text:
Greek debt crisis: death and destruction in Athens
Everyone's furious with Greece over its debt – even its own people. What went so wrong? A report from the teargas-drenched streets of Athens
Stephen Moss
@StephenMossGdn
Smoke billows behind Hadrian's Arch and Acropolis during the protests this week. Photograph: KPA/Zuma/Rex Features
It began as a fiesta, a mass march in the sun against the deflationary programme the Greek people are being told can alone save their country. At 10 on Wednesday morning, Klathmonos Square in Athens was filling with protesters. A union official was making an interminable speech (Greeks never use one word when 300 will do), and music was blaring out of vans – those Chilean-style revolutionary songs without which no demo is complete: "The people, united, will never be defeated." Not today, anyway.
People had said there would be no violence – or at least if there was, it would be "ritual" violence: a broken window here, a wrecked ATM there. One Greek journalist had told me the protests so far had been subdued – "equivalent to what would normally happen here if the electricity board sacked a few people". He said the public were resigned to the economic hardships to come – salaries of state employees cut by 25%, pensions to fall by 15%, unemployment likely to rise to 18% – and that they recognised the only alternative was national bankruptcy; not just junk bonds but a junk country.
A few hours later, three bank workers, one a woman who was four months pregnant, lay dead in a burnedout bank on Stadiou Avenue, the victims of anarchist firebombs. Ritual violence this was not, and by Wednesday evening Athens feels drained and lifeless. "This will make people stop and think," teacher Anna Tsiokou tells me, as we stand beside the police cordon on the edge of the area where the firebombing had occurred. "The demonstrations will have to stop for the moment. We have legitimate grievances, but the anarchists are using the crisis for their own ends."
The writer Apostolos Doxiadis, whom I had met the previous day, rings me as I sit in a cafe close to Stadiou, and offers to come down from his office 20 minutes away and help me make sense of what has happened. Doxiadis has an interest in terrorism because last year his office was firebombed, after he and two fellow writers had taken a public stand against political violence and disruption of artistic events by sympathisers of the riots of December 2008 (when the police shooting of a schoolboy led to weeks of unrest).
A protester throws a stone at police near parliament. Photograph: Aris Messinis/AFP/Getty Images
"What's so surprising is that there haven't been more deaths before," Doxiadis says. "Those of us who have been outspoken against violence from the beginning are not, I'm sorry to say, surprised, because there's been extreme violence of many forms. But this tragedy will start to make people think seriously, and find other ways to register their dissent. We are in a complex situation, and we have reached a tipping point today."
Just before midnight on Wednesday, as Athens finally starts to rest after a fearful and violent day, I have a coffee with an anarchist in Omonia Square, the traditional heart of violent protest in the city. He tells me he was close to the attack on the bank. His emotions are confused. He is sorry for the deaths, but will not accept the anarchists are to blame.
"The government are presenting this as murder," he says, "but it was a tragic accident. Anarchism is about material damage; it is not about taking life." Perversely, he blames the bank for allowing workers to be there on a day when it should have realised banks would be targeted.
"I am shocked, devastated," he says. "It will make me rethink whether I will ever throw a petrol bomb again." Yet, a few minutes later, he tells me that he will do just that if faced with a line of policemen who threaten him and his "comrades".
"When one of us is killed in a non-combat situation, it doesn't even get reported. I said people were going to die in Greece. This isn't the G20 protest outside RBS; this is about people's lives. Everyone here will be affected in some shape or form."
He believes Greece is at a potentially revolutionary moment – a point of view held by virtually no one except anarchists, communists and the fringe left – and, while he sympathises with the three innocent bank workers, mostly he is disappointed that the cause has been set back, the revolutionary momentum lost. The deaths have given even the anarchists pause for thought, and the evening's battles in Omonio and the neighbouring district of Exarchia have been less extensive than might otherwise have been the case.
The general strike, the mass demonstration and the deaths occur on my third day in Greece, a country now in such crisis that it is being painted as an international pariah. "This is the biggest crisis for Greece since the dictatorship [the 'rule of the colonels' from 1967-74]," says novelist Petros Tatsopoulos, at his flat in the northern suburbs of Athens, two days before the killings. "But this is not only our fault. There has been a chain reaction from the [subprime mortgage] crisis starting in the US two years ago, and Greece was the weakest link in the chain in Europe. Traders have been gambling on the bankruptcy of Greece, and that is a very dirty game."
