Unravelling the Bayeux Tapestry, episode 1: When, where and why was the Tapestry made? - HistoryExtra - "'This goes back to Bernard de Montfaucon in the early 18th century that the Bayeux embroidery is underwhelmingly triumphal. That is, that there are these moments where Norman triumph could be insisted on. The landing of the horses and Hastings for example, that are underplayed. So I just wanted to, to mention that point, as well as the fact that the the narrative is surprisingly magnanimous, towards Harold as as the loser of the Battle of Hastings, he, he gets lots of airplay'
Unravelling the Bayeux Tapestry, episode 2: How was the Tapestry created? - HistoryExtra - "‘We're incorrect to call it a tapestry and we should really describe it as an embroidery.’
‘Of course. A tapestry is normally a woven piece of textile. You see a lot of them from the med, late medieval period onwards, particularly in palaces and the National Trust properties. And they're normally hangings, but the Bayeux Tapestry is actually an embroidery. So this, it wasn't woven, we have a ground fabric and then embroiderers worked the pattern on top, they stitched it with the wool and threads as a separate process.’...
‘So it comes from the French tapisserie, which means a hanging a curtain, etc. So we're really borrowing their word rather than using the English technical word tapestry.’...
'[Linen] has to be spun. And that was all done by hand, of course until the Industrial Revolution. Using spit, usually. So every mediaeval thread that anybody wore or sat on or was kept warm by has passed between some woman's finger and thumb. And if it's linen, it's probably passed through her saliva as well.'"
Unravelling the Bayeux Tapestry, episode 3: What story does the Tapestry tell? - HistoryExtra - "‘The thing I always find a bit strange about the Battle of Hastings is why Harold fought that battle himself, you know, why didn't he leave it to others. Because the most catastrophic outcome of that battle wasn't to lose it but to get killed in it actually. I mean, if Harold was able to stay in London and and rely on his local, fjerd [sp?] or whatever to deal with Nick, William, that would have been ideal, but of course, the experience of earlier in the year, the Battle of Stamford Bridge, where obviously before that at the Battle of Fulford Gate, he'd relied on the northern hills to deal with the Norwegian threat. And, you know, couldn't rely on that that’"
Unravelling the Bayeux Tapestry, episode 4: What’s missing? - HistoryExtra - "‘Partly because of the Bayeux Tapestry, we've fallen into the habit of thinking about 1066 as though it's a struggle between Harold and William. Whereas in fact both of them were illegitimate usurpers who had no blood claim to the throne at all.’...
'Edgar Atheling is, in my mind, at least the missing man in the tapestry. And hopefully the conversation above has shown why that was the case… Edgar isn't as well known today as he might be… precisely because he's written out of the Bayeux tapestry'"
Unravelling the Bayeux Tapestry, episode 5: What now? - HistoryExtra - "‘It is so interesting how history is perceived either side of that small piece of water, if you do the 100 Years War, for example, the way it's interpreted in England is almost entirely different to how it's interpreted in France. And certainly, I think attitudes towards the tapestry are also founded on nationalist interests, really, I think, the just the very fact that it's called the tapestry of Queen Matilda. In France, the idea that it's connected directly to William the Conqueror, his wife… there's still claims that it was made in France… we tend to think about early medieval coming to an end in 1066. Moving into the Romanesque, moving into the, the high medieval, and we have this date drummed into our minds from childhood. 1066, 1066, the moment the date where everything changed. Now things obviously did change, but I think there are other important dates that come before. 1016. The importance of the fact that we had a Danish king in England. These things aren't taught in school, but 1066 is, it's almost as if the Bayeux Tapestry, the Battle of Hastings, the arrival of William the Conqueror is the starting point for English history’...
