January 20, 2022

Donald Trump calls for racial violence: White supremacists are listening, but the media laughs

Donald Trump calls for racial violence: White supremacists are listening, but the media laughs
While the media congratulated itself for mocking or ignoring Trump's Arizona rally, he spread vicious racist lies

By CHAUNCEY DEVEGA
PUBLISHED JANUARY 20, 2022 6:00AM


(Salon) Donald Trump is no longer president of the United States. Yet he remains a public menace, and to ignore his words and deeds is a critical error. In many ways, Donald Trump continues to be the most dangerous person in America.

The Republican Party has become a de facto criminal organization, with Donald Trump as its leader. His apparent mental pathologies now define the "conservative" movement, and the coup attempted last January has effectively continued. If Republicans lose another national election, they will likely attempt another coup or engage in other acts of political violence on a significant scale. No significant figure in the Trump regime has been punished for its abundance of criminal acts, including democide resulting from willful and intentional acts of political negligence during the coronavirus pandemic.

Contrary to what many of the hope-peddlers, happy-pill merchants and stenographers in the mainstream news media would like to suggest, there is no significant internal conflict within the Republican Party: Donald Trump maintains nearly absolute control. Public opinion research makes clear that Republican voters now view loyalty to Trump as barometer for what it means to be a "real" Republican. Trump's followers have also shown themselves increasingly willing to condone, endorse and even commit acts of political terrorism and violence at his command and in his name.

....(snip)....

Most notably, during his Arizona speech Trump encouraged racist violence against Black and brown people. This is not an exaggeration. These were his actual words:



....(snip)....

Donald Trump's call to racist violence is part of a much larger pattern of behavior that goes back well before his first presidential campaign. Trump was one of the most prominent advocates of the white supremacist Birther conspiracy theory directed against Barack Obama; his 2016 candidacy was endorsed by David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan. Long before he described the white supremacist thugs who rioted in Charlottesville as "very fine people," he took out full-page ads in New York newspapers calling for the execution of the Black and brown young men known as the Central Park Five, who were wrongfully convicted in a notorious 1989 rape case. The Trump family's real estate company was sued numerous times in the 1970s for refusing to rent New York apartments to Black people and other nonwhites. ..........(more)

https://www.salon.com/2022/01/20/donald-calls-for-racial-violence-are-listening-but-the-media-laughs/

January 20, 2022

Texas GOP candidate won't ditch overt white nationalist staffer, blames "cancel culture"

(Salon) The Texas Republican gubernatorial primary has shaped up, as journalists in the Lone Star State have observed, into a "contest of extremism," with the various challengers to already-very-conservative Gov. Greg Abbott competing to one-up each other's right-wing credentials. Last week, that even included an awkward remake of Clint Eastwood's infamous 2012 speech at the Republican National Convention, as three of Abbott's opponents gathered at a roundtable hosted by the tea party-affiliated True Texas Project to argue against an empty chair with the governor's name on it.

But in the race to the right, one Republican candidate stands alone: former state senator and real estate developer Don Huffines, who has promised to "stop the illegal invasion of Texas" by migrants, vowed to reinstate prayer in school, described gender-affirming medical treatment for trans youth as child "sexual abuse" and "predatory grooming," and took credit for scuttling two diversity training programs being used by Texas's child welfare department after publicly calling them "Marxist" critical race theory. The Texas Democratic Party has denounced Huffines' anti-immigrant rhetoric as identical to that which drove the 2019 mass murder in El Paso, and warned that his attempt to "scoop up extremist primary voters" comes at the expense of Texans' safety. The progressive media company Texas Signal called him "the most dangerous man in Texas" (a tribute Huffines immediately shared on Facebook), and media across the state have attributed Abbott's rightward moves to Huffines' influence.

But Huffines' seeming victory as king of the right isn't just about his positions or his rhetoric. It's also because of who he's hired.

On Saturday, Ben Lorber, a researcher at the progressive watchdog organization Political Research Associates (and, full disclosure, my former colleague), reported that Huffines appears to have an open white nationalist helping run his campaign. Until this week, Jacob Lloyd Colglazier, a 24-year-old former leader within the far-right America First or "groyper" movement, who's better known online as just Jake Lloyd, was advertised as Huffines' deputy communications director for three upcoming events hosted by the True Texas Project. ................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2022/01/19/texas-candidate-wont-ditch-overt-nationalist-cancel-culture/

January 19, 2022

How social media drives a 'regression to the extremes'

How social media drives a ‘regression to the extremes’
By Abdul El-Sayed


(Detroit Metro Times) Earlier this month, we commemorated the somber day one year ago when thousands of Americans tried to ransack our democracy. That came on the backdrop of a global pandemic's fifth wave, despite now having a safe, effective vaccine that nearly 40% of Americans still refuse to take.

