Classified docs probe pushes Biden think tank into spotlight
 

Affiliated with the Philadelphia school, the Penn Biden Center says it was founded on the principle that “a democratic, open, secure, tolerant, and interconnected world benefits all Americans.”

University of Pennsylvania President Amy Gutmann, left, talks with former Vice President Joe Biden at the university's Irvine Auditorium in Philadelphia on Feb. 19, 2019. 

(Tim Tai/The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP, File)


COLLEEN LONG
Sun, January 29, 2023

WASHINGTON (AP) — As Joe Biden contemplated his next move in 2017 after decades in government, he considered a familiar path — creating a Washington-based think tank to focus on international affairs and diplomacy. It proved an easy sell and a lucrative one, too.

Soft landings in the capital are common for officials with a resume like Biden’s, and the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement was born, with a grand view of the Capitol.

The former vice president brought with him trusted staff and boxes of files. Now, a small batch of those files is at the center of controversy because some were classified documents that Biden had no right to retain.

The gloss of Ivy League academia and high-minded ambitions has been dulled by this month’s disclosure that the sensitive documents were found last fall in a locked closet as Biden lawyers were packing up his former office at the center. That discovery is posing a test for Biden just as he is contemplating a 2024 reelection campaign.

It turns out politics have been part of the equation all along.

In an early meeting at the center in February 2018, Biden told longtime foreign policy aides — many of them from the Obama-Biden administration — that he was keeping his options open for a potential presidential campaign in 2020 and that he would welcome them joining his team if he decided to run.

Sure enough, after hosting a handful of forums at the center and speaking a few times on the University of Pennsylvania's main campus, Biden announced his candidacy in April 2019. And after that he was rarely at the Capitol Hill center, which has continued to function quietly since its namesake leader moved on.

Its relatively low profile is now history.

Congressional Republicans are asking questions about the center’s budget and hiring practices and the FBI may want to search the premises for more documents, as it did Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware.

Affiliated with the Philadelphia school, the Penn Biden Center says it was founded on the principle that “a democratic, open, secure, tolerant, and interconnected world benefits all Americans.”

According to Biden's tax returns, the university paid him roughly $900,000 over about two years, starting just after he left office when Donald Trump and Mike Pence took over the White House. In addition to the center, Biden also held roles at the school where he would speak on campus.

While the center’s staff continued to conduct research, serve as experts for the media and write columns on foreign policy after Biden’s departure, there is no new work listed on the center’s website for the past 10 or so months.

Elliott Abrams, who has held foreign policy positions for presidents in the Reagan, George W. Bush and Trump administrations, said it has not developed as an influential think tank.

“It started as a parking space for Biden people until he ran for president, and never really outgrew that start,” Abrams said.

Plenty of current Biden allies at the White House cycled through the think tank, according to public records and the Penn Biden Center website.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken was the center’s managing director from May 2017 through June 2019. Michael Carpenter had the managing director's role before he was named U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

Other center employees included Steve Ricchetti, now a senior counselor to Biden. There are at least seven other Biden staffers who were at the center and are now involved in national security matters in the administration.

Even Amy Gutmann, the university's president at the time who helped launch the center, now works for him. She's the U.S. ambassador to Germany.

Biden himself has a long history with the Ivy League school; his late son Beau, daughter Ashley, and granddaughter Naomi are all graduates. Biden received an honorary degree from Penn in 2013 after he gave the commencement address.

Biden frequently worked out of the center on Constitution Avenue as he quietly planned his presidential run, according to his aides, but he did not spend time there after he announced his candidacy. His lawyers had finally gotten around to clearing out the office when they came across the classified documents last November.

Biden told reporters he was surprised to learn the documents were there. The records were immediately turned over to the Justice Department, but the discovery of records there and at Biden’s home has led to an investigation by a special counsel appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland.

Trump, too, faces a special counsel inquiry related to classified documents. In his case, FBI agents executed a warrant that showed they were investigating possible crimes including the willful retention of national defense information and efforts to obstruct the federal probe. Biden voluntarily allowed the FBI search of his home.

Former officials from all levels of government discover they are in possession of classified material and turn them over to the authorities at least several times a year, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of classified documents.

Still, the existence of the documents at the Penn Biden Center has trained unwanted criticism on the think tank, particularly by House Republicans investigating the mishandling of classified materials. They have requested a list of all center employees, including dates of employment and salaries, visitor logs and documents and communications related to security.

A conservative legal group led by former Trump advisers has complained to the IRS about the center’s hiring of Biden and his allies.

The chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., has suggested that some of the tens of millions of dollars in foreign gifts to the university from patrons in China went to the Penn Biden Center.

Donors from Ireland, Hong Kong, Canada, India, Japan and Brazil also contributed to the university in recent years, though the House has focused on donations from China.

A statement from university said the school would address the committee’s questions in a timely way, but that it has never solicited gifts for the center. There were three unsolicited gifts from two donors that totaled $1,100.

The budget for the center comes solely from university funds. The total academic operating budget for the university is roughly $4 billion. Penn Biden Center officials did not say how much of that goes to center operations.

“It is important to reiterate that the Penn Biden Center has never solicited or received any gifts from any Chinese or other foreign entity,” according to the statement from the Penn Biden Center.

___

Associated Press writer Farnoush Amiri contributed to this report.

YE OLDE CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

FTX's collapse mirrors an infamous 18th century British financial scandal

Amy Froide, Professor of History, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

THE CONVERSATION
Sun, January 29, 2023 

Sam Bankman-Fried, once considered a star in the freewheeling world of cryptocurrency, has been charged with conspiracy, fraud and money laundering. 

Stefani Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images

Enron. Bernie Madoff. FTX.

In modern capitalism, it seems as if stories of companies and managers who engage in fraud and swindle their investors occur like the changing of the seasons.

In fact, these scandals can be traced back to the origins of publicly traded companies, when the first stockbrokers bought and sold company shares and government securities in the coffee houses of London’s Exchange Alley during the 1700s.

As a historian of 18th century finance, I am struck by the similarities between what’s known as the Charitable Corporation Scandal and the recent collapse of FTX.
A noble cause

The Charitable Corporation was established in London in 1707 with the noble mission of providing “relief of the industrious poor by assisting them with small sums at legal interest.”

Essentially, it sought to provide low-interest loans to poor tradesmen, shielding them from predatory pawnbrokers who charged as much as 30% interest. The corporation made loans available at the rate of 5% in return for a pledge of property for security.

