Category Archives: Viva!

Berkeley police posted activists’ mugshots on Twitter and celebrated retweets, emails reveal

Whose side are you on? Not democracy or anti-white supremacy!

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City has an explicit policy of targeting protesters with mugshot tweets to ‘help create a counter-narrative’

A California police agency that published the names and photos of anti-fascist protesters on Twitter said it was creating a “counter-narrative” on social media and celebrated its high rate of retweets and “engagement”, internal records reveal.

The Berkeley police department (BPD) faced widespread backlash last month after posting the personal information of arrested activists online, leading to Fox News coverage and harassment and abuse against the leftwing demonstrators at a far-right rally. New emails have shown that the city has an explicit policy of targeting protesters with mugshot tweets, with the goal of using “social media to help create a counter-narrative”.

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‘Merde alors!’: Salvini draws fury with reference to African ‘slaves’

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Italian interior minister’s comments on immigration infuriate Luxembourg minister

Italy’s far-right interior minister, Matteo Salvini, has compared African immigrants to slaves, prompting Luxembourg’s foreign minister to retort angrily using the French curse “Merde alors!

The fiery exchange between Salvini – the leader of the League, which governs in coalition with the populist Five Star Movement – and Jean Asselborn occurred during a behind-closed-doors session at a European conference on security and immigration in Vienna.

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If Jeff Bezos wants to help-low income people why not just pay them better? | Marina Hyde

Giving money away that he will control gets him a get out of jail feee card for being rich and “caring.” But he does not care to pay well or share the his gains with those who did the work that gave him billions.

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The Amazon boss’s philanthropy fund flies in the face of the way he treats his workers. Yet he wants to be seen as a messiah

Always a pleasure to hear from rejected Paul Verhoeven villain Jeff Bezos, who this week announced an initiative designed to cast him as Earth’s first trillion-dollar sociopath. OK, I’ve paraphrased slightly. The Amazon boss has launched something called the Day One fund, which feels like the will-this-do title for the will-this-do initiative it is. Bezos has long been criticised for his glaring lack of a philanthropic arm, long after he became the richest man in modern history. A year ago Jeff seemed at such a loss as to how not to be an unmitigated arse that he was asking internet users for ideas. He seems to have ignored all the respondents who said, “Stop treating your workers like rubbish.”

Do you remember the beginning of Verhoeven’s Robocop, before things started to go really tits-up in increasingly automated future Detroit? There’s a company that basically does everything, called Omni Consumer Products. They begin providing services that might reasonably be imagined the job of the state. A movie ensues. Anyway, here we are. Fresh from announcing that Amazon’s getting into healthcare, Jeff has decided to help homeless people and low-income communities with donations and not-for-profit schools.

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Japan’s attempt to overturn commercial whaling ban fails

yes!!!!!

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Anti-whaling nations defeat proposals that would have allowed for the return of hunts

An attempt to overturn the decades-old global ban on commercial whaling has failed, to the relief of conservationists.

Anti-whaling nations defeated by a decisive margin proposals from the Japanese government that would have allowed for the return of whale hunts.

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Whaling vote: Australia tells Japan it has lost argument for killings

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Country’s commissioner makes impassioned case against a business that no longer has a ‘social licence’

There is no longer a “social licence” for countries to kill whales for profit, Australia has told the International Whaling Commission in Brazil.

In an impassioned intervention, Australia’s IWC commissioner, Dr Nick Gales, told the key meeting that Japan’s proposal to lift a 30-year ban on commercial whaling was a “business proposition” that Australians reject.

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“I’d always dreamed of getting a college degree, but I got…

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“I’d always dreamed of getting a college degree, but I got married right after high school.  We started having children right away, so it wasn’t easy to convince my husband to let me study.  The one time I tried to mention it, he immediately said ‘no.’  But a few years later we were in the passport office and I saw an advertisement for a university.  I pulled on his sleeve, pointed at the sign, and said: ‘Lets take a look.  It’s only a look.’  That very same day I enrolled in classes.  Each night I’d wait until 2 AM, after everyone’s demands had been answered, and the whole house was asleep.  Then I’d begin my studying. I’d work until morning, wake the children up, and prepare them for school.  Only then could I rest.  It was exhausting but I was so happy.  It felt like I’d gone back in time and my kids were my siblings.  During my third year I was pregnant again, and I was terrified that I’d go into labor during my final exams.  But I got my diploma.  It was the happiest day of my life.  My husband was thrilled for me.  Everything is different now.  I understand the world.  I used to be afraid to leave the house.  But now I feel powerful.  And it shows.”  
(Cairo, Egypt)

‘Little Mussolinis’: EU chief angers Italy with comment on rise of far right

good on you!

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Pierre Moscovici, EU economics commissioner, told to ‘wash his mouth out’ by Italy’s deputy PM Matteo Salvini

The EU’s top economic official has voiced fears that “little Mussolinis” might be emerging in Europe, drawing a furious response from Italy’s far-right interior minister who accused him of insulting his country and Italians. 

