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Switzerland: A New ‘S’ in ESG? By Andrew Stuttaford

Posted By on June 2nd, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/switzerland-businesses-face-prospect-tougher-ethical-regulations/

Switzerland is generally a well-run place, with a healthy respect both for the preservation of capital and for the way that its referendums help ensure that Swiss democracy is genuinely bottom-up as well as top-down.

But, judging by this Financial Times report, these two qualities may be about to come crashing into each other:

Some of the world’s biggest companies, from Nestlé to Glencore, face the prospect of tougher ethical regulations in Switzerland, as a four-year debate over business practices comes to a head in parliament this week.

From Tuesday, MPs will have less than three weeks to thrash out a compromise to a proposed change to the law brought by the Responsible Business Initiative (KVI) .

The proposal will make businesses in Switzerland legally liable and “guilty until proven innocent” for abuses of human and environmental rights anywhere in their supply chains around the world — whether at subsidiaries or third-party companies.

The Responsible Business Initiative emerged in 2016 as a result of Switzerland’s direct democratic process garnering the support of more than 100,000 citizens, the threshold for triggering a referendum.

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George Floyd’s Brother Condemns Riots, Calls for ‘Destructive Unity’ to End By Matt Margolis

Posted By on June 2nd, 2020

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2020/06/01/george-floyds-brother-condemns-riots-calls-for-destructive-unity-to-end-n479504

Terrence Floyd, the younger brother of George Floyd, condemned the rioting that’s happening nationwide.

Floyd spoke with Robin Roberts on Good Morning America, and described his brother as “a gentle giant” who “was about peace” and a “motivator” who “always saw the lighter, the brighter side of things.”

He added that the riots and violent protests are “overshadowing” his brother’s memory. “They may call it unity, but it’s destructive unity.” Terrence explained that his brother “would want us to seek justice” but would want people to channel their anger “another way.”

“It’s OK to be angry, but channel your anger to do something positive or make a change another way because we’ve been down this road already.”

“The anger, damaging your hometown is not the way he’d want,” he added.

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THE NOTHING MATTERS RIOTERS WANT ANARCHY BY MATT PURPLE

Posted By on June 2nd, 2020

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-nothing-matters-rioters/

It was a funny thing over the weekend. You could turn on CNN and find officials deploring the violence in Minneapolis. You could hear rapper Killer Mike exhorting his fellow Atlantans “to be better than burning down our own homes.” You could listen to George Floyd’s girlfriend, who said that seeing Minneapolis in flames would have devastated her slain beau.

And then you could log on to Facebook and find people lionizing the riots as the next Boston Tea Party.

It’s hard to think of anything more privileged than social media armchairs excusing violence against our poorest and most vulnerable neighborhoods. But so it goes in the Nothing Matters quarter of America. This weekend saw the unrest that began in Minnesota spread across the country. In Louisville, vandals smashed windows and attacked restaurants and hotels. In Washington, D.C., the White House was briefly locked down amid rowdy protests outside. In Oakland, two federal officers were shot; one died. And in Minneapolis itself, the arson and looting continued, drawing out the largest National Guard mobilization in Minnesota history.

All this was done ostensibly to express fury over the murder of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis policeman, as well as other episodes of brutality against African Americans, the killing of Breonna Taylor in Louisville and the lynching of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia. Yet there was something else at work too. Officials estimated Saturday morning that only 20 percent of the rioters in Minneapolis were actually from Minnesota, and while that was later walked back, reporting confirms that the city has become a bug light for out-of-state anarchists and agitators. Pittsburgh’s police chief, meanwhile, said protests there had been hijacked by “white males” dressed in black. And in Rochester, where cars were flipped over and set ablaze, police blamed “anarchists” and “paid protesters.”

