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You can transform the world with blockchain: Dr. Jane Thomason

Jane Thomason is an Australian academic who spent 15 years running hospitals and doing development work abroad followed by a 20-year stint building a $250-million…

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Jane Thomason is an Australian academic who spent 15 years running hospitals and doing development work abroad followed by a 20-year stint building a $250-million revenue company.

Thomason now a blockchain adviser to the World Health Organization says she had an epiphany while thinking about the 2004 Tsunami in Indonesia, in which the lives of over 200,000 people were washed away.

No one knew the identities of the people coming to the hospitals all the identity documents were gone, all the bank records were gone, all the health records were gone. People wanted to send money to the people who were alive, but no one could send money directly.

 

Dr Jane Thomason
Dr Jane Thomason believes in the power of blockchain to help make the world a better place.

 

Thomason believes that if this data had been recorded on a blockchain, people would be able to reconnect with their data really quickly and access their identity, health and bank records. The realization convinced Thomason that she needed to play a role in helping the technology scale for humanitarian applications.

My blockchain story is quite cute, Thomason says, explaining that she completely ignored her sons advice when in 2010 he encouraged her to buy Bitcoin. He brought the subject up again in 2015, becoming really frustrated with Thomasons inaction.

He said, Listen Bitcoin is built on blockchain, and blockchain is going to change everything and you need to learn about it.

Thomason began reading and, after several months, began to feel a strong pull toward the industry. Shes since pivoted into the blockchain for social impact niche and is the author of several books including Blockchain Technology for Global Social Change and Blockchaining the World, and acts as a blockchain adviser to various international organizations, such as the World Health Organization and the Commonwealth Secretariat.

 

 

Dr Jane Thomason
Dr. Jane Thomason is a regular at crypto conferences around the world. Source: drjanethomason.net

 

 

Thomason believes that beyond all the talk of cryptocurrency, blockchain is a technology that can solve practical problems for some of the most disadvantaged groups in the world by facilitating and securing identity, health records, banking, supply chains and supporting climate action. Despite the rosy picture, she remains worried about the current state of the industry and questions whether the industry understands its own climate footprint.

Social benefits of blockchains

When it comes to blockchain and identity, Thomason believes that recognition by governments is the biggest hurdle because many people around the world do not have any type of ID, to begin with. Identity is a persons window to the world, making it perhaps the most important problem to solve.

Financial inclusion can be tackled with stablecoins, which people can easily send and receive. Despite being much lauded by the Bitcoin community, Thomason remains skeptical of El Salvadors decision to make Bitcoin legal tender due to the inherent volatility.

 

 

 

 

While running the London Blockchain Week Hackathon in 2017, conveniently sponsored by the Abt Associates, Thomason invited a group of central bankers from the Bank of Papua New Guinea to witness 200 of the smartest people in the world sitting there trying to figure out how to solve this problem of financial inclusion. The winners then accompanied them to Papua New Guinea to create a proof-of-concept for a new payment system.

They went to a super isolated village, and without electricity and only 2G mobile phones, and were able to make transfers to that village and convert it into fiat in the local store.

As for supply chains, Thomason is quick to point to problems even in the medical sector regarding fake personal protection equipment devices, which began to circulate during the pandemic. If supply chains can be clearly recorded onto blockchains, both manufacturers and buyers can see transparently right through the entire supply chain and know whats going on. The same goes for food and can help farmers avoid exploitation via transparency.

 

 

Jane Thomason
Dr. Jane Thomason sees opportunities for blockchain to aid climate change efforts. Source:drjanethomason.net

 

 

Thomason also sees a bright future for blockchain as a tool for climate action. One opportunity, she says, is the tokenization of green bonds and carbon offsets, as well as NFTs, which can represent carbon offsets. She cites the example of the Brooklyn Microgrid, which is a marketplace for locally generated solar power.

In developing countries, she explains, someone with a solar panel could sell generated power to others for micropayments, making electricity available in places where people might otherwise not be able to keep a mobile phone charged. Developing countries often serve as great proving grounds for new technologies, which could also be implemented on much larger scales in developed economies.