‘Even in France, I think what's interesting is the difference between Normandy and the rest of France. And indeed, so the attitude towards England and the English in Normandy is very different, actually, in Normandy, than it is to the rest of France. In many ways, in Normandy, they see the Bayeux Tapestry in the context of the D Day invasion, or liberation, if you like, of 1944. And it's, it's fascinating, really, because, you know, as you know, at the cemetery at Bayeux, they have this kind of epitaph to say that the the men that were once under William the Conqueror have come back to free the Conqueror’s homeland. And that narrative is very, very much picked up in Normandy. But for the rest of France, of course, 1066 means nothing, really, because Duke, William of Normandy was just a vassal in principle of the French King. And I guess the history of France, a bit like in England, focuses on the kind of national narrative, and, has already been said, I mean, in terms of England, that's very much about, after 1066, we somehow became something completely different, never conquered again, etc, etc. In France, it's about, Normandy has nothing to do with the history of the French monarchy. And so it's a narrative that's been kind of, I suppose, produced by, you know, French historians, essentially, that kind of distances itself from the history of Normandy and therefore, in some respects, the history of England though of course, they interlink in other ways, at later dates’...
‘In France, you know, the great early figure is Charlemagne... the Carolingian Renaissance is the great foundation or the first Renaissance of Europe’...
'The Bayeux tapestry for me is a kind of passion of England in the sense of an almost religious narrative'…
‘There's this mythic association with it, and the idea that it's been in France for 950 years, and yet it's probably made in ,England probably made by English artisans, made as a document of suppression, a document of the idea that the, the English have been subsumed under Normandy, and yet the English can't get their hands on it. There's something tantalizing about that, too. And I think that just the history of the tapestry, what happened to it, shows its mythic status in the last few centuries. Because it's 1792. I think, when the revolutionaries want to destroy it, and actually, it's, it's very understandable why French revolutionaries would want to destroy the Bayeux Tapestry, it's a celebration of all things royal and oppressive. And they want to use it to wrap up their ammunition wagon. But it's, it's then saved by the people of the town and preserved. So there's these wonderful stories that continue afterwards, you've got the connection with Napoleon, you've Napoleon recognizing that it's, it's something to be shouted about in 1803, when he puts it on display in the Louvre, and even right up to World War Two. I think you Michael, you were saying this about the idea that it has this, this recent association with Normandy with the liberation and the fact that it's it's almost taken to Berlin, Himmler almost gets it out of the Louvre, almost gets it there. This SS guard is sneaking it out of Bayeux, getting it to Paris. And all of that is drama. It's modern day drama. It's recent, but it's telling the most dramatic story from a period that lots of people like to think of as a dark age, not a particularly interesting time of our history, but the Bayeux Tapestry shatters that. It makes the medieval period fascinating, dramatic, noisy, exciting. That's why it's such a wonderful artwork.’...
‘My kind of gut reaction, I've got no evidence for this whatsoever, is that for whatever reason, it just became out of, out of, you know, its kind of story, its narrative just became not very popular, not very interest, not in if you like, and it was sort of kind of housed up in the Treasury ar Bayeux and completely forgotten about almost it would seem until at least the 15th century, and then again, almost forgotten until the 1700s. So I think in some ways, what explains its survival is because it became insignificant, ironically, at some moment in time. And then it's been sort of resurrected by us who get kind of fascinated with this, this kind of, this crazy history of the 11th century.’
