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elizabethsharmon · 4 years ago

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So. Poland has chosen its "president" yesterday - if we can even talk about real choice here when he won by approximately 422k votes. When he won in 6 out of 16 regions, all of them with significantly lower number of eligible voters. When there are huge discrepancies between the results displayed in each polling district and the ones published on the website of the National Electoral Commission. When there were recurring instances of some voting cards not having the necessary stamps which automatically classified the vote as invalid. When some people went to vote and it turned out they're not registered in their designated district because of system error. When people abroad didn't get their voting cards on time. When his party sent over 150 buses to villages in Eastern Poland to take older, conservative people to voting stations. When this is how the results map looks like - and somehow the blue wins with orange.

In the last five years, Du*a and his party PiS (literally lAw AnD jUsTiCe but believe me, they're none of these things) have completely ruined the country and regressed it to Middle Ages.The democracy practically doesn't exist anymore, not since they have the majority to rule (the opposition won the senate back in the parliamentary elections so it's a small win but it's still not enough). They started with the judicial system, appointing conservative judges who are always ruling in their favour. The courts are not independent anymore. The Constitution is being broken over and over and over again. People have been marching and protesting for years now but to no avail.

The national television, TVP, is practically owned by the ruling party. The propaganda, fake news, hatred on the opposition and minorities is getting stronger each day. What you need to know is that this is literally the first channel on every TV set in the country. No matter where you live, no matter if you have cable or satellite, you turn on TV and TVP is what you get. Their reach is so much higher than other TV stations from the big four (TVP1&TVP2, TVN, Polsat). Poland has fallen to 62nd out of 180 countries in the World Press Freedom Index compiled annually by Reporters Without Borders. Before PiS took over in 2015 we were 18th. For du*a's presidential campaign now they gave TVP 2 billion PLN in order to strengthen the propaganda. There was a project to give those money to hospital oncology wards but PiS said no. TVP has only been showing him during the campaign. The other candidates have either been showed in a bad light or haven't been showed at all. Voters for whom TVP is the only source of information haven't seen other candidates nor their campaigns.

During the second round of the campaign, when another tv station, TVN, with two major Polish online media, Onet and WP, invited him and his opponent, Rafał Trzaskowski, for a debate. Du*a declined because he said he won't participate in a debate which isn't available for everyone and he asked them to reach an agreement with TVP to host the debate together. In the end there were two debates. Du*a on his own in TVP, answering predetermined questions from journalists reporting to his party and people in the studio that were paid to be there. Trzaskowski on his own in TVN and live on his Facebook channel, answering questions from the journalists from 16 independent offline and online media teams.

At the beginning of his and PiS first term of destroying the country, they started their crusade against women, because as we all know middle aged men are the most eligible people to make choices for women and their bodies. Abortion is Poland is (was? honestly who knows now) only allowed in three cases: if the woman's life was in danger, if the prenatal testing indicates severe damage of the fetus, if the pregnancy was the outcome of rape. With their pro life and anti women initiative, PiS was determined to ban abortion completely and punish it by prison. The bill was so flimsy that in some cases even miscarriage could be turned against woman. Even if the baby would've been born sick or severely disabled, even if the pregnancy could be fatal for the mother, even if it was caused by rape. We went on the streets. All dressed in black, with umbrellas in hand. Hundreds of thousands of women and allies marching and protesting together against the government. And they got scared. The bill proposal was dropped but the fight wasn't over and it still isn't. They tried to bring it back now during the pandemic just because they knew we wouldn't go out protesting. But we did, we blocked the streets with our cars.

The day after pill can only be bought on prescription. But if you end up going to the conservative ob/gyn they can invoke conscientious objection to abortion and they won't prescribe it for you. They want to ban sex ed from schools. In their opinion sex ed “demoralizes children and teaches them masturbation.” They want young people to be uneducated and have sex and get pregnant and give birth. They want to make kids have kids just so they would depend on the government and social wage programme 500+ which gives 500PLN (approximately 125€) each month to families with 2 or more children for each of their children. Right now you can be a woman raising your three or four kids and you will get the equivalent of minimum wage just for that. This program made people vote for them in 2015. First Du*a used it in his presidential campaign, then PiS was blackmailing the voters saying the program will only happen if both president and the government will be on board aka they have to get in so Du*a will sign the bill and people will get the money. People still believe only they can ensure the stability of the program even though almost all the other candidates said it will not go away.

In the last couple of weeks of presidential campaign, it became more clear than ever how Du*a is planning to win the elections - by trying to reach to the mindsets of elderly and conservative voters by attacking the LGBT community. He called us “ideological hurricane”. He said we are worse than communists. His party members have been saying we're not humans. He was saying over and over again how he doesn't care what people do in bed as long as they're not obnoxious on street and in real life about it. How sexuality is a private thing and we shouldn't be proud of it. How there's no place in Poland for “LGBT propaganda that wants to demoralize our children”. How there's no space here for unions for same-sex couples, not even mentioning marriage or adoption. How he'll do everything in his power to protect the “traditional Polish values and family model” (whatever that means). The most conservative parts of the eastern Poland has claimed their towns and villages as “anti-LGBT zone”. It's been going on since last year. After Dua's words now the hate crime is stronger than it ever was. When LGBT activists asked him to apologize for his spiteful words, showed him proofs that suicide rate among LGBT teenagers is higher than it was since his party is ruling, showed him the photographs and shared the stories of the people we lost because of the bashing they encourage and support, he said he won't apologize because he stands by his words and there's a freedom of speech in the country. Not for everyone I guess.

The journalists have been interviewing many people in different parts of Poland after it. What stuck with me were the words of some old man from the countryside who has said that “LGBT should be exterminated in Majdanek”. It's one of the places where the death camp was during World War 2. I don't think I have to tell anyone what words like this mean, how much they hurt, and how much worse it is when they’re said in the country that’s lost so so many lives during WW2. In a country that fought so hard for so many years to reclaim its freedom from the nazis and then from the soviets. In the meantime of this bashing, Du*a has pardoned a pedophile so he could return to his family (and the victim he abused). So that would be it for protecting family values.

The exit polls results yesterday were so close that they gave us so much hope that we would wake up in a new reality today but the hope died quickly. Now we're stuck again with a man who said in the middle of the global pandemic that he's anti-vaccination and he doesn't think vaccine for covid-19 should be obligatory. With a man who thinks climate change and global warming isn't real. With a man whose actions are constantly destabilitizing economy because he only acts like there is today and doesn’t look forward in the future and doesn’t know the way he and his party ruin the country will have terrible consequences in a few years. With a man who is homophobic, racist, misogynistic, xenophobic, and many, many, many other things. With a man who is a "president” of Polish people but only if you're a straight catholic man voting for his party.

Now our fear is that with him being “elected” as the “president” again, his party will try to meddle with the Constitution and try to change it so they could either extend his term for more years or extend the number of terms a president can have. And even if the change can’t happen so easily, what’s sure is that they will try to take away basic human rights from women and LGBT community. They made it perfectly clear in the last five years and during the campaign now.

So if you’re asking yourself now what can you do about it the answer is simple: spread the word. Read about it. Educate yourself. Make a buzz in the social media. We need as much help as we can get. We need foreign media to pick up the topic, we need them to talk about it and to make the noise. We need the foreign governments to know about it. European Union has already declared that if the bashing on LGBT continues, they will take away the development aid from the self-proclaimed “anti-LGBT zones”. Our country has suffered so much and somehow we’re still standing but I don’t know for how much long we will last. So please. Don’t leave us alone.

#poland #lgbt #feminism #tw homophobia #signal boost

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caelpictor · 5 years ago

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✊🏽 🌈 😷

Hello hello hello! Happy Pride, and a very happy Juneteenth to you all! For those of you who don’t know, Juneteenth is a holiday that commemorates the day the final group of enslaved people was freed in Texas in 1865 (which was two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed… but that’s beside the point). So I recently took about a month-long unplanned break from social media, because, as I’ve said before, I’ve been REALLY low energy these past few weeks, what with everything that’s been going on in the world. I am at the intersection of multiple marginalized groups, and that knowledge can be very heavy sometimes. But I wanted to make a post today in my own words, because I realized my staying silent doesn’t help me or anyone I care about; it only helps maintain the status quo. So now I’m here to check in with all of you and to put my thoughts and feelings on the record.