Tatsopoulos accepts Greece is now the "black goat" of Europe – it takes me a while to grasp the slight difference between the English and Greek expressions – but again stresses it is not solely the fault of his country. The collapse in relations between Greece and Germany – the latter was tardy in agreeing the loans needed to prop up Greece – becomes evident. "The Germans think we are the black goat, and that there would be no problems in the eurozone if Greece wasn't a member," he says. "But the Greeks think the Germans are the last people to talk, because they didn't pay reparations to us after the occupation in the second world war."
The number of tourists from Germany is predicted to drop by two-thirds this summer, a further disaster for an economy dangerously dependent on tourism and the service sector. Tatsopoulos foresees the severe public sector cuts and tax rises imposed by the EU and International Monetary Fund – the quid pro quo for their £95bn bailout package – provoking a social crisis; particularly as the country is being led by an ostensibly socialist government. "The Greek people can't stand any more," he says. "Greece is a very expensive country; prices are very high, but salaries are already low, and they won't be able to take more cuts in wages. There will be a revolt in the streets."
The taxi driver who takes me from Tatsopoulos's flat to Syntagma Square, home of the Greek parliament, tells me in broken English how fearful the public are. In part, he blames journalists. "They have made the people scared. The people don't know what they should do to get out of this." He also says journalists should have warned of the gathering crisis. "I think they are taking money from the government and the banks," he says. Greeks, several people tell me, are great conspiracy theorists.
There have been smaller daily demonstrations in Syntagma Square in the run-up to Wednesday's mass demo. Now it is the turn of the town hall workers, and John Maravelakis, who is selling copies of Workers Solidarity, explains why he has come. "If the working class succeed in their conflict with the government and stop this offensive, things are going to be better for Greece. Otherwise, we are going to live in hell. Working conditions will be destroyed, we will earn less, and there will be no jobs for younger people."
Maravelakis describes his paper as representing the anti-capitalist left, and has no time for George Papandreou's government. "We have a socialist government like Stalin was a socialist in Russia. They did not vote for Papandreou last October to implement monetarist policies. That is why people are angry."
That anger is palpable everywhere. That afternoon, I am sitting outside a cafe close to Syntagma, when a waiter offers to put up an awning. "No, I like the sun," I say, "the good Greek sun." "That's all we have left," he says. I laugh. "Don't laugh," he says. "We don't have the motivation right now to go to work. We hear bad news every day, and that affects us in a bad way. We are responsible for this, because we are electing the same people every time to be the government. They took the money, most of them; they are corrupt. And now they ask us to make sacrifices. We didn't steal the money. My salary here is €700 a month. I can't afford to pay more taxes or lose my Christmas and Easter bonuses." Greeks call those bonuses the "13th and 14th salaries", and the fact they are being removed is cited repeatedly.
Why has Greece reached this desperate state, I ask Alexis Papahelas, executive editor of the national newspaper Kathimerini and Greece's best-known journalist, when I meet him at his paper's offices overlooking the Aegean. "Politicians failed to exercise any kind of leadership," he says. "They let populism take over. And the public have been in denial. Somebody said to me recently it was all media hype, just like swine flu – that nothing would happen in the end. Well, we are going through the realisation process right now, and this week's announcements were the final shock. People now recognise it's for real, it's going to change our lives, and there's no going back. But somebody has to sell them some hope. We need a positive narrative about how Greece can get out of this."
What will the political impact be? "It's very hard to predict," Papahelas says. "People are looking for a messiah. They'd like some successful businessman, a Berlusconi figure, to come forward, and that is a scary thought. Papandreou has one more chance to re-establish his government, but I think the period of pain will be too long."
Like many pundits in Greece, Papahelas points to the dead weight of the public sector as the single biggest factor dragging Greece down, making the government deficit impossible to deal with, and killing enterprise. "It's been the dream of every kid coming out of high school or university to be appointed somewhere in the state apparatus – to get a permanent job on good money and not necessarily work hard. That's over. It delivered jobs for a while, but now the state is bankrupt."
Tax evasion is also endemic: the black economy accounts for almost 30% of the total economy. Inefficiency is rife: everyone points to the education system, where the pupil-teacher ratio is the lowest in Europe (about seven to one), yet standards in state schools are relatively poor.
Neoliberal economists, such as former finance minister Stefanos Manos, believe Greece needs a Margaret Thatcher, willing to take on vested interests, sweep away the occupational closed shops, and sack hundreds of thousands of state employees. Others, while admiring his ideological purity, think the cure would probably kill the patient.