 

 

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Building blocks

In the aftermath of her epiphany, she left her position at Abt Associates, the parent company that had bought her company JTA International in 2014. She had been building JTA for 20 years, and it had over $250 million in revenue and 600 employees.

MAFs star Georgina Fairweather does NFTs
Her daughter is Married At First Sight star Georgia Fairweather, who is passionate about NFTs.

She needed to regroup. I started traveling around the world, going to blockchain conferences and meetups, looking for ways she could contribute to the nascent sector. One of the first things she did was begin advising various projects, including the Kerala Blockchain Academy and Shyft Network.

Thomason found that affiliating herself with blockchain projects was important because if you dont belong to an organization, people think youre a bit weird. When unassociated, she found it difficult to be taken seriously as an advocate for blockchain as a tool for social impact at a time when everyone was simply trying to raise millions of dollars with ICOs.

Coming from a work culture where business cards were the norm, she noticed that the attendees of blockchain conferences preferred instead to connect digitally. Thomason found herself setting up a LinkedIn profile where she began writing about blockchain and social impact. Unintentionally and totally organically, I got this following, she says, referring to her 26,000 followers.

If you believe in something and have something important to say, you can build a following without maintaining it.

With all her explorations of the industry, Thomason came to the view that there was a need for deeper education relating to ways in which blockchain could be used to create impact.

In 2019, she launched Social Impact Week in London, and in 2020, we had our last blockchain week just before the borders closed due to the pandemic, after which Thomason was effectively stuck in Australia for two years.

I spent my time during the lockdown learning about DeFi, she says, explaining that in 2020, she came across Novum Insights, a Decentralized Finance (DeFi) analytic company that she invested in on the condition that she be allowed to work directly with the team in order to learn about DeFi. The experience, Thomason says, inspired her to write her fifth book Applied Ethics in a Digital Age. She was able to move to Dubai in 2022.

Healthcare development

Thomason was born in Scotland before moving to Australia, where her father worked as a rural doctor in North Queensland. When she was 16, her mother took her on an Oxfam study tour to Indonesia, which was sort of like a combination of a holiday, but you go and see all their development projects, and you see the good work that theyre doing, Thomason recalls.

 

 

 

 

She began her career after graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in Social Work from the University of Queensland in 1979, after which she volunteered at the Asia Development Bank in Indonesia before completing her Masters in Public Health at the University of Sydney in 1981.

Thomason's book
Thomasons books are available on Amazon.

Thomasons research involved fieldwork in Papua New Guinea, where she learned about the challenges faced by economically and geographically isolated people. Upon completing her Ph.D. in 1994, Thomason returned to Queensland to work as the CEO of a hospital, among other positions.

In 1999, Thomason founded JTA International to develop public health in developing countries. Over time, it expanded to various other industries, including mining, and was sold to Abt Associates in 2014, with Thomason agreeing to stay on board for four years to grow the company in Asia and the Pacific into other sectors outside of healthcare. The years following saw the company triple its revenues from $50 million to $250 million. Seeing a dire need for digital transformation, Thomason, however, stepped out of the CEO role in 2017 to become the parent companys global ambassador for its Center for Digital Transformation in the United Kingdom.

 

 

 

 

Though Thomason sees NFTs as a valuable canvas for digital art in support of climate initiatives, she is quick to bring up what she considers their dark side: the current power consumption of Ethereum. Im a little bit cautious about that because most NFTs build on Ethereum, and Ethereum is one of the power-hungry blockchains, she notes. Such art would by no means solve climate change, but she sees them as a way to galvanize climate action and reward artists.

I feel that we need to find ways to move the NFT community off Ethereum and onto Algorand, Solana, Cardano and those blockchains that arent that energy hungry.

Ethereums creator Vitalik Buterin argues that the chains upcoming transition to proof-of-stake will provide a fitting solution to climate concerns.

With time, Thomason notes that many others have begun to advocate for the climate and social benefits side of blockchain. One of these is Miroslav Polzer, European Climate Pact Ambassador in Austria, who is trying to build a DAO for climate action.

As new technologies are integrated with blockchain, perhaps like the biometric suit worn by Cage The Elephants lead singer, Thomason imagines a setting in which Internet-of-Things devices could measure positive actions taken by people and a smart contract can trigger a payment to people for having taken that climate action.