First of all, I’ve been doing a lot of drawing and writing and bingewatching and bingeplaying video games since quarantine started, and I’m having a great time with that! But I’ve also been staying up-to-date on the news, as any good person should, and what I’m seeing isn’t so good. More and more Black people, including children and the often overlooked women and trans folk, are being murdered every day. Speaking of trans folk, their basic human rights are being taken away before our very eyes. Brown immigrants continue to be abused by our government. Indigenous people continue to have their bodies, lands, and cultures violated. People who riot and loot are being condemned in the name of “respectability politics,” despite the fact that they’ve been systemically disenfranchised all their lives, and their anger is justified. People who oppose fascism are being dubbed terrorists. The pandemic isn’t getting any better, but people are acting like it’s over. Political leaders and celebrities who claim to be on our side are taking performative action that does nothing to foster actual progress. And that’s just in the United States! There are more crises going on in countries around the world than I can even think to name.

So right now I’m doing what I can to stay safe and sane and help out in whatever small ways I‘m able to. That means continuing to practice social distancing while also signing petitions, spreading information, supporting my fellow Black and Brown and LGBT+ artists/businesses/individuals, elevating our voices, and donating wherever I can. But Juneteenth is about education, and I’ve also been doing some reading. I have two really great books to recommend to you, if you haven’t read them already:

The first one is called The End of Policing, and it’s by Alex Vitale; it basically breaks down that phrase that seems to scare and confuse a lot of people: “Defund the police.” Vitale talks about how policing as an institution is ineffective at its best and harmful at its worst, how attempts at reforming the institution are also ineffective, how policing permeates every area of our society, including schools and politics and several other places where it doesn’t belong, and about the criminalization of homelessness, sex work, drugs, gangs, immigration, and more. The End of Policing is available as an ebook for free right here, for your convenience!

The second book is by the great political activist Angela Davis, and it’s called Are Prisons Obsolete? Like Vitale, Davis questions and critiques an institution which is often said to be in need of reform when it actually, she argues, needs to be done away with entirely. She talks about how the current system incorrectly values punishment and vengeance over reform and rehabilitation, how people of color are vastly overrepresented in the penal system, how the system treats people of color, women, the disabled, the mentally ill, the poor, and LGBT+ folk differently from well-off cishet white men, and how prisons have become an industrial complex that serves capitalistic desires over human needs. This one is also available for free, as a pdf right here, for your convenience!

Both authors discuss controversial, interconnected topics through thorough research, write in clear, concise, and fact-driven language, dive deep into the history of policing and prisons in America and around the world (including their shared origins in slave-catching), and finally offer alternatives, which are detailed, doable, and proven effective by precedent, such as decriminalization of certain acts and substances, and reallocation of bloated funds to areas that more effectively address crime at its source (as crime doesn’t happen in a vacuum, and mostly occurs as a direct result of people’s needs not being met!). I highly recommend these if you’re interested in reading. If not, there are lots of videos and infographics and articles that discuss these topics in much shorter, simpler ways, and a quick Google search will lead you in the right direction. 😉

In conclusion, coronavirus is alive and well, and so is racism. I urge my friends and followers not to be quiet about the injustices we have been facing every day for centuries, all over the world, and not to let the attention and momentum shift away from our movement. It doesn’t matter who you are or what you are or where you are. Keep wearing masks and socially distancing. Keep educating yourselves and each other. Keep protesting and contacting officials and donating and signing petitions. Keep supporting Black and Brown and Queer artists and businesses and individuals. Keep elevating our voices. Use your voice to call for an end to white supremacy, the patriarchy, and transphobia. Be careful with spreading images of violence (as they can be disturbing and disrespectful), as well as protestors’ faces (as they can be used to identify and track people down).

On a more personal level, respect and value the lives of people who look different from you. We don’t exist for you. We exist for ourselves. We are complete human beings, and we will not be broken down into parts for your easy consumption. And sure, voting is important, but direct action has proven to be much more effective at causing immediate change. I understand if you need a mental health break. As I said at the beginning, I needed a mental health break. But please do so quietly, safely, and respectfully, and don’t make this about you. I see some of you are still out here fighting the good fight daily, and I thank you for it. But I can’t begin to express how troubling it is to watch other people go about their lives as if all these crazy things aren’t happening. Remember, no voice is too small to be used as a platform of positive change! I realized that includes me. Now you need to realize that includes you!

Lastly: Black Lives STILL Matter, Black WOMEN’S Lives Matter, Black TRANS Lives Matter, Black DISABLED Lives Matter, Black MENTAL HEALTH Matters. Defund The Police. Abolish ICE. No One Is Illegal On Stolen Land. Eat The Rich. Pride Is A Protest. Be An Ally. We’re In This Together.

And once again, happy Juneteenth.

P.S: My book recs are free, and Google is free, but as my friend Javon so perfectly put it, “my emotional labor and racial education will only be free when I wish them to be.” So if you want to debate me on any of these topics, OR if you want me to do more research for you, I would be happy to accept payment via Venmo (@KyleBryant), PayPal (kylemb13), CashApp ($KyleMarcusBryant), et cetera! (I’m also accepting drawing/painting commissions, reparation payments, and general donations! Yes, I’m dead serious!)

✊🏽🌈😷

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nickylovesrefugees · 5 years ago

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Coronavirus myths and facts

I am writing this as a doctor with an interest in infectious diseases who is currently studying a masters of international public health. Myths and facts about COVID-19. Please share if you think this is worthwhile. References in link at the end.

MYTHS

Myth: “COVID-19 is just like getting the flu”

COVID-19 is not just like the flu! The symptoms are often similar, that’s true. But there are key differences:

Influenza

Mortality: 0.1%

Vaccine availability: Vaccine updated yearly

Scientific understanding: Excellent

R0: 1.2

COVID-19

Mortality: ~3%

Vaccine availability: Does not exist

Scientific understanding: Limited, highly unpredictable

R0:2-4

Note: R0 is the number of people that the average infected person then goes on to infect

So essentially - coronavirus is much more contagious, is many times more deadly, there’s no vaccine and it’s highly unpredictable.

Myth: “Coronavirus is killed by warm weather”

I saw this floating around in a chain email purportedly from “Stanford University”, which claimed that a temperature of 26 degrees would kill the virus. There is no evidence to suggest this. If this were the case, the virus would die inside our bodies (~36 degrees) and nobody would get sick… It is important to note also that the WHO points out that cold weather similarly does not kill the virus.

Myth: “Drinking warm water kills viruses”

Nope. Water doesn’t have any toxic effects, and warming it slightly doesn’t change that. Even if it did, the virus is in your airways, not your stomach.

Myth: “If you have a runny nose, you cannot have COVID-19”

Another ridiculous claim. In general, in medicine, never/always statements are rarely correct, especially when looking at symptoms. There are always variations in symptoms between different people in the real world.

Myth: “Hand sanitiser is better than soap and water”

False. It’s the other way around. Soap breaks down the fatty bilayer which forms the “envelope” or wall of the viral particle. It does this in a similar way to ethanol-based handwashes, but most commercial hand sanitisers have a lower ethanol content and are not as effective. To be effective against coronavirus, your hand sanitiser should have at least a 60% ethanol content.

Myth: “I’m young and healthy, if I get coronavirus I’ll be fine”

Many young people who get COVID-19 will suffer a flu-like illness and not need hospitalisation but there’s also strong evidence that young healthy people can also get very sick with COVID-19. For example, more than 50% of patients admitted to ICU in France were under 60.

