Russian empire…the question is…whether we can summon the strength to set boundaries to warmongers like Putin,” the chancellor added.

“Dithering and weakness” are words it’s almost easy to imaging having come out of Trump’s mouth related to Berlin or others in past years, and now here’s how the political establishment perceives the situation: “Scholz had been widely criticized by opponents and allies alike in recent weeks for what they perceived as dithering and weakness in the face of Russia’s mounting aggression toward Ukraine,” Bloomberg describes.

It’s Germany’s foreign minister Annalena Baerbock who has been most out front in terms of urging Berlin to take a “180-degree turn in foreign policy” and that now is the “right moment”. In reference to the shock of Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine, she said: “If our world is different, then our politics must also be different” – also after Germany halted the Nord Stream 2 pipeline regulatory approval process and joined the push to target Moscow’s SWIFT access.

Germany also changed its policy of not sending its weapons to conflict zones. In a major reversal Scholz posted a statement online this weekend saying, “The Russian attack marks a turning point. It is our duty to do our best to help Ukraine defend against the invading army of Putin. That’s why we’re supplying 1,000 anti-tank weapons and 500 stinger missiles to our friends in the Ukraine,” he said.

Tyler Durden
Mon, 02/28/2022 – 05:45

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/UjzwO5f Tyler Durden