Monday, May 31, 2021

Trump, the GOP and Our Veterans

The GOP has a long history of trashing our heroes-- and it didn’t start with Donald Trump.

In 2000, John McCain had upset George W. Bush in the New Hampshire primary and Bush had to win the South Carolina primary to stay in the race. Karl Rove masterminded — behind the scenes — a nasty campaign of deception that alleged that McCain had turned traitor when he was a POW in North Vietnam. In addition, Bush’s supporters made false and scurrilous racist allegations against McCain.

In 2002, Max Cleland was running for re-election for the U.S. Senate in Georgia. Cleland was a wounded Vietnam War veteran who lost three limbs in that conflict. Subsequently, Cleland served as head of the V.A. during the Carter Administration.  Max Cleland’s draft dodging opponent trashed his patriotism by running TV ads that paired his pictures with those of Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. John McCain said of one ad: “It’s worse than disgraceful, it’s reprehensible.” Cleland lost.

Two years later, the so-called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth lied about John Kerry’s service in Vietnam. This PAC was funded by people with close ties to the Bush campaign. Several mainstream media sources debunked their false allegations. Nonetheless, Bush was narrowly re-elected and had a disastrous second term.

Republican attacks on our heroes reached a new low when Donald Trump came on the national scene. Early in his candidacy Trump attacked John McCain: “He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured. He lost and let us down. I’ve never liked him as much after that. I don’t like losers.” Nonetheless, Trump maintained his front runner status and continued to rise in the polls.

In 2016, Trump attacked a Gold Star family when he slammed the parents of Humayun Khan, an Army captain who was killed in Iraq in 2004.

During a meeting at the Pentagon in 2017, Trump insulted a room of top generals — all of whom had served in combat in the wars after the attacks of 9/11/01. Trump ranted: “I wouldn’t go to war with you people. You’re a bunch of dopes and babies.”

That same year, Trump visited Arlington National Cemetery with retired Marine General John Kelly. Trump said: “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?,” while he was standing with Kelly at the grave of Kelly’s son, Robert, who was killed in Afghanistan.

Donald Trump, in a White House meeting, asked that a military parade exclude wounded veterans, because “nobody wants to see” amputees.

In a 2018 trip to France, Trump canceled a visit to honor our troops at a WWI cemetery: “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” In a separate conversation on the same trip, Trump referred to the more than 1,800 marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood as “suckers” for dying for our country.

And just this weekend, Republican Mike Flynn (the former Army Lieut. General and traitor who was pardoned by Trump) called for a Myanmar-style coup in the U.S.

The Republican party will cease to be a relevant party if it doesn’t denounce Trump’s reprehensible treatment of our veterans.  For the rest of their lives, every elected Republican should be asked if they condemned Trump’s comments on our veterans.


Saturday, May 29, 2021

Another Moment in Incel History

Writer Natalia Antonova recently tweeted about a conversation she’d had with the unnamed suitor.  It began with him admitting he’d searched for her on social media after she rejected him on Bumble.

He confessed that he’d “swiped right” on Antonova but she “never swiped back.”

“I wondered if you’d respond if I found you on Instagram," he wrote after she accepted his message request on the platform.  “I’m not offended,” he added. “Just think it’s a little shallow of you.”

Asked to elaborate, the man continued: “You harshly judged my Bumble profile, but the second you saw that I’m funny and I can cook, you let me talk to you.”

A baffled Antonova responded: “Harshly judged? I honestly don’t remember ever coming across you on Bumble. So whatever it is you’ve just assumed, it’s weird and wrong.”

The heated conversation continued with the man asking: “Is this your way of implying that you get so many matches on Bumble that you don’t remember me? Scandalous!’

She replied that she didn’t understand how matching with plenty of people on the app could be considered “scandalous,” adding: “Maybe if I was a nun.”

“Way to make a guy feel good about himself,” he retorted.

Clearly irritated by this point, Antonova wrote back: “It’s not my job to flatter you. Especially after you called me shallow. Piece of advice: Acting insecure and rudely demanding validation is not how you get girls.”

His response?  “You’re just an aging single mom anyway, whatever.”

Their jaw-dropping dialogue ended with a stroke of pure class from Antonova:


 

 


 

Tuesday, May 25, 2021

Belarus Joins the Ranks of Somalian Pirates

European leaders are taking steps to cut off air connections with Belarus and barring airlines from flying over the country after its leaders forced a commercial jet to land and arrested a dissident journalist.

21st-Century Dictator Alexander Lukashenko executed an audacious power play, setting a fearsome precedent for journalists and political opponents, who now must fear flying through the airspace of repressive regimes, even if they are moving from one free capital to another.  The Ryanair plane was nearing Vilnius, Lithuania, before Belarusian authorities turned it around, forced it to land in their capital, Minsk, and arrested journalist Roman Protasevich, the founder of an opposition media outlet.

Timothy Snyder, author of "On Tyranny", wrote eloquently on the issue: "No matter how important you are, it is unlikely that a dictator has scrambled a fighter plane to force down a passenger flight so that he can arrest you.  This just happened to the young journalist Roman Protasevich.  His flight from one city in the European Union to another . . . was hijacked by the Belarusian state, forced to the ground by a false bomb warning and a MiG escort.  Protasevich and his girlfriend Sofia Sapega were arrested.

"Protasevich is important because he told the truth about his own country.  Last August the Belarusian dictator, Alexander Lukashenko, sought to stage yet another fake electoral victory.  His usual tactic of disqualifying and arresting opponents was not working.  The wife of one of his opponents ran against him, and almost certainly won.  After Lukashenko announced a victory anyway Belarusians protested peacefully in very large numbers for months. Protasevich at the time worked for NEXTA, a Telegram channel that provided Belarusians with the facts about what was happening in their own country."