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The Lancet’s Politicized Science on Antimalarial Drugs A new study suggests a treatment Trump touted is harmful. Let’s take a closer look at the data. by Allysia Finley

Posted By on June 2nd, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-lancets-politicized-science-on-antimalarial-drugs-11591053222?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

“Lancet’s decision to publish the study with little apparent scrutiny also suggests politics may be influencing its scientific judgment. An unsigned editorial in May criticized President Trump’s “inconsistent and incoherent national response” to the pandemic and asserted that “Americans must put a president in the White House come January, 2021, who will understand that public health should not be guided by partisan politics.” The Lancet editors should focus on healing themselves.”

President Trump has often mentioned hydroxychloroquine as a potential treatment for Covid-19. Last month he announced that he was taking the antimalaria drug, also known as HCL, as a prophylaxis after two White House staffers tested positive for the virus. Mr. Trump’s critics in the press seem to be on a mission to discredit the therapy. Now a prestigious medical journal may be joining in.

The Lancet published a study on May 22 that purported to find a 30% increased risk of death for hospitalized Covid-19 patients treated with HCL or chloroquine, a related treatment. “Study says drug hailed by Trump is harmful,” the Washington Post reported. The World Health Organization suspended its HCL trial. France, Belgium and Italy announced they would prohibit the drug for the treatment of Covid patients.

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The Fog Is Lifted David Prentice

Posted By on June 1st, 2020

www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/06/the_fog_is_lifted.html#.XtTZie7a1y4.twitter

The fog of war.  It’s real.  It’s been hiding the truth that civil war has been upon us for years now.

Here is a prescient definition, first made by Prussian military analyst Carl von Clausewitz, who defined the fog of war concept in the mid 1800s: 

War is the realm of uncertainty; three quarters of the factors on which action in war is based are wrapped in a fog of greater or lesser uncertainty.  A sensitive and discriminating judgment is called for — a skilled intelligence to scent out the truth.

Example: Hitler not scenting out the truth is how we prevailed on D-Day.  The allies used the fog well.

So here we are, and the left is engaging us with its fog.  We have been fighting the left in a multi-front war, one front being the mysterious war against the Wuhan virus.  Others are fighting a degenerate Democratic Party and an even further degenerate media.

As the fog lifts on the mystery of the virus, we are beginning to see more clearly.  We know multiple things.  First, we can beat it.  Whether we mitigated correctly, or the models were entirely wrong, or it never was as bad as advertised, we don’t know yet.  But we do know that we know how to beat it.  This, in spite of the nonsensical Democratic Party lockdown governors.

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THE EUROPEAN WIGGLE: BY SHOSHANA BRYEN

Posted By on June 1st, 2020

https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/authors/shoshana-bryen/

Europe is straddling a line between what it wants to say and what it actually wants. The former is about opposing Israel, opposing the Trump administration, not alienating its own restive Arab populations, and not completely severing its relations with Iran and its jihadist proxies. The latter involves hoping Israel won’t pay too much attention to the former.

While U.S. President Donald Trump called both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his rotation partner and Minister of Defense, Benny Gantz, to congratulate them, French President Emmanuel Macron, welcomed the new government with his view that Jerusalem should “make it possible to decisively revive the Middle East peace process and to achieve a two-state solution, with Israel and Palestine living side by side in peace and security, in accordance with internationally agreed parameters.”

The European Union also issued a statement, though not a unanimous statement (thank you, Austria and Hungary): “The two-state solution, with Jerusalem as the future capital for both States, is the only way to ensure sustainable peace and stability in the region … we note with grave concern the provision—to be submitted for approval by the Israeli cabinet—on the annexation of parts of occupied Palestinian territories. … We strongly urge Israel to refrain from any unilateral decision that would lead to the annexation of any occupied Palestinian territory and would be, as such, contrary to International Law.”

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The economics of civil unrest High consumption and low savings helped set the stage for the explosion of violence across America

Posted By on June 1st, 2020

https://asiatimes.com/2020/06/the-economics-of-civil-unrest/

Economics doesn’t explain everything. Heartbreakingly high rates of incarceration, illegitimacy, disease and poverty among black Americans are tinder waiting for a spark like the death of Minneapolis resident George Floyd in police custody. “What the great French sociologist Emil Durkheim called “anomic suicide” is the Great Plague of our times. Self-destructive behavior in the form of opioid addiction, alcoholism, and violent behavior is destroying the lives of large parts of the US population,” I wrote in this space March 30. 