The problem for those who oppose the austerity package is that they end up merely defending ancient privileges. As critics like to point out, the Greek left is deeply conservative – and hopelessly factionalised, too. On the morning of the big demo, I talk to two communists who are putting up posters on the street where the murders will later take place. They seem less interested in policy than in claiming to be the one true Stalinist faith.
"We are the true Communist party," one says. "The other Communist party are reformists." As elsewhere in Europe (New Labour springs to mind), the traditional left has become technocratic and managerialist, and the parties further to the left largely irrelevant – although Greece's communists, alone in Europe, retain some residual strength,and can close the Parthenon when the urge takes them.
The novelist and cultural commentator Takis Theodoropoulos, whom I meet at the foot of the Acropolis shortly after it has been occupied by protesting trade unionists, likens Greece's current condition to emerging from a nightclub at dawn. A cultural conservative with a shock of grey hair, he believes that the past five years have been a social, as well as an economic, disaster, marked by an obsession with materialism, the rejection of traditional Greek values, and a belief that people could spend as much as they liked without ever having to pay.
"We transformed Greece into a nightclub," he says, "but how long can you live in a nightclub? It's not only a matter that at five in the morning, you have to pay the bill. There's also the fact that psychologically you get out and you are ruined. You are a wreck. This is a society which is tired and depressed, profoundly depressed. That is not just a privilege of Greek society – the whole of European society is more or less depressed – but I don't know how we are going to get out of here."
Theodoropoulos, who has mined Greek history in his novels and essays, says that in many ways Greece's travails mirror the collapse of Athenian society that Plato described in The Republic. Perhaps the mention of Plato cheers him up, because he suggests the current crisis might offer a form of catharsis. "In Greek, the word 'crisis' has two meanings," he explains. "One is the same as in English, a situation which is uncertain and not under control. But it also means the intellectual energy you need in order to realise what's happening to you. In Greek you can say, 'This man is in a crisis', but you can also say, 'This man has crisis'. That is our only hope."
Theodoropoulos may be able to see the cathartic benefits of social purification, but the workers I meet each day protesting in Syntagma Square think more viscerally. When the teachers hold their own demo on Tuesday afternoon, I ask Elena Tsiadi whether she really believes the protests will achieve anything. "I don't know if we are going to achieve anything," she says. "Realistically speaking, I don't think we will. But when you are led to the corner, you have to react. We want someone to pay for what we will suffer. In Iceland, they went bankrupt and already six ministers are on trial. Here, we have a series of governments which have committed crimes, and no one is paying. They are asking us to pay the bill. Greeks are a particular kind of people who say, 'We are willing to work, willing to suffer, willing to make sacrifices,' as long as we have leaders who pay first. Somebody has got to set an example."
The following day, I am back in Syntagma with the huge crowd – estimated by the police at 30,000, by the protesters at almost double that – marking the day of the general strike. For an hour or so, the crowd confronts the police ringing parliament. Even before the masked anarchists in their black uniforms arrive, there are violent scenes, with bottles, sticks and metal railings being thrown by small groups of protesters on the ramparts at each side of the building. This, though, is containable, and has a theatrical element, the crowd venting their feelings like an audience as the mini-battles play themselves out.
But once the anarchists enter the square, with the police in pursuit firing tear gas, the atmosphere changes instantly. The gas chokes you and makes your eyes stream. Anarchists wielding heavy mallets, with which they break off pieces of concrete to use as weapons, are arguing furiously with middle-aged women in the fleeing crowd. The latter accuse them of having wrecked the march, though the extent of the disaster is not yet clear.
I try to take refuge alongside other journalists in the parliament building, which commands a view of the entire square – by now a battlefield. But the policeman on the gate tells me I lack the necessary permit. "No money, no honey," he says with a laugh. I pass a man in an immaculate suit who is clutching a handkerchief to his mouth, and ask him whether he works in the parliament building. "No, I am an honest Greek," he responds in a flash. He tells me he is a lawyer. "I wanted to be in the square with the people, but the stench is too much."
While the battle rages and before news of the deaths has emerged, I have to go to do a prearranged interview with Antonis Liakos, professor of modern history at the University of Athens. This must be the strangest interview I've ever conducted, because it takes place in a cafe only a couple of hundred metres away from Syntagma, in a pedestrianised street where people are still sitting outside, despite the whiff of tear gas from the square.
Liakos is critical of the austerity measures, and says the approach needs to be more "nuanced". A government with more bargaining power would, he suggests, be able to pick and choose which of the measures to apply. Like several of those I talk to, he argues that you can't have European monetary union without political union, because the states will never be in synch economically. Many leading figures in Greece now back political union, and it is possible to foresee inexorable pressure towards a superstate that would leave the UK, always lukewarm on matters European, entirely out in the cold. The Greek crisis is the first chapter of a Europe-wide story that could go anywhere.