‘Yeah, I couldn't agree more, Michael, I think that's exactly it. The idea that if it had remained highly controversial, highly difficult, highly problematic, and presented new problems to different audiences, it would have been destroyed. We know that. So it is an accidental survivor. And in a funny way, it's it's thankful that it was where it was in France, where where this part of the story hasn't been perhaps fetishized as much as it has in England... there's no no Jesus, no Mary, no saints’"
Brian Lilley: Building Highway 413 should be a no-brainer - "It’s a highway that has been talked about for 20 years but never built. The badly-needed highway is opposed by vested interests — many in the media — but supported by the public. The GTA West Corridor, often called Highway 413 now, was under consideration by PC and Liberal governments from 2002 until the Wynne government shelved the project in February 2018... The four- to six-lane highway, with a transit corridor, will take congestion off the 401, the busiest highway in North America. It should be a no-brainer; sadly, it’s not. With the environmental assessment proceeding and the project receiving full support from the government, the campaign to stop it is on. Well-heeled environmental groups have launched a political campaign targeting elected officials and the public. Media campaigns against the highway have also been strong and at times gone well beyond opposing the highway. A front-page story in the Toronto Star — with the headline Friends with Benefits — resorted to racial stereotypes of Italians with the layout, graphics and storytelling looking more like something you would see in a story about Mafia family business than that of land developers. It tried to paint a picture of home builders getting special favours from the Ford government. Truth be told, some of the developers who own land required for the project could stand to lose money from the highway winding its way across their lands: fewer homes built, less profitable homes built, opportunity lost — that’s the reality. What’s also true is that this highway needs to be built to ease congestion and to be ready for growth over the next several decades... Opposition to Highway 413 is less than half, at times a third, when compared with the level of support. That’s probably because the people who most support it live with the crowded highways and commutes already, know the growth that is coming, and are less likely to use public transit if they can avoid it in the post-COVID future. The Greater Toronto-Hamilton Area is expected to grow from a current population of roughly 6.5 million people to more than 11.1 million by 2051. Peel and York regions alone are expected to add two million people to their ranks, according to the province’s official growth plan. Having that many people in one region requires housing, and it requires infrastructure — like highways — in order to make society work... There is a segment of the environmental movement that believes we should stop all outward development. That simply isn’t feasible in a growing area like the GTA where families want a variety of options for their living space and the ability to get to and from work in a reasonable amount of time. We’ve heard ad nauseam about the cost of congested roads and commute times to the economy and the strain on family life. It’s for all of these reasons that this highway makes sense."
Refusing to build a highway because politicians' developer friends will supposedly benefit is cutting off your nose to spite your face. And then if a new highway doesn't benefit anyone, the anti-development lobby will say it shouldn't be built anyway
NP View: On Trans Mountain, Highway 413 Canada proves again that it can't get things done - "If a history is ever written on the saga of Canada’s efforts to build the Trans Mountain pipeline, there will have to be a chapter labelled “H for Hummingbirds.” Construction of a section of the pipeline has been ordered delayed for four months after members of the Community Nest Finding Network in Burnaby B.C. spotted a worker cutting down a tree containing a nest belonging to a species known as Anna’s hummingbird. Federal wildlife officers were alerted, which led to Environment and Climate Change Canada ordering the halt on the basis that “cutting vegetation and trees or carrying out other disruptive activities such as bulldozing or using chainsaws and heavy machinery in the vicinity of active nests will likely result in disturbance or destruction of those nests.” Under the Migratory Birds Act any situation in which migratory birds might be killed, captured or their nests threatened is an offence. Hence, the pipeline — already on track to challenge Canada’s first transcontinental railway 150 years ago for most delayed construction undertaking by a federal government — must down tools once again. Anna’s hummingbird can now join activists, environmentalists, Indigenous communities and People with Placards in successfully slowing down, and adding costs, to what might otherwise be a fairly straightforward effort to transport a product that is in high demand and essential to the economy... One reason the Trans Mountain pipeline is needed is that proposals to build pipelines in the other direction — across the country to the Atlantic coast, where crude is currently imported from emission-spewing foreign regimes at great expense and environmental risk — can’t win approval because Quebec is against it. And if Quebec is against something … well, we better not get into that. The decisions on issues like this are frequently made by people who live far away in Ottawa, some 4,300 kilometres from the tree containing the nest in question. Most don’t live near