Fauci schools Rand Paul on herd immunity: ‘You’re not listening’

Fauci defends U.S. economic shutdown in a tense Senate hearing on the nation’s coronavirus response

Published: Sept. 23, 2020  By 

Nicole Lyn Pesce

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Dr. Anthony Fauci has officially lost patience with Sen. Rand Paul.

The nation’s leading infectious disease expert scolded the Republican senator from Kentucky for repeatedly “misconstruing” COVID-19 data during a heated congressional hearing on Wednesday.

Paul, who has criticized the economic shutdown measures enacted to limit the spread of the coronavirus, pointedly asked the White House coronavirus task force member how effective he believes these social distancing measures have been, and whether Fauci has had any second thoughts about his lockdown recommendations.

‘You’ve misconstrued that, senator, and you’ve done that repetitively in the past.’

— Dr. Anthony Fauci

To make his case, Paul tried to compare the U.S. coronavirus death toll, which just passed a grim 200,000 milestone on Tuesday, to Sweden’s, even though the U.S. is much larger and more densely populated compared to the Scandinavian country. After an initial surge in COVID-19 infections and mortalities, Sweden now has one of Europe’s lowest death rates despite never mandating masks or closing down schools, restaurants and gyms.

Related:Sweden embraced herd immunity, while the U.K. abandoned the idea — so why do they both have high COVID-19 fatality rates?

“Is man really capable of altering the course of infectious disease through crowd control? The statistics argue a resounding no,” Paul said, adding that, “despite all of the things we’ve done in the U.S., our death rate is essentially worse than Sweden, [and] equivalent to the less developed world.” It should be noted that Paul was the first U.S. senator to test positive for the coronavirus in March. He was asymptomatic, and he was criticized by some at the time for not quarantining himself while he was waiting for his test results.

Fauci countered that Sweden’s death toll is actually much worse than its more comparable neighboring Scandinavian countries, however, which did impose lockdown measures early in the pandemic. Sweden’s death toll (5,870) is much higher than Norway (267) and Finland (341), according to Johns Hopkins University data, and its case count is also much higher. “I don’t think it’s appropriate to compare Sweden with us,” said Fauci.

Research from Columbia University suggests that 36,000 American lives could have been saved by early May, and there could have been at least 700,000 fewer infections by that time, if the government had put broad social distancing measures in place just one week earlier in March. “I don’t regret saying that the only way we could have really stopped the explosion of infection was by essentially ... shutting down,” Fauci said.

Related:Dr. Fauci tells MarketWatch: I would not get on a plane or eat inside a restaurant

Paul also mocked Fauci for being “a big fan” of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and questioned how the state has managed to bring its coronavirus outbreak under control. “How can we possibly jump up and down and say, ‘Oh, Gov. Cuomo did a great job?’ He had the worst death rate in the world!” Paul said, arguing that herd immunity (having enough people become immune to COVID-19 through natural infection to make its spread unlikely) may have been more effective in flattening the curve in New York than anything the local government did.

Fauci came back swinging.

“No, you’ve misconstrued that, senator, and you’ve done that repetitively in the past,” said Fauci, arguing that New York was hit hard by the virus early on, but it got its test positivity rate down to 1% or less through face mask mandates, social distancing, pushing people to spend more time in well-ventilated areas outdoors instead of indoors, avoiding crowds and washing their hands that have been recommended by the coronavirus task force and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Paul again countered that the test positive rate may also have simply dropped because the population “developed enough community immunity that they’re no longer having the pandemic, because they have enough immunity in New York City to actually stop.”

Fauci interrupted with, “I challenge that, senator,” and noted to the moderator that, “this happens with Sen. Rand all the time.”

“You are not listening to what the director of the CDC said, that in New York [the infection rate is] about 22%,” Fauci said. “If you believe 22% is herd immunity, I believe you’re alone in that.” Epidemiologists estimate that at least 70% of the population attaining immunity is needed to achieve actual herd immunity. And New York City has also seen a fresh spate of outbreaks in several neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens, so it’s not out of the woods yet.

Related:Have you ‘herd’? New York might have immunity—but please don’t count on it, the mayor pleads

Paul also tried to push what he called a “fascinating field of inquiry” into whether people who have been exposed to other coronaviruses, including the common cold, might have a cross-reactive immunity to the coronavirus causing COVID-19. He said this may be why so many infected patients have little or no symptoms.

Fauci knocked that down, as well, noting there’s a recent study debunking that theory, although he told Paul that “I’d like to talk to you about that also.”

Twitter ate the exchange up.

It’s not the first time that Fauci and Paul have sparred. In June, the senator boiled down the doctor’s coronavirus response to “we can’t do this, we can’t do that.” Paul said at the time that, “We shouldn’t presume that a group of experts somehow knows what’s best for everyone.”

Fauci responded, ““The only thing that I can do is, to the best of my ability, give you the facts.”

Covid-19: 'Herd immunity' strategy is flawed until we have a coronavirus vaccine – Professor Devi Sridhar
Without a vaccine, building up population-level immunity to the Covid-19 coronavirus could take a year or more and catching the virus does not necessarily provide lasting protection, writes Professor Devi Sridhar.