Myth: “If you can hold your breath for ten seconds without coughing, you cannot have COVID-19”

If it were that easy to diagnose coronavirus, the hospital and GP system would be under a whole lot less pressure. Once again, these simple, “too good to be true” claims are exactly that.

Myth: “Antibiotics can treat COVID-19”

Antibiotics have no activity against viruses - they are used exclusively for bacteria. Occasionally, very unwell people with COVID-19 may develop superimposed bacterial infections in hospital, and is this setting antibiotics will be used. But this is to treat the bacterial pneumonia, not the COVID-19 infection. Currently, there are no WHO-recommended medications to treat COVID-19, although reports are coming out of some countries that some antivirals usually used in treatment of hepatitis or HIV may be beneficial.

FACTS

Fact: Ibuprofen should be avoided in patients with COVID-19.

Ibuprofen, sold under brand names such as nurofen or advil, is an NSAID (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug). It’s used for a variety of inflammatory conditions, and is also sometimes used for fever that is not responding to paracetamol. However, a paper was published on March 11 in the Lancet linking increased ACE2 levels (an enzyme that coronaviruses use to bind to target cells) with COVID-19 infection. This is relevant because ibuprofen can increase levels of ACE2, at least in rats. More research is needed in this area, but for now the WHO has recommended avoiding ibuprofenin COVID-19, and instead using paracetamol. This also implies that theremay be an argument for withholding ACE-Inhibitors (a common blood pressure medication) but the European Society of Cardiology recommends that they are continued.

Fact: Healthcare workers on the front line are doing their absolute best in a very difficult time.

Many of my best friends are working on the front lines as junior doctors, GPs, emergency or medical registrars, nurses, pharmacists and other allied health professions. They are doing their best, but the situation is constantly evolving, and guidelines continue to do change. As such, they may not test you for COVID-19 when you are expecting a test, or otherwise treat you in some way that differs from your expectations. Rest assured that they are working very hard to keep up to date, and to behave in a manner that prioritises not only your health, but also public health and the best possible allocation of resources. Please be patient and honest with, and kind to, them in these challenging times. Speaking as one of them, we really do care about you.

Fact: Panic buying deprives vulnerable people of vital necessities, and is completely unnecessary.

I’ve touched on this earlier, but please do not hoard groceries. Many elderly or people with disabilities do not have the luxury or option of visiting multiple stores, so if they go to a supermarket that has had its shelves cleared out, they have no backup option and may be forced to go without. If everyone were to return to how they shopped a month ago, everyone would have enough food!! The supermarkets never run out of pasta or toilet paper normally, and they will stop running out if people just shop normally. The supermarkets are not going to close, there is no need to hoard food.

Fact: We still have a lot of control over what happens over the next few weeks.

Here, we must learn from the examples of other countries. If we continue to treat COVID-19 with the same cavalier attitude, continuing to attend large events, public places like gyms, churches etc, we will follow in the footsteps of Italy, which now has over 30,000 cases and over 2,500 dead. The death toll there is now climbing by hundreds per day. On the other hand, a combination of widespread closures and shutdown measures, combined with individuals taking responsibility to do their absolute best, will see us closer to countries like Singapore or South Korea, which have dramatically curbed their cases.

Fact: Social distancing will save lives.

Social distancing will dramatically reduce coronavirus spread. This works both because undiagnosed cases of COVID-19 have less opportunity to spread, and because uninfected people have less opportunity to encounter coronavirus as you go about your life. So please take it seriously, even if you are feeling perfectly well. Stay home unless it is absolutely essential that you leave the house. Wash your hands often, with soap and water. Avoid touching your face.

In summary, we need to make informed, evidence-based decisions to combat this pandemic. It poses grave public health risks if not taken seriously, but we can do a lot to mitigate these risks. This needs to be led by Government, but in the absence of decisive leadership there, we must take the lead ourselves. But our response needs to be one that continues to look after the needs of our most vulnerable members of the community.

#coronavirus covid-19 australia health medicine publichealth

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theshedding · 4 years ago

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Don’t tell people not to laugh.

Friends, today is not a day to be shamed of your joy and hope. Wave your flag HIGH. Some people would have you to believe you should hide your glee, your excitement or your elation at finally seeing the caravan of retribution, cosmic justice and old-fashioned “reaping and sowing” reach the gates of its own demise. You should not. The universe is doing what it’s doing and, acknowledging that as the only “justice” we can be sure to have, or hope for, is well-earned and beyond our control. But just in case you still feel a bit self-conscious about the universe’s timing:

Remember the children -as young as babies- in distress, traumatized from parental separation, with ID numbers written on their arms as they’re shipped around the US quietly on night flights, lodging in Best Western hotels while this administration claimed they are “keeping families together”. Remember how their family members -pre pandemic- were packed in cages so tight no one could even lay down and SLEEP and how lawyers went to COURT on their behalf to advocate for them having access to basic hygiene products and influenza medications.

Remember the "shithole" Bahamians (a former Caribbean free-slave society with "Black Leadership") that were denied temporary refuge in the US after a monstrous hurricane stalled over their island homes for nearly 3 days-destroying their entire habitat, food/water supply & livelihood. Think of all the Republican politicians & White Americans who then joined in to support and affirm this un-neighborly treatment, who hide their tax-free profits in their banks and HAPPILY vacation there each year but proudly expect the service of Bahamian people during their pseudo-Caribbean "getaways”.

Remember the Puerto Ricans 🇵🇷 (& Vieques, Culebra, USVI 🇻🇮) who were told they were too "Lazy" to deserve adequate FEMA relief; relief that was sitting in cargo bins and supply ships stuck in port for weeks while surviving families, children & the elderly scoured around the island for water & food. Remember how the big ‘White Man’ and his posse flew in on a PR gambit to cover-up administrative incompetence. How they forced the hand of local government officials to “erase” lives by agreeing to concede lower death counts. How he threw paper towels at human beings in need of food and water from across a room, delighted with the televised spectacle of groveling survivors to cover-up an ill-prepared disaster response. How he required literal “thanks and praise” for benevolently distributing resources which they are entitledto by law, then flew back to the states, lied on those same leaders and then told the citizenry (overriding the NOAA) the same monstrous hurricane was "changing course" to Western Florida and Alabama because he knows better about meteorological science.

Remember the families of Paradise California-having lost all their life’s possessions, standing in the ashes of torched forests, had to acknowledge the welcome of a man who couldn’t bother to offer condolences let alone research the name of the very town he traveled to for a photo op. How he then minimized their devastation by recommending those agencies and families "rake leaves" like the Scandinavians do-to combat a Climate Change phenomenon he believes is a hoax.

Remember Heather Heyer, who lost her life, run over by a speeding driver in a crowd-on film, who's mother wasn't offered so much as a condolence card for the loss of her only daughter during a protest against Nazis HE STILL WONT CONDEMN, that descended on her hometown to spew epithets, obscenities while terrorizing ethnic, religious and sexual minorities with old-fashioned torches one fine Friday evening. Remember how it looked and sounded to witness the chilling resurrection of the chanting ghosts in our country’s violent, barbarous history be welcomed in equivocal affirmation by a head of state, staff and colleagues.

Remember Khzir Khan, his wife and fallen son who are to this day still mocked, denigrated and roundly dismissed for their immigrant history and military service-to this country's ideals and imperialistic motivations in their own places of birth -whilst simultaneously offering up White soldiers and their families who served in the same wars as the epitome of American valor, respectability, 'legitimacy' and political currency. And how he later condemned his own Defense leaders as being hungry for war to satisfy a “military industrial complex”.

Remember the vile ‘mysogynoir’ directed at Rep. Fredrica Wilson (FL) by his Chief of Staff, himself a gold-star military father, caught blatantly lying about material facts he used to denigrate her concerning the death of a Black soldier and his grieving widow. How he defended a callous condolence call and gaslight an entire press corp to bolster an unpatriotic narrative of a Black soldier that "He knew what he was getting into"...and never apologized for it.