"Does history happen if no one is there to report it?  Foreign journalists were banned from Belarus, and so NEXTA, along with a few Russian independent reporters, Ukranian journalists and a Polish writer, was also among the few sources for people abroad who wanted to learn about the democratic movement."

"Democracy is about rule by the people, and it depends on our awareness and confidence that people around the world care about it.  Democracy rises and falls as an international phenomenon.  A huge democratic movement in Belarus, in a place that seemed consigned to dictatorship, is an inspiration for others around the world."

"That people like to vote and have their votes counted is a dangerous truth for most of the world's governments.  For Putin's regime in neighboring Russia, in particular, the spectacle of a neighboring country that wanted clean elections seemed like a terrible threat."

"Protasevich could now face the death penalty in Belarus.  The state terrorism organized to silence one person reminds us just how important reporters are.  Without the words and the images they provide us, we have no chance of getting to the truth about oligarchy, war, and elections, or about any issue that really matters.  They may use technology skillfully, as Protasevich does, but no technology can replace them.  There are far too few of them, and  each one is precious.  We should support them everywhere, abroad and at home."

"Reporters are the heroes of our time, in eastern Europe and everywhere else.  Watching the risks they take and the price they pay, we should be ashamed to have any association with anyone who would say that reporters are "enemies of the people."  Reporters are the friends of the people.  In fact, they are just about the only friends that we the people have."  


Monday, May 24, 2021

Don't Mess With Mother Nature!

Poisoned prawns produce pricey penalty
A record price for a prawn may have been set in Hawaii, after the state fined a man $100 for every one he allegedly killed by pouring ant poison into a stream. An estimated 6,250 Tahitian prawns died, the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources said in a release.

Which means that 54-year-old Hilo resident Wayne Keaulana Spatz must pay a whopping $633,840, after the state tacks on additional penalties for the overtime paid to staff while collecting evidence against him, officials said. 

The fine is the the largest assessed against someone for violating the state’s aquatic resource laws, Hawaii officials said.  “Over the past week, we’ve received additional reports of individuals using pesticides or chemicals used in pesticides to poison streams for the sole purpose of collecting prawns to sell for human consumption,” wildlife department Chair Suzanne Case said in a release. “It is illegal, despicable, and morally indefensible and anyone caught will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

The state said it received an anonymous tip that Spatz had been seen pouring ant poison into Paheehee Stream in North Hilo.  Soil and dead marine life samples “tested positive for bifenthrin, which is an active ingredient used in insect repellent,” officials said.  “The illegal and unethical use of these pesticides in streams have shown to cause extremely damaging and long-lasting effects to all aquatic stream animals, native and non-native,” the state said.

“These pesticides are highly toxic to all aquatic animals and result in extensive recovery time, particularly for native and endemic stream life. Typically, non-native and invasive species are the first to repopulate these impacted streams. Therefore, these types of activities can severely alter the natural biological conditions and overall health of the stream ecosystem.”

 

Wednesday, May 19, 2021

Just. Stop. It. Already. Please!

A conspiracy ripping through the anti-vax world may finally drive some anti-maskers to do the unthinkable: wear a mask and keep their distance. 

The conspiracy—which comes in several shapes and sizes—more or less says the vaccinated will “shed” certain proteins onto the unvaccinated who will then suffer adverse effects. The main worry is the “shedding” will cause irregular menstruation, infertility, and miscarriages. The entirely baseless idea is a key cog in a larger conspiracy that COVID-19 was a ploy to depopulate the world, and the vaccine is what will cull the masses. 

Experts say the conspiracy is born from a fundamental misunderstanding of how vaccines work. It has been widely debunked and you can read about it here, here, and here, among other places.  

Anti-vax influencers are instructing their fellow anti-vaxxers as well as anti-maskers (at this point the two communities overlap to a huge degree) that one of the best ways to defend themselves from this blight is to co-opt…social distancing, the very strategy they have long decried. 

Sherri Tenpenny, an anti-vaxxer who was found to be key in spreading COVID-19 conspiracy theories, suggested on a recent anti-vax livestream that you may have to “stay away from somebody who's had these shots…forever.”

Another prominent anti-vaxxer suggested quarantining people who have been vaccinated. “There is something being passed from people who are shot up with this poison to others who have not gotten the shot,” said Larry Palevsky, a New York pediatrician and anti-vaxxer,  on a separate livestream. They should also “have a badge on their arms that say ‘I've been vaccinated even though it's not a vaccine’ so that we know to avoid them on the street, to not go near them anywhere in society,” he said.

 It’s not just social distancing that anti-maskers/anti-vaxxers are begrudgingly accepting. Some conspiracy theorists are wondering if perhaps their longtime bane, the mask, could become their salvation. One perplexed poster on the fringe site 4chan asked their fellow anons if they should “wear a mask around the vaccinated, because they shed the mRNA stuff?”

“I am going to be watching these vaccine shedding stories like a hawk,” wrote another man on Twitter. “Is my family going to need to wear masks to protect ourselves from the vaccinated?” 

Incredibly, this particular conspiracy is picking up steam. Recently a private school in Miami went so far as to ban vaccinated teachers from interacting with unvaccinated students. In April, a Gold Shop in Kelowna, British Columbia, caused a stir when the owners put up a sign saying the vaccinated were banned from entering the store, citing worries about vaccine shedding. The store also had a sign that masking was not allowed and instructed customers to “lower their face diaper.”  


