Get ready to get screwed and for major profiteering from ill veterans. The Department of Veterans Affairs says it is ready for a major shift in access to private care, but veterans groups and lawmakers are concerned.
All posts by nedhamson
Australia May Well Be the World’s Most Secretive Democracy
Raids targeting journalists this week are the latest examples of how far the country’s government will go to scare officials and reporters into submission, media experts say.
Chicken Farmers Thought Trump Was Going to Help Them. Then His Administration Did the Opposite. — ProPublica
Chicken farmers who considered themselves staunch Trump supporters say their worsening circumstances since he took office are making them reconsider their votes. Mike Weaver, a West Virginia farmer, said he gave up raising chickens this year after the company wanted him to waive his right to sue — something the Obama administration’s rules would have prevented. “I made excuses for him for a while, thinking he’s going to eventually get a grasp on the dire situation small family farmers are in,” Weaver said of Trump. “It hasn’t happened yet. If it doesn’t happen by the next election, I’m going to tell everybody some of the promises he made were never kept and I don’t see it changing.”
Ultra-Orthodox Brooklyn Residents Protest Anti-Vax Symposium
Ultra-Orthodox attendees of an anti-vaccination event in Borough Park on Tuesday night were confronted by members of their own community who hoped to dissuade them from attending—or convince them to reconsider their choice not to vaccinate. [ more › ]
NYPD Officer On Trial For Eric Garner’s Death Will Testify Via Secret Document, Won’t Be Questioned
Five years after Eric Garner was killed during a violent arrest in Staten Island, on the sixth day of an NYPD disciplinary trial that has spread languorously over 24 days, New Yorkers learned that the NYPD officer charged with killing Garner with an illegal chokehold won’t have to say anything publicly about his conduct, and won’t have to answer any questions either. [ more › ]
YouTube says homophobic abuse does not violate harassment rules
wtf – When Trans people are bing killed by those who are inspired by such videos?

Video-sharing site defends American user who called journalist ‘lispy queer’
YouTube has sparked outrage by defending an American man who subjected a journalist to repeated homophobic abuse in videos presented to millions of people, arguing that his “criticism” was debating rather than harassment.
Carlos Maza, a video journalist for the US news site Vox, went public last week with a complaint that the rightwing YouTube personality Steven Crowder was engaged in a long-term homophobic harassment campaign. In a compilation video Maza created of some of his mentions on Crowder’s show, the host attacks Maza as a “gay Mexican”, “lispy queer” and a “token Vox gay atheist sprite”.
Why do US evangelicals support Trump? They’re giving Christianity a bad name | Tim Farron

The politicisation of evangelicals is dangerous – especially when they’re supporting a loveless, graceless amoralism
• Tim Farron is the former Lib Dem leader
In the UK, the United States president is dismissed or condemned from almost all quarters, and most of us struggle to get our heads around the idea that millions of people voted for Donald Trump. One significant group of these voters were white evangelical Christians. According to the exit polls from the 2016 US election, white “evangelical Christians” voted for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton by 81% to 16%.
It has not been unusual for presidential candidates to court the so-called “evangelical Christian vote” in recent history. If you vote for a president, it doesn’t necessarily mean you support everything they stand for. I recognise that: the 81% represents a whole host of motivations and degrees of support rather than a united mass gathering under Trump’s banner. But it’s still a big number.
US-China trade war to cost $455bn in lost output, says IMF

Christine Lagarde says world must avoid the ‘self-inflicted wounds’ of a tit-for-tat wrangle
The International Monetary Fund has called for a speedy end to the deepening trade war between the United States and China after calculating that the tit-for-tat tariffs will cost $455bn (£357.5bn) in lost output next year – more than the size of South Africa’s economy.
Christine Lagarde, the IMF’s managing director, underlined her organisation’s growing concern at the most serious outbreak of trade tension since the 1930s and said “self-inflicted wounds” had to be avoided.
Brexit Britain and Trump’s America are a betrayal of the values D-day was fought for | Martin Kettle

The D-day commemorations have never felt so uneasy. Trump and Brexit are tearing apart the bonds forged after 1945
They are saying that Thursday – the 75th anniversary – will be the last of the international D-day commemorations in which the veterans of 1944 participate. For obvious reasons that may well be so. The surviving soldiers who fought their way up the beaches of Normandy are in their 90s now, so it seems poignantly unlikely that more than a handful will return in 2024.
But there is a more political reason why this week could be the start of a less unified approach to marking the liberation of Europe at the end of the war against Hitler’s Germany. The reason is that Donald Trump’s US and Brexit Britain, though both still immeasurably and justifiably proud of the roles their predecessors played in this epic climax of the war in the west, are each in their own way turning their backs upon the European order that the invasion of 6 June 1944 made possible.
Trump likens Irish border to wall between US and Mexico | US news | The Guardian Translation: he does not have a clue what he is talking about
Trump echoed their confidence in Shannon. “There are a lot of good minds thinking about how to do it and it’s going to be just fine. It ultimately could even be very, very good for Ireland. The border will work out.”
Source: Trump likens Irish border to wall between US and Mexico | US news | The Guardian
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