South L.A. activists seek dialogue with Sheriff’s Department after deputy shooting inflames tensions

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Prominent South L.A. community activist Najee Ali denounced violence and offered prayers for injured sheriff’s deputies

Fact check: President Donald Trump called John McCain a loser

After Trump recalled McCain saying something that Trump considered an insult to him and his supporters, “I said, ‘Somebody should run against McCain,’ who has been, in my opinion, not so hot. And I supported him for president! I raised a million dollars for him. That’s a lot of money! I supported him. He lost. He let us down. But he lost. So I never liked him much after that, because I don’t like losers.”

Amid audience laughter, the moderator, Republican pollster Frank Luntz, then interjected, “But he’s a war hero!”

Trump responded, “He’s not a war hero. He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured.”

Later that day, Trump retweeted, with seeming approval, a web post headlined “Donald Trump: John McCain Is ‘A Loser,’” that recapped his exchange at the summit.

Source: Fact check: President Donald Trump called John McCain a loser

RNC wants to shift focus to Biden’s response to the pandemic – (ROTFLMAO – he was not President, 45 was and blew it – killed 200,000)

There was an unintentionally amusing moment on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” yesterday, when Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel was trying to defend Donald Trump’s pandemic response. Following the president’s cues, the RNC chief made the case that when Trump misled the public about the seriousness of the threat, he was merely trying to prevent panic.

In reference to the president, McDaniel argued, “Think of what would have happened if he’d have gone out and said, ‘This is awful. We should all be afraid. We don’t have a plan.'”

The RNC chair may have admitted more than she’d intended with that one.

Nevertheless, as part of the same interview, McDaniel seemed eager to shift the focus away from Trump’s handling of the pandemic and toward Joe Biden’s handling of the pandemic. When NBC News’ Chuck Todd reminded the RNC chair that the Delaware Democrat is not actually the president, McDaniel said of Biden, “He was running for president, and he had the same data and the same information.”

For what it’s worth, Biden has been receiving intelligence briefings, but this was not the case in the early months of the year, as the coronavirus crisis first took root. Regardless, whether Biden had “the same data and the same information” or not, the fact remains that Biden has been a private citizen for nearly four years.

Source: RNC wants to shift focus to Biden’s response to the pandemic

Alexander Vindman Confirms Trump Is 100% a Putin Puppet | Vanity Fair

Vindman, who was born in the Soviet Union and came to the United States as a young child, expressed particular concern about Trump’s approach to Russia and its strongman leader, Vladimir Putin. Describing the president as an “unwitting agent” of Putin, Vindman said the Kremlin wouldn’t even need to use kompromat against Trump if they had it because he “has aspirations to be the kind of leader that Putin is.” “President Trump should be considered to be a useful idiot and a fellow traveler,” Vindman said. “He likes authoritarian strongmen who act with impunity, without checks and balances. So he’ll try to please Putin.”

“In the Army we call this ‘free chicken,’ something you don’t have to work for—it just comes to you,” Vindman added. “This is what the Russians have in Trump: free chicken.”

“Truth is a victim in this administration,” he added. “I think it’s Orwellian—the ultimate goal of this president is to get you to disbelieve what you’ve seen and what you’ve heard. My goal now is to remind people of this.”

Source: Alexander Vindman Confirms Trump Is 100% a Putin Puppet | Vanity Fair

Biologists warn ‘extinction denial’ is the latest anti-science conspiracy theory

  • There’s a growing refusal by some groups to acknowledge the ongoing global extinction crisis being driven by human actions, conservation scientists say.
  • These views are pushed by many of the same people who also downplay the impacts of climate change, and go against the actual evidence of widespread species population declines and recent extinctions.
  • Scientists say this phenomenon will likely spike again this week, since a major Convention on Biological Diversity report is due to be released.
  • The authors of a new report on extinction denial advise experts to proactively challenge its occurrence, and present the “cold hard scientific facts.” 

Source: Biologists warn ‘extinction denial’ is the latest anti-science conspiracy theory

China says no need to vaccinate entire population against Covid-19 at this stage, only frontline workers (they have handled pandemic better than the rest of us)

There isn’t currently a need for mass vaccination at this stage — though that could change if another serious outbreak takes place, Gao said.

The policy marks China apart from many Western governments, most notably Australia, that have outlined plans to introduce mass public vaccination drives.

Source: China says no need to vaccinate entire population against Covid-19 at this stage, only frontline workers

Staggering Number of Hysterectomies Happening at ICE Facility, Whistleblower Say

A whistleblower complaint filed Monday by several legal advocacy groups accuses a detention center of performing a staggering number of hysterectomies on immigrant women, as well as failing to follow procedures meant to keep both detainees and employees safe from the coronavirus.

The complaint, filed on behalf of several detained immigrants and a nurse named Dawn Wooten, details several accounts of recent “jarring medical neglect” at the Irwin County Detention Center in Ocilla, Georgia, which is run by the private prison company LaSalle South Corrections and houses people incarcerated by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). In interviews with Project South, a Georgia nonprofit, multiple women said that hysterectomies were stunningly frequent among immigrants detained at the facility.