Remember the Trans women and men serving in the Miltary who woke up one random morning to read on Twitter that their hard work and dedication was now a distraction and “threat to cohesion” because their identity had become "too expensive" to sustain. This after being assured their jobs and “LGBTQ rights” would be honored beyond 2016. Remember the grift of inter-agencies, the re-allocation of Defense funds towards a border wall “Mexico would pay for” and the $84 Million in subsidies for erectile dysfunction medications for male military officers (in contrast to “overspending” claims on Trans hormonal care). Remember this vulgar scapegoating to satisfy a group of mysogynistic theocrats and non-profit “interest groups” self-defined by Biblical “principles” and simultaneously bearing the most false of witness against these their neighbors.

Remember the show hearings with Dr. Ford, a victim of sexual abuse, white patriarchy and the most acute manifestations of rich, male, Christian privilege, who was not be afforded a thorough background investigation into her abusers and the veracity of her case; who was eventually mocked and discredited by grinning Senators eager to affirm a petulant, entitled drunk of a pious Juris Doctor, just so he could rule in favor of a “Muslim Ban” from a guy who pledged a “total Muslim ban” before being sworn-in to office. And the irony of discrediting Ford’s testimony on ‘insufficient’ evidence while being employed as a result of 10 years of election campaigns exploiting fears of coming “Sharia Law” they claim mistreats women places like Iran and Afghanistan.

Remember the nearly $110 million dollars for a 2017 Presidential inauguration still unaccounted for but nevertheless was somehow needed to hire acts like The Rocketts, the “US Border Patrol Pipes & Drums”, celebrity season winners on “America’s Got Talent” or the high-priced “1st Calvary Division Horse Calvary Detachment”. Remember how he got an inauguration: through outright lies, mockery, demonization of Latinos, the Disabled, the American Indigenous (remember “Pocahontas”?) and Blacks/African-Americans…before insisting the public believe an easily refuted lie about crowd and attendance.

Remember the dead that are still being killed overseas in various theaters of war: the dead Kurdish people (a.k.a. our “allies”); the dead soldiers for whose lives someone received a $100K bounty payment from Putin; the dead migrant adults and children who succumbed to abuse, infection and disease in holding cells (pre-Covid); the charred bodies trapped in their neighborhoods from fires raging in the West; the traumatized and/or dead protestors shot by sanctioned White vigilantes in cities “protecting businesses”; Black/Latino men and women shot by law enforcement or the 72 y/o Buffalo man with a permanent brain injury pushed to the ground by a “task force” of colleagues dutifully walking away as his blood spills on the sidewalk; the 205,000 DEAD of Covid-19, a purported “Democratic Hoax” that would miraculously disappear by Easter 2020, yet could be sufficiently treated with ultraviolet lights, “injections” of cleaning solution and for which -according to this man- “no one” has died even from (including your friend or your family member). He calls them “no one”.

Oh, and lest we forget-he is said to have only paid $750.00 in Federal taxes as a BILLIONAIRE…in the 10 years. Not to mention having allegedly RAPED or SEXUALLY ASSAULTED over 25 WOMEN.

As you tell me and everyone else not to “laugh”, dismiss or revel in this President’s current status, or that of his staff and family, REMEMBER THAT.

-R

#TrumpHasCovid Covid19 2020 TSMadison Retribution

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skepticraven · 5 years ago

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Dear Trump Fans,

I keep hearing you say that Trump has done so much for America but you never elaborate on that, even when I ask you to. So, I’m asking again & my question is simple. What has he done that you think is so great? Aside from insulting people you don’t like, I just don’t see any achievements. This is what I do see:

-Trump didn't end the overseas wars like he promised. Instead, he got us involved in Syria. And he has nearly started a couple new wars with Iran & North Korea

- It seems you don't have your giant, waste-of-money wall. You have a small amount of fencing that anyone could cross should they want to. And Mexico won't EVER pay for it. Now, I’m fine with no wall but you shouldn’t be.

- Trump is trying to cut the CDC budget by almost 20% amidst a pandemic.

- Trump fired the pandemic response team last year.

- Trump is already saying he wants everyone back to work by Easter & all of the churches full on Easter- except every doctor & all his medically educated advisors are advising Trump against that. The cases of coronavirus are still increasing rapidly. Sending people back into such close proximity to one another will only inflame the problem, increasing the number of infected & dead tenfold.

-Trump has violated the emoluments clause of the constitution by failing to put his assets in a blind trust & thus is charging foreign leaders & American politicians inflated prices to stay at his hotels to win his favor & get private access to the president since he goes there all the time

- Trump is guilty of blatant nepotism. For example, he appointed Jared Kushner to negotiate peace in the middle east, handle diplomacy with China & Mexico, address the opioid epidemic, manage the wall construction process, etc. Jared isn't qualified for any of that, he only has that job because he bones Trump's daughter. Jared wouldn’t be qualified to manage a Pizza Hut. He was born rich and has done nothing but lose billions when he landed in his father job because his father went to prison for tax evasion, witness tampering, & illegal campaign contributions.

- Trump, who claims to be tough on terrorism, signed a multi-billion dollar weapons deal with Saudi Arabia RIGHT AFTER they murdered & dismembered an American journalist. Not to mention the genocide they were waging in Yemen. There is a reason that 80% of the 9/11 terrorist were from Saudi Arabia.

- Trump has eliminated funding for programs that work to de-radicalize people in extremist groups/organizations & help them escape that life.

- Trump cut his own taxes & that of his rich buddies & corporations BY 40%. Due to all the tax loopholes & shady financial dealings (like equity swapping or offshore tax havens) which the wealthiest Americans & corporations do, they already historically weren't paying anywhere near the marginal tax rate they should be on paper. Trump cut the corporate marginal tax rate from 35% to 21%. So after the loopholes & their shady bullshit, they're very likely paying a lower effective tax rate than you are. Thanks to Trump, many paid no income taxes at all in 2018 like Amazon, Netflix, Chevron, IBM, Delta Airlines, General Motors, Whirlpool, Goodyear Tires, etc.

-Trump promised to reduce the deficit but he has actually raised it by a lot. When you decrease the amount of taxes coming in that drastically & you increase government spending that much, the deficit is going to increase. The Caronavirus situation has only exacerbated that problem but the problem was already there.

-Trump pulled out of the Iran deal, solely because Obama did it. And Mr. Art of the Deal did not even try to negotiate a new deal.

- This great healthcare Trump promised hasn't happened. Less people have insurance now than when Trump first took office. Drug prices have only gone up. There have be cuts to Medicaid as well.

-Trump appointed a judge who clearly lied to congress & whom likely sexually assaulted someone. Why Trump did not pick a different conservative judge to nominate, I will never understand.

- Trump cut all the social safety net programs that help the poor & disabled: SSI Disability, Food Stamps, Medicaid, HUD, etc.

- Like it or not, Trump was technically impeached. He just wasn’t removed from office by the Senate because there are a bunch of scared Republicans who are too scared to do or say anything against Trump. Tribalism saved him. That’s it. Because he admitted on national television that he talked about Biden & his son on that phone call- you can even see the exact moment when he realizes he shouldn’t have said that. So, he did do what he was accused of.

-His administration is a revolving door of hiring & firing/quitting. Trump said he knew the best people so why would he need to fire so many of them? Think about how many people have come & gone. These are just some of the big names who left the administration but there are WAY MORE than I am listing: Rex Tillerson, Mike Pompeo, Scott Pruitt, Steve Bannon, John Bolton, Jeff Sessions, John Kelly, Anthony Scaramucci, Reince Priebus, Sean Spicer, Sarah Sanders, James Mattis, Rick Perry, Nikki Haley, Dan Coats, Alexander Acosta, Scott Gottlieb, Bill Shine, Tom Price, H.R. McMaster, Ryan Zinke, Mick Mulvaney, James Comey, Sebastian Gorka, Omarosa Newman, Gary Cohn, Don McGahn, Rod Rosenstein, Michael Flynn, Sally Yates, Tom Homan, Ty Cobb, Tom Bossert, K.T. McFarland, Rob Porter, Dina Powell, Rick Dearborn, Matthew Whittaker, Ezra Cohen-Watnick, Hope Hicks, Brenda Firtzgerald, Rob Snyder, Michael Dubke, Sean Doocey, etc.