The Charitable Corporation was modeled on Monti di Pietà, a charitable institution of credit established in Catholic countries during the Renaissance era to combat usury, or high rates of interest.

Unlike the Monti di Pietà, however, the British version – despite its name – wasn’t a nonprofit. Instead, it was a business venture. The enterprise was funded by offering shares to investors who, in return, would make money while doing good. Under its original mission, it was like an 18th century version of today’s socially responsible investing, or “sustainable investment funds.”
Raiding the fund

In 1725, the Charitable Corporation diverted from its original mission when a new board of directors took over.

These men turned the corporation into their own piggy bank, taking money from it to buy shares and prop up their other companies. At the same time, the company’s employees began to engage in fraud: Safety checks ceased, books were kept irregularly and pledges went unrecorded.

Investigators would ultimately find that £400,000 or more in capital was missing – roughly 8 million in today’s U.S. dollars.

In the autumn of 1731, rumors began to circulate about the solvency of the Charitable Corporation. The warehouse keeper at the time, John Thomson, who was in charge of all loans and pledges but also in league with the five fraudulent directors, hid the company’s books and fled the country.

At the shareholders’ quarterly meeting, they found that money, pledges and accounts had all gone missing. At this point, the proprietors of the Charitable Corporation stock appealed to the British Parliament for redress. One-third of those who petitioned were women, a proportion that equaled the percentage of women who held shares in the Charitable Corporation.

Many women were drawn to the corporation because of its public mission in providing small loans to working people. It’s also possible that they had been intentionally targeted for fraud.

The parliamentary investigation led to various charges being leveled against both managers and employees of the Charitable Corporation. Many of them were forced to appear before Parliament and were arrested if they did not. The managers and employees deemed most responsible for the 1732 fraud, such as William Burroughs, had their assets seized and inventoried in order to help pay back the shareholder losses.

Bankruptcy proceedings were started against the banker and broker, George Robinson, and the warehouse keeper, Thomson. Both Sir Robert Sutton and Sir Archibald Grant were expelled as members of the House of Commons, with Grant being prevented from leaving the country and Sutton ultimately prosecuted in several courts.

In the end, the shareholders received a partial government bailout – Parliament authorized a lottery that reimbursed only 40% of what the corporation’s creditors had lost.

The risks of concentrated power

There are several key characteristics that stand out in the collapses of both the Charitable Corporation and FTX. Both companies were offering something new or venturing into a new sector. In the former’s case, it was microloans. In FTX’s case, it was cryptocurrency.

Meanwhile, the management of both ventures was centralized in the hands of just a few people. The Charitable Corporation got into trouble when it reduced its directors from 12 to five and when it consolidated most of its loan business in the hands of one employee – namely, Thomson. FTX’s example is even more extreme, with founder Sam Bankman-Fried calling all the shots.

In both cases, the key fraud was using the assets of one company to prop up another company managed by the same people. For example, in 1732, the corporation’s directors bought stock in the York Buildings Company, in which many of them were also involved. They hoped to juice stock prices. When that didn’t happen, they realized they couldn’t cover what they had taken out of the Charitable Corporation’s funds.

Fast forward nearly 300 years, and a similar story seems to have played out. Bankman-Fried allegedly took money out his customer accounts in FTX to cover his cryptocurrency trading firm, Alameda Research.

News of both frauds also came as a surprise, with little advance warning. Part of this is due to the ways in which managers were well respected and well connected to both politicians and the financial world. Few public figures mistrusted them, and this proved to be a useful screen for deceit.

I would also argue that in both cases the company’s connection to philanthropy lent it another level of cover. The Charitable Corporation’s very name announced its altruism. And even after the scandal subsided, commentators pointed out that the original business of microlending was useful. FTX’s founder Bankman-Fried is an advocate of effective altruism and has argued that it was useful for him and his companies to make lots of money so he could give it away to what he deemed effective causes.

After the Charitable Corporation’s collapse in 1732, Parliament didn’t institute any regulation that would prevent such a fraud from happening again.

A tradition of loose oversight and regulations has been the hallmark of Anglo-American capitalism. If the response to the 2008 financial crash is any indication of what will come in the wake of FTX’s collapse, it’s possible that some bad actors, like Bankman-Fried, will be punished. But any regulation will be undone at the first opportunity – or never put in place to begin with.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.

It was written by: Amy Froide, University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

Read more:


Restoring the reputations of charities after scandals

In the 1620s, Plymouth Plantation had its own #MeToo moment

People couldn’t look away from the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard trial – the appeal of a relationship drama held true in the 1700s, too

Amy Froide receives funding from the Henry E. Huntington Library.

Biden climate law spurred billions in clean energy investment. Has it been a success?



MAX ZAHN
Sun, January 29, 2023 

When President Joe Biden signed the $369 billion Inflation Reduction Act in August, supporters hailed the measure as the largest climate investment in the nation's history -- but questions remained about what the spending would ultimately achieve.

The majority of the funding took the form of tax credits meant to incentivize private investment in clean energy, such as wind and solar, and in theory, boost U.S. production of renewables as the nation pursues ambitious carbon emissions goals and a supply chain less dependent on China.

The success of the strategy, however, in a large part hinged on the willingness of companies to pursue those tax credits. So far, dozens of firms have announced projects that qualify for government relief, totaling more than $40 billion in clean energy investment and adding nearly 7,000 jobs, according to a report from Clean Power America, an industry group representing green energy companies.

New plans range from a battery manufacturing plant in Georgia to a solar complex in Alabama to the expansion of a wind turbine facility in Colorado, the report found.

As the global supply chain struggles to recover from the pandemic, the early wave of investment proves the wisdom of the landmark energy law, foretelling significant growth for U.S. clean energy and easing the sector's reliance on China, some industry representatives and analysts said.

MORE: Oil company chief's appointment to lead COP28 climate conference sparks backlash

But some climate experts cautioned that the tens of billions in investment makes up a fraction of the scale required, leaving the effectiveness of the environmental measure in question. The law left out key parts of the climate change fight that could imperil carbon emissions goals regardless of the amount of investment, they added.

"Friction in the global economy is causing difficulties getting solar panels and lithium batteries," David Victor, a professor of innovation and public policy at the University of California, San Diego, told ABC News. "It's hard to deploy the commitments we've made, let alone bring a radical expansion."

"This is a massive amount of money behind that ambition that we've never seen before in American history," he added.

