****NOTE: Leading up to the November 3rd US presidential elections, the CIJR will include in its Briefing significant articles on the election.
Table of Contents:
With Brexit Clock Ticking, Boris Johnson Vows, Again, to Walk Away: Mark Landler and Stephen Castle, NY Times, Oct. 16, 2020
To Test Virus Vaccines, U.K. Study Will Intentionally Infect Volunteers: Benjamin Mueller, NY Times, Oct. 20, 2020
Biden Story Suppression by Twitter Despicable: Rex Murphy, National Post, Oct. 20, 2020
A Good Debate, and It’s Not Quite Over: Peggy Noonan, WSJ, Oct. 23, 2020
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With Brexit Clock Ticking, Boris Johnson Vows, Again, to Walk Away
Mark Landler and Stephen Castle
NY Times, Oct. 16, 2020
Britain’s Brexit negotiations with the European Union teetered on a precipice yet again Friday, after Prime Minister Boris Johnson declared that his government was fed up and ready for a no-deal exit from the bloc’s trading system, and with his chief negotiator calling off talks scheduled for next week in London.
European leaders reacted coolly to Mr. Johnson’s threat, making clear that they were ready to keep talking and acknowledging that both sides needed to give ground to reach a trade agreement by the deadline of Dec. 31.
Mr. Johnson, who had set a self-imposed deadline of this week to judge whether the talks should go on, delivered his warning after a summit meeting of European Union leaders in Brussels that resulted in what the prime minister called an unreasonable demand that Britain make the major concessions.
“They want the continued ability to control our legislative freedom, our fisheries, in a way that is obviously unacceptable to an independent country,” Mr. Johnson said in a taped statement from Downing Street. “With high hearts and complete confidence, we will prepare to embrace the alternative.”
For all his bluster, history suggested that the negotiations were less likely to collapse than to enter a climactic final act, promising even more of the theatrics and brinkmanship that have characterized the Brexit drama from the start.
There are genuine gaps between Britain and the European Union: The two are at odds over quotas for fishing — an issue that is highly sensitive politically in neighboring France. And the two sides have yet to agree on rules governing state aid to industry or a way to resolve disputes over this funding.
The calendar poses another risk: With the deadline for a deal fast approaching, even the loss of a week or more of talks could make it difficult for the two sides to reach a settlement in time. If they fall short, Britain would have to start trading with the bloc under what Mr. Johnson euphemistically calls Australia-style rules — in other words, under the default terms set by the World Trade Organization.
“We will prosper mightily as an independent free-trading nation, controlling our own borders, our fisheries, and setting our own laws,” he said.
In fact, analysts said, Britain would face severe disruptions, including long lines of trucks at the English Channel, and a heavy blow to its economic growth, on top of the already painful dislocation caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Britain’s battle to contain the latest wave of infections has all but eclipsed the latest Brexit news.
Given those daunting realities, analysts said they still believed that Mr. Johnson was bluffing and would end up striking a deal. The likelihood that Britain will have to compromise, they said, made it all the more important for the prime minister to look like he is driving a hard bargain with the European Union. … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
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To Test Virus Vaccines, U.K. Study Will Intentionally Infect Volunteers
Benjamin Mueller
NY Times, Oct. 20, 2020
Scientists at Imperial College London plan to deliberately infect volunteers with the coronavirus early next year, launching the world’s first effort to study how vaccinated people respond to being intentionally exposed to the virus and opening up a new, uncertain path to identifying an effective vaccine.
The hotly contested strategy, known as a human challenge trial, could potentially shave crucial time in the race to winnow a number of vaccine candidates. Rather than conducting the sort of trials now underway around the world, in which scientists wait for vaccinated people to encounter the virus in their homes and communities, researchers would purposely infect them in a hospital isolation unit.
Scientists have used this method for decades to test vaccines for typhoid, cholera and other diseases, even asking volunteers in the case of malaria to expose their arms to boxes full of mosquitoes to be bitten and infected. But whereas the infected could be cured of those diseases, Covid-19 has few widely used treatments and no known cure, putting the scientists in charge of Britain’s study in largely uncharted ethical territory.
Starting with tiny doses, the scientists will first administer the virus to small groups of volunteers who have not been vaccinated at all, in order to determine the lowest dose of the virus that will reliably infect them. That process, scheduled to begin in January at a hospital in north London, will be followed by tests in which volunteers are given a vaccine and then intentionally exposed to this carefully calibrated dose of the virus.
The study will be led by scientists with Imperial College London and hVivo, a company specializing in human challenge trials. It still requires approval from Britain’s drug regulation agency, but the government said on Tuesday that it would allot 34 million pounds, or $44 million, in public funding.
The first round of volunteers, up to 90 healthy adults aged 18 to 30, will have the virus dripped into their noses without having been vaccinated. If not enough participants become infected, the scientists will try to expose these early-stage volunteers to a higher dose, repeating the process until they have identified the necessary exposure level of the virus.
Only once the scientists decide on a dose, which they intend to do by late spring, will they begin the process of comparing vaccine candidates by immunizing the next group of volunteers and then exposing them to the virus.
Some vaccine candidates now undergoing trials may already have received approval by then, but researchers hope a challenge trial will add direct evidence of efficacy and help them compare the performance of different vaccines. “Deliberately infecting volunteers with a known human pathogen is never undertaken lightly,” said Professor Peter Openshaw, an immunologist and co-investigator on the study. “However, such studies are enormously informative about a disease, even one so well studied as Covid-19.” … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
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A Good Debate, and It’s Not Quite Over
Peggy Noonan
WSJ, Oct. 23, 2020
The hour and a half between 9 and 10:30 p.m. ET on Thursday, Oct. 23, at Belmont University in Nashville was the last chance Donald Trump had to turn it all around.
