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Category: Politics

The secretive government agency planting ‘cyanide bombs’ across America

The secretive government agency planting ‘cyanide bombs’ across America

The Guardian reports: The call came over Tony Manu’s police radio one March day in 2017: some sort of pipe had exploded in the hills outside Pocatello, Idaho and the son of a well-known local doctor was hurt, or worse. Manu, a long-time detective with the county sheriff’s office, was shocked. A pipe bomb in Pocatello? “We were like, ‘Holy shit,’” says Manu. He hit the gas and screeched up winding mountain roads outside of town. “I thought maybe [the…

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A devastating new stage of the pandemic

A devastating new stage of the pandemic

The Atlantic reports: For the past few weeks in the United States, the awful logic of the coronavirus seemed to have lifted. Stores and restaurants reopened. Protesters flocked to the streets. Some people resumed going about their daily lives, and while many wore face masks, many others did not. Yet cases continued to ebb. Even though the U.S. had adopted neither the stringent lockdowns nor the trace-and-isolate strategies seen in other countries, its number of confirmed COVID-19 cases settled into…

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How conservative media misinformation may have intensified the severity of the pandemic

How conservative media misinformation may have intensified the severity of the pandemic

Christopher Ingraham writes: Coronavirus infections have surged in a number of states, setting the United States on a markedly different pandemic trajectory than other wealthy nations. There are many reasons our response to the pandemic tied to nearly 120,000 U.S. deaths has faltered, experts say, including the lack of a cohesive federal policy, missteps on testing and tracing, and a national culture emphasizing individualism. In recent weeks, three studies have focused on conservative media’s role in fostering confusion about the…

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Trump says the coronavirus is ‘going away.’ CDC says cases in U.S. may be 10 times higher than reported

Trump says the coronavirus is ‘going away.’ CDC says cases in U.S. may be 10 times higher than reported

NBC News reports: President Donald Trump keeps spinning a tale about COVID-19 that is at odds with his own administration’s disease experts and data compiled by his own coronavirus task force, which was obtained exclusively by NBC News. In Trump’s telling, the deadly pandemic isn’t really a serious threat to the public and rising infection rates are simply due to increased testing. “It’s going away,” he said Tuesday at an event in Phoenix. But on the same day, the coronavirus…

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Ad agency counting BMW, PayPal and Pepsi as clients joins Facebook boycott

Ad agency counting BMW, PayPal and Pepsi as clients joins Facebook boycott

CNBC reports: Advertising agency Goodby Silverstein, owned by the Omnicom Group, has announced that it intends to join the ”#StopHateForProfit” campaign and pull advertising from Facebook next month. The agency’s clients include the likes of BMW, HP, PayPal, Pepsi, Doritos, and Adobe. Last week, a group of six organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Sleeping Giants and Color of Change, called on Facebook advertisers to halt their spending on the social media…

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The dirty secret behind Ben Shapiro’s extraordinary success on Facebook

The dirty secret behind Ben Shapiro’s extraordinary success on Facebook

Popular Information reports: The success of The Daily Wire, the website run by right-wing pundit Ben Shapiro, on Facebook is mind-boggling. The site has a small staff and primarily aggregates content from Twitter and other news outlets. Typically, its articles are very short, usually less than 500 words, and contain no original reporting. And yet, last month, The Daily Wire was the seventh-ranked publisher on Facebook, according to the analytics service NewsWhip. Articles published in The Daily Wire attracted 60,616,745…

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Policing is doing what it’s meant to do — and that’s the problem

Policing is doing what it’s meant to do — and that’s the problem

Todd May and George Yancy write: On June 6, one of us attended a memorial vigil for George Floyd. The opening speaker first thanked the local Police Department for keeping the vigil safe and then went on to distinguish between the majority of police officers who do their job helping and protecting people and the few who are racist and violent. His remarks echoed those made by Barack Obama on May 29, in his public statement on the killing of…

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‘Coming back and biting us’: U.S. sees Covid-19 resurgence

‘Coming back and biting us’: U.S. sees Covid-19 resurgence

The Associated Press reports: Hospital administrators and health experts warned desperately Wednesday that parts of the U.S. are on the verge of becoming overwhelmed by a resurgence of the coronavirus, lamenting that politicians and a tired-of-being-cooped-up public are letting a disaster unfold. The U.S. recorded a one-day total of 34,700 new COVID-19 cases, the highest in two months, according to the count kept by Johns Hopkins University. The number of new cases per day is now running just short of…

