All posts by nedhamson

Activist, writer, researcher, addicted to sharing information and facts.

How Native Americans’ right to vote has been systematically violated for generations | US news | The Guardian

The rights of indigenous communities – including the right to vote – have been systematically violated for generations with devastating consequences for access to clean air and water, health, education, economic opportunities, housing and sovereignty. Voter turnout for Native Americans and Alaskan Natives is the lowest in the country, and about one in three eligible voters (1.2 million people) are not registered to vote, according to the National Congress of American Indians. Source: How Native Americans’ right to vote has been systematically violated for generations | US news | The Guardian

Freedom for All Fridays and opportunity for all? — ShiraDest: The 4 Freedoms for ALL via Language & Adult Education, Writing, and PublicDomainInfrastructure

Well, opportunity if you were born in the upper working to middle classes, anyway… — Notice who had the BMW (Bike/Metro/Walk) vs. whose access to folks with wheels got those resource advantages moving, wittingly or unwittingly… I’ve been mulling over some conversations with a person, white, grew up with a housekeeper, left home at 16 […]

Freedom for All Fridays and opportunity for all? — ShiraDest: The 4 Freedoms for ALL via Language & Adult Education, Writing, and PublicDomainInfrastructure

Japan to release treated Fukushima water into the sea | News | DW | 16.10.2020 – (inconceivable – sadly not)

The idea to release the stored water has been met by strong disapproval from environmentalists. Farmers and fishermen have also come out against the idea, saying people will continue to reject eating seafood and produce from the region. They said it would undo years of work to repair the region’s reputation.

Fishery representatives visited Kajiyama on Thursday to express their displeasure for a potential release of the water.

South Korea, which bans seafood imports from the region, has also voiced its concern about the plan.

Read more: Japan’s nuclear mishap underlines industry malaise

Despite the opposition, a panel of experts advising the Japanese government on the matter recommended releasing the water.

Source: Japan to release treated Fukushima water into the sea | News | DW | 16.10.2020

Avian Flu Diary: WHO Solidarity Therapeutics Trial: Remdesivir, HCQ, Lopinar/Ritonavir & Interferon Disappoint

Interim results from the Solidarity Therapeutics Trial, coordinated by the World Health Organization, indicate that remdesivir, hydroxychloroquine, lopinavir/ritonavir and interferon regimens appeared to have little or no effect on 28-day mortality or the in-hospital course of COVID-19 among hospitalized patients.

The study, which spans more than 30 countries, looked at the effects of these treatments on overall mortality, initiation of ventilation, and duration of hospital stay in hospitalized patients. Other uses of the drugs, for example in treatment of patients in the community or for prevention, would have to be examined using different trials. Source: Avian Flu Diary: WHO Solidarity Therapeutics Trial: Remdesivir, HCQ, Lopinar/Ritonavir & Interferon Disappoint

Most Home Health Aides ‘Can’t Afford Not to Work’ — Even When Lacking PPE | Kaiser Health News

RIP – Even after a colleague on the night shift developed pneumonia, Williams-Ward tended to her patients — without protective equipment, which she told her husband she’d repeatedly requested from the agency. Together We Can did not respond to multiple phone and email requests for comment about the PPE available to its workers.

Still, Davis said, “Sue did all the little, unseen, everyday things that allowed them to maintain their liberty, dignity and freedom.”

He said that within three days Williams-Ward was coughing, too. After six weeks in a hospital and weeks on a ventilator, she died of COVID-19. Hers is one of more than 1,200 health worker COVID deaths that KHN and The Guardian are investigating, including those of dozens of home health aides.

Many home health providers care for multiple patients, who also bear the consequences of their work conditions. “If you think about perfect vectors for transmission, unprotected individuals going from house to house have to rank at the top of list,” Kohn said. “Even if someone didn’t care at all about these workers, we need to fix this to keep Grandma and Grandpa safe.”

