Category Archives: News to use

Useful news for all to advance knowledge of the world and how it works

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

FCC Will Move To Regulate Social Media After Censorship Outcry – Slashdot (Fascism on the march in USA)

On Thursday, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai said that the agency will seek to regulate social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter at the behest of the Trump administration’s executive order signed earlier this year. “Members of all three branches of the federal government have expressed serious concerns about the prevailing interpretation of the immunity set for in Section 230 of the Communications Act. There is bipartisan support in Congress to reform the law,” Pai said in a statement Thursday. “Social media companies have a First Amendment right to free speech. But they do not have a First Amendment right to a special immunity denied to other media outlets, such as newspapers and broadcasters.” Source: FCC Will Move To Regulate Social Media After Censorship Outcry – Slashdot

Edward Hopper’s Creative Process: The Drawing & Careful Preparation Behind Nighthawks & Other Iconic Paintings | Open Culture

Edward Hopper painted, but more importantly, he drew. His body of work includes about 140 canvases, which doesn’t make him especially prolific given his long life and career — but then, one of those canvases is Nighthawks. Here on Open Culture, we’ve previously featured Hopper’s “storyboards” for that time- and culture-transcending painting of a late-night New York diner. But those count as only a few of the voluminous preparatory drawings without which neither Nighthawks nor his other major works like AutomatChop Suey, or Morning Sun Sea would have seen the light of day — or rather, the emotional dusk that infuses all his images, no matter their setting. Source: Edward Hopper’s Creative Process: The Drawing & Careful Preparation Behind Nighthawks & Other Iconic Paintings | Open Culture

‘A Fearless Song’: Guatemalan women protest violence against women through music · Global Voices

On October 10, hundreds of women peacefully took to the streets in several Guatemalan cities, equipped with musical instruments, handkerchiefs, posters, and masks to demonstrate their rejection of violence against women.

The demonstrations coincided with the weekend dedicated to International Day of the Girl Child but they were also a response to the recent disappearance and death of student Litzy Cordón Guardado, and the murder of 22-year-old teacher Laura Hernández Guevara, both in the same southeastern department of Zacapa. Twitter was flooded with messages and songs supporting the protests, along with the hashtags #NiUnaMenos, #JusticiaParaLitzy, and #JusticiaParaLaura.

Source: ‘A Fearless Song’: Guatemalan women protest violence against women through music · Global Voices