I think that the job that weve got ahead of us is really an education job because were so consumed with whats going on in currencies that most people have no idea of the social utility of blockchain, Thomason concludes.

 

 

Read More: Six questions for Jane Thomason

6 Questions for Jane Thomason of Kasei Holdings

 

 

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International

Beloved mall retailer files Chapter 7 bankruptcy, will liquidate

The struggling chain has given up the fight and will close hundreds of stores around the world.

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It has been a brutal period for several popular retailers. The fallout from the covid pandemic and a challenging economic environment have pushed numerous chains into bankruptcy with Tuesday Morning, Christmas Tree Shops, and Bed Bath & Beyond all moving from Chapter 11 to Chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation.

In all three of those cases, the companies faced clear financial pressures that led to inventory problems and vendors demanding faster, or even upfront payment. That creates a sort of inevitability.

Related: Beloved retailer finds life after bankruptcy, new famous owner

When a retailer faces financial pressure it sets off a cycle where vendors become wary of selling them items. That leads to barren shelves and no ability for the chain to sell its way out of its financial problems. 

Once that happens bankruptcy generally becomes the only option. Sometimes that means a Chapter 11 filing which gives the company a chance to negotiate with its creditors. In some cases, deals can be worked out where vendors extend longer terms or even forgive some debts, and banks offer an extension of loan terms.

In other cases, new funding can be secured which assuages vendor concerns or the company might be taken over by its vendors. Sometimes, as was the case with David's Bridal, a new owner steps in, adds new money, and makes deals with creditors in order to give the company a new lease on life.

It's rare that a retailer moves directly into Chapter 7 bankruptcy and decides to liquidate without trying to find a new source of funding.

Mall traffic has varied depending upon the type of mall.

Image source: Getty Images

The Body Shop has bad news for customers  

The Body Shop has been in a very public fight for survival. Fears began when the company closed half of its locations in the United Kingdom. That was followed by a bankruptcy-style filing in Canada and an abrupt closure of its U.S. stores on March 4.

"The Canadian subsidiary of the global beauty and cosmetics brand announced it has started restructuring proceedings by filing a Notice of Intention (NOI) to Make a Proposal pursuant to the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act (Canada). In the same release, the company said that, as of March 1, 2024, The Body Shop US Limited has ceased operations," Chain Store Age reported.

A message on the company's U.S. website shared a simple message that does not appear to be the entire story.

"We're currently undergoing planned maintenance, but don't worry we're due to be back online soon."

That same message is still on the company's website, but a new filing makes it clear that the site is not down for maintenance, it's down for good.

The Body Shop files for Chapter 7 bankruptcy

While the future appeared bleak for The Body Shop, fans of the brand held out hope that a savior would step in. That's not going to be the case. 

The Body Shop filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in the United States.

"The US arm of the ethical cosmetics group has ceased trading at its 50 outlets. On Saturday (March 9), it filed for Chapter 7 insolvency, under which assets are sold off to clear debts, putting about 400 jobs at risk including those in a distribution center that still holds millions of dollars worth of stock," The Guardian reported.

After its closure in the United States, the survival of the brand remains very much in doubt. About half of the chain's stores in the United Kingdom remain open along with its Australian stores. 

The future of those stores remains very much in doubt and the chain has shared that it needs new funding in order for them to continue operating.

The Body Shop did not respond to a request for comment from TheStreet.   

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Government

Are Voters Recoiling Against Disorder?

Are Voters Recoiling Against Disorder?

Authored by Michael Barone via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The headlines coming out of the Super…

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Are Voters Recoiling Against Disorder?

Authored by Michael Barone via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The headlines coming out of the Super Tuesday primaries have got it right. Barring cataclysmic changes, Donald Trump and Joe Biden will be the Republican and Democratic nominees for president in 2024.