-This is kind of a minor point but it does illustrate Trump’s hypocrisy. Trump criticized Obama for golfing so much & then Trump turns around & plays 2.6 times more golf than Obama in his first 2 years and 91 days & has cost the tax payer an estimated $74 million more than Obama.

- Does it ever embarrass you how little Trump knows about anything? Ever notice how he never goes in depth talking about anything? Its all vague because he doesn’t know enough about healthcare or the Iran Deal or climate change to address it in any kind of depth. You still see that idiocy spill out regardles. During an interview for SiriusXM’s P.O.T.U.S. channel, Trump said that former President Andrew Jackson was angry about the Civil War. The only problem is, Jackson couldn’t have been angry about the war. He died in 1845. The Civil War was in 1861. Another example would be during a call with Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, Trump claimed Canada burned down the White House during the War of 1812. Canada didn’t exist as a country until 1867. That was the British... Trump also claimed General John J. Pershing dealt with Muslim terrorists by shooting them with bullets dipped in pig’s blood. That did not happen. The story began circulating the internet around the September 11 terrorist attacks. Apparently Trump believed it was factual, talking about it during his 2016 presidential campaign & again after a terror attack in Barcelona. Then, speaking to the conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, Trump confused the Quds Force, a unit of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, with the Kurds, the minority group battling ISIS in northern Iraq (who he would later abandoned). Maybe that confusion could be forgiven for an average Joe but if you’ president, you need to know stuff like that (especially given the region these two groups are in). Hence why most presidents study political science, law, or economics in college or at least, they bother to read up on this stuff. But Trump doesn’t really read. The only book he claims to have read was a biography about Andrew Jackson whom, he thought was mad about a war that happened 16 years after his death & he also seems to have missed the whole Trail of Tears thing.

- By pulling out of the Iran Nuclear Deal & the Paris Climate Accord, Trump has isolated us from our allies. Our word means nothing anymore. And who can blame them for being pissed? Whether Iran has a nuclear weapon effect more than just us. Given the size of our nation, our refusal to take the looming threat of climate change seriously is a detriment to the entire world that can & likely will have devastating consequences for everyone. Furthermore, Trump trash talks our closest allies & has placed tariffs on nearly all of them. For example:

AUSTRALIA: Shortly after taking office, Trump reportedly berated then-Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull over an agreement between the U.S. and Australia involving refugee resettlement.

CANADA: Trump also attacked Canadian President Justin Trudeau as “meek, mild, dishonest, & weak” during a conversation on trade at the G7 summit in 2018. He also threatened to withhold the U.S.’s signature from a joint communique from the meeting over the feud. Trudeau he also found it “insulting” that tariffs were placed on Canada under a rarely invoked law that allows levies to be placed on a country in the interest of national security. Since when is Canada a national security threat?

DENMARK: Trump also went after Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen after she refused to sell him Greenland. She called the idea “absurd,” & Trump referred to her as “nasty & inappropriate.” The people that live there don’t want to become American. You can’t just buy a country on whim. Greenland belongs to Denmark but its semi-autonomous.

FRANCE: Trump threatened to slap tariffs on French wine & called French President Emmanuel Macron “foolish” after he signed a digital services tax on tech companies making at least 750 MILLION EUROS annually, a figure which meant U.S.-based tech giants like Apple, Google, Facebook & Amazon would be included.

GERMANY: Trump has had a particularly tumultuous relationship with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The president has repeatedly threatened Germany with auto tariffs, saying if companies like BMW and Mercedes wanted to sell cars in the U.S., they should build them in the country. German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Friday criticized President Donald Trump's tweets about four Democratic congresswomen of color telling them to go back to where they came from. She said that the president's tweets contradict "the strength of America." "I distance myself firmly from this & feel solidarity with the women who were attacked," Merkel said. (Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau also criticized Trump for the same thing).

JAPAN: Trump has lamented the U.S.’s responsibility to defend Japan if attacked, saying the alliance between Washington & Tokyo is uneven. Trump has also threatened Japan with auto tariffs, though it announced in May it was delaying any levies for six months.

MEXICO: President Trump has repeatedly torn into Mexico, slamming it on trade but focusing much of his ire on the country over immigration. Trump has threatened America’s southern neighbor with tariffs over its alleged inaction in working to stem the flow of undocumented migrants in the U.S. And let’s face it, he doesn’t exactly talk about the Mexican people in the nicest way and stroked racial tensions.

SWEDEN: President Trump feuded with Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven after American rapper A$AP Rocky was detained in Sweden & charged with assault following a June incident in Stockholm. Apparently Kanye West told Trump about it. 🙄 The rapper was ultimately released in & returned to the U.S AFTER he was convicted & had to pay a fine (plus time served).

UNITED KINGDOM: While Trump has bashed the United Kingdom over trade practices, threatening tariffs on one of the U.S.’s closest allies to rectify what he sees as an imbalance, he has directed much of his criticism toward the country’s handling of Brexit. He also attacked the UK's National Health Service, claiming it is "going broke & not working." That’s not true but its not really his business either way. Trump is so disliked in the UK that at one point, 75,000 protestors gathered in central London’s Trafalgar Square to protest U.S. President Trump’s visit to the U.K

SOUTH KOREA: The Trump administration is reportedly demanding South Korea pay 400% more for U.S. troops in the region- despite the fact that having a base in South Korea is essential as much for us as it is for them. We need a base near North Korea should we ever have to attack. Maybe raising it some is reasonable but raising anything 400% overnight is a little absurd.

I see failure & corruption in Trump. I see a danger to America. Feel free to try to change my mind.

#politics #conservative #liberal #democrats #republicans #explain #political blog #PoliticalQuestions #potus #potustrump #failure

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newsmanmdgn · 4 years ago

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NO MORE MASKS!

CDC says people fully vaccinated against COVID-19 can shed masks in most indoor settings

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says people who are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 can forgo their masks and social distancing in many indoor situations.

“Today, CDC is updating our guidance for fully vaccinated people,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said Thursday at a White House COVID-19 briefing. “Anyone who is fully vaccinated, can participate in indoor and outdoor activities, large or small, without wearing a mask or physical distancing. If you are fully vaccinated, you can start doing the things that you had stopped doing because of the pandemic.”

CBS News

It's about time!

But I'll still be wearing a mask, thank you very much. I don't EVER want to be confused with anti-vaxxing non-mask-wearing MAGAts.

Stefanik voted into House GOP leadership, replacing Cheney

House Republicans chose Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) on Friday to fill the leadership post recently occupied by Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), replacing a harsh critic of former president Donald Trump with a lawmaker who has become one of his staunchest defenders.

She received 134 votes while Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) received 46, according to the aides, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the closed meeting. Nine members voted present and three wrote-in a person who was not running.

The Friday morning vote capped a tumultuous week for the party, which has established support for Trump’s false claims about the 2020 presidential election as a defining issue, and those who challenge his falsehoods have found themselves exiled.

Stefanik moved quickly to lock down support for the No. 3 spot in House GOP leadership when it became clear last week that Cheney would lose the job because she continued to challenge Trump’s unfounded assertion that the election was stolen and blame him for inciting the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. She was formally ousted on Wednesday.

WaPo

One word: DUH.

Gaetz ally plans to plead guilty and cooperate with prosecutors

The ex-Florida tax collector with close ties to Rep. Matt Gaetz is planning to plead guilty on Monday in a federal court in Florida, according to a new filing Thursday.As part of the deal, Joel Greenberg will cooperate with investigators in a wide-ranging probe, according to one source familiar with the matter. For months, federal investigators have been examining whether Gaetz broke federal sex trafficking, prostitution and public corruption laws and whether he had sex with a minor.