Meanwhile, America is just, well, angrier.

Videos of airline passengers assaulting flight staff, shoppers harassing other shoppers over masks, or road rage incidents populate our newsfeeds. It doesn't just offend our sensibilities. It's deadly — traffic accident fatalities have spiked over the past two years.

Though each of these offers substrate for a complex sociological analysis, there is a clear thread that binds them. I've written quite a bit about the way that social media has corrupted our public discourse. But here I want to hone in on a particular mechanism, which I'll call "regression to the extremes."

In statistics, "regression to the mean" is the phenomenon by which if one sample of a certain variable tends toward the extreme, the next sample is more likely to to tend to the mean average of that variable. The regression to the extreme that I'm describing here is the phenomenon by which engaging in social media discussions will tend to drive opinions to one of either extremes on an issue. ..............(more)

https://www.metrotimes.com/detroit/how-social-media-drives-a-regression-to-the-extremes/Content?oid=28991518#.YegqfYDAYa4.link

January 19, 2022

South Africa is over Omicron, and their good news may be a harbinger of hope for the U.S.

(CBS News) Johannesburg — Only eight weeks after the world first heard about the Omicron variant of the coronavirus, when researchers in South Africa who discovered the strain notified global authorities, that country's wave of infections has fallen as sharply as it climbed. Not only that, but South Africa has weathered its fourth wave of COVID-19 with very little interruption to people's lives.

CBS News foreign correspondent Debora Patta reports that in the suburbs of Johannesburg, restaurants are busy again, traffic is jammed, and the city is bustling.

Omicron quickly became the focus of global anxiety as infections spread across South Africa with ferocious speed. Within days, the country was at the epicenter of the pandemic. And then… well, not much happened at all.

"A little bit at ease"

Patta and her team have monitored one COVID ward, at a hospital in Gauteng province, which includes the metropolis of Johannesburg and the capital Pretoria, throughout the pandemic. Six months ago, during the country's battle with the Delta variant, the hospital was overwhelmed. ICU beds and oxygen were running out and the death rate was soaring.

"You are a human being before becoming a nurse, so seeing people die like that is very, very hard," exhausted nurse Justice Mangala told CBS News at the time. .............(more)

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-omicron-variant-south-africa-turning-point/

January 19, 2022

COVID-19 infection levels in Macomb Co. sewage 'dropping sharply,' officials say

(Detroit News) The level of COVID-19 infection showing up in sanitary sewage tests is "dropping sharply" in Macomb County, officials say, a potential indicator that the spread of the virus there is beginning to slow.

Lab tests, conducted from samples taken from wastewater in the seven sewage districts covering Clinton Township, show that the level of COVID-19 spiked Dec. 28, when it was at the highest level since the team started tracking it in August 2020. Samples from more recently, taken on Jan. 4, Jan. 9 and Jan. 11, show a decline.

In a Tuesday news release, Macomb County Public Works Commissioner Candice Miller said Clinton Township has been "quite an accurate reflection in Macomb County because of its size and demographics." ...............(more)

https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/macomb-county/2022/01/18/covid-19-levels-dropping-macomb-county-sewage-water-county-says/6567829001/

January 18, 2022

Maryland: Purple Line won't open until late 2026 and project costs have gone up too

It was safe to assume the Maryland Department of Transportation (MDOT) Maryland Transit Administration (MTA) Purple Line would not open in 2022 per its original schedule. However, a revised project schedule from state transportation officials shows the 16-mile line is estimated to open in the fall of 2026.

The project has experienced a contractor change, dealt with legal challenges and the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. With a new lead contractor on board and full scale construction expected to begin this spring, MDOT MTA and Purple Line Transit Partners (PLTP) continue to press forward with the project that will connect New Carrollton in Prince George’s County and Bethesda in Montgomery County, which are two of Maryland's most populace counties.

“Despite the challenges over the last several years, we have never lost sight of the benefits of the Purple Line for the residents and businesses in the National Capital Region. Taking the Purple Line P3 Agreement amendment to the Board of Public Works is the next step needed to move the Purple Line from construction into an active light rail line that creates a truly interconnected regional transit system. Getting to this critical step was made possible by the true partnership with Purple Line Transit Partners and the support of our county, state and federal partners to get this project built,” said MTA Administrator Holly Arnold.