(Left) President Joe Biden delivers remarks on canceling student debt at Culver City Julian Dixon Library in Culver City, Calif., on Feb. 21, 2024. (Right) Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. President Donald Trump stands on stage during a campaign event at Big League Dreams Las Vegas in Las Vegas, Nev., on Jan. 27, 2024. (Mario Tama/Getty Images; David Becker/Getty Images)

With Nikki Haley’s withdrawal, there will be no more significantly contested primaries or caucuses—the earliest both parties’ races have been over since something like the current primary-dominated system was put in place in 1972.

The primary results have spotlighted some of both nominees’ weaknesses.

Donald Trump lost high-income, high-educated constituencies, including the entire metro area—aka the Swamp. Many but by no means all Haley votes there were cast by Biden Democrats. Mr. Trump can’t afford to lose too many of the others in target states like Pennsylvania and Michigan.

Majorities and large minorities of voters in overwhelmingly Latino counties in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley and some in Houston voted against Joe Biden, and even more against Senate nominee Rep. Colin Allred (D-Texas).

Returns from Hispanic precincts in New Hampshire and Massachusetts show the same thing. Mr. Biden can’t afford to lose too many Latino votes in target states like Arizona and Georgia.

When Mr. Trump rode down that escalator in 2015, commentators assumed he’d repel Latinos. Instead, Latino voters nationally, and especially the closest eyewitnesses of Biden’s open-border policy, have been trending heavily Republican.

High-income liberal Democrats may sport lawn signs proclaiming, “In this house, we believe ... no human is illegal.” The logical consequence of that belief is an open border. But modest-income folks in border counties know that flows of illegal immigrants result in disorder, disease, and crime.

There is plenty of impatience with increased disorder in election returns below the presidential level. Consider Los Angeles County, America’s largest county, with nearly 10 million people, more people than 40 of the 50 states. It voted 71 percent for Mr. Biden in 2020.

Current returns show county District Attorney George Gascon winning only 21 percent of the vote in the nonpartisan primary. He’ll apparently face Republican Nathan Hochman, a critic of his liberal policies, in November.

Gascon, elected after the May 2020 death of counterfeit-passing suspect George Floyd in Minneapolis, is one of many county prosecutors supported by billionaire George Soros. His policies include not charging juveniles as adults, not seeking higher penalties for gang membership or use of firearms, and bringing fewer misdemeanor cases.

The predictable result has been increased car thefts, burglaries, and personal robberies. Some 120 assistant district attorneys have left the office, and there’s a backlog of 10,000 unprosecuted cases.

More than a dozen other Soros-backed and similarly liberal prosecutors have faced strong opposition or have left office.

St. Louis prosecutor Kim Gardner resigned last May amid lawsuits seeking her removal, Milwaukee’s John Chisholm retired in January, and Baltimore’s Marilyn Mosby was defeated in July 2022 and convicted of perjury in September 2023. Last November, Loudoun County, Virginia, voters (62 percent Biden) ousted liberal Buta Biberaj, who declined to prosecute a transgender student for assault, and in June 2022 voters in San Francisco (85 percent Biden) recalled famed radical Chesa Boudin.

Similarly, this Tuesday, voters in San Francisco passed ballot measures strengthening police powers and requiring treatment of drug-addicted welfare recipients.

In retrospect, it appears the Floyd video, appearing after three months of COVID-19 confinement, sparked a frenzied, even crazed reaction, especially among the highly educated and articulate. One fatal incident was seen as proof that America’s “systemic racism” was worse than ever and that police forces should be defunded and perhaps abolished.

2020 was “the year America went crazy,” I wrote in January 2021, a year in which police funding was actually cut by Democrats in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and Denver. A year in which young New York Times (NYT) staffers claimed they were endangered by the publication of Sen. Tom Cotton’s (R-Ark.) opinion article advocating calling in military forces if necessary to stop rioting, as had been done in Detroit in 1967 and Los Angeles in 1992. A craven NYT publisher even fired the editorial page editor for running the article.

Evidence of visible and tangible discontent with increasing violence and its consequences—barren and locked shelves in Manhattan chain drugstores, skyrocketing carjackings in Washington, D.C.—is as unmistakable in polls and election results as it is in daily life in large metropolitan areas. Maybe 2024 will turn out to be the year even liberal America stopped acting crazy.