To be sure, a host of industry groups and economists opposed the Inflation Reduction Act altogether, warning that the billions in spending would exacerbate inflation rather than alleviate it. Congressional Republicans tried to obstruct the law with a party-line "no" vote.

“We share the goal of addressing climate change," the American Petroleum Institute, a trade group representing about 600 companies in the oil and natural gas industry said in a letter to House leaders before the law's passage. "The considerable tax increases and new government spending in the IRA amount to the wrong policies at the wrong time.”

Last decade, the use of renewable electricity in the U.S. skyrocketed. Between 2011 and 2020, the U.S. quadrupled the share of electricity it gets from wind and solar, according to a report from the nonprofit Environment America Research and Policy Center and the nonpartisan research organization Frontier Group.

Over the first six months of 2022, nearly a quarter of U.S. electricity generation came from renewable sources, according to the Energy Information Administration, a government agency. But the progress falls well short of the Biden administration's goal of 100% clean electricity by 2035.

The need for additional U.S. clean energy capacity has drawn attention to the nation's renewables manufacturing sector, which pales in comparison to China, the source of more than 80% of components in all of the key stages of solar production, the International Energy Agency said in July.

MORE: Tech layoffs 2023: Companies that have made cuts

As global supply chain bottlenecks amid the pandemic have weighed on China's economy and hindered U.S. access to key parts, the need for a fix has gained added urgency, some analysts said.

"Frankly, we've seen a slowdown," John Hensley, vice president for research and analytics at American Clean Power, told ABC News. "The inability to source solar modules is front and center."

The three-month period ending in September marked the slowest quarter for renewable energy growth in three years, a report from American Clean Power found. Wind installations fell 78% compared with the previous quarter, while solar installations dropped 23%, the report showed.

By dramatically expanding U.S. clean energy production, the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, will help the nation circumvent a fragile global supply chain and return it to a trajectory of robust growth, industry representatives and some analysts said.

A pronounced impact is expected in the solar market. The law will lead to over $600 billion in new investment over the next decade, bringing 50% more solar investment than the country would've drawn without the measure, the Solar Energy Industry Association found.

President Joe Biden hosts Democratic congressional leaders in the Roosevelt Room at White House in Washington, Jan. 24, 2023. (Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters)

Hanwha Qcells, a Korean solar company, announced earlier this month more than $2.5 billion in new investment to build a manufacturing facility about 50 miles northwest of Atlanta. The company said it will also expand an existing plant in Dalton, Georgia, bringing a total of 2,500 new jobs.

MORE: Collection of voice data for profit raises privacy fears

"The U.S. solar manufacturing industry has really struggled over the last couple decades," Scott Moskowitz, senior director, head of market strategy and public affairs at Qcells North America, told ABC News. "The IRA marks a turning point in the history of the industry."

The Republican party, whose members on Capitol Hill uniformly opposed the energy law, retains one-party control of Georgia's state legislature. But government officials in the state have backed the solar project, Moskowitz said.

"We've had nothing but support from our elected officials," he said. "We've found there's universal support for manufacturing jobs and pretty wide support for a diversified and cleaner energy mix."

Despite signs of success, some analysts warned that the investment so far remains far short of what the country will require to achieve its climate goals.

"It's definitely good," Mark Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University, told ABC News. "The issue is we need much more."

The law hamstrings itself, Jacobson said, since it includes tax credits for what he says are unproven technologies like carbon capture, a way of reducing emissions at their source by trapping and storing carbon before it releases into the air. Such tax credits are "basically taking money away from real solutions," he said.

MORE: 'Extreme' drought status nearly eliminated in California in wake of atmospheric rivers

The market will limit the use of credits for technology that proves ineffective, limiting that potential waste, said Hensley, of American Clean Power.

"If you have a project that doesn't have great economics, that doesn't have a great production profile, that isn't delivering on goals and benefits, not many of those projects are going to get done," he said.

While improving the output of clean energy, the IRA doesn't address the issue of fossil fuel consumption, Jacobson said. As long as cars, homes and offices use fossil fuels, the benefits of clean energy will prove limited, he said.

"The IRA isn't addressing that problem of getting rid of fossil fuels," he said. "The big problem is we need to stop burning things."

Hensley acknowledged that the climate fight will require initiatives that extend beyond clean energy production.

"It will take a joint effort to get there," he said. "The country has a good track record of rising to the occasion."

Biden climate law spurred billions in clean energy investment. Has it been a success? originally appeared on abcnews.go.com

IMPERIALISM'S COMPASSION

Haitian children are vulnerable in capital's violence, UNICEF says
 

IS CAUSE FOR HUMANITARIAN MILITARY INVASION

 Gary Conille reviews a document while leaving a news conference in Port-au-Prince

Fri, January 27, 2023 
By Brian Ellsworth

(Reuters) - More than one million Haitian children are under constant threat of violence in the area of the capital Port-au-Prince because of chronic lawlessness, the regional director of children's agency UNICEF said on Friday.

UNICEF last year warned that Haitian children are threatened by malnutrition, armed violence, and an outbreak of cholera. Many schools were unable to start the academic year because gangs in September blocked fuel distribution, creating a humanitarian crisis.

Haiti's political leaders should unite around ensuring children have access to education, food and drinking water, said Garry Conille, UNICEF's Latin America and Caribbean director.

"If you don't do this, you're actually creating a pipeline for the gangs, and this is something that we can't afford," he said in an interview with Reuters.

UNICEF is seeking $210 million for its Haiti operations in 2023, more than double what it requested in 2022, due to the growing need to provide services for children, he said.

It is also seeking to address gender-based violence and violence toward children in Haitian homes, where corporal punishment remains common.

"Children not only find the opportunity to learn (at school), but it's also more and more a safe haven in the neighborhood and a way to escape all sorts of violence," Conille said.

"I think the international community needs to continue to maintain its focus and provide the necessary resources so that these children can get the support they need."

A spate of police murders by gangs spurred a protest by police officers who on Thursday attacked the residence of Prime Minister Ariel Henry and later swarmed the main airport.

(This story has been corrected to remove reference to children out of school after UNICEF clarified it cannot confirm the figure.)