“When I met all these women who had had surgeries, I thought this was like an experimental concentration camp,” said one woman, who said she’d met five women who’d had hysterectomies after being de

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A whistleblower complaint filed Monday by several legal advocacy groups accuses a detention center of performing a staggering number of hysterectomies on immigrant women, as well as failing to follow procedures meant to keep both detainees and employees safe from the coronavirus.

The complaint, filed on behalf of several detained immigrants and a nurse named Dawn Wooten, details several accounts of recent “jarring medical neglect” at the Irwin County Detention Center in Ocilla, Georgia, which is run by the private prison company LaSalle South Corrections and houses people incarcerated by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). In interviews with Project South, a Georgia nonprofit, multiple women said that hysterectomies were stunningly frequent among immigrants detained at the facility.

“When I met all these women who had had surgeries, I thought this was like an experimental concentration camp,” said one woman, who said she’d met five women who’d had hysterectomies after being detained between October and December 2019. The woman said that immigrants at Irwin are often sent to see one particular gynecologist outside of the facility. “It was like they’re experimenting with their bodies.”

In one case, Wooten said, a woman who ended up with a hysterectomy was not properly anesthetized and overhead the doctor say that he’d taken out the wrong ovary. That woman had to go back and get her other ovary removed as well, Wooten said.

“We’ve questioned among ourselves, like, goodness, he’s taking everybody’s stuff out,” said Wooten, who was a full-time employee at Irwin until July. “That’s his specialty, he’s the uterus collector. I know that’s ugly.”

“Is he collecting these things or something,” she continued. “Everybody he sees, he’s taking all their uteruses out or he’s taken their tubes out. What in the world.”

Wooten also said she’d talked to several detained immigrants who’d had hysterectomies but didn’t know why. One detained immigrant told Project South that, ahead of the scheduled procedure, she was given multiple different explanations about what would happen and why it was necessary.

While ICE reported in August that 41 immigrants at Irwin have tested positive for COVID-19, Wooten believes that the true number may be much higher, according to the complaint. Women housed in multiple units in the facility allegedly exhibited COVID-19 symptoms, but were not tested for the virus for weeks. Immigrants have also allegedly continued to be transferred in and out of the facility, against guidelines by the Centers for Disease Control and the advice of Irwin’s own medical director.

The complaint also alleges that both the detained immigrants and staffers at Irwin lacked the personal protective equipment they need to stay safe during the coronavirus pandemic: People in both groups have only received one mask each since the pandemic broke out. It is also impossible to socially distance within the facility, according to the complaint. 

“There is no way to protect [against COVID-19] at all here in the facility,” one immigrant said. “We share everything together. There is no way at all we can feel protected here in the facility.

Detained immigrants also said that the medical and quarantine unit in one part of the Irwin facility were filthy. One woman said she had to clean her cell using shampoo because staffers wouldn’t give her any cleaning chemicals; she recalled seeing another woman use her socks to do the same. 

“If it wasn’t for my faith in God, I think I would have gone insane and just break down and probably gone as far as hurting myself,” the woman said. “There are a lot of people here who end up in medical trying to kill themselves because of how crazy it is.”

Some men at the facility even went on hunger strike, demanding to be released or to have better protections against the coronavirus, according to the complaint. But nothing  changed.

Meanwhile, employees are also expected to work even if they have COVID-19 symptoms and are awaiting their test results, Wooten said. And management at the facility also allegedly refuses to tell officers if any detained immigrants have tested positive for COVID-19, which could heighten their risk of contracting the virus. 

“Ms. Wooten explained that she believes ICDC is hiding information about COVID-19 in order to keep things quiet,” the complaint alleged. “She stated that everyone in the facility is scared at this point, so management does not want to tell officers and detained immigrants the truth because they are afraid of an uproar. Instead, the secrecy has created a ‘silent pandemic’ where even if officers get COVID-19 from the facility, the officers won’t be able to blame ICDC because no one knows how prevalent COVID-19 is inside ICDC due to not testing detained immigrants and not sharing who has the virus.”

Neither ICE nor LaSalle Corrections immediately responded to VICE News requests for comment on the complaint. Besides Project South, the advocacy groups Georgia Detention Watch, Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights, and South Georgia Immigrant Support Network helped file the complaint with the Department of Homeland Security’s office of the inspector general.

Cover: Gynecology surgery, Chambery Metropole Savoie Hospital, France, Conservative hysterectomy by vaginal laparoscopy in a 44-year old patient suffering from adenomyosis and uterine lymphoma. (Photo by: BSIP/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

Texas changes how it reports coronavirus positivity rate | The Texas Tribune

The Texas Department of State Health Services said it will now “primarily rely” on a new calculation of the daily positivity rate — defined as the share of tests that yield positive results — that takes into account the date on which a coronavirus test was administered. Officials said the new metric will give a more accurate representation of viral transmission in Texas on a given day.

It also means that each day’s positivity rate will be an oft-changing number, fluctuating as officials collect lab results over time. Labs and hospitals report their test results to the state with varying degrees of timeliness, and state officials will have to recalculate the positivity rates for previous days as more test results from those dates pour in.

Source: Texas changes how it reports coronavirus positivity rate | The Texas Tribune