By Devi Sridhar
Wednesday, 23rd September 2020

Shoppers wear face masks as they walk by an NHS poster urging people to wear them in shops (Picture: Oli Scarff/AFP via Getty Images)

The term ‘herd immunity’ keeps being raised during the Covid-19 pandemic. What does it mean? Herd immunity has been used as a vaccine strategy for diseases such as measles, mumps and rubella and means vaccinating the bulk of the population, thus preventing the ongoing transmission of these infectious diseases, and protecting the vulnerable (eg immuno-compromised) who cannot have the vaccine.

In the absence of a vaccine, it means having a certain percentage of the population contract the virus (50-80 per cent), develop antibodies or a T-cell response, and then have lasting protection from Sars-CoV-2 and not transmit it to others. A herd-immunity strategy without a vaccine has been advocated as segmenting the population by age, and asking vulnerable/elderly groups to ‘shield’ while the virus runs through the young and healthy members of the group (‘the herd’).

Why is this a dangerous approach? First, complete shielding on its own has not worked in any country that has tried it given the difficulties in separating the healthy from the weak, for example, those who work in care homes, who live in multi-generational housing, or who teach in schools and work in essential services. Would this mean removing all children from schools whose parents or household members are in a vulnerable category, or work with vulnerable groups? East Asian countries did not even try this approach: it was one taken by the UK, Sweden and the Netherlands.

Second, it is unethical to lock vulnerable and elderly people away at home for an indefinite amount of time. Seroprevalence studies (which show the extent of previous infection – antibody prevalence – in the population) fall under 10 per cent in Scotland, indicating that it would take over a year, if not longer, to reach some kind of population-immunity.

Third, immunity is still a large unknown, with several cases of re-infection already documented. Having the virus once does not guarantee immunity for life, and other coronaviruses do not provide lasting immunity. A big question is whether re-infections also make individuals infectious to others, or not.

Fourth, there are increased cases of Long Covid, a chronic post-Covid syndrome, affecting previously healthy, young people (largely aged 30-59) who are suffering for months from fatigue and heart, lung or kidney problems. Covid-19 is a multi-system disease and recommending young people get infected is like playing Russian Roulette with young people’s health given these complications. It is not a harmless virus in all young people. In the US, 935 children have been hospitalised with Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome (MIS-C), which is a rare condition, but does occur if prevalence increases.

As the four-nation agreement states, to get the maximum normality requires suppressing the virus overall with the minimum restrictions and minimal impact on economy and society. This is the balance that every country is trying to find and the trade-offs they involve.

Even New Zealand, with life largely back to normal on the islands, has made the trade-off of bubbling itself off from the rest of the world. Restrictions might mean 90 per cent normality in daily life, or 60 per cent normality, but lockdown/release is not the best way of seeing the coming year, but rather a gradient of moving towards more relaxation or more stringency depending on control of the virus.

And finally, beware of theories and those offering comforting lies over policy arising from public health practice and history. Even after decades and centuries, we do not have herd immunity to cholera, yellow fever, polio, measles, TB, malaria or plague. Public health measures have been used to control their spread until vaccines or elimination strategies were developed.

Professor Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at Edinburgh University and advises the Scottish Government on Covid-19

David Hume's racism was attacked by an 18th century Scottish philosopher, as well as modern Black Lives Matter protesters – Dr Robin Mills

Moral philosophy professor James Beattie of Marischal College accused David Hume of Eurocentric arrogance, ignorance and victim-blaming, writes Dr Robin Mills

By Robin Mills
Friday, 18th September 2020, 

Racist remarks by the 18th-century philosopher David Hume have come under attack amid the ongoing Black Lives Matter protests, but he was also heavily criticised at the time (Picture: Jane Barlow/PA)

Edinburgh University has decided to remove philosopher David Hume’s name from its tower block at 40 George Square. The university claimed Hume’s views, while characteristic of his time, were abhorrent now and were causing some students distress. Were Hume’s racist beliefs commonplace? No doubt. But across late 18th-century western Europe, including Scotland, abolitionist movements were garnering popular support and informing political decision-making.

The most well-known contemporary critic of Hume’s racism was James Beattie, a moral philosophy professor at Marischal College Aberdeen from 1760 until 1797. Beattie was Hume’s bête noire. He shot to fame in 1770 with An Essay on Truth, a pugilistic takedown of Hume’s philosophical writings, which Beattie claimed denied the existence of all truth. The essay was one of the bestsellers of the Scottish Enlightenment.

One widely disseminated passage was Beattie’s assault on Hume’s infamous footnote in which he claimed all non-white civilizations were intellectually inferior, and black Africans especially so. Beattie slung a barrage of arguments Hume’s way, accusing him of Eurocentric arrogance, ignorance of other civilisations, and failing to reflect critically on his own society’s problems. Beattie’s central challenge, however, was that Hume was blaming the victim. If African slaves did not demonstrate “ingenuity” or “genius”, this could hardly be said to be their fault.