(Reporting by Brian Ellsworth in Caracas; editing by Grant McCool)

SAME TIME AS BIBLE BILL IN ALBERTA

That time private US media companies stepped in to silence the falsehoods and incitements of a major public figure ... in 1938

208
Bill Kovarik, Professor of Communication, Radford University

THE CONVERSATION 
Sun, January 29, 2023 

Father Coughlin's bully pulpit. Fotosearch/Getty Images

In speeches filled with hatred and falsehoods, a public figure attacks his enemies and calls for marches on Washington. Then, after one particularly virulent address, private media companies close down his channels of communication, prompting consternation from his supporters and calls for a code of conduct to filter out violent rhetoric.

Sound familiar? Well, this was 1938, and the individual in question was Father Charles E. Coughlin, a Nazi-sympathizing Catholic priest with unfettered access to America’s vast radio audiences. The firms silencing him were the broadcasters of the day.

As a media historian, I find more than a little similarity between the stand those stations took back then and the way Twitter, YouTube and Facebook have silenced false claims of election fraud and incitements to violence in the aftermath of the siege on the U.S. Capitol – noticeably by silencing the claims of Donald Trump and his supporters.

A radio ministry

Coughlin’s Detroit ministry had grown up with radio, and, as his sermons grew more political, he began calling President Franklin D. Roosevelt a liar, a betrayer and a double-crosser. His fierce rhetoric fueled rallies and letter-writing campaigns for a dozen right-wing causes, from banking policy to opposing Russian communism. At the height of his popularity, an estimated 30 million Americans listened to his Sunday sermons.

Then, in 1938, one Sunday sermon crossed the line. On Nov. 20, he spoke to listeners on the subject of the recent antisemitic Nazi rampage in Germany known as Kristallnacht – during which mobs of Nazis burned down 267 synagogues, destroyed 7,000 Jewish-owned businesses and arrested 30,000 Jews. Worldwide condemnation quickly followed. An editorial in the St. Louis Globe, for example, stated: “We stand in horror at this outbreak of savagery.”

Coughlin saw things differently. He blamed Jews for their own persecution and claimed in the sermon that the Nazis had actually been lenient. Only a few synagogues were burned, he lied, adding: “German citizen Jews were not molested officially in the conduct of their business.” And communists, not Jews, were the real targets of the Nazi mobs, according to Coughlin.

In the wake of these obvious lies, a New York radio station decided to break with Coughlin. “Your broadcast last Sunday was calculated to incite religious and racial strife in America,” said a letter from WMCA radio. “When this was called to your attention in advance of your broadcast, you agreed to delete those misrepresentations which undeniably had this effect. You did not do so.”

Other radio stations in major cities like Chicago and Philadelphia also canceled Coughlin’s broadcasts. Neville Miller, the president of the National Association of Broadcasters backed them up, saying that radio could not tolerate the abuse of freedom of speech.

1938 ANTIFA/ANTIFASCISTS

New Yorkers take to the streets after Kristallnacht. 

FPG/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Coughlin claimed that he’d been misrepresented, and that his intention had only been to stir sympathy for Christians persecuted by Communists. The Nazi press crowed at what they saw as American hypocrisy, saying Americans were “not allowed to hear the truth.” Meanwhile, Coughlin’s followers began showing up and protesting at radio stations where his broadcasts had been cut off.

FDR anticipated the controversy. “To permit radio to become a medium for selfish propaganda of any character would be shamefully and wrongfully to abuse a great agent of public service,” he said the day before the Kristallnacht sermon. “Radio broadcasting should be maintained on an equality of freedom which has been, and is, the keynote of the American press.” But Roosevelt did not want to take action.

Dorothy Thompson, a newspaper columnist who had been expelled from Germany by the Nazis a few years before, asked her readers: “Have you been listening to the broadcasts of Father Coughlin?” He was clearly a threat to democracy, she said, and the FCC itself should take him off the air.

Sidelining Coughlin

Coughlin’s radio empire continued eroding that winter and into the spring. With his pickets still protesting at radio stations, the National Association of Broadcasters changed its code to promote “fair and impartial presentation of both sides of controversial issues.” The code was originally established in 1929 to address issues like fair advertising practices. The revisions in 1939 prevented radio stations from selling air time for presentations from single speakers like

Coughlin. Naturally, Coughlin claimed that his rights were being violated, even though he tried to justify his own violation of other people’s rights.

By the middle of the 20th century, this would become known as the paradox of tolerance. Philosophers like Karl Popper and John Rawls would insist that, at some point, a society’s tolerance should not be allowed to threaten its own survival.

For Americans who were unsure of how to deal with Coughlin, the paradox was solved by the advent of World War II. In January of 1940, the FBI caught 17 of his followers in a Nazi spy ring, and soon after, calls for more understanding of Nazis were flatly treasonous.

After the war, the idea that radio listeners should hear two sides of every controversy evolved from self-regulation by the broadcasting industry into the government’s “Fairness Doctrine” of 1949, which required broadcasters to allow responses to personal attacks and controversial opinions. It was enforced by the Federal Communications Commission and upheld in Red Lion Broadcasting v. FCC in 1969.

Then, with the deregulatory era of the 1980s, the Fairness Doctrine was abolished as the abundance of cable TV and radio was said to have “eroded” the rationale for regulation. And yet, as it turned out, the expected abundance morphed into one-sided talk radio and social media echo chambers. These worked, as did Father Coughlin, to undermine tolerance and democracy.

Stepping in

There’s not much that separates, on the one hand, the mad fanaticism that held Jews supposedly responsible for their own persecution in 1938 and, on the other, the fevered delusion of 2020: that Donald Trump’s victory was stolen or that the president is on a mission to expose a satanic pedophile ring consisting of liberal politicians and media elites.

In both cases, a relatively new medium was harnessed to inject hateful ideas into American society for political gain. And in both cases, private business had to step in when the consequences became evident.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.

Israel Reportedly Carries Out Drone Strikes On Iranian Factory On Eve Of Blinken’s Middle East Tour

Siladitya Ray
Forbes Staff


Jan 29, 2023

An Iranian defense factory was targeted by Israeli drone strikes late Saturday night, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing U.S. officials, an attack that comes amid growing tensions over Iran’s nuclear program and its continued supply of weapons to Russia.


File photo of Iran's Uranium Conversion Facility, just outside the city of Isfahan.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

KEY FACTS

Citing unnamed U.S. officials, the Wall Street Journal reported that the target was a munitions factory in the city of Isfahan and the attack was carried out by small Israeli quadcopters (Israel has not officially claimed responsibility for the strikes).

