Attacks on the CIA (Are a Huge Deal), California Will Run Out of Bacon, Atlanta Police Appear to Use Attack Dog on Subdued Man, Chicago+Local Corruption Destroy Two IL Cities (The Five for 08/03/21)
Hey, welcome to The Five.
If you’re reading this via social media link, just a reminder you can subscribe for free email delivery.
One of my clients just lost his Twitter account of nearly 50,000 followers after (we think) a one-strike “music violation” that Twitter never explained (possibly from a workout tutorial filmed at a gym with a song playing over the loudspeakers). The appeal was ignored and never responded to.
Social media is pretty crazy, and last week I witnessed that you don’t have to have a controversial, divisive or political account to be “canceled” (possibly by an algorithm, or very low level, offshore employee at Twitter).
Subscribe via email (again, for free) so we don’t lose touch in case one of us gets kicked off social media in a similar manner.
[one]
To kick things off on a very serious note, it appears that some foreign actor, most likely the Russia, now has the ability to cause severe illness and mental problems via some kind of unknown weapon, and active American covert agents (that are supposed to be deep undercover) are being affected all over the world.
This phenomenon has been labeled “Havana Syndrome,” since the first victims to report the illness were Americans in Cuba.
As many as 200 Americans have come forward to describe possible symptoms of directed energy attacks, part of a wave of fresh reports that includes newly identified incidents around the world, Western officials say.
A U.S. official with knowledge of new potential cases of so-called Havana Syndrome said a steady drumbeat of cables has been coming in from overseas posts reporting new incidents — often multiple times each week.
A recent and previously unreported incident in Berlin cut short at least one diplomat's term in Germany, U.S. officials and others briefed about the matter said.
Another person who was briefed this month about recent incidents said, "It is global — but there seems to be an awful lot going on in Europe."
Officials with direct knowledge said there are now possible cases on every continent except Antarctica. In the past year, officials said, more than one American in the Central Asian country of Kyrgyzstan has experienced symptoms, including a baby.
Almost half of the possible cases involve CIA officers or their relatives, two officials said, while about 60 involve Defense Department employees or relatives, and around 50 were linked to the State Department.
There’s been a good bit of talk about aliens this summer, which I’ve personally rolled my eyes at.
In my opinion, the U.S. government has opened up some info about “UFO’s” because the next phase of warfare is underway, which likely includes both flying saucers (almost certainly some kind of combat drones)…as well as some kind of sonic or radiation weapon causing “Havana Syndrome.”
Around 1990, several residents of my native Pike County, IL swore up and down they saw some kind of triangle shaped fighter jet buzzed the tree line just as the spring planting was getting underway.
The validity of these stories was the subject of intense local debate until the mid-90’s, when the U.S. Government finally admitted the existence of the B-2 Spirit, a stealth bomber developed by the Northrop Corporation (which has an office in St Louis).
The U.S. Airforce has a major base on the Illinois side of the St. Louis suburbs, which means that a test flight likely got off course and a several farmers got the shock of their lives when a top-secret bomber buzzed low enough over the fields to scrape the green paint off the roof of a John Deere.
Put a pin in this one somewhere in your mind. I think it's highly probable that we find about some kind of hypersonic or radiation spy weapon in use, either five months or five years from now.
[two]
Jeanie Kim was able to keep her San Francisco breakfast diner afloat during COVID, but fears the bacon shortage could dry up the customer base and put her restaurant out of business.
If California, with it’s outlandish real estate prices, high taxes, wild fires and shrinking population didn’t have enough to worry about, now the Golden State is about to run out of bacon.
That’s not hyperbole.
At the beginning of next year, California will begin enforcing an animal welfare proposition approved overwhelmingly by voters in 2018 that requires more space for breeding pigs, egg-laying chickens and veal calves. National veal and egg producers are optimistic they can meet the new standards, but only 4% of hog operations now comply with the new rules. Unless the courts intervene or the state temporarily allows non-compliant meat to be sold in the state, California will lose almost all of its pork supply, much of which comes from Iowa, and pork producers will face higher costs to regain a key market.
Animal welfare organizations for years have been pushing for more humane treatment of farm animals but the California rules could be a rare case of consumers clearly paying a price for their beliefs.
With little time left to build new facilities, inseminate sows and process the offspring by January, it’s hard to see how the pork industry can adequately supply California, which consumes roughly 15% of all pork produced in the country.
“We are very concerned about the potential supply impacts and therefore cost increases,” said Matt Sutton, the public policy director for the California Restaurant Association.