Monday, May 17, 2021

A Tale of Two Appraisals Highlights Racism in Real Estate

Despite there being laws in place against it, there continue to be many cases where people of color have noted that their homes were valued for less money based on racial biases of appraisers.  A black homeowner in Indiana decided to check whether she was being victimized herself.

After suspecting that she was low-balled in not one but two home appraisals, Carlette Duffy decided to ask a white friend to take her place during a third appraisal. 

After Duffy receiving the two low appraisals,  Duffy provided the appropriate paperwork to counter the rationale given in the appraisals.  CityWidek mortgage refused to make any changes despite this documentation.

In order to see if her appraisals were actually as data-driven as the appraisers argued, Duffy did not declare her race or gender during the application for her third appraisal and only communicated via email. As the time for the appraisal drew nearer, she told the lender she would be out of town and that her brother would be home. Her friend’s white husband then filled in as her brother.

“I staged my home to look as ethnically neutral as possible,” she said. Duffy took down pictures of herself and removed African American art and any books that might indicate her race.

The decision nearly doubled her home’s value.  After initially being appraised at $125,000 and $110,000, Duffy’s home was valued to $259,000, the Indianapolis Star reported. "I had to go through all of that just to say that I was right and that this is what's happening," Duffy said. "This is real."

This isn’t an isolated case. Multiple incidents have been reported in which Black homeowners have been discriminated against and been given significantly lower appraisals than their white counterparts. Additionally, studies have found that homes in neighborhoods where there is a higher population of Black people are valued at about half the price of those with no Black residents, according to Brookings Institution.

In a similar incident to Duffy’s, a California couple went viral after unveiling that their home was undervalued by more than $500,000 before their second appraisal during which they had white friends pose as the owners, ABC 7 News reported.

“I want to see the system changed,” Duffy said. “I don’t know if we can, but I’m up for the fight.”

 

Sunday, May 16, 2021

Netanyahu Continues His Reign of Terror Targeting Residential Buildings and Journalists' Offices

Destruction of the Al-Jalaa building, which housed the AP
Israeli airstrikes on Gaza City flattened three buildings and killed at least 42 people Sunday (including 10 children), Palestinian medics said, in the deadliest single attack in the latest round of violence. Despite the toll and international efforts to broker a cease-fire, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signaled the fourth war with Gaza’s Hamas rulers would rage on.

The hostilities have repeatedly escalated over the past week, marking the worst fighting in the territory that is home to 2 million Palestinians since Israel and Hamas’ devastating 2014 war.  “I have not seen this level of destruction through my 14 years of work,” said Samir al-Khatib an emergency rescue official in Gaza. “Not even in the 2014 war.”

Among those reported killed was Dr. Ayman Abu Al-Ouf, the head of the internal medicine department at Shifa Hospital and a senior member of the hospital’s coronavirus management committee. Two of Abu Al-Ouf’s teenage children and two other family members were also buried under the rubble of their home.  The death of the 51-year-old physician “was a huge loss at a very sensitive time,” said Mohammed Abu Selmia, the director of Shifa.

Gaza’s health care system, already gutted by an Israeli-led lockade imposed after Hamas seized power from rival Palestinian forces in 2007, had been struggling with a surge in coronavirus infections even before the latest conflict.

  Rubble of the Yazegi residential building
Israel also began targeting international media.  Yesterday, Israel gave occupants of an 11-story high rise residential building one hour to evacuate before an airstrike leveled the building, which contained the office of the Associated Press and other apartments.  The Israeli government said the building contained Hamas military intelligence assets.  The Associated Press called on the Israeli government to put forward the evidence, but none has been provided. The AP said in a statement that its bureau has been in the building for 15 years, and never had any indication Hamas was present or active in the building. 

This latest round of violence was triggered last Monday when Israeli police stormed the Al-Asqa mosque, firing rubber bullets, stun grenades and tear gas.  The mosque is the third-holiest site in Islam and sits on a sprawling plateau that is also home to the iconic golden Dome of the Rock. Muslims refer to the compound as the Noble Sanctuary. The walled plateau is also the holiest site for Jews, who refer to it as the Temple Mount, because it was the location of biblical temples.  Neighboring Jordan serves as the custodian of the site, which is open to tourists during certain times but only Muslims are allowed to pray there. The Western Wall is the holiest site where Jews can pray.

In recent years, groups of nationalist Jews escorted by Israeli police have been visiting the compound in greater numbers and holding prayers in defiance of rules established after 1967 by Israel, Jordan and Muslim religious authorities. The Palestinians view the frequent visits and attempted prayers by Jews as a provocation. Some Israelis say the site should be open to all worshippers. The Palestinians refuse, fearing that Israel will eventually take over the site or partition it, as Israel has similarly done with its illegal settlements in the West Bank and with its policies in East Jersusalem. 

Israel has built (illegal) Jewish settlements in east Jerusalem and severely limited the growth of Palestinian neighborhoods, leading to overcrowding and the unauthorized construction of thousands of homes that are at risk of demolition.  The Israeli rights group B'Tselem and Human Rights Watch cited the discriminatory policies in east Jerusalem in recent reports arguing that Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid. Israel rejects those allegations, saying Jerusalem residents are treated equally.

 

Saturday, May 15, 2021

Film About an Aboriginal Boy Highlights How Australian Schools are Failing Indigenous Kids

"Listen carefully," a Australian teacher tells her class. "This one isn't a story, this is information, or non-fiction - it's fact."  She's holds a picture book published in 1952, and reads: "In Botany Bay, Cook landed for the first time in a new country. Then he sailed up the coast, mapping as he went... On an island in Cape York he raised the English flag. And he claimed for the English country the whole of this new land."