Liakos believes there is a danger that, as in the 1930s, economic crisis may encourage the rise of anti-democratic groups across Europe. "We don't know how things are going to change in the rest of Europe," he says. "If Spain is in the same situation as Greece, then the whole euro stability pact will come under threat. The worst scenario is that European monetary union is going to sink. Imagine you are living in 1932: you can't anticipate the second world war and the catastrophe that was derived from the economic crisis. Perhaps we, too, can't see what is before our eyes."
After the meeting, I return to the square. The battle is over, an eerie calm has descended, and the pall of gas is dispersing. The police are still lined up in front of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, just beneath the parliament, but the only people left are two young men sitting on the kerb holding red flags. One, a student who has smothered his face in special white paint that mitigates the effects of the gas, tells me his friend has two degrees but can't get a job, and he doesn't want to be in the same position when he graduates.
I ask whether, at the height of the battle, the Tomb came under assault. "No," says the student, "we respect the monument. It is not the enemy, the cops are not the enemy – it's the people inside the parliament who are the enemy, but they don't come out."
At that point, another young man who has been listening to our conversation approaches. He disagrees with the student. "Just look at this," he says, pointing to the line of policemen in front of the Tomb. "People gave their lives in the war so that this monument to freedom could be built. Now the police stop the people from getting to it. The monument is shit. Today we have lost our freedom."
We don't know it yet, but on the broad avenue that leads down to the square, three people have lost much more – their lives. This peculiar calm in Syntagma, with Japanese tourists taking pictures of the debris, policemen slowly removing their gas masks and lighting cigarettes, and a young man walking past holding a broken violin, precedes a storm that will shortly break, exploding the myth that violence can be ritualised, theatrical, innocent.
The staff of the ornate Grand Bretagne hotel, which adorns one side of the square, are already scrubbing the anarchists' graffiti from its marble facade, but the lives lost today cannot be restored. Greece's monumental debit column now has its starkest entry.
European monetary union


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Royal Excel Mouscron - Lierse Kempenzonen
Royal Excel Mouscron vs Lierse Kempenzonen Summary
Royal Excel Mouscron 5 19 16 22 28 360% 240% 425% 342% 457%
Lierse Kempenzonen 6 18 16 29 31 375% 125% 637% 233% 466%
Royal Excel Mouscron vs Lierse Kempenzonen Head 2 Head
Lierse Kempenzonen
Royal Excel Mouscron 2
First Division B League table 2021/2022
1 KVC Westerlo 8 4 4 0 15 9 16 7 6 0 1 15 5 18 15 10 4 1 30 14 34 16 2.00
2 Waasland-Beveren 8 3 0 5 13 17 9 8 4 3 1 16 7 15 16 7 3 6 29 24 24 5 1.80
3 RWD Molenbeek 7 1 3 3 11 13 6 8 5 2 1 13 10 17 15 6 5 4 24 23 23 1 1.60
4 Deinze 8 3 4 1 15 10 13 8 1 5 2 12 15 8 16 4 9 3 27 25 21 2 1.70
5 Royal Excel Mouscron 8 3 2 3 9 11 11 8 2 2 4 13 17 8 16 5 4 7 22 28 19 -6 1.40
6 Lierse Kempenzonen 8 3 3 2 15 14 12 8 1 3 4 14 17 6 16 4 6 6 29 31 18 -2 1.80
7 Lommel United 8 2 2 4 14 14 8 8 2 2 4 11 14 8 16 4 4 8 25 28 16 -3 1.60
8 Virton 8 2 2 4 7 14 8 8 1 3 4 8 14 6 16 3 5 8 15 28 14 -13 0.90
Royal Excel Mouscron Last Games
0 + 0 0 - - - - 0 + - 0 - - 0 - - - - 0 - 0 - 0 - + + + + - + 0
Lommel United
KVC Westerlo
Waasland-Beveren
Lierse Kempenzonen Last Games
- - 0 - - - - - 0 - 0 - - - - 0 + - + - + 0 - 0 - + 0 - - 0 0 -
RWD Molenbeek 1
Lierse Kempenzonen 1
Oh Leuven
Royal Excel Mouscron Results
Lierse Kempenzonen Results
Royal Excel Mouscron Goals
Lierse Kempenzonen Goals
Royal Excel Mouscron Strength
Lierse Kempenzonen Strength
Royal Excel Mouscron Goals (Last 30 games)
Lierse Kempenzonen Goals (Last 30 games)
Royal Excel Mouscron Scorers (Last 15 games)
Lucas Ribeiro 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 5
Teddy Chevalier 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 4
Joachim Carcela-Gonzalez 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 3
Pietro Perdichizzi 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
Hakim Abdallah 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
Christophe Lepoint 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
Clement Tainmont 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1