Did he? Could he?
It’s late in the game, most peoples’ minds are set, and more than 40 million have already voted. But he did himself some good. He wasn’t a belligerent nut. He held himself together, controlled himself, presented opening remarks that made sense. He won, not a dazzling win but a win that kept him in the game. He succeeded in doing what Joe Biden didn’t have to do: If you wanted or needed an excuse, an out, to vote for Mr. Trump, if you wanted an argument that justified your decision in a conversation in the office, he probably gave you what you need.
It was a good debate. The candidates argued big things. Both had some good moves. Mr. Trump was smart to dwell, early on, on opening up economically. He hung a “Closed” sign around Mr. Biden’s neck. Mr. Biden deftly turned accusations of familial venality into reminders of the president’s refusal, after five years of demands, to show his tax returns.
Mr. Biden too often lapses into government-speak— “the public option.” He was in government 47 years, and sounds it. Mr. Trump’s power, recovered Thursday night, is to speak like normal people, so you can understand him without having to translate what he’s saying in your head. He appears to have lied a great deal. That will be adjudicated in the coming days.
Moderator Kristen Welker was fabulous—fair-minded, professional and in control. What a star.
All that said, where are we? This close to Election Day and everyone with bated breath. Everyone sees the polls, the clear Biden lead nationwide and the smaller lead in most of battleground states. We know what those polls suggest. But there is little air of defeat among Trump supporters and no triumphalism among Democrats.
Trump supporters believe he will win because of his special magic, Trump foes fear he will win because of his dark magic. Pollsters and pundits stare at the data and wonder how to quantify his unfathomable magic. It’s remarkable that all in their different ways put such stock in the president’s powers, his ability to pull a black swan out of a hat. I believe he is not magic and faces a big loss, and from the way he’s acted the week leading up to the debate—flailing about, stirring themeless chaos—so does he.
But there are a few points that contradict the picture. One is the number 56. That is the percentage of registered voters who, asked by Gallup if they are better off than they were four years ago, say yes. (Gallup has asked this regularly in election years since 1984.) Fifty-six percent—in a pandemic, after protests, riots and recession!
It’s only a poll, but after Gallup, a New York Times/Siena poll asked the same question, and 49% said they were better off. What’s interesting, though, is that when Siena asked respondents if the country was better off than it was four years ago, only 39% said yes. … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
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Biden Story Suppression by Twitter Despicable
Rex Murphy
National Post, Oct. 20, 2020
Joe Biden and son Hunter. According to the New York Post, emails from a recovered laptop indicate the younger Biden had or was pursuing multiple lucrative arrangements with firms in Ukraine and China.
When Twitter last week suppressed a New York Post story about Joe Biden and his son Hunter, the whole house of North American journalism should have unanimously blasted the tech giant for its outrageous and blindly partisan attempt to kill the news.
When Twitter just a little later summoned the gall to ban the chief communications officer of the president of the United States, Kayleigh Mcenany, that same house of journalism should have fired off a thunderbolt of condemnation. Who or what in hell is vacuous Twitter to ban the White House Press Secretary?
Both Houses of the U. S. Congress — yes both, Republican and Democratic — should have come down on Twitter with a sledgehammer for arrogating to itself what may or may not be spoken or written during a presidential election. (Twitter — working hard to bring 1984 to your home computer.)
Facebook should have faced identical consequences, for it took parallel action on its huge site to suffocate the same story — released via one of the largest and most historic American newspapers — containing serious allegations regarding the character and actions of one of the presidential candidates and his son.
Let me preliminarily put it in clear terms.
Regardless of the ultimate accuracy of the New York Post article, and setting aside concerns over how the documents were obtained, Twitter is not the Communist Chinese government and Facebook is not an arm of the North Korean press.
Both should mightily strive not to be seen as in any way adopting the tactics of these regimes when it comes to the flow of information and news to its “users.”
It is not for Facebook or Twitter to arrogate to themselves authority to edit, to ban, or to censor the news as determined by journalists; it is not for Facebookor Twitter to imitate the Roman Catholic Church’s days of the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, or Stalin at the height of his tyranny dictating what people could say, writers could write, and newspapers could publish, or by his command erasing what had previously been written.
The New York Post reported that according to “a massive trove of data recovered from a laptop computer” dropped off at a repair shop and never retrieved, Hunter Biden had or was pursuing multiple lucrative arrangements with companies in Ukraine and China. The emails from the forgotten laptop raise unavoidable and absolutely crucial questions about political influence. … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed]
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For Further Reference:
The BBC Isn’t Just Too ‘Woke’—Over Israel, It Incites Baseless Hatred: Melanie Phillips, JNS, Oct. 15, 2020 — In recent weeks, there have been indications that the British government intends to try to bring the BBC to heel.
Post-Brexit Guide: Where Are We Now – And How Did We Get Here?: Alasdair Sandford, EuroNews, Oct. 26, 2020 — The United Kingdom left the European Union — now an economic and political partnership of 27 countries — on January 31, 2020 under the terms of a negotiated divorce deal, bringing to an end 47 years of British membership of the EU and the institutions that preceded it.
How Low Can the Bank of England Go?: Editorial Board, WSJ, Oct. 21, 2020 — Britain’s central bank is leaving little doubt that a plunge into negative interest rates is probably on the way. If the Bank of England takes that step, the U.S. Federal Reserve will be the only major developed-country central bank that doesn’t tax saving.
Pandemic Fatigue Is Real—And It’s Spreading: Stacy Meichtry, Joanna Sugden and Andrew Barnett, WSJ, Oct. 26, 2020 — From the corridors of Washington to the cobblestones of Paris, the coronavirus is roaring back and authorities are ramping up restrictions again. This time around, however, everyone is tired.