Pierre Moscovici, a Frenchman who is the European Union’s economics affairs commissioner, said the current political situation, with populist, far-right forces on the rise in many nations, resembled the 1930s when Germany’s Adolf Hitler and Italian fascist chief Benito Mussolini were in power. 

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Top Official at Memorial Sloan Kettering Resigns After Failing to Disclose Industry Ties

one down, many more at other institutions should go as well.

by Charles Ornstein, ProPublica, and Katie Thomas, The New York Times

Dr. José Baselga, the chief medical officer of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, resigned on Thursday amid reports that he had failed to disclose millions of dollars in payments from health care companies in dozens of research articles.

The hospital’s chief executive, Dr. Craig B. Thompson, confirmed the resignation.

The revelations about Baselga’s disclosure lapses, reported by The New York Times and ProPublica last weekend, have rocked Memorial Sloan Kettering, one of the nation’s leading cancer centers, in recent days. Its top executives scrambled to contain the fallout, including urgent meetings of physician leaders and the executive committee of its board of directors.

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Top Cancer Researcher Fails to Disclose Corporate Financial Ties in Major Research Journals

A senior official at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center has received millions of dollars in payments from companies that are involved in medical research. His omissions expose how weakly conflict-of-interest rules are enforced by journals.

Baselga could not be immediately reached for comment.

On Sunday, Thompson and Kathryn Martin, the hospital’s chief operating officer, sent a message to the staff instructing employees to “do a better job” of disclosing their relationships with the drug and health care industries.

“The matter of disclosure is serious,” the executives wrote.

Baselga, a prominent figure in the world of cancer research, omitted his financial ties to companies like the Swiss drugmaker Roche and several small biotech start-ups in prestigious medical publications like The New England Journal of Medicine and the Lancet. He also failed to disclose any company affiliations in articles he published in the journal Cancer Discovery, for which he serves as one of two editors in chief.

All told, ProPublica and The Times, found that Baselga had failed to report any industry ties in 60 percent of the nearly 180 papers he had published since 2013. That figure increased each year — he did not disclose any relationships in 87 percent of the journal articles he co-authored last year.

In an interview and later statement, Baselga said he planned to correct his conflict-of-interest disclosures in 17 journal articles, including in The New England Journal and the Lancet. But he also contended that in dozens of other cases, no disclosure was required because the topics of the articles had little financial implication. He also said his failed disclosures were unintentional and should not reflect on the value of the research he conducted.

Those journals, as well as professional societies like the American Society of Clinical Oncology and the American Association for Cancer Research, said they were conducting reviews of Baselga’s disclosure practices after inquiries from The Times and ProPublica. Baselga was president of the AACR in 2015 and 2016 and appears to have violated disclosure rules for reporting conflicts of interest during that period.

A spokeswoman for The New England Journal, Jennifer Zeis, said in an email Thursday that Baselga had submitted changes to his disclosures but that editors had questions for him before the articles could be corrected. A spokeswoman for the AACR said that organization was continuing to review Baselga’s disclosures.

Baselga, 59, is an expert in breast cancer research and played a key role in the development of Herceptin, which was developed by Genentech, a subsidiary of Roche. He came to Memorial Sloan Kettering in 2013 after serving as chief of hematology and oncology at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Before that he was a leader at the Vall d’Hebron Institute of Oncology in Barcelona, Spain.

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Medical journals and professional societies have imposed stricter rules about reporting relationships to industry after a series of scandals a decade ago in which prominent physicians failed to disclose payments from drug companies. But medical journals have said they don’t routinely fact-check authors’ disclosures, and much is left to the honor system.

Ethicists say that outside relationships with companies can shape the way studies are designed and medications are prescribed to patients, allowing bias to influence medical practice. Reporting those ties allows the public, other scientists and doctors to evaluate the research and weigh potential conflicts.

Baselga has extensive ties to a range of companies, including sitting on the board of the large pharmaceutical company Bristol-Myers Squibb and serving as a director of Varian Medical Systems, which sells radiation equipment and for whom Memorial Sloan Kettering is a client.

Baselga has served on the boards of at least four other companies since 2013, and the positions required him to assume a fiduciary responsibility to protect the interests of those companies, even as he oversaw the cancer center’s medical operations. Baselga and Memorial Sloan Kettering have said the cancer center has put firewalls in place to prevent any conflicts.

Baselga received nearly $3.5 million in payments from drug, medical equipment and diagnostic companies from August 2013 through 2017, according to Open Payments, a federal database that tracks payments to physicians from health care companies. Most of that amount, about $3 million, involved a payment from Genentech for Baselga’s ownership interest in a company it acquired, Seragon Pharmaceuticals, in 2014.

But the $3.5 million in the Open Payments database does not include payments from companies that don’t have products approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Such companies are not required to report their payments under federal law.

For instance, Infinity Pharmaceuticals, a start-up with no approved drug, paid Baselga nearly $250,000 in cash and stock options for serving on its board from 2015 to 2017. He declined to disclose how much he received from such companies.

Baselga was one of the highest-paid staff members at Memorial Sloan Kettering, earning more than $1.5 million in 2016, the most recent year for which the nonprofit’s financial filings are available.