Joeri Poelmans 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1
David Jensen 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1
Marko Bakic 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1
Eric Bocat 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1
Cristophe Diandy 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1
Lierse Kempenzonen Scorers (Last 15 games)
Ivan Yagan 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 4
Kenneth Schuermans 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 3
Stallone Limbombe 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 3
Thibaut Van Acker 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 2
Alexander Maes 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2
Jonathan Hendrickx 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 2
Brent Laes 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
Guillaume De Schryver 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
Jordi Liongola 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
Jens Naessens 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
Nils Schouterden 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1
Royal Excel Mouscron Bad Boys (Last 30 games)
Oliver MYNY 05.12.2021
Christophe Lepoint 02.10.2021
Joachim Carcela-Gonzalez 02.10.2021
Jeremy Taravel 18.09.2021
Lucas Ribeiro 14.08.2021
Lierse Kempenzonen Bad Boys (Last 30 games)
Jordy Gillekens 05.03.2021
Royal Excel Mouscron 2.00 2.00 2.68 2.79 2.00
Lierse Kempenzonen 1.00 1.50 0.78 1.06 1.25
Royal Excel Mouscron vs Lierse Kempenzonen
The last meeting of these teams took place more than a month ago (28 November 2021) and ended with the victory of Royal Excel Mouscron with a score 2-1.
The teams are close in the league table, the difference between their points is only 1 point.
Royal Excel Mouscron takes the 5th position in the league table with 19 points. This is the 16th of 28 team game in the tournament.
The difference with the nearest team on top is 2 points (Royal Excel Mouscron can score 36 points). The distance from the bottom league record is 5 points. The nearest pursuer is 1 point lower and has the opportunity to score 36 points additionally. The goal difference is 22:28. In addition, the Royal Excel Mouscron offensive line is one of the worst in the tournament.
Lierse Kempenzonen takes the 6th position in the league table with 18 points. This is the 16th of 28 team game in the tournament.
The difference with the nearest team on top is 1 point (Lierse Kempenzonen can score 36 points). The distance from the bottom league record is 4 points. The nearest pursuer is 2 points lower and has the opportunity to score 36 points additionally. The goal difference is 29:31. In addition, the Lierse Kempenzonen offensive line is one of the TOP-4 in the tournament. The Lierse Kempenzonen defensive line is the worst in the league.
Royal Excel Mouscron Stats
Leading players in the last 15 matches in all tournaments: Lucas Ribeiro (5), Teddy Chevalier (4), Joachim Carcela-Gonzalez (3), Pietro Perdichizzi (1), Hakim Abdallah (1), Christophe Lepoint (1), Clement Tainmont (1).
Lierse Kempenzonen Stats
Lierse Kempenzonen could not win in the last 5 matches, with 3 losses and 2 draws.
The team scored 6 points when playing away in 10 last matches, with the following results 1 win, 3 draws и 6 losses. The difference between scored and conceded goals is 15-24. The average number of goals is 1.5. The average number of cards in 10 last matches is 1.2.
Leading players in the last 15 matches in all tournaments: Hakim Abdallah (6), Ivan Yagan (4), Kenneth Schuermans (3), Stallone Limbombe (3), Thibaut Van Acker (2), Alexander Maes (2), Jonathan Hendrickx (2).

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
What were public health officials at every level of government doing last year? Were they preparing for a pandemic? Or were they using their office to meddle with your lifestyle choices?
by Jeff Stier
http://www.jeffstier.org/24138/public-health-agencies-care-more-about
The partisan political sniping over Covid-19 is completely predictable and counter-productive. There's plenty of fault to go around, but the blame-gaming should be ignored or discounted for what it is: self-aggrandizing grandstanding.
It is, however, worthwhile to examine a tension that has been brewing in the public health world for decades. That dichotomy is: should we focus on communicable diseases, as has long been the mission of public health institutions, or do we have enough bandwidth and resources to venture out into the much more controversial area of non-communicable diseases (NCDs)?