Nonetheless economics does tell us something, and the chart below gives context to the riots which have wracked American cities during the past several days.

Thirty years ago the United States had twice as many workers in factories than in restaurants, hotels and other leisure and hospitality businesses. Over those 30 years the number of manufacturing workers fell by about half and leisure-and-hospitality employment doubled.  Then came Covid-19, and all the employment gains of the past 30 years evaporated in two months (these are April data, and the picture has worsened since then).

Minority workers in the United States benefited from an employment boom during the Trump Administration, and black unemployment fell to just 5.8%, the lowest level in American history, thanks in large measure to the availability of low-skilled service industry jobs. These jobs disappeared the fastest and are least likely to come back in the foreseeable future, as Americans save more of their income and avoid crowded public places like restaurants.

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THE FOUNDATION RACKET: BURT PRELUTSKY

Posted By on June 1st, 2020

https://patriotpost.us/opinion/70895-the-foundation-racket-2020-06-01

If there is a foundation that isn’t corrupt, that isn’t just a way for rich people to lower their tax rate by pretending the foundation is a charity and not simply a way to inflate certain people’s political influence, I don’t believe I’ve heard of it.

The most famous of them are the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Clinton Family Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Foundation and, not satisfied with just one, George Soros has number of them under the umbrella of the Open Society Foundations.

What each of them has in common is none of their missions is to improve life for Americans; in the case of the Clintons, it’s to enrich themselves. With the others, it’s to destroy the sovereignty of nations, particularly the United States, and to bring about a globalist society.

As rotten an idea is that in general terms, it becomes even worse when you realize that, at least so far as Bill Gates is concerned, that society should be overseen by the Communist Party of China.

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Video: WHO’s Sneaky Ties to China’s Most Powerful Communists Unbeknownst to many, Xi Jinping’s wife is a WHO Goodwill Ambassador. VIDEO

Posted By on June 1st, 2020

https://patriotpost.us/articles/71024-video-whos-sneaky-ties-to-chinas-most-powerful-communists-2020-06-01

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The Slow Strangulation of Hong Kong Peter Rowe

Posted By on June 1st, 2020

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2020/06/the-slow-strangulation-of-hong-kong/

“The stifling by China of democratic development didn’t prevent Hong Kong making one of the few successful transitions from Third World poverty to prosperity and modernisation, not only in Asia, but anywhere. On present trends, it looks set to make the journey in reverse.”

The Chinese Communist Party has no peer when it comes to strategic thinking, even if the thinking is wrong or repellent. Anyone else, anywhere else, would have thought that if the Hong Kong chief executive couldn’t cope, the sensible thing to do would be to replace her with someone who could. But no. The party’s answer is to replace its representative in the territory, someone most people wouldn’t have known existed. It’s the right answer, too, for that’s where the real power lies. The new man, Luo Huining, is one who unlike his predecessor isn’t encumbered with any experience of Hong Kong matters. Luo is a party loyalist long familiar with imposing party discipline and organisation in troublesome regions.

It’s an honest answer, too. Chief executive Carrie Lam can continue to twist ineffectively in the breeze, a fit demonstration of the powerlessness of old colonial mechanisms, while the new order gets on with the real task. And the real task is not to address mass protests or their causes, as one might think. Rather, the party’s new representative has announced that his task will be the further integration of Hong Kong into the surrounding provinces of China, especially Guangdong. That means the people of Hong Kong can just get used to the fact that Beijing is not going to take any notice of their demands for democracy and openness; they can start getting used to the inevitability of being more like the rest of China.

Luo has also asserted the right of Beijing to supervise affairs in Hong Kong. The territory’s autonomy is beginning to resemble the autonomy the party promised Tibet when it took over there.