CNN

Now you know why #MattGaetzIsGoingtoPrison was trending on Twitter yesterday.

The IRS Is Coming for Crypto Investors Who Haven’t Paid Their Taxes

Cryptocurrencies are exploding—and so is the Internal Revenue Service’s pursuit of Americans who aren’t paying taxes on them. With Tax Day approaching, it’s a good time to clean up your act if you’ve been lax about taxes on crypto. Not doing so could compound future tax problems, especially if you have traded a lot or have more than a small stake.

Two new IRS efforts to find crypto tax cheats stand out: In April, a federal judge in Boston approved an IRS summons to the payments company known as Circle and its affiliates, including Poloniex, to turn over customer records to the agency. And in early May, a federal judge in San Francisco approved another IRS summons for records to the crypto exchange known as Kraken. In both cases, the turnover applies to customers who had more than $20,000 in transactions in any year from 2016 through 2020.

“With these summonses and other actions, the IRS is mounting a full-court press to show taxpayers how seriously it takes cryptocurrency compliance,” says Don Fort, a former chief of IRS criminal investigation now with Kostelanetz & Fink. “Taxpayers should take it seriously too.”

WSJ

Simple solution: Buy and never sell. Hilarious that you'll be a “paper billionaire” without ever owning ANY paper.

Activists and Ex-Spy Said to Have Plotted to Discredit Trump ‘Enemies' in Government

WASHINGTON — A network of conservative activists, aided by a British former spy, mounted a campaign during the Trump administration to discredit perceived enemies of President Donald Trump inside the government, according to documents and people involved in the operations.

The campaign included a planned sting operation against Trump’s national security adviser at the time, H.R. McMaster, and secret surveillance operations against FBI employees, aimed at exposing anti-Trump sentiment in the bureau’s ranks.

The operations against the FBI, run by the conservative group Project Veritas, were conducted from a large home in the Georgetown section of Washington that rented for $10,000 per month. Female undercover operatives arranged dates with the FBI employees with the aim of secretly recording them making disparaging comments about Trump.

Yahoo News

Project Veritas is run by James O'Keefe. It's a despicable organization who specializes in made-up hits. They're the ones who went into Planned Parenthood facilities and doctored videotape to make it look like they were doing the exact opposite of their mission.

They are scum. O'Keefe belongs in prison. He's a fraudster.

Colonial Pipeline Paid Hackers Nearly $5 Million in Ransom

What happens when you hoard gasoline by placing fuel in unapproved containers after Colonial Pipeline fucked up.

Colonial Pipeline Co. paid nearly $5 million to Eastern European hackers on Friday, contradicting reports earlier this week that the company had no intention of paying an extortion fee to help restore the country’s largest fuel pipeline, according to two people familiar with the transaction.The company paid the hefty ransom in difficult-to-trace cryptocurrency within hours after the attack, underscoring the immense pressure faced by the Georgia-based operator to get gasoline and jet fuel flowing again to major cities along the Eastern Seaboard, those people said. A third person familiar with the situation said U.S. government officials are aware that Colonial made the payment.

Once they received the payment, the hackers provided the operator with a decrypting tool to restore its disabled computer network. The tool was so slow that the company continued using its own backups to help restore the system, one of the people familiar with the company’s efforts said.

A representative from Colonial declined to comment. Colonial said it began to resume fuel shipments around 5 p.m. Eastern time Wednesday.

Yahoo Finance

Of course they did. And the kicker, in case you missed it above, is that the decryption tool the hackers gave them after they ponied up $5 million? It was super slow.

LOL

Time we get some real pros running our infrastructure. And maybe, JUST MAYBE, how about we don't rely on private businesses whose ONLY motive is short-term profits?

The article was originally published here! NO MORE MASKS!

0 notes

dipulb3 · 4 years ago

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Republicans continue their nationwide campaign to restrict voting

New Post has been published on https://appradab.com/republicans-continue-their-nationwide-campaign-to-restrict-voting/

Republicans continue their nationwide campaign to restrict voting

The vote came after an often-heated debate on the floor of the Texas House with Democratic lawmakers pressing the bill’s author, GOP Rep. Briscoe Cain, to cite examples of the election fraud the bill sought to prevent.

“We don’t need to wait for bad things to happen” to take action, Cain responded at one point.

The vote moves Texas closer to joining a host of other states racing to change the ground rules for future elections, following former President Donald Trump’s repeated and unfounded claims that voter fraud contributed to his loss last November. Around the country, Republicans have cast their effort as needed to restore voter confidence in the integrity of elections. But critics say the nationwide push aims to retain GOP power in key battlegrounds by making it harder for people of color and younger voters to cast their ballots.

There is no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election.

“Most of these changes are unnecessary to make voting more efficient or to prevent fraud, which is quite rare in our elections,” said Richard Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California at Irvine. “These measures are political and are being passed on a partisan basis for partisan reasons.”

The Texas measure, which now goes back to the state Senate, would empower partisan poll watchers, increase penalties for voting crimes and bar counties from sending unsolicited applications to vote by mail. It included Democratic amendments, including one that would allow election officials to call the police to remove disruptive partisan poll watchers.

“Under the cover of darkness, the Texas House just passed one of the worst anti-voting bills in the county,” Sarah Labowitz, policy and advocacy director of the ACLU of Texas, said after lawmakers voted to advance the bill in the early morning hours Friday. “SB7 will target votes of color, voters with disabilities and the civil servants who run our elections.”

A separate measure approved previously by the Texas Senate is more expansive. It would allow poll watchers to videotape people receiving assistance to vote and would ban drive-thru voting and other measures employed in urban areas in 2020 that made it easier to vote in the pandemic.

Those provisions still could make into the final law.

State action

In Florida, DeSantis said the new law would “increase transparency and strengthen the security of our elections.” Its critics, such as NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson, called it a “horrifying reminder” of democracy’s “fragility.”

The law brings sweeping changes to Florida’s election rules, such as imposing new identification requirements to request vote-by-mail ballots or to change an address. It also limits the location and hours of ballot drop boxes and requires election workers to monitor boxes. Election supervisors face a $25,000 fine for the failure to do so.

Texas and Florida — both populous and diverse states — are just the latest Republican-led states to move forward with voting restrictions.

Georgia and Iowa already have passed far-reaching election restrictions. Montana has tightened voter ID requirements and ended same-day voter registration. Bills to tighten voting rules also are advancing in the battleground state of Michigan.

And this week, the Republican majority in the Kansas legislature overrode Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s vetoes of controversial election bills. As a result, it’s now a misdemeanor for someone in Kansas to collect and return more than 10 ballots — which opponents say will hamper efforts by churches and other organizations to help the elderly and disabled vote.

Meanwhile, legislation introduced Thursday by Republicans in the Ohio House would significantly revise election laws there. Among other things, the GOP package co-authored by Republican state Rep. Bill Seitz would tighten voter ID requirements, eliminate a day of early voting and limit drop box locations to local election offices.

Asked about the moves in Texas and Florida, White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Friday said, “The President’s view — the fact of the matter is that these laws make it harder to vote. That’s not a good thing.”

She said Biden will leave it up to the Justice Department and Attorney General Merrick Garland to make any decisions about whether to intervene in states implementing restrictive voting measures.

Arizona ‘audit’

In Arizona — a state Biden narrowly won last November — a controversial election audit demanded by Republican state senators of the 2020 ballots cast in Maricopa County is underway. Two previous audits by county elections officials found no evidence of widespread voter fraud. The state’s results have long been certified.

This week, the head of the US Department of Justice’s civil rights division wrote to the president of the Arizona Senate, suggesting that the recount by a private contractor of some 2.1 million ballots could violate federal law that requires state and local officials to maintain ballots and election materials for 22 months.

Justice Department official Pamela Karlan also warned that the plan by the recount contractor, Florida-based Cyber Ninjas, to knock on voters’ doors to confirm their addresses could violate federal laws banning voter intimidation.