To get to the answer, think about this. What were public health officials at every level of government doing last year? Five years ago? Were they first ensuring that their track and trace systems were in place for a pandemic? Or were they using their office to meddle with your lifestyle choices?
The discipline of public health has long been rooted in fighting contagious diseases. For the most part, it has done very well. Notwithstanding the current Covid-19 pandemic, sanitation, vaccines and therapies—mainly drugs—have dramatically reduced the toll of communicable diseases.
That success has led many in public health agencies, especially in the United States, to argue that we must now use our limited resources to combat NCDs, and that we can address both effectively. It isn't exactly working out that way.
Efforts to fight non-contagious diseases such as heart disease and diabetes frequently raise questions about individual liberty, including the freedom to make poor choices. All too often, the politicized debate causes both sides to overstate or manipulate the science supporting their viewpoints.
When former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the biggest booster of today's public health movement, campaigned against sugary drinks like soda, it landed the city's health department in hot water. For instance, a taxpayer-funded ad campaign created by the Department of Health showed a photo of a man purportedly with amputated legs. The city's ad agency had Photoshopped his legs out of the photo to support the valid claim that Type 2 diabetes can lead to amputations.
The Bloomberg administration's antics, which even elicited criticism from within the health department, indicates the degree to which his wing of the public health movement has lost sight of its most primary and unifying functions: preparedness.
This lack of preparedness is not partisan. It exists in the current Republican administration, as it did in the prior Democrat administration. Cities, counties, and states long governed by each party were equally ill-prepared for a pandemic.
Commentators on the left and the right have referred to Coronavirus and Covid-19 as a "black swan event." But it doesn't meet the definition. A pandemic of this type was not only predictable, it was something communicable disease experts have warned about rather specifically for many years. The warning signs were ignored, and we were ill-prepared.
A 2007 review article in the American Society for Microbiology's publication, Clinical Microbiology Reviews, entitled, "Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus as an Agent of Emerging and Reemerging Infection," concluded: "Coronaviruses are well known to undergo genetic recombination, which may lead to new genotypes and outbreaks. The presence of a large reservoir of SARS-CoV-like viruses in horseshoe bats, together with the culture of eating exotic mammals in southern China, is a time bomb. The possibility of the reemergence of SARS and other novel viruses from animals or laboratories and therefore the need for preparedness should not be ignored."
Rather than marshal finite resources towards preparedness for a coming communicable disease, lots of public health resources, including taxpayer dollars, media attention, and legislative priorities, were deployed to address non-communicable diseases, from domestic violence to gun regulation.
Think back to a different time not so long ago. During the second half of 2019, federal, state and city health officials throughout the country were busy confronting a new and scary lung disease. The health reporters covering them churned out news articles, regularly garnering front-page placement. Major charities such as Bloomberg Philanthropies were making large public health grants. So it should come as no surprise that the American public and political leaders were keenly focused on this emerging health threat.
The disease wasn't Covid-19, of course. It was a something the Centers for Disease Control called e-cigarette or vaping product use-associated lung injury, or EVALI.
At the time, public health activists were, for years, calling for bans on the types of e-cigarettes used to quit smoking. Despite strong evidence that nicotine e-cigarettes are 95 percent less harmful than smoking and can help smokers quit, public health agencies treated e-cigarettes as the most important threat to public health. Yet they still failed to convince policymakers to institute widespread bans on the most popular e-cigarettes.
But as consciousness of EVALI reached a crescendo, states began to ban most flavored e-cigarettes, and the FDA further tightened the regulatory screws on nicotine-containing e-cigarettes.
It turned out that none of these nicotine e-cigarettes were ever responsible for the lung disease that bears their name. It took until late December for the Centers for Disease Control to (partly) acknowledge that the lung injuries were caused not by vaping liquid nicotine e-cigarettes such as Juul, but by the use of THC oil contaminated with vitamin E acetate.
Public health agencies were so ideologically opposed to e-cigarettes as a tool for tobacco harm reduction that they sowed panic, promulgated misinformation, and actually caused a failure to identify the true culprit in a life-saving and timely way. Still, nobody has been held accountable.
So, back to the question about communicable and non-communicable disease: Has public health been able to "do both" well? It turns out, that when purportedly trying to do both, public health hasn't been able to do either effectively.
I'm not suggesting that public health's EVALI scandal was the only or even primary culprit for the failure of public health departments around the country to ensure that their communities had an adequate supply of personal protective equipment in the event of a predictable communicable disease outbreak, or that the CDC was otherwise preoccupied. Instead, the EVALI episode was more of a symptom of something wrong in public health.