Hume’s footnote was greedily deployed by pro-slavery campaigners. They used his fame – the footnote itself hardly counted as sustained argument – as evidence of the correctness of their cause. But Beattie’s refutation and celebrity were likewise used by abolitionists. The leading anti-slavery advocate of the 1770s, Granville Sharp, used Beattie’s attack in an influential campaign, fascinatingly described by modern historian David Olusoga. And throughout his anti-slavery activism, Beattie researched what he was talking about, whereas Hume hardly seemed to care.

Beattie was an activist professor of sorts. He ended his attack on Hume’s racism with a call to Britons to live up to their self-images as lovers of liberty and to fight to stop slavery.

Prompted by disgust at Hume’s opinions, Beattie lectured his students at Marischal College on slavery’s horrors and their need to act in humane and Christian ways to their fellow human. He organised petitions sent from Aberdeen during the height of abolitionist campaigning in 1788.

Beattie compiled a book arguing against the slave trade and substantiating the claim, as he wrote to a friend in 1788, that slavery must cease “to clear the British character of a stain which is indeed of the blackest dye”. It was never published, but the crux of Beattie’s position appeared in a sustained attack on slavery in his student textbook Elements of Moral Science (1793). Here an impassioned Beattie described slavery as “utterly repugnant to every principle of reason, religion, humanity, and conscience”

The opposition of Hume and Beattie reflected the divisions within Scottish society over slavery. One event in Aberdeen epitomises this. In 1792 professors at Beattie’s employer Marischal College drew up another abolitionist petition to the British Government. The rival King’s College, by contrast, was studiously silent. Beattie noted with pleasure to William Wilberforce that Aberdeen’s town council had voted to send a petition to London.

Like many abolitionists, Beattie believed the campaign needed to be realistic about slavery’s end. Sudden cessation was a political impossibility given the slavery lobby’s clout. Likewise, one-off abolition would leave the wretched trade’s dehumanised victims without the means to survive. Nor was Beattie pushing for the abandonment of Britain’s colonies.

Beattie’s proposals will seem piecemeal, even immoral by our standards. Slavery, he thought, would wither away without major intervention if wage incentives and education were introduced. Education would bring slaves back up the level of dignified rational humans, which their oppression had denied to them. Granting freedom to the most productive slaves would encourage self-sufficiency and independence. It would demonstrate to plantation owners that it was more profitable to abandon the practice.

Beattie was part of an ongoing conversation within the Scottish abolition movement. He discussed slavery repeatedly with his old friend from student days in Aberdeen, James Ramsay. Ramsay was a naval surgeon turned Anglican priest who worked in St Kitts. Upon his return in the mid-1780s Ramsay campaigned fearlessly, despite vicious attacks, against the slavery he had witnessed first-hand. Beattie was not alone.

What does all of this tell us? Sure, Hume’s position was reprehensible to many contemporaries, like it is to our sensibilities. On racial issues at least, Beattie is a more amenable figure. Even then, many of his opinions will strike us as debatable, if not deplorable.

The study of the past, however, is not therapy. Viewing history as a storehouse of laudables and deplorables infantilises us. If we go to the past looking for ammunition for contemporary battles, we will fail to understand what has gone before. We apply our standards and get the answers we already wanted. We remain steadfast in our mindset and we do not learn anything.

While a tiny part of the story, thinking about Beattie’s and Hume’s attitudes helps us understand how slavery endured and how it ended. It is the sort of thing that universities should be encouraging, rather than seeking symbolic erasure of the uncomfortable past. This could be an opportunity for debate, nuance, and understanding. But if we approach the past as victims, we might get protection, but we will not get insight.

Dr Robin Mills is a Leverhulme early career fellow at Queen Mary University of London

David Hume was a brilliant philosopher but also a racist involved in slavery – Dr Felix Waldmann

David Hume advised his patron, Lord Hertford to buy a slave plantation, facilitated the deal and lent £400 to one of the principal investors. And when criticised for racism in 1770, he was unmoved, writes Dr Felix Waldmann

By Felix Waldmann
Friday, 17th July 2020, 7:30 am

A petition by a student of the University of Edinburgh has called for the re-naming of its David Hume Tower, drawing attention to the philosopher’s 1753 essay, Of National Characters, in which he voiced his suspicion that “negroes” are “naturally inferior to the whites”. These “racist epithets”, the petition notes, justify the removal of Hume’s name from the building. It has gathered 1,750 signatures.

As a historian who specialises in Hume’s life and works, I was not surprised to find Hume’s views discussed in the weeks after the toppling of Edward Colston’s statue in Bristol. Hume’s own statue on the Royal Mile was recently targeted by a protestor, who fixed a placard to it bearing Hume’s notorious statement from Of National Characters.

As debate over Henry Dundas’s statue has grown in recent weeks, it was inevitable that the commemoration of Hume in Edinburgh would fall under suspicion.

There is no question that Hume was a brilliant philosopher, whose writings have shaped modern philosophy and Scottish culture. His Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40) may be the most significant work of philosophy published in English before the 20th century. His puckish scepticism about the existence of religious miracles played a significant part in defining the critical outlook which underpins the practice of modern science.