their offices in downtown Ottawa, which largely resembles a ghost town once civil servants finish their shifts. Nor do they favour tiny condominiums within walking distance of work. Instead, many drive — often alone in cars that can seat four or more — on roadways to suburbs containing homes large enough for spare bedrooms, which, like their cars and offices, have to be heated with the fuels that will be harder to ship because of the regulatory regimes they enforce. Ottawa is in Ontario, where there is currently a drive to prevent construction of a new roadway. Highway 413 would start west of Toronto and head northeast, allowing truck traffic to bypass the city and reduce the constant crush on Highway 401, North America’s busiest highway, and one of the widest at 18 lanes as it passes Pearson International Airport, Canada’s busiest when it isn’t shuttered by pandemics. Opponents to Highway 413 include activists, environmentalists, People with Placards, journalists who live elsewhere and people who already own homes in the region and don’t want a new highway nearby. One of their key complaints is that the roadway would attract housing, factories and workplaces, and reduce farmland. Canada currently has a housing crunch so dire it is being compared to the COVID crisis in terms of emergency status. The Globe and Mail, popular with many in Ottawa who make decisions for communities they rarely visit, carried a column this week headlined: “The housing boom is ripping apart the financial fabric of Canadian life.” The Toronto Star, widely read by Liberals and predictably horrified by the idea of a highway, insists Ottawa must absolutely do something about housing. The western entrance to Highway 413 would be at Milton, ranked in 2019 by Maclean’s as the second fastest-growing town in Canada. Anyone who heads south from the town will pass by one spanking new development after another, field after field having been gobbled up as developers race to feed the demand for housing in and around the Lake Ontario horseshoe. New homes demand new roads, new malls, new workplaces. Milton’s southern march will soon meet with a parallel building boom running north from the lake, and the ever-growing communities of Brampton-Mississauga to the east, creating one vast suburban conurbation fated to pour traffic onto the already overloaded network of aging roadways. All these developments gobble up land at a rate that has somehow failed to prompt the outpouring of angst that has greeted Highway 413. Opponents condemn it as “sprawl,” while neglecting to suggest how else housing can be provided without building homes. But we already know that the job of activists, environmentalists, People with Placards and regulators in Ottawa is not to suggest solutions, but to oppose projects like roads and pipelines that serve the demands of Canadians and help keep the country solvent. Opposing is easy. Canadians are very good at opposing. We’re not so good at getting things done. Maybe if we were, we’d have done a better job of battling the pandemic. But when indecision, delay, uncertainty, risk-aversion and equivocation embed themselves in the national character, doing nothing becomes a pass time rather than an excuse."
Then these same activists will turn around and blame "greedy companies" for the high cost of living
Meme - "Will You Be Mother to My Children?"
"Aww Yes!"
"They Are Waiting for You at Home"
Ginny Hogan_ on Twitter - "Maybe people who meditate for an hour/day are happier because they live a life that affords them an hour/day to meditate"
What Happens to Patients When Thousands of Cardiologists Leave Town? - Freakonomics - "patients were less likely to die while the doctors were away. But only, we should point out, for certain high-risk patients in certain kinds of hospitals. Jena and his colleagues looked at teaching hospitals and non-teaching hospitals. The assumption is that teaching hospitals have more of the type of cardiologists who are likely to attend conferences, but that’s only a hunch. And that is where Jena found the surprise in his data. In non-teaching hospitals, the conference didn’t seem to matter. But patients who were admitted for cardiac arrest to a teaching hospital during one of the cardiology conferences were roughly 10 percentage points more likely to survive than if they were admitted on non-conference dates. Patients with heart failure — again, at teaching hospitals — were 8 percentage points more likely to survive during a cardiology conference... while patients with cardiac arrest and heart failure were less likely to die during a cardiology conference, there was no difference in outcome for patients who were admitted with a heart attack. The study did find, however, that these patients received far less invasive treatment – stents and angioplasties, for instance – when many cardiologists were away...
JENA: At the very least, what this would suggest is that, look, we’re able to reduce these procedures by about a third, and yet we see no difference in mortality, in heart attacks...
This, Jena says, brings us to the “less is more” dictum in medicine – which, he notes, is not universally embraced.
JENA: The perception of healthcare is that by doing more we can improve health. And what we need to recognize is that so much of healthcare, so much of the clinical decisions that we make operate in this gray zone. It’s not black and white. And it could very well be the case that in the gray, less may be more... I think the American College of Cardiology released a statement, which was very well-worded. It basically said, it’s reassuring to know that during dates of national cardiology conferences, our patients receive no worse care, which is technically true...