California’s restaurants and groceries use about 255 million pounds of pork a month, but its farms produce only 45 million pounds, according to Rabobank, a global food and agriculture financial services company.
Analysts estimate that a package of bacon could top $10 in early 2022 in California due to severe pork shortages in the state as a result of the new law.
And, as a reminder, this was not pushed down by a state level office. This is what the residents of California voted for.
I certainly wouldn’t say there are zero changes that need to be made to modern hog farming, but I also wouldn’t say that a drastic piece of legislation that doesn’t allow adequate time for change, and causes foot shortages (at least in one category) is anything other than sheer folly.
“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” -HL Menken
[three]
An ariel shot of Lollapalooza in Chicago last weekend.
Chicago plans re re-instate a mask mandate…after the financially strapped Windy City finishes counting those sweet, sweet tax dollars from the 100,000 concertgoers at Lollapalooza over the weekend, one of the largest music festivals in the world.
Lightfoot on Thursday declined to renew her promise, made Monday in an interview with the New York Times, to reimpose a mask mandate on Chicagoans, regardless of their vaccination status, once the city passes the 200 cases per day benchmark set by local health officials. That would mean the city would meet the standard set by the CDC to deem an area where there is “substantial” transmission of the coronavirus.
Hospitalizations in Chicago are at the highest level since mid-June, according to city data.
However, Lightfoot said the data gives city officials “some reason for optimism, in quotes” because there are fewer seriously ill Chicagoans than in previous [sic] months.
This isn't the first time the Chicago mayor had stepped into make controversy. Lightfoot’s handling of the COVID era as one of the country’s most powerful mayors has been met with serious scrutiny over the past year.
Shortly before Thanksgiving, Lightfoot imposed a 10-person cap on gatherings such as weddings, funerals, and other events, according to the Chicago Tribune. She even went so far as to urge families to “cancel traditional Thanksgiving plans.”
Lightfoot also faced accusations of wanton hypocrisy when she got her hair done in April, during a time when Chicagoans were forbidden even from outdoor exercise. “I am the public face of this city,” Lightfoot said when a reporter confronted her about it. “I’m on national media and I’m out in the public eye. I take my personal hygiene very seriously. As I said, I felt like I needed to have a haircut. I’m not able to do that myself, so I got a haircut. You want to talk more about that?”
Lightfoot also celebrated in the streets amid the apparent victory of Democratic nominee Joe Biden in November.
[four]
Video appears to show a man who’s already been subdued being attacked by a police dog on the direct order of his handler.
Travis Moya was apparently suffering from some kind of mental breakdown when his wife called the police for help.
The Atlanta Journal Constitution reports:
“Obviously, when someone calls in about a mental health crisis, a K-9 unit should not be the one that responds to it,” said attorney Madeleine Simmons, who is also representing Moya. “There’s a breakdown there in the training and the processes and policies that they have in this police department.”
Alpharetta’s K-9 policy says the dogs’ handlers “may only use that degree of force reasonable and necessary to apprehend or secure a suspect.”
That policy also instructs the department’s handlers to “exhaust all reasonable means to effect an apprehension without incurring a canine bite.” In addition, department policy requires officers to intervene if they witness an “improper use of force,” records show.
Observations:
At first glance, this looks really, really bad. I’m not going to link to it, but Moya’s attorney put out a video of the puncture wounds on his arms and chest via an Instagram video, and they’re horrific.
Unless he was going for a weapon, it seems nearly impossible to justify this.
That being said, the initial video out of Kenosha, Wisconsin appeared to show video of an officer shooting a man in the back. The full story is that Jacob Blake was going for a knife, was attempting to kidnap the children in the car, and was out on bail for rape. So, let’s see the body cam footage.
Unless some new revelations are unearthed here (via cam footage or other tangible evidence) this is just disgusting policing. It does seem to be sound policy to increase officer pay, which would attract better candidates and remove the department temptation to hire questionable candidates as cops…due to a limited applicant pool from low wages compared to the market. As I’ve stated before, the reason I’m not in the FBI (and I was recruited) is because my wife and I couldn’t pay our bills on the 4 month training salary, then very low first year salary. And that’s a federal job, not a local one.
(Hat tip: Matt for this story)
[five]
A building in Cairo, IL that fell into disrepair.
The Epoch Times has some excellent on-the-ground reporting on the despair felt in most of Illinois that isn’t Chicago.