It is unclear if the munitions factory itself was the target of the attack, as it is located next to an Iran Space Research Center site, which has been sanctioned by the U.S. for its alleged work on ballistic missiles, the report added.

In a statement on Sunday, the Iranian Defense Ministry said a factory was targeted by three drones but claimed that the attack was “unsuccessful.”

Two of the three drones “were caught in traps” and a third one was shot down by air defense inside the factory, resulting in only “minor damage” on the facility’s roof and no casualties, the ministry added.

Israeli media outlets and journalists citing official sources within the country, however, reported that the strikes successfully targeted four different areas of a building linked to Iran’s missile program.

The strikes come on the eve of U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s Middle East tour, which includes visits to Egypt, Israel and the occupied West Bank territory.

Dismissing the attack as a “cowardly” attempt to destabilize the country, Iran’s foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said: “Such actions will not impact our experts' determination to progress in our peaceful nuclear work.”

KEY BACKGROUND

The city of Isfahan is located less than 100 miles from Natanz, which is home to a major Iranian nuclear facility. The Biden Administration’s efforts to resurrect a deal to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon—after the previous agreement was scrapped by the Trump Administration—have failed to make any progress. Israel, however, has warned that it will use military force to halt Iran’s nuclear or ballistic missile programs, and the Israeli Defense Forces has been linked to attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities and scientists in the past. The strike on Iran is the first one carried out by Israel by the country’s new far-right ruling coalition led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Tehran has also drawn scorn from Kyiv and its Western allies for supplying weapons including kamikaze drones to the Russian military in support of its ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

SECTION TITLE

Israel Strikes Iran Amid New International Push to Contain Tehran (Wall Street Journal)

Israel strikes Iranian munitions facility with targeted drones


Israel strikes Iranian munitions facility with targeted drones

John Bowden
Sun, January 29, 2023

Iranian officials said that unmanned aerial vehicles struck a munitions facility in the central Iranian city of Isfahan overnight, a result of what US officials on Sunday said was an Israeli operation, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Tehran had not initially placed blame for the attack, and claimed that only minor damage was done to the rooftop of the facility. The Iranian defence ministry further claimed that several drones had been shot down by Iranian ground-to-air defences. It was unclear, based on multiple reports, if any drones survived the operation.

Israeli officials also did not immediately claim credit for the operation, though the Biden administration likely revealed their involvement with tacit support.

It wasn’t clear exactly what the attack’s intended goal was, but The Wall Street Journal reported that the site of the battle was directly next to a site designated for the Iran Space Research Center, which plays a role in Tehran’s ballistic missiles program.

The attack comes at a time of great uncertainty in the field of US-Iran relations. The Biden administration spent much of the president’s first two years in office attempting to revive the Obama-era nuclear accord signed by Iran, the US, and several European countries which was abandoned under the Trump administration. But White House and State Department officials, including the president himself, have recently indicated that the possibility of those talks resulting in success has all but evaporated.

Such operations therefore could become more commonplace in the months and years ahead as the US and Israel seek to hinder Iran’s various weapons and atomic development programs through nonpolitical and often violent means.

Meanwhile, cities across Iran have been rocked for months by widespread demonstrations in response to the killing of a young woman in police custody. The 22-year-old Mahsa Amini was detained for allegedly wearing a headscarf incorrectly in September; she died after reports say she was severely beaten.

Her death sparked a wave of protests against the country’s so-called “morality police” and the country’s conservative Muslim government in general; those demonstrations continue even as the Iranian government has responded with a brutal crackdown that has included arrests and sentences as severe as death for some of those caught.

The US Congress has voted in bipartisan fashion to support those protests, with conservatives finding rare common cause with the left on the issue. European legislative bodies have done the same, sparking a wave of retaliatory sanctions by Tehran; the Biden administration meanwhile, has responded with sanctions for a number of senior officials including members of the Revolutionary Guard over the crackdown.

Iran says drone attack targets defense facility in Isfahan

 

JON GAMBRELL
Sat, January 28, 2023

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Bomb-carrying drones targeted an Iranian defense factory in the central city of Isfahan overnight, authorities said early Sunday, causing some damage at the plant amid heightened regional and international tensions engulfing the Islamic Republic.

The Iranian Defense Ministry offered no information on who it suspected carried out the attack, which came as a refinery fire separately broke out in the country's northwest and a 5.9 magnitude earthquake struck nearby, killing three people.

However, Tehran has been targeted in suspected Israeli drone strikes amid a shadow war with its Mideast rival as its nuclear deal with world powers collapsed. Meanwhile, tensions also remain high with neighboring Azerbaijan after a gunman attacked that country's embassy in Tehran, killing its security chief and wounding two others.

Details on the Isfahan attack, which happened around 11:30 p.m. Saturday, remained scarce. A Defense Ministry statement described three drones being launched at the facility, with two of them successfully shot down. A third apparently made it through to strike the building, causing “minor damage” to its roof and wounding no one, the ministry said.

The state-run IRNA news agency later described the drones as “quadcopters equipped with bomblets.” Quadcopters, which get their name from having four rotors, typically operate from short ranges by remote control.

Iranian state television's English-language arm, Press TV, aired mobile phone video apparently showing the moment that drone struck along the busy Imam Khomeini Expressway that heads northwest out of Isfahan, one of several ways for drivers to go to the holy city of Qom and Tehran, Iran's capital. A small crowd stood gathered, drawn by anti-aircraft fire, watching as an explosion and sparks struck a dark building.

“Oh my God! That was a drone, wasn’t it?" the man filming shouts. "Yeah, it was a drone.”

Those there fled after the strike.

 Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian speaks in a joint press briefing with his Qatari counterpart Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, in Tehran, Iran, Sunday, Jan. 29, 2023. 

(AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

That footage of the strike, as well as footage of the aftermath analyzed by The Associated Press, corresponded to a site on Minoo Street in northwestern Isfahan that's near a shopping center that includes a carpet and an electronics store.

Iranian defense and nuclear sites increasingly find themselves surrounded by commercial properties and residential neighborhoods as the country's cities sprawl ever outward. Some locations as well remain incredibly opaque about what they produce, with only a sign bearing a Defense Ministry or paramilitary Revolutionary Guard logo.

The Defense Ministry only called the site a “workshop," without elaborating on what it made. Isfahan, some 350 kilometers (215 miles) south of Tehran, is home to both a large air base built for its fleet of American-made F-14 fighter jets and its Nuclear Fuel Research and Production Center.