But his views served to reinforce the institution of racialised slavery in the later 18th century. More importantly, the fact that he was involved in the slave trade is now a matter of record, thanks to a discovery in Princeton University Library. It was there that I recently found an unknown letter of March 1766 by Hume, in which he encouraged his patron Lord Hertford to purchase a slave plantation in Grenada.

This is the only surviving evidence of Hume’s involvement in the slave trade, and it was completely unknown to scholars until I published it in my 2014 book Further Letters of David Hume.

Through additional archival research, I discovered that Hume had not only contacted Hertford; he had facilitated the purchase of the plantation by writing to the French Governor of Martinique, the Marquis d’Ennery, in June 1766. Indeed, he lent £400 to one of the principal investors earlier in the same year.

Hume denounced slavery – in ancient Rome

It did not surprise me that this information was omitted from the student’s petition, since it is known only to the specialist audience which read Further Letters of David Hume.

But it was a discovery which I expected would one day force scholars to re-evaluate their judgement of Hume, who was not otherwise known to have participated in the slave trade and who devoted a considerable part of an essay in 1748 denouncing the practice of slavery in ancient Rome.

Some may attribute Hume’s conduct in this affair to the social conventions of his time. Eighteenth-century Scotland was a racist society.

Many of its most prominent figures were direct beneficiaries of the slave trade. Scotland in general reaped the advantages of slavery in Britain’s colonies. It could be argued that holding Hume to the standard of a later age would be unfair. We should acknowledge, instead, that Hume could not criticise racism and slavery without upsetting social conventions.

But this argument is absurd. Hume was a genius by the standards of the 18th century. He was not deferential to convention. In fact, he was the antonym of convention. He was sufficiently wealthy in 1766 not to assist in this scheme. And he was aware of the widespread denunciation of slavery by his contemporaries, including in books by his friends and correspondents.

One of world’s most important philosophers

Anyone with Hume’s intelligence would recognise the enormity of slavery. But Hume sought to benefit from it. In Of National Characters, he justified it. When James Beattie of Aberdeen criticised Hume’s racist comments in 1770, Hume was unmoved. The last authorised edition of the essay, published in 1777, repeats the same sentiments, almost verbatim.

Where does this leave Hume’s reputation? The irony in his matter is that Hume was always an unlikely candidate for celebration by the University of Edinburgh. Although he studied at the University between about 1722 and 1725, the institution refused to employ him as a professor of moral philosophy in 1745 because of his religious scepticism, and it was this – in part – which prompted his departure from Edinburgh for four years.

It was only in the 20th century that Hume’s status as one of the university’s most eminent alumni was commemorated. This is because Hume was then, rightly, regarded as one of the most important philosophers ever to have lived. His works found an eager audience in an increasingly secularised society.

The posthumous celebration of Adam Smith’s legacy is similar. As Smith became an apostle of free-market capitalism, interest in his works grew. His face now appears on the £20 note in England and his statue accompanies Hume’s on the Royal Mile.

Wagner, a vicious anti-semite and brilliant composer

It is important, however, to distinguish between studying an individual and venerating him. As an observant Jew and fan of classical music, it pains me to admit that Richard Wagner – a vicious anti-semite – is one of the most important composers ever to have lived. His genius and influence are impossible to deny.

The question is whether this importance needs to be celebrated by the use of statues or the emblazoning of names on buildings. If I had to work in a building named after Wagner, or if I had to walk past a statue of the man, I would find it preposterous. But if you asked me to stop listening to his music, I would object. Listening to his music is a personal choice, which I would not impose upon others.

There are many questions to consider when removing a statue or expunging name from a building. As we have found with the debate over the Melville Monument, these questions are aesthetic, moral, and historical. In Hume’s case, the history and morality of the matter is clear: Hume was an unashamed racist, who was directly involved in the slave trade.

Dr Felix Waldmann is a Fellow of Christ’s College, Cambridge. He was the David Hume Fellow at the University of Edinburgh in 2016.

When the Highlands went into 'lockdown' 80 years ago

Holidaymakers were turned away, police checked on visitors and those caught flouting the restrictions faced fines and even imprisonment. This is not 2020 but ‘Lockdown 1940’ in the Highlands.
By Alison Campsie
Friday, 18th September 2020
UpdatedSaturday, 19th September 2020,

A sign at the Forest of Birse in Aberdeenshire which appeared in Spring 2020, warning visitors to stay away during the Covid-19 lockdown. Eighty years earlier, and restrictions were placed on the movement of thousands of people throughout the Highlands.


Eighty years ago and it was not a pandemic that restricted movement across 40 per cent of Scotland’s land mass, but the threat of invasion under World War Two.

Caithness , Sutherland , Ross and Cromarty and parts of the then counties of Inverness and Argyll were placed in a Protected Area by the War Office in March of that year in a bid to bid to safeguard the naval defences of the far north as well as prepare for the possibility of the enemy landing on Scotland’s shores

Queues formed around police stations by thousands of Highlanders seeking proof of residence documents that had to be pinned to their identity cards. Anyone who wanted to visit the area, whether it be on holiday or for some types of business – had to apply for a permit from either Edinburgh, Glasgow or the Passport Office in London.