Dujuan Hoosan's hand shoots up, but he doesn't get the chance to speak.  Dujuan, a 10-year-old Aboriginal boy, struggles a bit with the vocabulary, but he finds it even harder to recognize the story, because the history he has been taught by his elders is very different.

"That [lesson] was for white people, not for Aboriginals," he reflects. "This man came on the ship and he was the first white man on Australia. The Aboriginal people told them to go and find another land, because this was their land. But people didn't listen." 

Maya Newell, who filmed the scene for her documentary "In My Blood It Runs", can feel his frustration.  "You imagine what it feels like to be essentially erased from history," she says.

Maya and Dujuan first met "out bush" when Maya was filming a story-telling session in one of the red-earth deserts of central Australia. Sitting around a campfire at night, a rapt group of Aboriginal children listened as aunts and grandmothers told stories in the Arrernte language about how the world began and about their connection to the land.

Dujuan was an eager learner, having been taught by his aunts and grandmothers in the Arrernte language about how the world began and about their connection to the land. He had already got to know quite a few plants with medicinal properties, and told Maya about his healing gift: when his family had aches and pains it was his job to lay hands on them, he said, using powers that had passed to him after his great-grandad died.

Dujuan lived with his mother, grandmother and two brothers in the Hidden Valley Aboriginal Town Camp, on the outskirts of Alice Springs. Some days there was no milk, so the boys ate breakfast at school. Some nights there was no electricity, so they played I-spy under the stars.  About 20% of the town's 30,000 residents are Aboriginal, and most of them live in heavily-policed, run-down camps that sprang up in the 1960s, when many Aboriginal people were forced off their land.

"You grew up around drunks, smoking - then you start learning from that," says Dujuan's mum, Megan. She was expelled from school at 14, so her parents sent her to stay with aunties in the safety of the countryside in Borroloola, 780 miles to the north. That's where she met Dujuan's dad, James, who came back with her to Alice Springs with their first child, but left when they broke up a few years after Dujuan was born.

"Being a teenage parent is hard, and being an Aboriginal mum is exhausting," Megan says. "Every day you hear that you are not good enough - in the newspapers, on TV, on social media."  She worries about her children getting into trouble, like she did, particularly "smart and cheeky" Dujuan. And as filming progresses, her fears are realised.

When Dujuan's report card arrives he gets very upset. He has received the lowest grade for every subject. He thinks there must be something wrong with him.

He starts skipping school, and this could have serious consequences - under strict rules brought in with the aim of improving educational outcomes for Aboriginal children, attendance is directly linked to income support and family assistance. If children are regularly absent, their parents' welfare payments can be stopped. It also increases their risk of being taken by the government and sent to a foster home.

When Dujuan doesn't come home from school one day, his mum and grandma go out looking for him until late in the night. If the police find him first, they will report it to welfare authorities, and he could end up in foster care - or worse, juvenile detention.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are vastly over-represented in the Australian penal system. Nationwide, they make up close to 70% of those aged 10-14 in youth detention, despite being only about 6% of the population in that age group. In the Northern Territory, in which Alice Springs is located, the situation is even worse: at the end of March, 31 out of 33 young people in detention (94%) were Aboriginal.

Dujuan's family move him to a different primary school, one that offers a bilingual curriculum. But he skips classes here too, and his late-night adventures on the streets of Alice Springs continue.  He's picked up by the police several times, and gets formal warnings that if he's found causing a nuisance again he'll be sent to juvenile detention, or taken into care.  "This is what happens to young boys in Alice Springs. This is the story of what it is to be a First Nations child in this country," Maya Newell says.  Finally, after stealing a teacher's car keys and throwing them on the school roof, Dujuan is expelled.

The Northern Territory department of education says its schools can opt to use an "indigenous languages and cultures curriculum" and that they are encouraged to share decision-making with families, communities and industry partners.  But Dujuan's family never felt these good intentions were reflected in the classroom.  "White people educate our kids in the way they want them to be educated," says Dujuan's grandmother, Carol.

Within living memory it was government policy to break the link between children and their Aboriginal ancestors and culture and to assimilate them into the white population.  Dujuan has grown up with stories of children being taken away to be brought up by white families. One of his great-grandmothers was taken, while another was hidden "way out bush" for safety.

William Tilmouth, chair of Children's Ground, a charity that teaches Aboriginal children is an example of this "stolen generation".  "I can remember my eldest sister telling me that when they used to see Welfare coming down the road all the mothers used to run out, grab the kids and run straight back into the house, that way Welfare couldn't get them," he says.

He and all his siblings were take by the government after his mother's death. The five oldest had whiter skin and were sent to Adelaide, where they were expected to "blend in." He and two brothers were taken 870 miles from Alice Springs to be brought up in a Methodist mission, where they were banned from speaking their language.  "We never knew who our family were," he says. "It was a deliberate attempt to fragment the foundations of our lives, to the extent that we kept asking ourselves, 'Who are we?'"

When William ran away from a children's home he was placed in juvenile detention, which he describes as a "conveyor belt that led ultimately to the prison system".  Only when he was 17 was he able to hitchhike back to Alice Springs, to be reunited with his father, three years before he died.

Although the policy of assimilation is no longer explicit, William says, the draconian rules governing education and welfare mean the system is still set against indigenous children. He sees many parallels between his story and Dujuan's.

But Dujuan's family come up with a time-worn strategy to keep him safe-- they sent him to live in Borroloola, with his father, James Mawson.  "Kids like Dujuan go to detention centres. I wanted to move him away before that happened," said his mother, Megan. "We Aboriginal parents do love and care about our kids."

