Category Archives: News to use

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

New Hampshire State Rep Encourages Burning and Looting Houses With BLM Signs

Source: New Hampshire State Rep Encourages Burning and Looting Houses With BLM Signs

Rep. James Spillane told his followers on Facebook, “If you see a BLM sign on a lawn, it’s the same as having a porch light on at Halloween. You are free to burn and loot that house.” The New Hampshire Department of Justice has launched an investigation into Spillane as a result of the post.

As of Thursday, the post has been deleted from Spillane’s page. Sean Locke, Director of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Unit, has said that his office has received multiple complaints regarding Spillane’s post. Locke wrote a letter to state House Speaker Steve Shurtleff that said “members of the public who support the Black Lives Matter movement have expressed fear that they may become targets of violence as the result of Rep. Spillane’s post.”

Shurtleff said the Facebook post was an “incitement of violence that put the lives of Granite Staters in jeopardy,” and called for Spillane’s immediate resignation. Jordan Thompson, a founder of Black Lives Matter Nashua and local organizer for the ACLU of New Hampshire, also believes that Spillane should resign.

“Remarks like these indicate a total lack of decency and respect for Black lives,” Thompson said in a statement. “This is yet another example of what we mean when we say New Hampshire is not innocent. It is incumbent on all of us to be honest about the reality that white supremacy exists in the Granite State.”

Yair Lapid to ‘Post’: Netanyahu made Israel a branch of Republican Party

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has damaged Israel’s future by aligning the country too closely with the Republican Party that may end up losing the presidency and controlling neither house of Congress after November, opposition leader Yair Lapid warned at Thursday’s Jerusalem Post Conference.
Speaking to Post editor-in-chief Yaakov Katz, Lapid criticized Netanyahu for not meeting with Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden when he went to Washington to sign diplomatic agreements with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. 464065
The next US administration, Senate and Congress could be led by Democrats who are “extremely angry at Israel’s government.”

Cuba’s Government Throws Its Repressive Playbook at a Journalist

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Journalist Camila Acosta wears a facemask saying “no to Decree 370,” a 2019 law curtailing free speech in Cuba, on August 1, 2020.
© Camila Acosta

The Cuban government’s brutal restrictions on free speech fall particularly hard on journalists. Camila Acosta has learned this from experience. In just the one year since August 2019, when she began working as an independent journalist for the news website CubaNet, Acosta has endured multiple instances of targeted abuse.

Earlier this summer, Acosta was waiting for friends in a park in Havana when two officers asked for her ID, arrested her, and took her to a police station. Inside her bag, they found several facemasks reading, “No to Decree 370,” an abusive 2019 law forbidding the dissemination of information “contrary to the social interest.” The officers forced Acosta to strip her clothes and searched her further, she told Human Rights Watch. The police fined her and threatened further prosecution for protesting the decree.

But this was only the most recent in a string of multiple incidents of harassment against Acosta.

In November 2019, an immigration official stopped Acosta as she was trying to board a plane for a human rights event in Argentina. He said she was forbidden to leave the country, Acosta told Human Rights Watch.

Since February, Acosta has been forced to move houses in Havana at least six times. Each time she rented a new house, the owners soon told her she had to leave. Some said police had chastised them for hosting a “dissident.”

In March, police arbitrarily detained Acosta as she was covering a demonstration in Havana. During a two-hour interrogation, one officer threatened to prosecute her for allegedly “usurping public functions” by reporting the news.

The police eventually let her go. But two weeks later, she was summoned back to a police station, where an officer showed her three of her recent Facebook posts, including a meme of Fidel Castro. The officer invoked Decree 370 and imposed a fine of 3,000 Cuban pesos (roughly US$120), several times the average salary in Cuba.

This repeated weaponizing of Cuba’s free speech restrictions against Acosta leads to the question: Why are authorities so afraid to let a journalist do her job?

Trump cuts aid for pro-democracy groups in Belarus, Hong Kong and Iran | US news | The Guardian (Trump opposed to promoting democracy in Belarus, Honk Kong and Iran)

Source: Trump cuts aid for pro-democracy groups in Belarus, Hong Kong and Iran | US news | The Guardian

The Trump administration has stopped vital technical assistance to pro-democracy groups in Belarus, Hong Kong and Iran, which had helped activists evade state surveillance and sidestep internet censorship.

Sanders issues stark warning on Trump and calls for election commission

Trump casts doubt on his vote and his wife’s vote since they are voting absentee… Feeding distrust of voting and aiming to tie everything up in court and his criminal AG Barr.

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Senator accuses Trump and Republicans of ‘sowing the seeds of chaos’ by ‘casting doubt’ on election

Senator Bernie Sanders has returned to the campaign trail by calling for an independent election commission to stop Donald Trump defying the will of the people and plunging the US into a constitutional crisis.

The independent senator also urged social media companies to “get their act together” and news media to prepare the American people to understand that “there is no longer a single election day”.

Continue reading…

Most Texas public school coronavirus cases found in teenagers, data shows | The Texas Tribune (% is misleading, since if each just infected 1 additional person – things quickly get out of hand)

Source: Most Texas public school coronavirus cases found in teenagers, data shows | The Texas Tribune

Statewide, at least 3,735 Texas public school students who have returned to campus in person this school year have tested positive for the coronavirus

Tillis pushes debunked theory about COVID death toll | TheHill (disrespecting the deaths of nearly 190,000 caused by Covid-19 infection)

Source: Tillis pushes debunked theory about COVID death toll | TheHill

“But I think when the final accounting is done you are going to see, sadly, that the number of people who died may have died from an underlying condition at the same time that they had COVID,” Tillis said.

Ernst also drew fire for saying she is “so skeptical” of case and death counts from the coronavirus, later adding, according to the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier, “They’re thinking there may be 10,000 or less deaths that were actually singularly COVID-19. … I’m just really curious. It would be interesting to know that.”

The discredited theory comes from a misreading of a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) webpage stating that the coronavirus was listed as the sole cause for only 6 percent of deaths from the virus.

However, that does not mean the other 94 percent of people did not die from the coronavirus. Instead, it means that another factor directly caused by the coronavirus, such as respiratory failure, was also listed or that there was an underlying condition that is not necessarily fatal on its own but heightens the risks from the coronavirus.