The institution of public health has largely been co-opted by those with a desire to control individual choices to such a degree that it has largely lost sight of its fundamental role of pandemic preparedness. At this point, taxpayers should realize that we are giving the keys to the public health car to people who have long been driving in the wrong direction.
Jeff Stier is a senior fellow at the Taxpayers Protection Alliance.


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Q: Change VPN in Windows 7 from command line How can I change my VPN connection settings in Windows 7 from the command line?  I know how to do it using the GUI but I really need to do it from the console.
I need to change the user, password and internet address and then restart the connection. It doesn't matter if I have to install some third-party software in order to do this (from the command line).

A: I have not got a PPTP connection set up to test this at the moment, but you could try making two connections in %userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Network\Connections\Pbk\.  The default connection is rasphone.pbk.
You could just execute them using the full path from the commmand line, but I am not sure if the first one automatically disconnects when you use the second one, as I cannot test it.

A: I was able to do it with the rasdial command
rasdial /disconnect
rasdial connection_name user pass /phone:host.example.com

Source: Microsoft resources and some guy.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


How many of you have makeup in your drawer and not sure when you got it? I know I do.
Did you know that makeup expires? I didn't know that before I started to really get into makeup. It's really important to make sure you throw away the makeup that expires and today I'm telling you when makeup expires.
When should you toss it? As soon as you start to notice that its getting clumpy or even smells weird. TOSS IT.
When should you toss it? If it has separated into layers or the color has lightened, it's time to buy a new one!
Tip: Keep it out of the sunlight. The sun UV rays can destroy the preservatives.
Good for: 2 years for Lipstick & 1 year for Lip Gloss.
When should you toss it? If you notice that your lipstick has gone dry or your lip gloss is extra sticky, they've gone bad.
When should you toss it? Expired powders tend to be more dry and flaky than new ones.
There you have it. Please be sure you toss out of your makeup once they have expired. You don't want to ruin your gorgeous skin.
Thank you! I had no idea…pinning this!!
I usually push it with my mascara, but yesterday I sat down and chucked 5 of them that I've had for over 6 months. I only use a select few on a regular basis (Too Faced BTS, Lash Sensational and False Fiber Lashes) so I don't know why I felt the need to keep the rest!
One of my goals this month is to clean out my makeup desk, and I will definitely use these guidelines – thanks for the great post, Jasmine.
I definitely need to throw away some of my lip glosses!!
Yeah that's what I use to do but then I did research on it and come to find out it goes bad after a few months.
I just tossed all my old make up & bought new stuff. I am loving the new stuff – much nicer and goes on much better!
I bet!!! Hope your skin has been getting since doing that.
lol I know how you feel .
Glad you're taking care of it. I always do every month bc I don't want the expired stuff on my face.
I honestly didn't realize I had been keeping some of my mascaras way too long beofre reading this post. Wow! Good to know. haha Thanks for sharing!
Great post as always! I had no idea that eyes hadow even expired. I'll have to tell my mom because she probably has a ton from a few years ago. Thanks for sharing!
Always love your tips Jasmine! I actually just cleaned out my make up this week. I couldn't bear to get rid of my eyeshadows though. I have such beautiful palettes, but I can never get through them fast enough!
I"m guilty of keeping my makeup too long. Mostly the lipsticks & lip glosses. I just have so many of them and change them day to day that I never finish them.
Foundation & lipsticks are me lol that's why I did research on this.
OMG! I can use mascara for so long, it seems to be neverending! I can never use it up for 2-3 months!
I'll admit I have an entire bag of barely used makeup that's got to be expired by now. I'm also guilty for using lipgloss for longer than I should.
Very helpful! Time to clean out my makeup drawer!
lol good to know 🙂 thanks for putting in the work for us!
So glad to read this – I have a ton of makeup and makeup samples and am never sure when I should toss them!
Gross. I definitely need to toss a lot of mine! I've kept it far too long! Thank you for this info because this is something I really need to do. I didn't realize it expired so quickly.
Definitely do it because you don't want that on your skin.
I need to seriously go through my makeup drawer! What about non-liquid concealers…same timeframe as the liquid variety?
With the exception of mascara, I definitely err on the side of using makeup for a longer amounts of time. Especially if it's a higher-end product like my Nars blush that's still going strong nearly 2+ years later. As long as there's no visible change or skin issues I keep it past the expiration mark. Even with a more pared-down makeup collection, there's no way I could use everything up within 1-2 years. Haha!