Chaos and disorder work against incumbents, as they did in 1968 when Democrats saw their party’s popular vote fall from 61 percent to 43 percent.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

Tyler Durden Sat, 03/09/2024 - 23:20

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Government

Veterans Affairs Kept COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate In Place Without Evidence

Veterans Affairs Kept COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate In Place Without Evidence

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The…

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Veterans Affairs Kept COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate In Place Without Evidence

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) reviewed no data when deciding in 2023 to keep its COVID-19 vaccine mandate in place.

Doses of a COVID-19 vaccine in Washington in a file image. (Jacquelyn Martin/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

VA Secretary Denis McDonough said on May 1, 2023, that the end of many other federal mandates “will not impact current policies at the Department of Veterans Affairs.”

He said the mandate was remaining for VA health care personnel “to ensure the safety of veterans and our colleagues.”

Mr. McDonough did not cite any studies or other data. A VA spokesperson declined to provide any data that was reviewed when deciding not to rescind the mandate. The Epoch Times submitted a Freedom of Information Act for “all documents outlining which data was relied upon when establishing the mandate when deciding to keep the mandate in place.”

The agency searched for such data and did not find any.

The VA does not even attempt to justify its policies with science, because it can’t,” Leslie Manookian, president and founder of the Health Freedom Defense Fund, told The Epoch Times.

“The VA just trusts that the process and cost of challenging its unfounded policies is so onerous, most people are dissuaded from even trying,” she added.

The VA’s mandate remains in place to this day.

The VA’s website claims that vaccines “help protect you from getting severe illness” and “offer good protection against most COVID-19 variants,” pointing in part to observational data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that estimate the vaccines provide poor protection against symptomatic infection and transient shielding against hospitalization.

There have also been increasing concerns among outside scientists about confirmed side effects like heart inflammation—the VA hid a safety signal it detected for the inflammation—and possible side effects such as tinnitus, which shift the benefit-risk calculus.

President Joe Biden imposed a slate of COVID-19 vaccine mandates in 2021. The VA was the first federal agency to implement a mandate.

President Biden rescinded the mandates in May 2023, citing a drop in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations. His administration maintains the choice to require vaccines was the right one and saved lives.

“Our administration’s vaccination requirements helped ensure the safety of workers in critical workforces including those in the healthcare and education sectors, protecting themselves and the populations they serve, and strengthening their ability to provide services without disruptions to operations,” the White House said.

Some experts said requiring vaccination meant many younger people were forced to get a vaccine despite the risks potentially outweighing the benefits, leaving fewer doses for older adults.

By mandating the vaccines to younger people and those with natural immunity from having had COVID, older people in the U.S. and other countries did not have access to them, and many people might have died because of that,” Martin Kulldorff, a professor of medicine on leave from Harvard Medical School, told The Epoch Times previously.

The VA was one of just a handful of agencies to keep its mandate in place following the removal of many federal mandates.

“At this time, the vaccine requirement will remain in effect for VA health care personnel, including VA psychologists, pharmacists, social workers, nursing assistants, physical therapists, respiratory therapists, peer specialists, medical support assistants, engineers, housekeepers, and other clinical, administrative, and infrastructure support employees,” Mr. McDonough wrote to VA employees at the time.

This also includes VA volunteers and contractors. Effectively, this means that any Veterans Health Administration (VHA) employee, volunteer, or contractor who works in VHA facilities, visits VHA facilities, or provides direct care to those we serve will still be subject to the vaccine requirement at this time,” he said. “We continue to monitor and discuss this requirement, and we will provide more information about the vaccination requirements for VA health care employees soon. As always, we will process requests for vaccination exceptions in accordance with applicable laws, regulations, and policies.”

The version of the shots cleared in the fall of 2022, and available through the fall of 2023, did not have any clinical trial data supporting them.

A new version was approved in the fall of 2023 because there were indications that the shots not only offered temporary protection but also that the level of protection was lower than what was observed during earlier stages of the pandemic.

Ms. Manookian, whose group has challenged several of the federal mandates, said that the mandate “illustrates the dangers of the administrative state and how these federal agencies have become a law unto themselves.”

Tyler Durden Sat, 03/09/2024 - 22:10

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