In November 2021, MDOT MTA, with input from PLTP, selected Maryland Transit Solutions (MTS), comprised of Dragados USA Inc. and OHL USA Inc., to be the project’s design-build contractor. PLTP holds the public-private partnership agreement with MDOT MTA to design, build, finance and operate the light-rail project. ..............(more)

https://www.masstransitmag.com/rail/infrastructure/article/21253204/mdot-mta-purple-line-wont-open-until-late-2026-and-project-costs-have-gone-up-too

January 18, 2022

Dozens of alligators scrubbed, 3 euthanized after massive diesel spill that killed thousands of anim

Wildlife rehabilitators are decontaminating dozens of alligators, brushing their pointy teeth and scrubbing their scaly hides in the weeks after a pipeline rupture dumped 300,000 gallons of diesel fuel into a New Orleans area wetland. Three alligators that were caught in deep diesel had to be euthanized, officials said.

Diesel poured into the area outside New Orleans suburb Chalmette on December 27 after a severely corroded pipeline broke, according to federal records.

Seventy-eight alligators have since been rescued, and 33 of them had been cleaned and released by Friday into a national wildlife refuge located in New Orleans and about 10 miles from the spill site in St. Bernard Parish, the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries said.

Cleaning a six-foot-long alligator on Thursday required eight people: four holders, two scrubbers, one person with a hose for hot-water rinses and one to change the wash water, said Laura Carver, who became the department's oil spill coordinator in February 2010, less than three months before a massive BP oil spill off Louisiana in the Gulf. ..........(more)

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/diesel-spill-alligators-scrubbed-euthanized-louisiana/

January 18, 2022

Explainer: 5G and air travel

The airline industry is raising the stakes in a showdown with AT&T and Verizon over plans to launch new 5G wireless service this week, warning that thousands of flights could be grounded or delayed if the rollout takes place near major airports.

CEOs of the nation’s largest airlines say that interference from the wireless service on a key instrument on planes is worse than they originally thought.

AT&T and Verizon plan to activate their new 5G wireless service Wednesday after two previous delays from the original plan for an early December rollout.

The new high-speed 5G service uses a segment of the radio spectrum that is close to that used by altimeters, which are devices that measure the height of aircraft above the ground.

....(snip)....

Whose side is the government on?

Both.

The Federal Communications Commission, which runs the auctions of radio spectrum, determined that C-Band could be used safely in the vicinity of air traffic. The FCC in 2020 set a buffer between the 5G band and the spectrum that planes use to resolve any safety concerns. ..........(more)

https://www.detroitnews.com/story/tech/2022/01/18/explainer-5-g-and-air-travel/6562015001/

January 18, 2022

New York and other north-eastern US states see a rapid fall in Covid cases

(Guardian UK) New York City and some north-eastern US states appear to be seeing rapid decreases in their numbers of Covid-19 cases in recent days, raising the possibility that the Omicron wave has now already peaked in some parts of America.

In New York City the rolling seven-day average of new cases was less than 28,000 a day on 16 January, down from an average of more than 40,000 on 9 January.

Similar patterns were being observed in the state as a whole and other nearby regions.

“The Covid forecast is improving … the Covid clouds are parting,” said Kathy Hochul, the New York governor, in a statement Sunday after releasing figures that showed positivity rates in the state are falling sharply. “Overall, the prognosis, the forecast, for Covid is much brighter than it had been before.” .............(more)

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/17/us-coronavirus-cases-decrease-latest

January 18, 2022

One year later, mainstream media still doesn't see Jan. 6 attack as racial

One year later, mainstream media still doesn't see Jan. 6 attack as racial
Jan. 6 was literally a white supremacist assault on democracy. Has anyone in the media come out and said that?

By CHAUNCEY DEVEGA
PUBLISHED JANUARY 18, 2022 6:00AM


(Salon) Public opinion polls and other research have repeatedly shown that white racist attitudes, whether presented as "old-fashioned" racism or in less direct fashion as racial resentment and racial hostility, are strongly associated with support for Donald Trump and his Republican fascist movement. It is certainly true that feelings of economic insecurity, inequality and social alienation among the white working class are central to understanding the rise of American neofascism. But throughout American history, those forces have primarily manifested through white racism in its various forms.

As social theorist Stuart Hall described this dynamic: "Race is the modality in which class is lived."

W.E.B. Du Bois explained it this way in a memorable passage from "Black Reconstruction":



President Lyndon Johnson offered a famous observation in a similar vein: "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."

....(snip)....

It is simply factual to describe Jan. 6 as a white supremacist attack on multiracial democracy. But if one were to rely on the consensus of the America's mainstream news media on the one-year anniversary, one might come away with the belief that racism and white supremacy played little or no role in the events of that day.

Very few of the personal essays and reflections from journalists and others who were at the Capitol or nearby on Jan. 6 explicitly mentioned that Trump's attack force was almost entirely all white. Instead, those accounts depicted a race-less and colorless horde of angry political hooligans attempting to overthrow American democracy. ...........(more)

https://www.salon.com/2022/01/18/one-year-later-mainstream-media-still-doesnt-see-jan-6-as-racial/