Letters to newspapers complained about snags and delays in the system. Articles reported the fines given out to those found breaching the new regulations.

Checkpoints were placed throughout the north, with the army patrolling one main barrier built at Beauly.

Neil Bruce, of Banchory, a postgraduate of the history department at the University of Highlands and Islands, has researched the Protected Area introduced in 1940 and said the Highlands effectively became a "military controlled zone”. A similar scheme was introduced during World War One.

He said: “Restricting access in wartime resonates with 2020. What is striking is that in early 2020, communities really took matters much more into their own hands as restrictions were put in place. Communities felt they had to look after themselves. But in 1940, it was officialdom at work – with the help of the police and the military.”

Those who flouted the restrictions quickly ended up court as the 1940 Protected Area was enforced.

A Robert Michie was sentenced to a £2 fine or 10 days imprisonment at Inverness Sheriff Court for circumventing the army’s Beauly barrier which controlled the north road, research by Mr Bruce found.

Meanwhile, holidaymaker Jessie Macleod freely crossed the Beauly barrier several times before being found to be without permit. In her defence she said she believed her identification card was sufficient proof but it was not enough for her to escape a 10/- fine.

Meanwhile, John P. McGovern, a farm labourer in Caithness for 11 years, received more leniency. He was remanded in custody while Wick police obtained the necessary military permit.

Other reports detailed how one man was only allowed to attend his father’s funeral having “pulled certain very important wires which are not given to all men to reach”.

Mr Bruce said there were suspicions about preferential treatment being given in some cases, not least when Lord Redesdale and daughter Deborah Mitford holed up on the tiny island of Inch Kenneth, off Mull, which they bought just before the outbreak of war.

Secretary for War, Anthony Eden defended Redesdale’s ‘valid reason for finding it desirable and necessary to reside there during part of the year’ seeing no ‘reasonable grounds for disquiet throughout Scotland’.

Minister for Security and Home Secretary, Sir John Anderson, said the the island was ‘visited periodically by the police’, though he had no grounds ‘for prohibiting the present inhabitants from living there’.

Mr Bruce added: "In spring 2020, echoes reverberated when officials told citizens to stay at home, then ignored the same instruction. Elsewhere, police visited Lismore following concerns about a non-resident’s arrival.”

Meanwhile, residents from enemy countries required a specific permit and had to adhere to strict regulations, Mr Bruce said. Two Italian men, Enrico and Antonio Pizzamiglio, were fined £10, or the equivalent of around £560 at today’s values, for forgetting to report to their local police station before overnight curfew set in.

The restrictions created another issue familiar in 2020 – the struggle for tourism to survive in the Highlands.

Tourism was killed almost ‘stone dead’ in 1940 and the slow issue of visitor permits brought sparse Easter trade, research by Mr Bruce found.

A report in The Scotsman encouraged readers not to worry about food restrictions or petrol rationing, but warned that bed and breakfasts and other tourist businesses may be unable to continue under the restrictions.

Highlighted as particularly vulnerable were the small enterprises set up by the “Women of Ross”, from bed and breakfasts run out of lone shielings to overight accommodation offered above village shops.

Visitors with even the correct documents could find themselves stopped from boarding ferries or trains without warning with no compensation offered.


When Anthony Eden was pressed why some permit applications were refused. In his response, he said: “There may be reasons which I would rather not refer to in public.”


It it thought, however, they included an expected imminent invasion or the construction of defensive works to thwart the enemy.


As in 2020, the need for protection was ever real.

ScotRail staff to hold strike ballot over no pay rise
The Rail Maritime and Transport union announced a vote today after being told there would be no increase today

By Alastair Dalton
Wednesday, 23rd September 2020

The RMT is angry its members have not been given a pay rise. Picture: Danny Lawson/PA Wire


Thousands of ScotRail train conductors and other staff are to be balloted for industrial action after being told their pay would not increase this year.

The RMT move followed emergency Scottish Government funding for ScotRail being extended until January.

The union did this did not include a pay rise, which should have been agreed in April.

‘Fruitless’

A letter issued by the union stated: “Negotiations have taken place with the company to discuss the matter of your pay rise.

"Unfortunately the latest talks have proved to be fruitless and your union has been advised that the extension of emergency measures agreement until January 2021 implies that you will not receive a pay rise in 2020.

"Your national executive committee has considered the matter further and it has declared that a dispute situation now exists between our organisations.

"Necessary preparations for a ballot for industrial action are being made.”

The RMT urged members to vote in favour of both strike action and action short of a strike.

‘Treated with contempt’

Scottish organiser Mick Hogg said: “We are key workers and have been more than patient.

"1 April was our pay anniversary date, but we agreed reluctantly to pause pay talks.

"We are now being treated with contempt and our members have had enough.”

Under a separate two-year deal agreed with ScotRail last year, train drivers’ union Aslef will see its members’ annual pay increase by 3 per cent from £50,000 to around £51,500 next month.