In 2018, we studied what happened to patients who have heart attacks during the dates of a different, but very specific cardiology meeting that is attended by doctors called interventional cardiologists. These are the types of doctors who specialize in procedures to treat heart attack patients. The general cardiology meetings that I’d studied initially are attended by all sorts of different cardiologists. Studying the effect of this specialized event kind of gave us a way to zoom in. And we still found that patients with heart attacks had lower mortality rates if hospitalized during the dates of an interventional cardiology meeting. We didn’t see a difference in age or gender between the two groups of doctors. But here’s what we could measure: The people who were going to conferences were more likely to have attended a top medical school, more likely to have received research funding from the National Institutes of Health or led a clinical trial, and they had nearly three times as many publications, on average. We can infer that since the doctors who remained behind to treat patients tended to be less specialized in research, they may be more experienced and specialized in patient care... My colleagues Hirotaka Kato, Yusuke Tsugawa, Jose Figueroa and I, we examined whether doctors who treat fewer patients per year have worse outcomes than doctors who treat more. We studied hospitalized medical patients because those patients typically don’t choose their doctors and vice versa, which means it’s a good natural experiment. And we found that those doctors who split time between seeing patients and on research, administrative roles, or other work — and so they treat fewer patients — those patients had higher hospital mortality rates than those treated by doctors who were clinically more active... these follow up studies point to something that economists, and probably all of us, have known for a long time: that specialization matters. Practice matters."
This is evidence against being bullish about generalists vs specialists
Maher: It's Not Liberal for People Making Less to Pay for College Educations of Those Who Make More - "“Liberals see more school the way Republicans see tax cuts, as the answer to everything.” Maher began by saying that higher education in the U.S. is “a racket that sells you a very expensive ticket to the upper-middle class.”"
Bill Maher Slams Higher Education as a 'Grift,' 'Overpaid Babysitters' - "Maher went on to call colleges “giant, luxury daycare centers, with overpaid babysitters anxious to indulge every student whim.” “Why is China kicking our ass? Because in 2019, we issued more undergrad degrees in visual and performing arts than in computer and information science or math”... “In the grift that is our higher education, when you want to ‘move up’ — hold on there, not so fast, toll booth ahead — you need to pay for more ‘education’ before we decide if you can do what you do,” he added. “Fuck, this is what Scientology does, makes you keep taking courses to move up to the bridge of total freedom.” Maher also pointed out the fact that the cost for obtaining a college degree has gone up four times the rate of inflation, and colleges are getting away with charging “whatever they want” because a degree is “so necessary” in order to move up in society. “Since 1985, the average cost of college has risen 500 percent — it doubles every nine years,” he explained. “Every year it increases at four times the rate of inflation. And yet, no one knows how to change a tire.” “The answer isn’t to make college free. The answer is to make it more unnecessary — which it is for most jobs”... Despite his long history of left-wing ideology, Maher has turned against the more totalitarian, “woke” faction of progressives in the past year. Last month, the talk show host lamented that the left has become the party of “speech codes and blacklists and moral panics.” “I don’t want to live in a world where liberals are the uptight ones and conservatives do drugs and get laid,” Maher said. “Once upon a time, the right were the ones offended by everything. They were the party of speech codes and blacklists and moral panics and demanding some TV show had to go. Well, now that’s us.” “We’re the fun-suckers now,” he added. “We suck the fun out of everything: Halloween, the Oscars, childhood, Twitter, comedy. It’s like woke kids on campus decided to be all the worst parts of a Southern Baptist, and that’s wrong. Because it’s cultural appropriation.”"
Russia tells France's Champagne region to label its bubbly as 'sparkling wine' - The Washington Post - "A law signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin on July 2 will require French champagne makers to add a “sparkling wine” reference to the back of their bottles sold in Russia. The French champagne industry has long considered itself separate from that catchall category because it says the name “champagne” refers exclusively to the bubbly produced in the French region of the same name. The new legislation also stipulates that makers of Russian “shampanskoye” — the Russian word for champagne — will get a unique status, exempting it from the sparkling wine note on the back... Vasya Oblomov, a popular Russian musician, joked on Twitter that the country should now call all cars produced in Russia “Mercedes” while labeling the German-made models “foreign-assembled cars.” Even Kremlin propagandist Margarita Simonyan, the editor in chief of the government-funded TV channel RT (formerly Russia Today), said the law “looks very silly.”... France’s Champagne Committee has long been in a feud with a small Swiss village that is named Champagne but is banned from using its own name on wines and other products."