Nonetheless, caregivers like Samira, in Richmond, Virginia, have little choice but to work. Samira — who makes $8.25 an hour with one client and $9.44 an hour with another, and owes tens of thousands of dollars in hospital bills from previous work injuries — has no other option but to risk getting sick.

“I can’t afford not to work. And my clients, they don’t have anybody but me,” she said. “So I just pray every day I don’t get it.”

Source: Most Home Health Aides ‘Can’t Afford Not to Work’ — Even When Lacking PPE | Kaiser Health News

Yanomami mother with baby, Amazonas, Venezuela — Barbara Crane Navarro

As the Yanomami spokesman Davi Kopenawa says in the chapter “Metal Smoke” of his book “The Falling Sky”:  “Now the gold miners stink up the forest with the fumes from their motors and the vapors from the gold and mercury that they burn together. … it ends up making us sick. Its poison is fearsome. […]

Yanomami mother with baby, Amazonas, Venezuela — Barbara Crane Navarro

Susan Collins Supports QAnon Candidates in Maine – (A closet conspiracy fan no longer in closet)

… Redmond said he discovered QAnon in the comments section of Zero Hedge, a far-right, libertarian economics blog notorious for spreading conspiracies. “I was hooked right off the bat,” said Redmond, who now considers himself an investigative journalist. “It was an opportunity to wrestle back control of our government from subvertists and treasonists. … As a veteran, I was called to arms.”

“What I understand about the QAnon program is that the military is going to need to intervene eventually,” Redmond said. Asked what he meant by “military intervention,” he explained: “Nazis never lost World War II. [Nazism] was dissolved, they were consumed into the U.S.A., and the rich, cultist, Satanist families continued to utilize this Nazi force.

“The end of World War III will end with Donald Trump,” he continued. “It’s already happening with the crushing of ISIS. There will be another Nuremberg trial, some of these icons of American industry and business will be held accountable at Gitmo [the military detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba].”

Kevin Bushey, the other QAnon acolyte supported by Collins’s PAC, has a long history of speaking publicly about his beliefs as a leader of a “QAnon Church” called Omega Kingdom Ministries. In a recorded interview in May, Bushey spoke to the Mainer about “his anti-mask protests, the Illuminati, his work as a QAnon analyst, and his ability to walk on glass,” telling the publication a shadowy class including bankers, Freemasons, Catholics, and Jews “have worked very diligently to support the idea we should be in continuous war or having ways, because they like to finance both sides of the equation.

Source: Susan Collins Supports QAnon Candidates in Maine

Judge Says Courts Are Suppressing Votes In 2020 Election

Judge Karen Nelson Moore of the US Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit

“Hiding behind closed courthouse doors does not change the fact that ruling by ruling, many courts are chipping away at votes that ought to be counted. It is a disgrace to the federal courts’ foundational role in ensuring democracy’s function, and a betrayal to the persons that wish to participate in it fully,” Moore wrote. Source: Judge Says Courts Are Suppressing Votes In 2020 Election

Trump-Supporting Republican Congressional Candidate Believes QAnon Conspiracy Theory

When asked if she believed the retailer was involved in a global pedophilia conspiracy, she replied: “You know they are. You saw it. You watch the news just like I did.” The candidate then ended the interview. …

“I don’t know anything about QAnon. You know more than I know,” King said as she walked away.

This incident was far from the first time that Stanton King has treated baseless far-right conspiracy theories as truth. She has also used her Twitter to claim that the Black Lives Matter movement was “a major cover up for PEDOPHILIA and HUMAN TRAFFICKING.” In August, Stanton King tweeted “THE STORM IS HERE,” presumably reiterating the QAnon rallying cry that references the “storm,” a day of reckoning when QAnon followers believe Donald Trump will reveal the bad actors hidden within the deep state.

When asked to explain the tweet, she responded “It was raining that day,” despite weather reports indicating it was hot with no chance of precipitation in Atlanta on the day she sent that tweet.

Source: Trump-Supporting Republican Congressional Candidate Believes QAnon Conspiracy Theory