‘Very disappointing’

Gerry Skelton, ScotRail human resources director, said: “ScotRail delivers well-paid, good quality jobs.

"While many other parts of the economy have closed down and laid off thousands of staff, the jobs, salaries, and conditions of ScotRail staff have been unaffected.

"We are proud we’ve been able to protect our people during these very challenging times and believe the delay in any pay negotiations is a small price to pay for the peace of mind and financial stability we can give our colleagues and their families.

"It’s very disappointing the RMT doesn’t appear to recognise or welcome the job security that has been provided.

“With the emergency measures agreement in place, we are in regular dialogue with the Scottish Government and trade union colleagues about when it would be right to begin pay discussions in a responsible manner over the coming months.”

News of the RMT ballot comes hard of the heels of the union announcing a series of strikes among Caledonian Sleeper staff over rest areas on trains during extended shifts.

Two 48-hour walkouts are due to take place from Sunday 4 and Sunday 11 October, along with an overtime ban on other days.

Caledonian Sleeper is looking at whether it will be forced to make changes to services if the action goes ahead.

The dispute was called after the RMT said staff were denied access to spare cabins during shifts that could last more than 16 hours.

Operator Serco has drafted in a fatigue expert.

A further meeting with the union is scheduled for next week.

‘How DARE you!’ indeed! Spitting Image puppet show eviscerated over ‘mocking’ Greta Thunberg

NATIONAL REVIEW? NYET ITS RT

22 Sep, 2020 
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© Instagram / Spitting Image

UK satire show Spitting Image has been savaged online after unveiling a puppet of teen climate crusader Greta Thunberg that some claim mocked her autism. With no episodes of the show yet released, others questioned the outrage.

BritBox TV’s reprisal of the political puppet satire attracted major backlash after unveiling its Thunberg puppet on Tuesday - a typically-absurd looking construct exaggerating the pint-size eco-warrior’s furrowed brow, hectoring finger, and braided pigtails.ALSO ON RT.COMGreta Thunberg back in school after taking 1-yr sabbatical to crusade against climate change

The show originally ran for 12 years before being canceled in 1996 and is set to return next month with contemporary characters.

While every puppet gets the production’s signature grotesque-caricature treatment, critics on social media nevertheless tore into the still-unaired new series for its portrayal of Thunberg.

The 17-year-old’s autism makes her off limits, many argued.

Misjudged this one folks. She’s an autistic young person. Plenty of people more deserving of your attention.— Ryan Love (@RyanJL) September 22, 2020


I sincerely hope you will not be encouraging more vicious personal attacks on a young girl with autism.I suspect that that will be the result.So shame on you.Cruelty is not funny.— angie - Brave New World explorer (@lifelearner47) September 22, 2020

A number of commenters condemned the series for “punching down” without specifying what exactly elevated the youthful Swedish scold above comedic criticism.

I'm old enough to remember when Spitting Image punched up— Elaine Crory (@ElaineCrory) September 22, 2020

ooh! reeeallly punching up here with some cutting-edged satire, can see this being *great* content, nice one guys— lottie (@sellottie) September 22, 2020

Others, who’d seen the original Spitting Image, tried to mitigate the outrage, pointing out that not every character who appeared on the show was ruthlessly mocked and worrying about the future of comedy itself.

I wouldn't blow a gasket just yet. There were always 'straight' characters on Spitting Image that gave the writers the opportunity to rip into politicians etc. And she is a public figure, after all.— Dan Oliver (@danoliver) September 22, 2020


i don’t think there’s any winning for Spitting Image. No one wants to laugh at the thing they care about and no one wants to see others laugh at it either. So as long as no one laughs at anything, everyone will get what they want and be miserable all the time.— Chris (@onemorechris) September 22, 2020

Several defended the satire, pointing out that Thunberg was a public figure who traveled the world lecturing people on their carbon footprints and thus a valid target.

She has out herself in the public sphere and hold a lot of influence over policy-makers and politicians. It’s perfectly acceptable to satirise her.— Gary Norwood (@GaryNorwood2) September 22, 2020


But isn’t it the fact that they take the piss out of everyone in the public what makes them so very cool?— Catherine Russell (@catherinerusse2) September 22, 2020

Ironically, one of those defending Spitting Image was apparently Thunberg herself, who has proven herself able to take a joke much better than her legions of defenders.


If Greta is cool with this, I am too. Ironically, everyone jumping to defend her because she's a teenager or has autism is doing no one a favor and proving she had thicker skin than all of us. pic.twitter.com/HnWUmSWIhY— the Laughing Fool (@SeanDStevens1) September 22, 2020

The original Spitting Image directed mockery at politicians of all parties as well as celebrities, royals, and anyone else making news, something that many may find difficult to imagine in hyper-partisan 2020. The show was scheduled to return to the airwaves in 2016 after a special broadcast two years prior, but a fight over certain puppets put it on the sidelines temporarily.