The piece profiles two small cities that have fallen into disrepair due to a mix of bad state policy from Chicago based politicians and local corruption and a lack of sound leadership that’s driven businesses away and reduced the population from 15,000 down to 2,000.
From The Epoch Times:
Over the past 30 years, Alexander County, where Cairo is located, has lost nearly a third of its population. Although not all southern Illinois counties have experienced such a drastic loss, all are shrinking.
It’s tempting to blame this population loss on the “rural decay” trends that afflict many other places in the United States. But according to the people who live there, what’s happening in southern Illinois, locally known as “Little Egypt,” is the result of decades of destructive government policies.
Just across the Mississippi River, some Missouri counties are growing. And none of Missouri’s counties have lost population at the same rate as the fastest-shrinking southern Illinois counties.
Cairo is the way it is because of decades of political corruption, rejected business opportunities, and high taxes, Collier said.
“There were lots of businesses at one time,” Collier said. “Cairo was a very popular destination. People from the tri-state area would come here to do the grocery shopping and clothes and all that type of stuff.”
The local government in Cairo has often been corrupt, Collier noted. Public utilities were charged at different prices in different locations. A pair of volunteer firefighters burned down houses in 2012 because they only got paid when fighting a fire.
Despite Cairo’s excellent location on two rivers, corruption and poor policy turned it into a ruin. But less than an hour away, the river town of Cape Girardeau, Missouri, is prospering. In the past decade, its county population grew by 4 percent.
Dozens of shops line Cape Girardeau’s streets. A few storefronts are for lease, but the town’s streets bustle with life. Unlike in Illinois towns, people stroll the streets on a weekday. Nothing’s overgrown, and the people look happier.
I’m regularly astounded that people will constantly scream about local politics, yet completely ignore the policies that rot their hometowns from within.
It’s not fair to blame all of downstate Illinois’ problems on Chicago (just the vast majority of them).
The comparison to nearby Cape Girardeau is an apt one…two similarly sized municipalities only an hour apart where people have radically different lives based on good vs. bad local and state governance.
Despite the fact that I’m very happy in Missouri, I still have a deep love for my home state. Heck, we would live on the Illinois side of the St. Louis metro…except for the fact that it would be a very foolish financial but move.
It’s a sad thing to be a local refugee from the state of your birth due to decades of corruption and failed economic policies.
(Hat tip: Craig of Second Drafts for this story).
[addendum]
McKayla Moroney on the vault in 2012.
This is the first time I’ve ever written a follow-up to a story for The Five, but significant new info has been released about Simone Biles dropping out of competition since I wrote about the story last Friday.
It appears that Biles may have had a good reason to drop, as she was experiencing “The Twisties,” a brain/body issue that can happen to gymnasts and divers, which can result in serious injury or paralysis in from a mistake in competition. (For a breakdown, check out this article from Live Science).
Now, 2012 London gymnastics competitor McKayla Maroney has come forward alleging that disgraced team doctor Larry Nasser (currently serving 175 years in prison) forced her to compete on a broken foot by hiding the X-Rays. Furthermore, Maroney alleges the break happened due to head coach Márta Károlyi pushing her to practice beyond what was reasonable.
But now, Maroney said in the video, she believes her broken foot was due to the fact that then-coach Márta Károlyi had the team start training soon after the team arrived in London. Maroney claimed that Károlyi had her complete three balance-beam routines despite being "jet-lagged" and not competing in the event.
"And that's when I broke my foot because I was dizzy as hell," Maroney said in the video. "Like, I felt terrible. I looked at my coach before the beam routine like, 'Really? You're going to make me get on this thing right now? I feel like s---.'"
During the 2012 Olympics, multiple reports said that Maroney's toe was broken - not that she suffered a broken foot. At the time, The New York Times reported that Károlyi denied that it was broken and said Maroney's toe was "bruised" and "strained."
Maroney continued in her Instagram video, saying that Nassar knew about Maroney's broken foot but lied to Károlyi, telling her that it wasn't broken. Maroney added that Nassar "was the one who helped with the X-rays and passed along the information."
Later in the video, Maroney said that Károlyi later yelled at her over the injury.
Maroney continued in the video, saying that competing at the Olympics with her injury was "risking the rest" of her gymnastics career. Following the London Olympics, she said she underwent "miracle surgery" after doctors said she may never do gymnastics again. Maroney said the surgery was a success.
In my opinion, Biles did not handle her withdrawal well from a PR perspective, but the evidence is certainly leaning towards justifying her decision from a safety perspective.
Until the next one,
-sth