Despite the fact father and son have not seen each other for five years, it works out well. In Borroloola everyone pitches in, working the land and looking after cattle. Dujuan likes being able to spend weekends fishing or swimming in the family's homelands - and there are no armed patrols on the street.

"Borroloola is like a little town where you are related to everybody. It's better than Alice Springs, where there are many other kids that lead you into bad places, and lots of police that are watching over you," he says.

He is also happier at the community's small middle school, where 95% of students are indigenous.  "What I want is a normal life of just being me," he says at the end of the documentary, still only 11 years old. "And what I mean by 'me' is, I want to be an Aborigine."

Dujuan has since had to move out of Borroloola to finish high school. Now 14 years old, he's doing well, but he's still not a huge fan. "It's boring to be in school, but I know there is knowledge I need to learn there," he says.

The film is now being made available to schools in the UK, where one of the first to show it was Sunnydown school in Surrey, for boys with autism.

The students there could relate to the experience of not fitting in at school.  15-year-old Matthew says he was made to use a different entrance to his school. "They put me in a room all by myself and they covered the window so I couldn't see anybody else."  Near the end of the film, Dujuan says: "I made the film to give other Aboriginal kids hope and strength, but I think it can give all kids everywhere that too.

 

Thursday, May 13, 2021

Being Plain Stupid Wasn't Enough for These Anti-Vaxxers

Internet trolls have unleashed a new wave of hate speech directed at Houston vaccine researcher Peter Hotez, a longtime nemesis of the anti-vaxx movement.

The website Natural News, which promotes false conspiracy theories about 5G and Bill Gates, posted a story about Hotez at the top of its website. “Echoing the fascism of genocidal maniacs like Hitler and Stalin,” it said, “Peter Hotez displays his own brand of insanity by equating vaccine skeptics with cyber criminals and nuclear terrorism.”

The author, Mike Adams, called on his followers to “pray for this sad monster of a man” to “seek forgiveness for the crimes against humanity being committed by whatever twisted, dark soul currently occupies his once-human body.” The story included Hotez’s contact information.

 

Wednesday, May 12, 2021

High-Rise Residential Building in Gaza Leveled by Israeli Airstrikes

The 13-story Hanadi tower, one of the largest residential buildings in Gaza, collapsed after a series of Israeli airstrikes, according to Al-Jazeera.  The Hanadi tower was reportedly evacuated ahead of the strikes and no casualties were reported.


The building collapse came a day after a separate residential tower in Gaza was hit, killing at least two people and injuring others.  At least 28 Palestinians, including 10 children, have been killed in the airstrikes and at least two Israelis in Tel Aviv were killed in the retaliatory rocket firings.

Salameh Marouf, the head of the Gaza-based government information office, told Al-Jazeera that at least two refugee camps, multiple schools and a COVID quarantine center had also been targeted in the strikes.

The airstrikes followed days of Israeli forces storming the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem during the final days of Ramadan and tear-gassing and firing rubber bullets at people, including during evening prayers.

Hundreds were left injured during clashes in Jerusalem earlier this week as Israeli police and Palestinians clashed at the holy Haram al-Sharif site in East Jerusalem.  The area is sacred to both Israelis and Palestinians with Hamas urging Israeli police to be withdrawn from the area. 

Clashes erupted with footage showing police and Palestinians clashing including one video of a Muslim being kicked on the ground while praying.

Tensions have ratcheted up dramatically as Israel continues its attempts to expel Palestinians from their homes in East Jerusalem to make way for Jewish settlers. 

While tensions within the region have never disappeared, the recent wave of violence is the worst seen since 2017.   Around 95 people have been treated in hospital following the outbreak of violence with hundreds more injured from the clashes in Jerusalem.

 

Coronavirus Art - Rome, Italy

 

Tuesday, May 11, 2021

Goofy Governor DeSantis Endangering the Lives of Floridians

"Oops-- what's a variant?"

The restaurant business is booming in Florida, propped up by "a huge spring break and tourist influx," as prelude to yet another story about how Americans are still not eagerly lining up to take the worst jobs in America even though restaurant owners really, really would prefer they did.  But something else is booming in Florida as well, due to that same "huge" spring break: The COVID-19 pandemic.

Florida is not just home to an explosion of new pandemic cases in the weeks following spring break, but now has "the most variant COVID-19 cases in the country."  Nearly 12,000 tested COVID-19 cases involved variants, mostly of the United Kingdom and Brazilian varieties, as the Florida government's continued indifference towards pandemic safety measures turns the state into a petri dish of variants that could weaken vaccine protection and jump-start the U.S. pandemic into another, even more lethal round.

Florida's Governor Ron DeSantis, however, has already proclaimed the lifting of all local pandemic safety restrictions.  If Floridians are going to protect themselves from the new surge of variant cases, they're on their own.  DeSantis has long had his eye on even higher office, and winning higher office within the Trump-ified GOP means declaring victory loudly and often—even while undermining health officials' efforts to bring that victory about.

To repeat: allowing the pandemic to last long enough to produce genetic variants of the virus is extraordinarily dangerous. The more the virus exists, the more commonplace genetic mutations of the virus will become-- and the more that mutations exist, the less likely it becomes that current vaccines, can produce antibodies.  Mutations may spread faster than the original virus could or may mutate into strains far more deadly.  Every passing month in which the pandemic is not contained produces new variants. It takes only one to bring us back to day zero—or worse.