The attack comes after Iran's Intelligence Ministry in July claimed to have broken up a plot to target sensitive sites around Isfahan. A segment aired on Iranian state TV in October included purported confessions by alleged members of Komala, a Kurdish opposition party that is exiled from Iran and now lives in Iraq, that they planned to target a military aerospace facility in Isfahan after being trained by Israel's Mossad intelligence service.

Activists say Iranian state TV has aired hundreds of coerced confessions over the last decade. Israeli officials declined to comment on the attack.

Meeting later alongside his Qatari counterpart, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian criticized the “cowardly attack” when asked if it would affect the country's nuclear program.

"Such moves can’t impact our nuclear scientists will and intentions to achieve peaceful nuclear energy,” Amirabdollahian said.

Qatar's Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said he passed a message from the Americans to Iran that related to its nuclear program, without offering specifics.

Separately, Iran’s state TV said a fire broke out at an oil refinery in an industrial zone near the northwestern city of Tabriz. It said the cause was not yet known, as it showed footage of firefighters trying to extinguish the blaze. Tabriz is some 520 kilometers (325 miles) northwest of Tehran.

State TV also said the magnitude 5.9 earthquake killed three people and injured 816 others in rural areas in West Azerbaijan province, damaging buildings in many villages.

Iran's theocratic government faces challenges both at home and abroad as its nuclear program rapidly enriches uranium closer than ever to weapons-grade levels since the collapse of its atomic accord with world powers.

Nationwide protests have shaken the country since the September death of Mahsa Amini, a Kurdish-Iranian woman detained by the country's morality police. Its rial currency has plummeted to new lows against the U.S. dollar. Meanwhile, Iran continues to arm Russia with the bomb-carrying drone that Moscow uses in attacks in Ukraine on power plants and civilian targets.

Israel is suspected of launching a series of attacks on Iran, including an April 2021 assault on its underground Natanz nuclear facility that damaged its centrifuges. In 2020, Iran blamed Israel for a sophisticated attack that killed its top military nuclear scientist.

Israeli officials rarely acknowledge operations carried out by the country’s secret military units or its Mossad intelligence agency. However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who recently re-entered the premiership, long has considered Iran to be the biggest threat his nation faces.

The U.S. and Israel also just held their largest-ever military exercise amid the tensions with Iran. However, a U.S. military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity citing the sensitivity of the situation given regional tensions, told the AP on Sunday night that “no U.S. military forces have conducted strikes or operations inside Iran.”

Meanwhile, tensions remain high between Azerbaijan and Iran as Azerbaijan and Armenia have fought over the Nagorno-Karabakh region. Iran also wants to maintain its 44-kilometer (27-mile) border with landlocked Armenia — something that could be threatened if Azerbaijan seizes new territory through warfare.

Iran in October launched a military exercise near the Azerbaijan border. Azerbaijan also maintains close ties to Israel, which has infuriated Iranian hard-liners, and has purchased Israeli-made drones for its military.

Anwar Gargash, a senior Emirati diplomat, warned online that the Isfahan attack represented one more event in the “dangerous escalation the region is witnessing.” The United Arab Emirates was targeted in missile and drone attacks last year claimed by Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels.

It “is not in the interest of the region and its future,” Gargash wrote on Twitter. “Although the problems of the region are complex, there is no alternative to dialogue.”

___

Associated Press writer Joseph Krauss contributed to this report.

Lebanon's top Christian cleric says judge probing port blast must be allowed to pursue truth


Maronite Patriarch Bechara Boutros Al-Rai is pictured during a meeting in Bkerke

Sun, January 29, 2023 at 6:49 AM MST·2 min read

AMMAN (Reuters) - Lebanon's top Christian cleric called on Sunday for the judge struggling to investigate the Beirut port explosion to be able to pursue his work and get help from any outside authority to pinpoint those responsible for the devastating blast.

Long-simmering tensions over the investigation have boiled over since Judge Tarek Bitar brought charges against some of the most influential people in Lebanon, defying political pressure to scrap the inquiry into the disaster that killed 220 people.

With friends and allies of Lebanon's most powerful factions, including Hezbollah, among those charged, the establishment struck back swiftly last week when the prosecutor general charged Bitar with usurping powers.

Critics called it "a coup" against his investigation.

"We hope investigating Judge Tareq Bitar continues his work to uncover the truth and issue a decision and get help from any international authority that can help disclose the truth...," Bechara Boutros Al-Rai, influential patriarch of Lebanon's largest Christian community, said in a sermon.

The Aug. 4, 2020 blast was caused by hundreds of tonnes of improperly stored chemicals of which the president and prime minister at the time were aware, among other officials.

Bitar resumed his inquiry on Jan. 23 after a 13-month break caused by legal wrangling and high-level political pressure, issuing charges against a number of senior officials including top public prosecutor Ghassan Oweidat.

Oweidat rejected Bitar's move and filed charges against him for allegedly mishandling the inquiry, as well as ordering the release of people detained in connection with the blast.

Rai has long said that Lebanon's judiciary should be free of political interference and sectarian activism.

"We won't allow however long it takes and rulers change to let the crime of the port pass without punishment."

(Reporting by Suleiman Al-Khalidi; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Peru’s Violent Protests Imperil 30% of Its Copper Output



James Attwood
Fri, January 27, 2023

(Bloomberg) -- An upsurge in the violent protests wracking Peru is crimping copper output in the world’s No. 2 supplier, with about 30% of its production at risk at a time of low global stocks and high prices.

One copper mine is offline after demonstrators stormed the site, another has seen shipments choked by roadblocks, while others have slowed operations as a precaution to manage scarce supplies of fuel and other inputs, according to industry group SNMPE.

“The situation of protests and the escalation of violence have affected the industry,” Magaly Bardales, who heads a mining sector committee at the association, said in a telephone interview. “We hope an understanding, a dialog with authorities, can be found to provide a swift solution.”

Demonstrators have blocked roads across Peru and clashed with security forces in more than six weeks of violent turmoil that began when President Pedro Castillo was impeached after he attempted to dissolve congress. Protesters are calling for both interim President Dina Boluarte and congress to be replaced, with more than 50 deaths and the violence showing no signs of easing.

The disruption coincides with operational setbacks and regulatory headwinds in neighboring Chile and the prospect of a mine shutdown in Panama as the government there seeks a bigger share of profit. Those supply threats have combined with optimism over Chinese demand after the lifting of Covid restrictions to send copper futures to seven-month highs.