Why are we so obsessed with therapy? - "Not so long ago, therapy was widely seen as something only for the seriously disturbed or neurotic, overeducated Americans. Now, all that is good is being turned into therapy. Rather than seeking help on Dr Freud’s couch, people are turning to Monty Don’s allotment or Jamie Oliver’s kitchen to soothe their troubled psyches. Ancient philosophy is also undergoing this process of therapisation. Today is day six of “Live Like a Stoic Week”, an experiment led by a group of academics and psychotherapists as part of an ongoing project to “examine the implications of ancient healthcare and philosophy for our own society”... what is of value in them threatens to be lost or perverted if we turn all that is therapeutic into forms of therapy... Contact with nature is not like vitamin D: something we need a minimum dose of, or else we stop functioning. It is simply something that most – but importantly not all – find an important part of a good, rounded life. There are lots of things that fulfil such roles, but it would be absurd to think of their absence as disorders and their introduction as treatments. Most people would rather have a good, intimate relationship than not. But that does not mean the single suffer from “partner deficit disorder”, the cure for which is marriage. The things we value tend to make us feel better, but that is not primarily why we value them. If you love your partner, for example, she will almost certainly make your life happier. But the reason you will stick together through hard times is that the relationship with her is valued more than how being in it happens to make you feel. Philosophy is an even clearer example. The only good reason to embrace a philosophical position is that you are convinced it is true or at least makes sense of the world better than the alternatives... In muddying the waters between philosophies of life and therapy, people do therapy a disservice, too. Therapy is often criticised for merely providing crutches, tools and strategies for coping, not treating the whole person. But at its best, that is all that therapy can and should do. Developing a comprehensive outlook on life, along with a set of values that guide us, is far too important a matter to be left to therapists. The therapist’s job is to help clients get back to the position of being able to pursue their own quests through life, not deliver them to their destinations."
Richest People in Asia Pour Into Singapore's Billionaire Playground During Covid - Bloomberg - "The number of single family offices in the city-state has doubled since the end of 2019 to about 400, including firms recently set up by Google co-founder Sergey Brin and Shu Ping, the billionaire behind Chinese hotpot empire Haidilao International Holding Ltd. Demand for private golf club memberships is soaring, real estate prices have jumped the most since 2018 and until the recent clampdown, Michelin-star restaurants were packed. Global banks like UBS Group AG meanwhile are expanding in the city to manage the massive influx of assets... Seletar Aiport, the hub for private jets, has seen demand for hangar space soar during the pandemic... Statistics released by the Land Transport Authority show that the number of Bentleys and Rolls Royces cruising the streets of Singapore leaped to more than 1,300 in 2020, the biggest jump since 2013. That trend is continuing, with another 70 of these cars registered in the first four months of 2021, in a nation of just 5.7 million people... The influx of foreigners is helping to fuel the property market, with the strongest growth in the luxury sector. It’s also made Singapore an outlier in the rental market, with rates rising even as they fall in New York, Hong Kong and London. All this visible display of wealth can cause resentment, according to Toby Carroll, who lectures on political economy at the City University of Hong Kong and previously worked at the National University of Singapore."
How X-Men: Apocalypse Killed the X-Men Franchise - "If you want to get technical about it, it’s easy to pinpoint exactly what killed the X-Men movies: Disney's purchase of 20th Century Fox. Disney, owning Marvel Studios, had its own plans for the beloved Marvel Comics series, and that plan could not be enacted if they continued moving forward with Fox's cast and (confusing) continuity of the X-Men timeline up until that point. As further evidence, look to Disney's ho-hum marketing of Dark Phoenix after its acquisition of Fox, and the paltry box office result. It was a whimpered ending to a franchise that helped kick-start the comic book movie genre as we know it with 2000's critically and financially successful inagural installment... Cyclops and the other new versions of familiar mutants don’t have much time to register as distinct personalities. What’s old is new again and these characters are once again upstaged by other figures in the story. Xavier, Magneto, and Mystique are the center of the story for the third movie in a row, while Hugh Jackman's Wolverine even comes back for a baffling set piece in which he feels completely out of place. And while future To All the Boys I've Loved Before star Lana Condor barely gets anything to do as Jubilee, the most tragic victim of X-Men: Apocalypse’s lack of interest in new characters is Oscar Isaac's titular villain... Quicksilver (Evan Peters) is brought back for another slow-motion set piece set to a period-era tune while Magneto is once again a good person until he abruptly isn’t. At times, Apocalypse feels like a clip show of past X-Men movies; the cinematic equivalent of a greatest hits cover album... As the finale sequence drones on, it becomes glaringly apparent that all this movie wants to do is emulate the style of the Avengers movies, complete with lots of CG mayhem representing a world-ending threat. There is no chance for distinct personalities of the characters or unique artistic visions to come through here, as the desire to copy other major superhero movies has become too overwhelming. In trying to create its own Battle of New York, Apocalypse merely proves you can annihilate a real-world city in stunning detail and inspire no reaction whatsoever from the viewer. Without any characters to get invested in, all this carnage just registers as meaningless."