Reaching herd immunity is becoming more and more difficult as states allow virus-spreading events and anti-science types furiously demand safety precautions not be followed because of "Freedoms", but there's no reason to make yourself part of this alarming little experiment.  What can one do to protect oneself despite the actions of these reckless GOP governors?  Get vaccinated as soon as you can; continue to wear a mask indoors if you live with unvaccinated people and practice social distancing outdoors even if there's no public orders demanding it.

 

Monday, May 10, 2021

Member of Royal Family Using Access To Putin for Personal Profit

An undercover investigation by the UK's Sunday Times has disclosed that the Queen of England's cousin-- Prince Michael of Kent-- is leveraging his status as a member of the royal family and his privileged access to Vladimir Putin’s Russian regime by selling access to business clients seeking favors from the Kremlin.

Two reporters set up a Zoom meeting involving Prince Michael and his business partner Simon Isaacs (aka, the Marquess of Reading) where the journalists posed as executives of a fake South Korean company that invests in gold.

The two undercover reporters told the Prince that they represented a South Korean company that "was looking to hire a royal to market its investment service" and wrote in a letter that it "was planning to set up a Moscow office and offered to hire the prince as an adviser to use his 'excellent contacts' in Russia."  Prince Michael claimed to have influence with the Russian government, saying that he became involved as Patron of the Russo-British Chamber of Commerce in 1998.

His friend, the Marquess of Reading, later described the prince as “Her Majesty’s unofficial ambassador to Russia” and that he would be prepared to help “open the door” for the fake company through contact with Putin.

Video of the Zoom call released by the Sunday Times revealed the following exchange:

Reporter: "The fee, $200,000, that we have offered, was it acceptable, sir?"

Prince Michael: "Oh yes, very much so, thank you."

Reporter: "Is it in line with what you would normally charge on a speech like this, sir?"

Prince Michael: "Yes indeed so, I have no, no questions for you on that."

Later in the call, the Marquess of Reading asked the reporters for discretion, saying "we wouldn't want the world to know that he's seeing Putin purely for business reasons, if you follow me."

The Queen, as head of the royal family, still has significant political powers in Britain and many will question whether that continues to be appropriate when it is obvious that members of her family continue to use their position for privilege and personal gain.

For the record, the Queen of England has the following legal powers in the UK:

1. Is believed to have the legal power to fire the prime minister
2. Can appoint members of the House of Lords
3. Receives certain foreign intelligence reports before the prime minister does
4. Can delay or withhold assent of an act of parliament
5. Can open or end a parliamentary session
6. Is head of the Armed Forces and can direct the actions of the military
7. Can appoint and dismiss ministers and cabinet officials
8. Regulates the civil service
9. Can issue passports
10. Can declare war and make peace
11. Can negotiate and ratify treaties that don't alter the domestic laws of the U.K.
12. Can opt out of paying taxes
13. Is immune from prosecution
14. Can issue pardons

Maybe it's time for the English to reconsider whether someone who is not elected and has no accountability to the British public should have such legal authority.

 


Sunday, May 9, 2021

Reports Confirm That Modi's Failure to Restrict Religious Gatherings Fueled India's COVID Spike

Reports are now starting to come in detailing how Modi's refusal to ban large religious gatherings in India were the primary cause of the lethal COVID outbreak in that country.  

Last year, when India had just several hundred coronavirus cases, the government swiftly imposed a nationwide lockdown.  But as this year's Kumbh Mela, the Hindu religious festival, approached, India's government took no action-- and it ended up driving a massive uptick in COVID infections as cases skyrocketed across the country, according to local officials, religious leaders and media reports.  The combination of an enormous wave of coronavirus cases and one of the biggest mass gatherings on the planet has fueled criticism that India's government should have curtailed the religious event or canceled it altogether.

The Kumbh Mela "may end up being the biggest super-spreader in the history of this pandemic," said Ashish Jha, dean of the School of Public Health at Brown University, in a recent interview with Indian news outlet The Wire. "It brought so many people together from across India."  Pilgrims were obliged to present a negative coronavirus test, wear masks and observe social distancing, but such requirements were widely flouted and were unenforced by government officials.

Tirath Singh Rawat, the leader of the state where the Kumbh Mela took place and a member of the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, urged devotees from all over the world to attend. "Nobody will be stopped in the name of COVID-19," he said in March. "We are sure the faith in God will overcome the fear of the virus."

Chandrama Das Tyagi, the head priest of a famous Hindu temple in the central Indian city of Bhopal, arrived at the festival on April 6 along with 25 of his followers. On April 12, he and more than 3 million others took part in one of the event's main rituals. That evening the 49-year-old came down with a fever. Two days later, he and a friend boarded an overnight train home, where he tested positive for coronavirus. Tyagi was admitted to the hospital as his symptoms worsened, and he died on April 29.

In the small town of Gyaraspur in central India, 60 of the 83 people who went to the festival tested positive upon their return, said Abbas Zaidi, a doctor and local health official.  Some of those who returned were reluctant to be tested, Zaidi said, including the head priest of a well-known local temple. Zaidi went with a team of police officers to test the priest, whose results came back positive for the virus.

In Ahmedabad, a city in the western state of Gujarat, many pilgrims returned from the festival on trains. In one batch of travelers, about 10 percent of those tested came back positive for coronavirus, said Bhavin Solanki, a municipal medical health officer.

A famous Bollywood music composer tested positive for the virus a few days after returning to Mumbai from the religious festival. The 66-year-old died in late April. The former king and queen of Nepal also tested positive after attending the gathering.