With global stockpiles of the wiring metal at historically low levels, traders are keeping close watch on events in Peru. The Andean nation accounts for about a 10th of global copper supply and is a major exporter of zinc and silver. About $160 million of production has been lost in 23 days of protests, Bardales said.

To be sure, protests are nothing new in Peru. It’s emergence as a major mineral producer has exacerbated historically tense relations with poor rural communities. The mining industry says not enough of the record-high revenue it generates for the state goes to improving local infrastructure and services.

But the current wave of unrest stands out from past events.

“I haven’t seen this level of violence, the coordinated nature of action, seeking to affect mining and energy, during the time I have been working in the sector,” Bardales said.

Much of the unrest is centered in the southern region of Puno, where Minsur SA’s San Rafael tin mine has been targeted. About 1,500 workers at San Rafael still can’t be evacuated, she said.

Tensions have fanned out into other areas of the south including Espinar, Arequipa and Cusco. Glencore Plc’s Antapaccay mine has halted operations after protesters entered and damaged a worker camp.

The Las Bambas complex is mining at a reduced rate due to blockade-related supply challenges, its Chinese-owned operator MMG Ltd. said, without elaborating. Bardales said Las Bambas is operating at just 20% of capacity, even as it continues to process ore on site.

The Cerro Verde mine in Arequipa isn’t being directly affected by protests but it has slowed mill operations by 10-15% in the past several days in a bid to conserve supplies such as lime amid a “very complicated” political situation, operator Freeport-McMoRan Inc. said this week on an earnings call.

Other mines to the north, such as BHP Group-Glencore’s Antamina are running normally, as are mines in the south that don’t depend on the so-called mining corridor for the transport of supplies, copper and people.

While the transport of semi-processed copper to ports has seen some disruption, the ports themselves are operating normally, Bardales said. She hadn’t heard of any “relevant” impacts on shipments.

The mining society continues to project an increase in Peruvian copper production this year as a new mine ramps up, although much depends on how long the current spate of protests lasts.

The unrest also jeopardizes the rollout of $53.7 billion in possible investments at a time when the world needs to accelerate decarbonization and boost minerals required for electromobility, according to BTG Pactual analyst Cesar Perez-Novoa.

“The combination of instability in other jurisdictions may exert upward pressure on copper prices,” Perez-Novoa said.

Peru's protest 'deactivators' run toward tear gas to stop it

 

DANIEL POLITI
Sun, January 29, 2023 

LIMA, Peru (AP) — When police fire tear gas at protesters demanding the resignation of Peruvian President Dina Boluarte, most run away.

A few, though, run toward the gas canisters as quickly as possible — to neutralize them.

These are the “deactivators.” Donning gas masks, safety goggles and thick gloves, these volunteers grab the hot canisters and toss them inside large plastic bottles filled with a mixture of water, baking soda and vinegar.

The deactivators made their debut in Peru street protests in 2020, inspired by protesters in Hong Kong who in 2019 unveiled new strategies to counteract the eye-stinging, breath-stealing effects of tear gas. With protesters in Lima facing a nearly daily fusillade of tear gas, more people have joined the ranks of deactivators trying to shield them and keep the demonstrations going.

Peruvians have been protesting since early December, when former President Pedro Castillo was impeached after a failed attempt to dissolve Congress. His vice president, Boluarte, immediately took over — and has faced strong opposition ever since.

Fifty-eight people have died in connection with the unrest, including one police officer. Forty-six of the deaths occurred during direct clashes between protesters and police.

The protests have exposed deep divisions in the country between the urban elites and the rural poor. Demonstrations were first largely concentrated in the south, a long-neglected region of Peru that felt a particular kinship to Castillo’s humble background as a rural teacher from the Andean highlands. But earlier this month, thousands descended on Peru's capital, and police met them with tear gas. Lots and lots of tear gas.

On Thursday, as protesters gathered in downtown Lima, Alexander Gutiérrez Padilla, 45, was giving a brief course to anyone who would listen around Plaza San Martín about how to mix vinegar and baking soda into the water and how to grab the tear gas canisters most efficiently.

“If we don’t deactivate, people disperse and the protest breaks,” Gutiérrez said. “That’s why we’re pillars of this demonstration.”

Next to him was Wilfredo Huertas Vidal, 25, who has taken it upon himself to collect donations to buy gloves and other protective equipment and hand them out to those who want to help.

“Who wants gloves? Who wants gloves?” he yelled as he stood next to several large bottles of water, gas masks and eye goggles.

When protesters descended on Lima earlier this month, old networks were reactivated. A tactic first seen in Peru in late 2020 during protests against then-President Manuel Merino resurfaced.

Vladimir Molina, 34, who participated in the 2020 protests, now runs what he calls a “brigade.” It consists of around 60 people, including paramedics, deactivators and “front-line” activists who stand in the middle of protesters and police with shields, in an effort to block any pellets or tear gas police may fire into the crowd.

“Every day more and more people are joining,” Molina said. Interest in his group is so great that he’s made it a requirement for anyone who wants to join to have their own equipment.

By tossing the hot tear gas cartridges into the water solution, “what they do is extinguish the pyrotechnical charge so the tear gas cannot come out anymore,” said Sven Eric Jordt, a professor of anesthesiology at Duke University.

Water alone should achieve what the protesters want, although the carbon dioxide created by mixing vinegar and baking soda could “form a foam bath that suffocates the charge” further, Jordt speculated.

It may be only a matter of time before authorities deploy methods to blunt the deactivators' effectiveness. Manufacturers are now developing tear gas with plastic cartridges that stick to the road so it “can’t be lifted up anymore,” Jordt said.

Fearful of being targeted by police and prosecutors, many of the deactivators prefer to remain anonymous, keeping their faces covered even when there’s no tear gas around.

Boluarte has given strong backing to law enforcement, and the government recently announced a bonus for police officers. Boluarte has characterized the work of police controlling the Lima protests as “immaculate,” despite their often indiscriminate firing of tear gas and pellets. In contrast, she says the demonstrations are violent and financed by drug-trafficking rings and illegal miners.

Andrea Fernández, 22, is new to deactivating tear gas.

“The truth is I love the adrenaline,” Fernández said shortly after grabbing a pair of gloves from Huertas and listening to the instructions closely.

She said she hadn’t been really interested in the country’s political crisis at first. Then the deaths started piling up.