The Thunberg likeness’s co-stars are set to include ex-royals Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, PM Boris Johnson, Russian President Vladimir Putin, US President Donald Trump, erstwhile Democratic Socialist presidential challenger Bernie Sanders, rapper/sometime presidential challenger Kanye West, and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Bobby Sands died in jail 39 years ago. Julian Assange is his modern equivalent and will one day also be hailed as a martyr

Chris Sweeney

6 May, 2020 09:33 
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(L) Fermanagh and South Tyrone MP and IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands, who died in the Maze prison, Belfast, after 65 days of hunger strike. © Getty Images / PA Images; (R) WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange © REUTERS/Simon Dawson

The British government allowed IRA hunger-striker Bobby Sands to starve to death in 1981. It is showing the same lack of judgment today on what is right and wrong, by callously letting another political detainee die needlessly.

Insanity is often defined as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. On that charge, Britain is guilty.

39 years ago, on May 5, 1981, Bobby Sands died after refusing food for 66 days at Her Majesty's Prison Maze in Northern Ireland – even a visit from Pope John Paul II's personal envoy couldn't persuade him to desist.

Sands was a member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army and had been sentenced to 14 years for possession of a gun, having been arrested near the scene of an IRA bombing.

During his time in jail, Sands campaigned, along with other IRA members, to have their special category status restored. It had been removed by the British government, who had decided to no longer view them as political prisoners. They were categorised as common criminals.

The IRA detainees sought demands such as the right to wear their own clothes, the right not to do prison work, the right to mix freely and the right to one visit per week. A hunger strike was started, but ended after 53 days when one prisoner slipped into a coma.


But with no sign of their political designation being returned, Sands began another strike, taking only taking water and salt. After a few weeks he weighed just 95 pounds, down from his normal 155.

In the midst of this, he was elected in absentia to the British Parliament as the MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone.

The following month, May 1981, he died aged 27. The hunger strike continued, with a further nine men perishing before it ended in October 1981.

Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher then agreed to their demands, but refused to recognise them as political prisoners.

Sands became – and still is – a folk hero to millions. It is estimated that around 150,000 people lined the streets for his funeral. There are streets named after him in Nantes, New York and Paris.

In Tehran, Winston Churchill Boulevard – one of the roads on which the British embassy lies – was renamed in his honour.

Sadly, it appears as if Britain has learned nothing from its brutal and oppressive handling of the IRA, as it's set to create another Bobby Sands.

Julian Assange is currently in extremely poor health, according to numerous reports, with his partner fearing he could die imminently.

He is being held in Belmarsh Prison, which has already suffered a Covid-19 death – and by definition, the enclosed nature of a jail makes it the optimum breeding ground for the spread of a pandemic.ALSO ON RT.COM'How do you prosecute Assange and not prosecute journalists everywhere?' – Greenwald to RT on threat to journalists worldwide

But Britain's arrogant and dismissive government refuses to get off its high horse.

They are holding a man against his will, who has committed no crime. He is only being held at the request of the US government, which has charged him with espionage and conspiracy to commit computer intrusion, better known as hacking.

The truth is, they are embarrassed and furious that the details of their murky dealings in places like Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen were laid bare for the world to see.

At one point, Assange dumped a quarter of million American diplomatic cables online – making every news outlet on the planet aware of the type of dubious conduct the US military and its operatives had been indulging in.

How does this equate to being locked up on the same terms as killers, paedophiles and rapists?

If we close our eyes and change the names of those involved, we could be back in 1981.

Britain's establishment has failed to learn the lessons of criminalising those with opposing political views who make life uncomfortable for them.

It's an atrocious state of affairs for a democracy like Britain to not have evolved and progressed.

Bobby Sands was no ordinary criminal – and neither is Julian Assange.

The irony is that the spineless politicians who took both of their freedoms have more to answer for.

In Sands' case, it was the occupation of another country, and discriminating between people based on religion – Catholic or Protestant.

In Assange's case, it's the money-hungry excuses for public servants who sell British arms to countries like Saudi Arabia, UAE and Bahrain to use in illegal foreign wars or against their own people, on top of the litany of unethical military incursions of our own.

Britain has now claimed second spot in the global Covid-19 death toll, and there's no sign of the line of corpses stopping any time soon.

Our prime minister and his cabinet are the ones who should be looking at the inside of a cell, because of the criminal way they've handled Britain's Covid-19 response.

Healthcare workers are being forced to use swimming goggles and paper aprons as protection, and the emergency 4,000-bed hospital (which has treated 54 patients in total) in London is closing due to there not being enough staff available to operate it.

Then there’s the botched order of 17.5 million faulty antibody tests, and the foolish plan to attempt to achieve herd immunity – before panicking and deciding to backtrack and go into lockdown, weeks too late to prevent so many deaths.

The litany of heinous misdemeanours is lengthy.

But what's also clear is how our political leaders bend with the wind; they have no backbone or spine.

How many of the British government have risen up above the parapet and called out what's going on? A shambles. A travesty. A complete failure.

None of them.

Sands and Assange were, and are, composed of better stuff. They stood up for something of importance; they drew a line and refused to back down due to the conviction of their beliefs. Britain should stop demonising them, and instead copy them.

Sands famously said: “Our revenge will be the laughter of our children.” Thirty-nine years later, we're still waiting to hear it.

