Italy's horse of a different color

  The reverse Arthur C. Clarke conundrum The late Arthur C. Clarke once wrote: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. Modern governments have twisted and turned that on its head, and are working according a new law: “Any sufficiently fudged set of regulations is indistinguishable from Technology” If you listen to the authorities' spiel, you come away convinced that in Italy all actions taken by the government on COVID have been carefully crafted according to “science”. Now, before some “Breaking Bad “ fan shouts out something embarrassing, let me say that this has not been limited to Italy: the strange interlude between EMA and the national medical authorities on the Astra Zeneca Vaccine side effects is no different than the alleged interplay between insiders at the WHO and Italian government official on the Report on pandemic plan effectiveness in the Italian case. Moreover, the fudge between politics and scientific principle is also ...

 CRY HAVOC This article was first published in Intelligence Quarterly: https://www.intelligencequarterly.com/2021/03/cry-havoc/ Why do people compare COVID with war, and why is that wrong? In Italy, partly due to the fact that the present COVID tzar is a military man, some people  in the ruling classes have started uttering that “Covid is like a war”. Now, I served for my rather uneventful year as a conscript, albeit in the Carabinieri, which meant police/public order duties, and while there are a lot of Veterans in America many of which I follow and admire, let me venture out on a limb and say that “Covid is like a war” is [$%&£&%] wide off the mark. Partly I can understand the sentiment. The “wars” that the western world has experienced were since 1945 far away things. While Eastern Europeans paid in blood and tears their subsequent attempts to throw the Communist yoke, the thing was and is sheepishly ignored by the glitterati. So, the...