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As Trump slumps, his campaign fixes on a target: Women

As Trump slumps, his campaign fixes on a target: Women

The Washington Post reports: Before the coronavirus pandemic shut down Tampa’s hotels and put her out of work, Audrey Scaglione said she expected to vote for Donald Trump a second time. Now the contract food service worker finds herself struggling to decide. “I’m just really unsure right now,” said Scaglione, who says she leans Republican but also previously voted for Barack Obama. “It is so hard to tell. I don’t think I can.” She has not heard much from former…

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With annexation plan looming, Israel grapples with reality of apartheid

With annexation plan looming, Israel grapples with reality of apartheid

Meron Rapoport writes: On 15 June 1967, five days after the end of the Middle East war, the Israeli cabinet met for the second time since the ceasefire was announced. Menachem Begin, the historical leader of the nationalistic Herut party – which would later become Likud – had joined the government only a few days before the war, having previously been treated as a pariah by the successive Zionist “social democrat” ruling parties in the first 19 years of Israel’s…

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With Trump under fire for his handling of the pandemic, his advisers consider blaming the CDC

With Trump under fire for his handling of the pandemic, his advisers consider blaming the CDC

Politico reports: White House officials are putting a target on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, positioning the agency as a coronavirus scapegoat as cases surge in many states and the U.S. falls behind other nations that are taming the pandemic. Trump administration aides in recent weeks have seriously discussed launching an in-depth evaluation of the agency to chart what they view as its missteps in responding to the pandemic including an early failure to deploy working test kits,…

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Americans may be banned from EU due to U.S. failure to control the pandemic

Americans may be banned from EU due to U.S. failure to control the pandemic

The New York Times reports: European Union countries rushing to revive their economies and reopen their borders after months of coronavirus restrictions are prepared to block Americans from entering because the United States has failed to control the scourge, according to draft lists of acceptable travelers reviewed by The New York Times. That prospect, which would lump American visitors in with Russians and Brazilians as unwelcome, is a stinging blow to American prestige in the world and a repudiation of…

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Texas is heading down a dangerous path, local leaders warn as coronavirus cases and hospitalizations surge

Texas is heading down a dangerous path, local leaders warn as coronavirus cases and hospitalizations surge

The Texas Tribune reports: As Texas’ coronavirus cases and hospitalizations continue to break records for a second straight week, leaders and health experts in the largest cities are warning that the state is heading down a dangerous path and hospitals could soon be overwhelmed. Gov. Greg Abbott struck a more urgent tone Monday, calling the increases in hospitalizations and cases across the state unacceptable. He said the state would only shut down businesses again as a last resort but cautioned…

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Trump joked about Covid testing slowdown? He denies it while Fauci and Birx call for increase

Trump joked about Covid testing slowdown? He denies it while Fauci and Birx call for increase

ABC News reports: The White House said Monday that President Donald Trump was speaking only in “jest” when he said at Saturday night’s rally that he told officials to slow down testing for the coronavirus and that he had not actually ordered anyone to do so. “No, he has not directed that,” White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said in an exchange with ABC News’ Ben Gittleson in Monday’s press briefing and added that “any suggestion that testing has been…

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In American journalism, objective truth is decided almost exclusively by white reporters and their mostly white bosses

In American journalism, objective truth is decided almost exclusively by white reporters and their mostly white bosses

Wesley Lowery writes: It was a brief interaction, during the first weeks of my career. There had been a stabbing, and I’d been dispatched to a block in Roxbury, a predominantly black section of Boston, to snag quotes from anyone who might know anything about what had happened. “Who are you with?” inquired the first person I had approached, a black man in his 50s. “The Globe?” he exclaimed after hearing my response. “The Globe doesn’t have black reporters. What…

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State terrorism: A low-flying ‘show of force’

State terrorism: A low-flying ‘show of force’

The Washington Post reports: Hemmed in by police on all sides, Camellia Magness feared that the military helicopter descending on downtown Washington might unleash a final assault on protesters. It was June 1, nearly three hours after federal police in riot gear charged largely peaceful demonstrators as they gathered near the White House to protest after the killing of George Floyd. Magness and others had lingered downtown past a 7 p.m. curfew. Military helicopters had been flying high overhead, seeming…

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