Ken Bennett, the former Republican secretary of state who is acting as the liaison between the private contractor and Senate Republicans, said there’s no plan to intimidate voters. “If somebody knocks on your door and you don’t want to answer their questions, you don’t have to,” he said.

Senate Republicans in Arizona show no signs of retreat. One state lawmaker, Republican Sen. Wendy Rogers, tweeted this week: ” ‘Justice’ Department – you need to stay in your lane. Do not touch Arizona ballots or machines unless you want to spend time in an Arizona prison.”

Trump has cheered on the recount effort.

On Thursday, Rep. Elise Stefanik, a New York Republican and vocal Trump ally, said she “fully” supported the privately conducted audit in Arizona. Stefanik is the leading contender to replace Rep. Liz Cheney in US House Republican leadership following Cheney’s public repudiation of Trump’s election lies.

“When you talk to any voter across this country, certainly at any Republican event, they are focused on election security and election integrity,” Stefanik said during an appearance on Steve Bannon’s show this week.

“It is important to stand up for these constitutional issues and these are questions that are going to have to be answered before we head into the 2022 midterms so that the American people have faith in our election system,” she added.

Appradab’s Dianne Gallagher, Stephanie Becker, Maegan Vazquez and Wes Breur contributed to this story.

0 notes

electronicstudentwerewolfstuff · 4 years ago

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Ransomware on the rise, blockchain to the rescue

The advent of COVID – 19 has created fertile ground for the multiplication of ransomware incidences by expanding the list of possible attack vectors that can help external actors create or find an opening through which they can orchestrate their plan. In a bid to preserve business continuity a large segment of companies shifted to remote working.

As the office has moved to the living room, employers implemented a series of new protocols that facilitated this transition. The issue is that many of these protocols can be manipulated, security measures can be bypassed, and as the majority of employees work from home, there are more openings for social engineering attempts that target high profile individuals from an organization to steal their credentials.

Take a look at the evolving ransomware sector, in a bid to explore and understand why ransomware attacks are stronger than ever in 2020 and how blockchain technology can be used to enhance existing data storage mechanisms or set a foundation for new types of data infrastructures! Find how the Modex BCDB solution has an answer for the ransomware threat, because Modex Blockchain Database represents a new take on traditional technology that levels the playing field by combining database systems with a blockchain backend to create a structure that closes any openings that can be exploited by ransomware groups.

Ransomware has become deeply ingrained in our collective business and enterprise consciousness as one of the most pernicious evils that companies need to safeguard against. Evolving from seemingly humble beginnings, ransomware attacks have become as widespread as the common cold, a fitting analogy that implies how companies and businesses are permanently required to be on guard and implement smart preemptive strategies as well as the latest cybersecurity tools and solutions to prevent infection. If early ransomware iterations were backed by a few individuals that acted as digital highwaymen that tried to make use of their technical abilities to extort various sums of money from businesses and everyday users, the phenomenon has reached alarming new grounds that can only be described as a veritable digital mafia that operates with clear strategic objectives in mind that can range from data hijacking to putting a stop to an enterprise’s operational flow. The proposition to uncover new profit from “alternative” means has reshaped the mentality of the people behind such operations, as they now don the businessman’s suit to sell the data of uncooperative victims or the means of acquiring such data to individuals that are seeking a quick profit.

The birth of ransomware

The year 1989 marks a pivotal chapter in the history of mankind during which the world witnessed a series of events that forever changed the geopolitical landscape and the balance of power. But did you know that the year 1989 also marks the creation of the first ransomware software?

Developed by Harvard trained evolutionary biologist Joseph L. Popp, also known as “the father of ransomware”, the software was called the AIDS Trojan, also known as the PC Cyborg. Popp used this software to perpetrate the first documented ransomware attack in December 1989. Of course, during that period, the internet was still in its early stages, so Popp distributed his software by sending 20,000 infected diskettes labeled “AIDS Information – Introductory Diskettes” to the attendees of the World Health Organization’s international AIDS conference in Stockholm.

Besides the questionnaire to help users determine their risk of contracting AIDS, the diskettes also contained the Trojan software that was designed to take action after 90 reboots, after which it encrypted through simple symmetric cryptography the user’s data. After the data was encrypted, the victim was presented with a ransom demand of USD 189 and the address of Popp’s post office box in Panama.

Little did Popp know that he set the foundation to what will develop in the past 3 decades in the main digital extortion method that targets individuals, small businesses, enterprises, and even governments.

Ransomware, a cat and mouse game between hackers and companies

Now that we have observed the first iteration of a ransomware software, and understand the logic and reasoning behind this type of software, we can construct a broad definition. Ransomware or ransom malware is a type of malicious software that prevents users from accessing their system or personal files and demands a ransom payment to regain access. Over the past decades, ransomware has become one of the most prolific criminal business models in the world, due to the fact that cybercriminals usually target high profile individuals, corporations, and even governmental institutions. Ransomware works by locking a victim’s computer through encryption and demanding a substantial sum of money, usually in cryptocurrency form, most notably Bitcoin for the decryption key necessary to decrypt the data. Depending on the group behind the ransomware, failure to comply with the demands may initially lead to an increase in the ransom and eventually to a permanent loss of the data, or new attacks based on the user base stolen from the previous attack.

A new milestone was reached in the evolution of ransomware in November 2019 when the group behind Maze, a new generation of ransomware, followed through on its threats and published the data stolen from its victim, Allied Universal after the company did not comply with the ransom demands. This is the first time a ransomware group publishes a large portion of the data stolen from a victim’s database. If this bold strategy proves to be more profitable than the traditional encryption focused approach, it is highly probable that newer versions of ransomware will soon change their approach from locking companies from their data, to publicly distributing the information of their victims, as well as the information concerning their clients, business partners and user base, a move that can prove disastrous to any business or enterprise.

Not long ago, ransomware groups had somewhat of a wild card approach, in the sense that they were indiscriminately and haphazardly spreading their malware, focusing on quantity in lieu of accuracy. This quantity over quality approach meant that not much thought was put in investigating victims’ network and security measures before deploying the ransomware.

Over the past decade, there has been a shift in the modus operandi of the actors that perpetrate ransomware attacks, as they now operate more like well-coordinated special operations groups. This is best reflected by the meticulous way in which they choose their next target, the time they allocate for gathering intel, how they examine targeted networks, and the increased levels of complexity and sophistication of the ransomware software. Furthermore, most ransomware groups no longer employ a hit and run approach, as they can infect a system and avoid detection for months, during which they slowly spread throughout the system in search of vulnerabilities and valuable data. According to a report conducted by cybersecurity company, Fire Eye, the median malware dwell time (a metric that measures the length of time between compromise and detection) is 56 days.

What are the attackers doing in this time frame:

examine the victim’s network to determine what servers and workstations they need to hit to maximize their impact;

manipulate or disable security systems;

install additional malware that gives them further control over the compromised machines;

obtain high-level privileges/steal credentials to gain access to additional systems;

whitelist ransomware executables, basically enabling them to leave with corporate data;

exfiltrate company data through various communication channels;

tamper with the backup mechanisms set in place to destroy existing system backups to disable a victim’s ability to recover their data through other means;

Infection and Distribution Vectors

For the past couple of months, companies and organizations across every sector have been required to cope with the sudden set of restrictions imposed by the global pandemic. The most obvious and difficult to manage is of course, the new rules concerning social distancing. In a bid to maintain business continuity while respecting the conditions imposed by social distancing, a large segment of companies has come to rely heavily on Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) which can be seen as an opportunity for ransomware groups to take action.

The reasoning behind this assumption is that during the mass migration to remote working at the beginning of the year, a considerable number of companies were caught off guard and didn’t have the time or resources to properly implement RDP, leaving a number of potential vulnerabilities. A report conducted by global computer security software company, McAfee supports this claim, as the number of exposed RDP ports grew from approximately 3 million in January 2020 to over 4.5 million in March, positioning exposed RDP ports as one of the biggest attack vectors for ransomware.