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Border agents tell Jewish American ‘the IDF doesn’t want you in Israel’

Julie Weinberg-Connors, who is in the process of making ‘aliya,’ or immigrating to Israel as a Jew under the Law of Return, was told that they were being deported because of the army’s objections over their visits to the West Bank. They were eventually let in.

Illustrative photo of passport control at Israel's Ben-Gurion Airport. (Photo by Rakoon)

Illustrative photo of passport control at Israel’s Ben-Gurion Airport. (Photo by Rakoon)

Jewish-American Julie Weinberg-Connors was denied entry to Israel Wednesday night and told that “the [IDF] does not want you in Israel,” where Weinberg-Connors holds residency and is in the process of immigrating under Israel’s Law of Return.

Border Control agents eventually reversed course and allowed Weinberg-Connors, 23, into the country after media outlets, including +972 Magazine, and several members of Knesset asked the Interior Ministry and Israeli army about the denial.

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Weinberg-Connors was meant to start yeshiva studies at the Pardes Institute on Thursday.

According to Attorney Leora Bechor, authorities had already flagged and questioned Weinberg-Connors about their political activity and affiliations before arriving back in Israel on Wednesday, where the American citizen has been living already for a year. (Weinberg-Connors prefers they/them pronouns.)

“They already knew that they wanted to deny her [entry] and they just had to find a reason,” Bechor told +972 Magazine, noting that Weinberg-Connors was flagged for questioning before border control authorities had a chance to ask her any questions. “It was clear their plan was to make sure she did not enter.”

Bechor, who was on the phone with Weinberg-Connors during parts of the detention and interrogation, said she heard a border control agent tell her client, “the Civil Administration does not want you in Israel.” The Civil Administration is the Israeli military body that administers the occupation of the Palestinian territories. The army, however, does not have the authority to determine who may enter Israel.

The denial of entry form given to Weinberg-Connors said they were being deported back to the United States for illegal immigration considerations. Weinberg-Connors was asked about visiting Khan al-Ahmar, a Palestinian village under imminent threat of forced displacement and demolition. Ultimately, they were allowed to enter after signing a document agreeing not to visit the West Bank.

Weinberg-Connors is in Israel on an A1 visa, a temporary residency status granted to people who the state has decided are eligible for citizenship under the Law of Return, or in other words — Jews.

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Israel’s “Law of Return” grants almost automatic citizenship to anyone with one or more Jewish grandparent, irrespective of whether they can trace heritage or have family ties to Israel. Palestinian refugees who were born, or whose parents or grandparents were born in Israel, are prohibited from immigrating to Israel.

Prior to the “Jewish Nation-State Law,” which passed earlier this year, the Law of Return was one of a small number laws on the books that explicitly grants certain rights only to Jews. Most other discriminatory laws do so without specifying a specific religious or ethnic group that is granted certain rights or privileges that are denied to others.

Denial of entry has become more common for foreigners — including Jews — visiting Israel in recent months, particularly those critical of Israeli policy vis-a-vis the Palestinians. Palestinians, Arabs, and non-Jews have been systematically denied entry to Israel over their politics and identity alike for years.

“This is the first case, to the best of my knowledge, of a person who was seeking to make aliyah who has been denied entry while they are actually in the process of having their aliyah application processed,” said Bechor.

Weinberg-Connors moved to Israel last September and flew back to the United States in June for the summer, according to Bechor. Weinberg-Connors was interested in becoming an Israeli citizen and has a pending aliya application. It was in the context of the aliya application that Weinberg-Connors was first asked about their political affiliations and activism and past visits to the West Bank.

Israeli citizens are not allowed to enter Palestinian-controlled cities in the occupied territories without military approval, but this restriction does not apply to non-citizens like Weinberg-Connors.

Weinberg-Connors signed the form agreeing not to enter the West Bank under duress, Bechor, the attorney, said, “because they told her if you do not sign the form we are not going to let you in.”

“It showed that there’s zero protections under the law so long as your political beliefs don’t match the consensus, you don’t have a place in Israel even if the law says that you do,” said Bechor.

Weinberg-Connors tried to present border control agents all of the aliya paperworkbut the border agents were not interested in seeing it, or in the fact that they had an A1 visa, said Bechor.

“She had a valid visa that they revoked. It is not just that she is an American who is coming on a visit, and they denied her entry – they revoked the visa that she has, temporary residency, without giving her any due process,” she added.

A spokesperson for the Population and Immigration Authority issued the following statement in response to a query about the Weinberg-Connors’ case:

The case concerns an American citizen who arrived to Ben-Gurion Airport in the evening, and after questioning her, it became clear that she was planning to stay in areas administered by the Palestinian Authority without the necessary approval from the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT). Upon checking with relevant security personnel, a conclusive recommendation was given not to approve her entry, but, after she committed to apply for the required permit in case she does plan on visiting the territories, her entry was approved.

A spokesperson for the COGAT, of the Israeli army, had not issued a formal response at the time of publication. It will be added here if and when it is received.