A couple of very important if totally unconnected things happened yesterday which are likely to have big global repercussions. The first was a Twitter thread by Harvard epidemiologist Eric Feigl-Ding about what's happening in China. The authorities recently lifted all covid restrictions after widespread protests following the deaths of some people who were unable to escape a burning apartment building because they were in lockdown. This has resulted in a new wave of infections sweeping across China. He says that epidemiologists like him estimate that over 60% of Chinese citizens (about 10% of the Earth’s entire population) are likely to be infected over the next 90 days and deaths will be in the millions.
Here is the tweet:#
This doesn't mean the wave will impact us but the economic (and political) fallout will be huge. Hospitals are already overwhelmed because the Chinese-made vaccine is not that effective and the take-up among the population, especially the elderly is terrible.
It looks like the Chinese government is trying to achieve herd immunity and the cost in lives could be extraordinary. Crematoriums and already working 24/7 and the morgues are completely full now.
When these sorts of events occur in a society that is a one-party state, there is no safety valve. You can't vote the leaders out and the only tool the authorities have to keep order is repression. So, things in 2023 are starting to look really bad.
Next, in the USA, the January 6th Committee looking into Trump and the riots that occurred during Biden's inauguration in 2020, released a 154-page document which is described as the "Introductory Material to the Final Report of the Select Committee" - Lord knows how long the final report will be.
They are recommending that the Department of Justice pursue criminal charges against the former POTUS and looking through the report, I'm not surprised. Sky News also covers the story HERE.
What happened on that day was not a surprise to many in Trump's camp. His advisor Steve Bannon, speaking to a group of his associates from China on October 31, 2020, said:
"And what Trump’s gonna do is just declare victory, right? He’s gonna declare victory. But that doesn’t mean he’s a winner. He’s just gonna say he’s a winner... The Democrats – more of our people vote early that count. Theirs [sic] vote in mail. And so they’re gonna have a natural disadvantage, and Trump’s going to take advantage of it – that’s our strategy. He’s gonna declare himself a winner. So when you wake up Wednesday morning, it’s going to be a firestorm.... Also, if Trump, if Trump is losing, by 10 or 11 o’clock at night, it’s going to be even crazier. No, because he’s gonna sit right there and say ‘They stole it. I’m directing the Attorney General to shut down all ballot places in all 50 states. It’s going to be, no, he’s not going out easy. If Trump – if Biden’s winning, Trump is going to do some crazy shit."
Roger Stone, another outside advisor to Trump, made this statement well in advance of the election:
"I really do suspect it will still be up in the air. When that happens, the key thing to do is to claim victory. Possession is nine-tenths of the law. No, we won. F""k you, Sorry. Over. We won. You’re wrong. F**k you."
The report contains a mass of detailed evidence that Trump was told multiple times NOT to announce he had won on the day yet he went out and did exactly that AND claimed the election had been fraudulently stolen. He was told on multiple occasions that the 'evidence' he was using was false.
There is a list of the testimony (with dates) of who told him what and when. Despite that Trump went out within days and told his supporters the exact opposite. These are all carefully tabulated in the report.
He simply could not accept that he lost. At one point he said to Mark Meadows, his chief of staff: “I don’t want people to know we lost, Mark. This is embarrassing. Figure it out. We need to figure it out. I don’t want people to know that we lost.”
Even the intelligence services knew there would be trouble but nobody knew or fully understood what role President Trump himself would play in exacerbating the violence, and later in refusing for three hours to instruct his supporters to stand down and leave the Capitol. There was no intelligence gathered on Trump’s plans for January 6th, and no analysis made of what he might do to exacerbate potential violence. I suppose nobody could believe he would be that stupid.
This is what the committee said:
"The Select Committee has conducted nine public hearings, presenting testimony from more than 70 witnesses. In structuring our investigation and hearings, we began with President Trump’s contentions
that the election was stolen and took testimony from nearly all of the President’s principal advisors on this topic. We focused on the rulings of more than 60 Federal and State courts rejecting President Trump’s and his supporters’ efforts to reverse the electoral outcome.
"Despite the rulings of these courts, we understood that millions of Americans still lack the information necessary to understand and evaluate what President Trump has told them about the election.
"For that reason, our hearings featured several members of President Trump’s inner circle refuting his fraud claims and testifying that the election was not in fact stolen. In all, the Committee displayed the testimony of more than four dozen Republicans—by far the majority of witnesses in our hearings—including two of President Trump’s former Attorneys General, his former White House Counsel, numerous members of his White House staff, and the highest-ranking members of his 2020 election campaign, including his campaign manager and his campaign general counsel. Even key individuals who worked closely with President Trump to try to overturn the 2020 election on January 6th ultimately admitted that they lacked actual evidence sufficient to change the election result, and they admitted that what they were attempting was unlawful."
Trump is in BIG trouble. They are finally catching up with him.
I perhaps should add a final event from yesterday. A new poll by IPSOS for The New Statesman puts the Conservatives on course to lose 323 seats and end up behind the Lib-Dems and only one seat more than the SNP:
Oh dear.