Of course, the author had to complain it wasn't SJW enough
HANSON: The ignoble lie | Toronto Sun - "Fauci misled the country about mask-wearing during the pandemic by claiming they were of little use. But he argued that he lied so the public would not make a run on masks, deplete the supply, and thus rob medical professionals of protective equipment. Fauci also told “noble” lies about the likely percentage of the public needing to be vaccinated to achieve herd immunity. He kept raising the bar — from 60% to 70% to 75% to 80%, to 85%. Apparently, Fauci feared a lower figure, even if accurate, might lull people into complacency about getting inoculated. Fauci also lied about his own role in routing U.S. aid money to subsidize gain-of-function viral research at the Wuhan virology lab — the likely birthplace of COVID-19. Either Fauci was hiding his own culpability, or he believed the American people might not be able to fully accept that some of their own health officials were promoting the sort of research that was partially responsible for more than 700,000 American deaths. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas has serially lied about the number of undocumented immigrants who have crossed into the United States. He falsely claimed mounted agents were whipping migrants. He fibbed about the purported lack of federal data of apprehensions, detentions, and deportations. His assertion that the border is secure was a joke. Apparently, Mayorkas believes the public would go ballistic or his own administration would be roundly despised, if he told the bitter truth about the border: by intent, the Biden administration has apparently deliberately left it wide open. And it will likely allow two million undocumented immigrants into the country in the current fiscal year. Lots of other unelected federal officials lied over the past five years by claiming or implying that harming the Trump administration was in the public interest. Former FBI directors Andrew McCabe and James Comey likely misled the nation. McCabe admittedly lied that he did not leak FBI information to the media. James Comey lied under oath on multiple occasions in congressional cross-examinations and claimed he did not know or could not remember basic facts about his own role in promoting the Russian collusion hoax. Apparently, Comey and McCabe believed that by being less than truthful, they might better emasculate Donald Trump. And that result would be beneficial to America. Our former intelligence leaders may have been the most brazen liars. Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper lied to Congress about the NSA surveillance program, though he denied it. When caught in the untruth, Clapper reverted to the noble lie that he gave the least untruthful answer, apparently on the pretense that he did not wish to damage the reputation of an important intelligence agency. Ditto John Brennan, the former head of the CIA. On two occasions he lied under oath about the agency’s monitoring of Senate staffers’ computers and the deaths of civilians caused by U.S. drone assassination missions along the Afghanistan border. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley lied for days about the details of an accidental drone strike that killed innocent women and children in Afghanistan. Either Milley is now lying when he says he warned Joe Biden about the disasters to come in Afghanistan or Biden is lying when he denies hearing any such advice. Many of the details of Milley’s conversations with authors Bob Woodward and Robert Costa as reported in their recent muckraking book were abjectly denied by Milley. The list of such lies could be vastly expanded. IRS functionary Lois Lerner never told the whole untruth about weaponizing the IRS... Special counsel Robert Mueller told a whopper under oath, claiming to know almost nothing about the Steele dossier and the misadventures of Fusion GPS. Both were the two catalysts that prompted his entire investigation of “collusion” in the first place... “noble lies” are rarely spun for anyone’s interests other than those of the liars themselves."
The left only care about Truth when it fits their agenda