In Uttarakhand, the state where the festival took place, infections surged beyond expectations. Before festival, the state was reporting 500 new cases a day. By the end of the month, that figure had soared to nearly 6,000. One in five of the doctors and paramedical staff deployed at the festival tested positive, said Arjun Senger, the event's health officer.

Unlike political rallies, the Kumbh Mela drew people from every corner of the country, allowing variants prevalent in one region to jump to different geographies.  The infections also spread among the attendees, including the members of the akharas, or religious sects, that spearhead the event. Ravindra Puri, the secretary of the Niranjani Akhara, said that nine of the ascetics in his organization, all of them elderly, died after contracting covid-19. On April 15, the group announced that it was withdrawing from the gathering.  The Kumbh Mela "will happen again," Puri said. "But people should not die."

Other religious leaders who took part in the Kumbh Mela said they had no regrets.   A 73-year-old Hindu priest named Dharamdasji (whose sect sent hundreds of thousands of members to the gathering), said, "Covid will come and go.  A festival for the gods cannot be stopped."


Thursday, May 6, 2021

Enough With the Fucking Gender Reveal Parties!

Explosives used at a gender reveal party caused buildings to tremble across the state of New Hampshire.  An expectant couple had gone to a quarry to let off an explosion to reveal the sex of their unborn child.

People in towns miles away felt the impact, which was said to be caused by mixing chalk with 80 pounds of Tannerite, an over-the-counter explosive.  The man who set it off has reportedly handed himself in to police.  Luckily, nobody was seriously hurt as a result of the blast.

Local news reported people across New Hampshire saying there had been an earthquake, with some reporting cracks in the foundation of their homes.

In February 2021, the accidental explosion of an in-development gender reveal device in Liberty, New York killed the father-to-be and injured his younger brother.

In September of last year, a firework at a gender reveal party started the El Dorado wildfire in southern California, which resulted in one death and over 22,000 acres of fire damage.

In October 2019, a 56-year-old woman was killed instantly when shrapnel from a homemade explosive hit her head at a gender reveal party.  Members of Pamela Kreimeyer's family had experimented with different kinds of explosive material. They built a contraption to release pink or blue powder revealing the gender of the new baby, which they aimed to film for social media.  But instead, the device exploded like a pipe bomb, sending pieces of metal into the air that hit Ms Kreimeyer, who was standing 45 feet away. Some pieces of debris flew more than 100 yards. 

In September 2019, there was a plane crash in Turkey, Texas when a low-flying crop duster was attempting to drop 350 gallons of colored water for a gender reveal stunt.

In April 2017, a gender reveal party in Arizona sparked a week-long wildfire which burned through 45,000 acres.  The father, Dennis Dickey, was given five years' probation and ordered to pay damages.  The 37-year-old border patrol agent agreed to make an initial $100,000 payment and compensation of $8,188,069 in monthly payments.

 

Tuesday, May 4, 2021

Constitutional Crisis in El Salvador as Corrupt President Engineers Overthrow of Supreme Court

El Salvador’s new legislative assembly has voted to dismiss top Supreme Court judges hostile to President Nayib Bukele, triggering a political storm as the opposition derided the move as a coup.

Following February’s elections, Bukele’s allies now hold 61 of the 84 seats in the unicameral Congress, making him the first president in nearly three decades to have a majority in the legislature.

At its first session, the assembly dismissed all the justices of the Supreme Court’s constitutional chamber for issuing “arbitrary” judgments.  The lawmakers also voted to dismiss attorney general Raul Melara, considered close to an opposition party.

“And the people of El Salvador, through their representatives, said: DISMISSED!” Bukele said triumphantly following the vote.  The 39-year-old president, in power since 2019, had repeatedly clashed with the Supreme Court and the public prosecutor’s office.

Labeled by many as authoritarian, Bukele's government became mired in corruption at the outset of his term.  Twenty government institutions of the Bukele administration are currently under investigation by the Attorney General's Office.  Last year, Bukele was denounced for sending soldiers into the Legislative Assembly to encourage the passage of a bill and to overthrow the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador.   It was also reported last year that Bukele had secretly negotiated a deal with the most powerful gang in the country, the Mara Salvatrucha. In return for more flexible prison conditions for its members and other promises, the gang reportedly pledged to reduce the number of murders and to support Bukele's political party during the elections.

The ousted Supreme Court judges, whose replacements were immediately appointed by the legislators, refused to leave their post, citing “the unconstitutionality of the decree of dismissal.”  The minority opposition in parliament — the right-wing Arena party and leftist FMLN — jointly denounced the move as an attempted coup.

 

Monday, May 3, 2021

Zuckerberg Continues His Colonialization of Native Hawaiian Land

Mark Zuckerburg has continued his colonialist buying spree in Hawaii, buying almost 600 acres on Kauai for $53 million.  Known as the “Lepeuli ahupua’a,” the property houses several “reef, sea, avian, flora and historical collections in their unaltered native habitat.

The deal, which closed on March 19, according to deeds first reported by Pacific Business News, comprises three parcels, including the remote northern waterfront known as Larsen’s Beach. The road to the beach was not included in the sale-- so the public still has access, unless something else changes. Zuckerberg’s other Hawaii property also fronts a public beach, but it’s accessible only by a single labyrinthine road.

Hawaiians have taken issue with Zuckerberg’s stewardship of his island properties. After the Facebook CEO bought his first Hawaiian estate back in 2015 (a 700-acre property also on Kauai) he ran into problems with the many families who owned smaller parcels within the compound. These residents were “kamaaina families,” or Hawaiian descendants who had inherited the land without a formal deed or will.