Chris Sweeney is an author and columnist who has written for newspapers such as The Times, Daily Express, The Sun and Daily Record, along with several international-selling magazines. Follow him on Twitter @Writes_Sweeney

Slavoj Žižek: Elon Musk’s desire to control our minds is dehumanizing and not what is needed in a socially distanced world

Slavoj Zizek

is a cultural philosopher. He’s a senior researcher at the Institute for Sociology and Philosophy at the University of Ljubljana, Global Distinguished Professor of German at New York University, and international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities of the University of London.

1 Sep, 2020 18:29

FILE PHOTO: Elon Musk, founder and chief engineer of SpaceX speaks at the 2020 Satellite Conference and Exhibition March 9, 2020 in Washington, DC ©  Getty Images / Win McNamee

Neuralink, which would see humans receive brain implants readable by a computer, is Elon Musk’s latest big idea. But digital control of our thinking would be a step in the wrong direction.

At the end of August, Elon Musk presented the first living proof of the success of his Neuralink project at a press conference in Los Angeles. On display was what he referred to as “a healthy and happy pig” with an implant which made its brain processes readable to a computer. I’d be curious to hear how he knew the pig was happy…

Anyway, what we were then told was a familiar story. Musk emphasized the health benefits of Neuralink (silently passing over its potential for an unheard-of control over our inner lives), and announced that he is now looking for human volunteers to try it out.

Using pigs first, then men, is an ominous parallel with electroshock therapy, which was invented by Italian psychiatrist Ugo Cerletti in 1938. After Cerletti saw electric shocks imposed on pigs before slaughter, making them more docile in their final moments, he was inspired to try the same treatment on humans.

Maybe this is a low blow against Musk, as extremes are to be avoided when considering Neuralink. We should neither celebrate it as an invention that opens up the path towards singularity (a divine collective self-awareness), nor fear it as a danger that we will lose our individual autonomy and become cogs in a digital machine.  

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Musk himself is falling into an ideological dream, as seen in the headline and subhead of a recent report in The Independent: “Elon Musk predicts human language will be obsolete in as little as five years: ‘We could still do it for sentimental reasons.’ Neuralink chief says firm planning to connect device to human brain within 12 months ...” 

Even if we ignore the technical feasibility of this dream, let’s just think about what the reality of our minds directly sharing experiences – outside the realm of language – would mean for the process of, for example, erotic seduction.

Imagine a seduction scene between two subjects whose brains are wired so that the other’s train of thought is accessible. If my prospective partner can directly experience my intention, what remains of the intricacies of seduction games? Will the other person not react with something like: “OK, I know you desperately want to f**k me, so why are you asking me all those stupid things about the movies I enjoy and what I would like to have for dinner? Can’t you feel that I would never have sex with you?” All would be over in a second.

More fundamentally, the distance between our inner life, the line of our thoughts, and external reality is the basis of the perception of ourselves as free. We are free in our thoughts precisely in so far as they are at a distance from reality, so that we can play with them, conduct thought experiments, and engage in dreaming, with no direct consequences to reality. No one can control us there.Once our inner life is directly linked to reality, so that our thoughts have direct consequences in reality – or can be directly regulated by a machine that is part of reality, and are in this sense no longer ‘ours’ – we effectively enter a post-human state.

Neuralink should thus make us raise basic questions: not just “Will we still be human if immersed in a wired brain?” but also “What do we understand by ‘human’ when we raise such questions?” 

I’ve dealt with these questions, including the new, unheard modes of social control opened up by Neuralink, in my book ‘Hegel in a Wired Brain’. We should never forget that if we can directly regulate processes in reality with my thoughts – for example, I just think that my coffee machine should prepare a latte macchiato, and it happens – the causal link works also in the opposite direction. Those who control the digital machine which ‘reads my mind’ can also control my mind and implant thoughts into it.  

What is important for us today, in the midst of the Covid epidemic, is to see that social distancing – or rather, bodily distancing – supplements the vision of Neuralink. How?

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Mars colonization is ever more likely, but don’t get too excited – it’ll be billionaires deciding who gets there, and how

Physical distancing as a defence against the threat of contagion led to intensified social connectivity, not only within quarantined families but also with others (mostly through digital media). But there were also outbursts of physical closeness, such as raves and partying, which reacted to both. Rave represents not just bodily closeness, but also less social control and thus more distance to society at large.

What happened with the epidemic was not a simple shift from communal life to distancing, but a more complex shift from one constellation of closeness and distancing to another one.

The fragile balance that existed pre-epidemic between communal life and the private sphere is replaced by a new constellation in which the diminishing of the space of actual/bodily social interaction – due to quarantines, etc – doesn’t lead to more privacy, but gives birth to new norms of social dependency and control. Don’t forget that even drones were used to control us in quarantine.

And so, the prospect of Neuralink ideally fits the vision of a new society in which we will be bodily isolated, living in protective bubbles, and simultaneously sharing the same mental space. In our psychic lives, we will be closer to each other than ever before, immersed into the same space.

What we need now is not only more physical proximity to others, but also more psychic distance from others.