“There are a lot of farmers who’ve come from lots of parts of Peru and they come here to march, face-to-face, but don’t have the necessary protection,” Fernández said.

Felix Davillo, 37, also says the casualties pushed him to become a deactivator.

“I made this decision for all the death that is going on in Puno right now,” Davillo said, referring to a region in Peru that has experienced some of the deadliest protests.

A general lack of protective equipment has also meant protesters have been injured by the widespread use of less lethal weapons.

From January 19 to 24, Doctors Without Borders treated 73 patients at the Lima protests suffering from exposure to tear gas, pellet wounds, contusions or psychological distress, the non-profit organization said.

The deactivators' increased chance of injury doesn’t scare Julio Incarocas Beliz, who grabbed one of the big water bottles in the plaza for his first day trying to diffuse tear gas.

“I served in the military and I’ve never been afraid,“ Incarocas, 28, said. “I’m fighting for my homeland.”

An effigy of President Dina Boluarte makes up part of a roadblock set up by demonstrators asking for the resignation of Boluarte, in Cusipata, Peru, Saturday, Jan. 28, 2023. Government officials said that police and the military will lift blockades set up around the country by supporters of former President Pedro Castillo who took to the streets after he was impeached and arrested for trying to dissolve Congress in December. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

 ABOLISH lèse-majesté laws
Activist sentenced to 28 years in Thai prison for insulting monarchy on Facebook


59
Michelle De Pacina
Fri, January 27, 2023 

A political activist was sentenced to 28 years in prison for insulting the Thai monarchy on Facebook.

Mongkol Tirakote, a 29-year-old online clothing vendor and activist, was found guilty in two separate royal defamation cases by a court in the northern city of Chiang Rai on Thursday.

He was arrested in August last year. According to the court, Tirakote violated Thailand’s lèse-majesté laws in 14 of 27 Facebook posts. His prison sentence was originally set to 42 years, but the court reduced it to 28 years following his testimony.

While Tirakote intends to lodge an appeal, the court has granted him bail of 300,000 baht (approximately $9,144), according to his lawyer

Sunai Phasuk, a Human Rights Watch senior researcher, said that Tirakote’s 28-year sentence is the second-highest prison term given by a Thai court for a royal defamation case.

Tirakote also faces a third royal defamation charge over online posts from last year.

He is expected back in court in March for the separate charge.

Those convicted under the lèse-majesté laws face imprisonment of three to 15 years per count.

According to critics, the laws are often taken advantage of to suppress public debate.

In 2021, a former civil servant was sentenced to over 43 years in prison after she posted several audio clips critical of the Thai monarch on social media.

There have been more than 200 royal defamation cases since November 2020, when mass youth-led protests called for democratic change, according to Thai Lawyers for Human Rights.

Opinion/Brown: Why I will wear a mask after a personal encounter with COVID-19


Lawrence Brown

Cape Cod Times
Sun, January 29, 2023 

I’m sick of sickness. I contracted COVID-19 about two weeks ago and at this writing, am flattened still.

The new variant is believed to be the world’s most contagious yet and has become prevalent here in the Northeast. Cape infections climbed during the first few weeks of January. You’d think you’d see more masks being worn. You’d think I’d have been wearing one, but some of us (like me) felt safe, all boostered up. Others among us refused to mask up when there was no vaccine at all when there was no remedy and over 4,000 Americans were dying of COVID-19 every day.

It’s not just that there’s a new variant. It shows multiple faces even to individual sufferers. Fevers come and go. First, it’s the throat — or the head — then it messes with the bowels, or our smell and taste. It’s at its most deadly when it gets into the lungs.

Lawrence Brown

COVID-19 is infinitely improvisational. It doesn’t just infect you; it messes with you. A friend woke up with hives all over his body. Fingers and toes can swell and turn purple. For some, symptoms and crushing fatigue can last for months. I’m well into my second week, no fever left but no relief either.

But we’re still the lucky ones. Five hundred Americans are still dying of COVID-19 every day … well over a million of us so far. And it’s still not done with us.

Historians point out that pandemics not only take their toll on mortality; they leave a profound sociological, economic and psychological wake behind them, too, that often takes a generation to work out. Sometimes, it seems to me, there is the actual pathogen — and then different societies have their own pathologies that determine the final outcomes.

Cape and Islands update:7 deaths, 264 new COVID cases on Cape and Islands. COVID risk is 'medium.'

Take China, for example. COVID-19 seems to have originated there. Until recently, its government attempted to contain the outbreak by rigidly locking down the population wherever an infection occurred. Families could be separated, even parents and children — by compulsion if necessary. Western vaccines were not available and domestic ones appear not to have been as effective. Nor was there a concentrated effort to vaccinate the elderly. With the lunar New Year upon us, millions are visiting relatives in the countryside where insufficient infrastructure exists to handle mass infections. China may see up to two million deaths, a tidal wave of terror and grief.

Autocracies have built-in co-morbidities. When the Chinese people could no longer stand the lockdowns and protested, the government had no way to process mass public criticism, so it abruptly ended the confinement, leaving a sixth of the world’s population with no effective Plan B. On a single December day, an estimated 37 million people in China were infected, maybe a quarter-billion in only 3 weeks. COVID-19, ever inventive, is about to have an explosive opportunity to come up with a host of new variants to infect the world with.

American democracy suffers co-morbidities of its own. It’s not that we politicized the virus. Any crisis requires a public response and we’re going to disagree about what is best. But we’ve divided ourselves over whether COVID-19 was even real. Roughly a third of us have decided that the real problem is "so-called" experts who think they know more than the rest of us. Several statehouses were occupied by armed protesters convinced that any attempt by the government to legislate a coherent response to the pandemic was a fundamental assault on liberty.

With vaccines free for the taking, only 68% of Americans have chosen to fully protect themselves. In America as in China, what we believe has profound consequences. It can even kill us — and the statistics bear that out.

Here on Cape Cod, we have one of the highest infection rates in the state (up 5% in the last two weeks). On average, we’re losing a neighbor a day.

As I recover, I might expect at least a 6-month immunity from COVID-19. I don’t like wearing masks and for the last year, I was convinced I no longer needed to. But I’ll be carrying a mask now, at least for crowds and public places. Since every infected person got COVID-19 from someone, may I suggest you consider wearing a mask, too?

Lawrence Brown is a columnist for the Cape Cod Times. Email him at columnresponse@gmail.com.

This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: Opinion: COVID-19 is still a threat. It's time to put masks on again