After his 2015 land grab, Zuckerberg filed several lawsuits aimed at evicting the families by forcing them to sell their land at a public auction.  He was forced to drop the lawsuits after public outrage and later tried to apologize with an op-ed in the island’s newspaper. But it was later discovered that he had hired a retired professor named Carlos Andrade to continue the battle on his behalf, using a shell corporation owned by Zuckerberg to file separate lawsuits.  Zuckerberg issued a non-denial denial of his involvement in Andrade’s lawsuits, issuing a statement that said, “Mark is not suing native Hawaiians."  The statement didn't deny that Zukerberg was funding Andrade's lawsuits, nor did it clarify what Zuckerberg considered "native Hawaiians."  After a long struggle with existing residents, Andrade gained control over four of the kamaaina properties for $2.2 million.

Zuckerberg's continued land acquisitions have continued to anger local Hawaiians and onlookers elsewhere. “This is the face of neocolonialism,” University of Hawaii professor Kapua Sproat told The Guardian at the time. A Change.org petition titled “Stop Mark Zuckerberg from Colonizing Kauai,” started last summer, has collected more than one million signatures to date.  Zuckerberg claims that he has no current plans for eviction at the new property (which is leased to an operation called "Paradise Ranch")-- but that doesn't mean that he won't change his mind tomorrow and initiate eviction proceedings.

 

Sunday, May 2, 2021

Disgraced Florida Politician Implicates Matt Gaetz in Sex Trafficking Scandal

A confession letter written by Joel Greenberg in the final months of the Trump presidency confirms that he and close associate Rep. Matt Gaetz paid for sex with multiple women—as well as a girl who was 17 at the time.  Greenberg, a disgraced local politician in Florida, currently faces a sweeping 33-count indictment that ranges from stalking to sex trafficking.  The New York Times previously revealed that the initial investigation into the Seminole County tax official expanded as agents looked into his role in arranging paid sexual encounters for his friend Matt Gaetz.

“On more than one occasion, this [17-year-old girl] was involved in sexual activities with several of the other girls, the congressman from Florida’s 1st Congressional District and myself,” Greenberg wrote in the letter.  “From time to time, gas money or gifts, rent or partial tuition payments were made to several of these girls, including the individual who was not yet 18. I did see the acts occur firsthand and Venmo transactions, Cash App or other payments were made to these girls on behalf of the Congressman.”

Greenberg also detailed his relationship with Gaetz. He confessed to paying young women for sex. And he claimed that he, Gaetz, and others had sex with a minor they believed to be 19 at the time. Greenberg said he learned she was underage on Sept. 4, 2017, from “an anonymous tip” and quickly contacted Gaetz.

The letter, which The Daily Beast recently obtained, was written after Greenberg—who was under federal indictment—asked Roger Stone to help him secure a pardon from then-President Donald Trump.  The Daily Beast is also in possession of text messages which further incriminate Greenberg and Stone in a cash-for-pardons scheme.

“If I get you $250k in Bitcoin would that help or is this not a financial matter,” Greenberg wrote to Stone, one message shows.

“I understand all of this and have taken it into consideration,” Stone replied. “I will know more in the next 24 hours I cannot push too hard because of the nonsense surrounding pardons.”

“I hope you are prepared to wire me $250,000 because I am feeling confident,” Stone wrote to Greenberg on January 13.

In other text messages to Stone, Greenberg described his activities with Gaetz, referring to the GOP congressman by his initials, “MG,” or as “Matt.”

“My lawyers that I fired, know the whole story about MG’s involvement,” Greenberg wrote to Stone on Dec. 21. “They know he paid me to pay the girls and that he and I both had sex with the girl who was underage.”

 

 

 

Saturday, May 1, 2021

How Can CNN Continue To Employ an Ignorant Jerk Like Rick Santorum?

This week, calls came in from all corners of the internet demanding that CNN end its working relationship with failed politician Rick Santorum after offensive and historically inaccurate remarks he made during a speech went viral. At a conservative function, Santorum, amongst other idiotic things, claimed that We birthed a nation from nothing. I mean, there was nothing here. I mean, yes we have Native Americans but candidly there isn't much Native American culture in American culture."

It was a truly moronic thing to say and also a truly offensive way to present the American experience. Dismissing these statements as proof of Rick Santorum’s profound ignorance doesn’t take into account his very racist and fundamentally white supremacist use of language in describing an American cultural history devoid of non-white Anglo-Saxon Protestant Europeans. The fact that Benjamin Franklin used the already more than 500-year-old Iroquois model of confederacy to shame fellow North Americans Europeans into creating the beginnings of our country’s union is just one of the important cultural, ideological, and historical fabrics woven into our country. 

The National Congress of American Indians' (NCAI) president, Fawn Sharp, released an official response to Santorum’s grotesque views. She did not hold anything back, saying: “Rick Santorum is an unhinged and embarrassing racist who disgraces CNN and any other media company that provides him a platform. Televising someone with his views on Native American genocide is fundamentally no different than putting an outright Nazi on television to justify the Holocaust.” 

The Native American Journalists Association came out with a statement that “strongly cautions Native American and Alaska Native reporters from working with, or applying to jobs, at CNN in the wake of continued racist comments and insensitive reporting directed at Indigenous people.” They also called for CNN to immediately dismiss Santorum, saying this was an issue of accountability and ethics in journalism.

As Walter Einenkel points out, people like Santorum don’t just simplify history in a racist way because it suits them and dealing with the messy complications of history are too difficult for their little brains to manage. They oversimplify things in the most racist way possible because ultimately they believe that their small identity is the only worthwhile story to tell, and anything that adds even the tiniest bit of moral complexity to their lives threatens to tear apart the fabric of how they see the world.