Huh, I never even thought about my make up expiring! Usually I use it up way before it would expire and I'm on to the next one, but I do have a drawer of old make up I hardly ever touch that I should probably clean out!
I have so much makeup that I should probably just go through and toss- although I never do. Mascara is the worst for me and I know it's so bad!! I really need to get on it.
Literally had no idea make up expired this fast. I definitely need to go through my stuff!!
Thank you. Lol I tossed a bunch of lipstick that I couldnt remember when I purchased them.
I started getting serious about this like a year ago. I would be holding onto makeup for years and years not thinking anything of it, but then I read about the bacteria that can be contaminating the product and got so grossed out that I literally cleared draws full of products.
I have too since doing research. SO gross.
Gahhh reading this post makes me cringe because I know for a fact two of my foundations are over a year!
NO! NO! Toss those babies out.
You always have great tips, Jasmine!
It was just this morning I was wondering whether I needed to ditch my current mascara and purchase a new one. Now I know, I really need to! Thanks for this post, it's so so useful for someone like me who really doesn't know enough about make up!
Jasmine- I just did a decluttered my makeup like a month ago when one of my fav YouTubers talked about this! I know a lot of makeup lovers have tons of expired makeup. Its totally disgusting to think about (bacteria) but Im glad you brought this up!
This is great. I always forget when my makeup expires. Good to know I have been on top of my game so far.
Whoa…good tips! I had no idea about some of these.


Why do you use the AdaptDx® in your practice?
I think it's important to be able to fully test and evaluate our patients for any type of ophthalmic condition, including early macular degeneration. For the first time we now have an option to measure function of the retina.
We have plenty of good ways to look at structure: not just our clinical exam, but OCT, with increasing resolution traditionally fluorescein angiography and now even OCT angiography. But nothing to really measure retinal function. The AdaptDx is revolutionary because now we can actually measure the function of the retina directly and counsel our patients appropriately.
Subclinical AMD is very common in our practice and I believe it's common in the general population. These are patients who have early symptoms of night vision impairment or mild vision impairment. It's not affecting their life at this point. The important population that we're using the dark adaptation test for is to diagnose early disease when the structure is normal. And that's a large percentage of patients with early AMD. The structure looks completely normal, clinical exam is normal, and the OCT is normal. So we are picking up patients in their early 50s even who have abnormal dark adaptation, at least for the age or what's expected, and we can get them into treatment.
I think the AdaptDx is able to identify AMD several years before we see anything on the clinical exam.


text:
T-Mobile Completes First Successful LAA Test In US
Android Headlines Daniel Fuller Jun 27, 2017
Daniel Fuller Jun 27, 2017 Read Source
T-Mobile has officially wrapped up the first successful field test of LAA, an LTE technology that extends LTE-U to the 5GHz spectrum bands. In testing, T-Mobile managed to pull down 741Mbps in download speed using 80MHz of unlicensed spectrum on top of the company's normal offerings. T-Mobile did not state whether the upload speeds were similar, whether the new technology affected server ping times, or what mobile device was used for testing. This means that a dedicated testing rig of some sort was likely used, rather than a consumer mobile device. The test took place in Los Angeles, California.
This test provides a good picture of what to expect when LTE-U and the full measure of T-Mobile's vast spectrum portfolio are rolled out into all service areas in the near future. For the time being, LTE-U is limited to a small selection of markets, such as the Simi Valley area of California, and Las Vegas, Nevada. In these areas, LTE-U is currently limited in the spectrum it can use, which is where LAA comes in. LTE-U, and by extension LAA, allows T-Mobile's many network features to work in concert with the carrier's own licensed spectrum and unlicensed spectrum that's floating about for general use. While LTE-U doesn't present many challenges as far as integration with other network services, the potential for interference and crosstalk with other users of the unlicensed spectrum is very real, making it extremely difficult and important to implement protections that will keep that from happening.
While T-Mobile is hard at work expanding LTE-U, the company is also expanding network offerings that use its own spectrum. It has already begun field tests and early deployment of 600MHz area spectrum that it won from the FCC's incentive auction that concluded earlier in the year, and has been conducting fairly successful early 5G testing using both high and low band spectrum. Thus far, T-Mobile has managed to burst through the gigabit barrier in 5G testing and plans to roll the technology out to their entire service area. As the 5G network goes live, T-Mobile hopes to continue expanding and enriching their LTE network, making it a reliable fallback for when customers cannot reach a 5G connection.
The post T-Mobile Completes First Successful LAA Test In US appeared first on AndroidHeadlines.com |.


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