Photo: Coveware

What is RDP?

Remote Desktop Protocol is a network communications protocol developed by Microsoft which is available on most Windows operating systems. RDP provides a graphical interface through which users can connect remotely to another computer over a network connection. After the connection has been established, the protocol transmits the display of the remote computer or server and the input of the peripherals (mouse and keyboard) from the client to the remote machine, basically granting the user the ability to control a remote computer. RDP has numerous applications including remote file and application access, remote system diagnosis, and troubleshooting.

Insecure or exposed RDP ports pose a real threat to companies because if left unchecked, they represent an open door for basically anyone that has an internet connection and sufficient technical skill to access the remote server. If an external actor manages to hack an account and gain access to the remote server, he will be able to do anything within the hacked account’s privilege range.

Although securing RDP ports should be a priority for every company, the global shift towards remote working has highlighted the fact that many companies, regardless of their sphere of activity, do a poor job in securing their RDP ports. Kaspersky Lab, a multinational cybersecurity and anti-virus provider, underlined in a report earlier this year that at the beginning of March the number of RDP attacks in the United States hovered around 200,000 per day, which by mid-April saw an exponential increase, reaching 1,4 million.

Photo: Kaspersky

The x-ray of server penetration via exposed RDP port:

Scanning the internet for exposed RDP ports: virtually anybody can download free port scanning software to search the internet for exposed RDP ports;

Server penetration: attackers employ various strategies such as social engineering to steal the credentials of a user (preferably an administrator because they have higher permission levels). Attackers may also use brute force methods which randomly try every possible combination until it guesses the right username and password;

Dismantling security systems: depending on the privileges of the hijacked account, the attacker attempts to systematically deactivate security measures, tampers with system backups and configurations to make the network as insecure as possible;

Installing the ransomware malware: after the security of the network has been compromised, attackers proceed to install ransomware software, exfiltrate corporate data, and create new back doors for future incursions.

Other ransomware attack vectors

Software vulnerabilities: as much as we would like to believe, there is no such thing as a perfect software product. In the real world, every software will eventually encounter a bug, crash, or have a hidden vulnerability that was undiscovered during the testing phases of the development life cycle. This is where attackers come into play. They carefully and minutely examine software products or infrastructures to uncover any potential vulnerabilities that can be exploited.

Weak credentials: more often than not, a weak password makes the life of cybercriminals easier. Brute force tools employed by attackers are quite effective against systems protected by weak passwords. To make it more difficult for hackers and to increase the chance of detecting a brute force attempt before it succeeds, it is highly recommended to use a combination of alphanumeric characters in upper and lower case in tandem with special symbols to create a strong password. Even so, cybersecurity experts still recommend periodically changing passwords.

Phishing: malicious actors often employ social engineering methods to trick unsuspecting victims into giving them their credentials. This can be as simple as impersonating other people over the phone or email, sending infected attachments with macros-embedded within them that trigger or install hidden software when opened such as keyloggers. Spear phishing is very similar to phishing, the main difference is that phishing campaigns don’t target victims individually, they’re sent to hundreds, sometimes thousands, of recipients. In contrast, spear phishing is a highly targeted operation in which attackers focus only on one individual. The term whaling is also used to describe spear phishing operations that target only high profile individuals within a company.

Maze and Netwalker, two ransomware to watch out for in 2020

Netwalker, also known as the Mailto ransomwareis a type of file locking malware that was first discovered in August 2019 and has slowly built itself as a major player in the ransomware scene, by systematically attacking high profile companies, healthcare providers, and even local governments. The data that was pieced together so far indicates that Netwalker was developed by a Russian speaking group of hackers that operate under the moniker Circus Spider.

Additional information reveals the fact that Netwalker is designed to operate as Ransomware as a Service (RaaS) offering, which implies that Circus Spider is more than eager to provide to other interested parties the tools and infrastructure required to perform ransomware attacks if they are willing to pay the right price. Joining the group does come with its set of rules, as affiliates are prohibited from attacking organizations from Russia, including the Commonwealth of Independent States (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan). Furthermore, their rule book seems to stipulate that once a ransom has been paid, data should always be restored to victims.

The group behind Netwalker seemed to operate with a standard approach by distributing malware through infected emails in mass phishing campaigns that targeted as many individuals as possible. In 2020 Circus Spider changed its approach and requested affiliates to follow the new direction and concentrate their attacks on large enterprises, hospitals, and governmental agencies. The main methods of gaining unauthorized access revolve around exploiting unpatched VPN appliances and bypassing weak RDP passwords. After successfully entering an organization’s network, Netwalker engages the data encryption process and deletes any backups. The data is then used to blackmail victims into paying the ransom under the threat that all their private files will be leaked online if they fail to comply. To put additional pressure, Netwalker has a public shaming website in which it posts the screenshots of the hijacked files with a timer that indicates how much time the company has at its disposal to pay the ransom.

Netwalker attacks

The group behind Netwalker doesn’t seem to shy from profiting from the fear generated by the global pandemic, as it has already targeted several healthcare institutions. On March 10, 2020, it set its sights on the Champaign-Urbana Public Health District in Illinois, USA, managing to take the institution offline. Fortunately, the district had most of its services and files backed on the cloud, so the main force of the attack was taken only by their website. A more serious blow was given on March 14th, 2020 to the Brno University Hospital from the Czech Republic, the country’s second-largest medical institution. The attack caused computers across the hospital to shut down delaying surgeries and coronavirus test results. Undoubtedly the attack on the Brno University Hospital was carefully planned as it took place two days after the president of the Czech Republic issued a nationwide quarantine.

Although cybersecurity experts have been pointing for years that healthcare institutions rank among the most vulnerable segments to the cybercrime spectrum, no significant step was taken to increase their tolerance to external tampering, and the ones who suffer the most are the patients whose lives can be threatened by a cyberattack. This was the case mid-September 2020 when a woman in Germany died during a ransomware attack on the Duesseldorf University Hospital, which may be the first death directly linked to a cyberattack on a hospital. Because all of the services were rendered offline by the attack, the hospital could no longer accept emergency patients, and the woman was sent to a healthcare facility around 20 miles away but didn’t survive the journey.

It seems that local governments aren’t safe from the threat posed by Netwalker, as the malware team launched a ransomware attack against the Austrian village of Weiz in May 2020, affecting the public service system and leaking stolen data from building applications and inspections. The village’s public network was penetrated by phishing emails that baited employees by masquerading as “information about coronavirus”. On a much larger scale, the group behind Netwalker forced Argentina’s immigration agency, Dirección Nacional de Migraciones (DNM), to suspend operations for over four hours on August 27th, 2020, basically putting a halt to all border crossings for that time frame.

Maze, previously known as the ChaCha ransomware, is a sophisticated strain of ransomware that has been targeting companies and organizations since 2019, demanding payment in the form of cryptocurrency for the safe recovery of data. Similar to many ransomware iterations that preceded it, Maze is designed to spread across corporate networks, infecting as many machines and servers as possible to encrypt data in an attempt to extract a ransom from the victim. What makes Maze more dangerous than traditional ransomware is the fact that it also acts as a data breach. Systems infected by the Maze strain showcased that their data was also exfiltrated to servers controlled by the group behind Maze, who threatens that if victims don’t comply with their demands, they will go public with their data. This new and aggressive approach raises important questions related to how companies should prepare for a ransomware attack because data backups will only be effective to a certain degree. Companies are dealt a tough hand as they can still rely on data backups to recover their lost data, but this doesn’t change the fact that hackers are now in possession of their commercial and private information.

Photo: pcrisk.com

The group behind Maze has shifted the ransomware paradigm and is promoting an alternative way of putting pressure on victims, which is slowly being incorporated into the new generation of ransomware. No longer content with just encrypting corporate data, hackers move it to their servers and threatens to:

release public details and inform the media of a victim’s data breach;

sell corporate data on the dark web to the highest bidder;

inform the stock exchange where the company is listed that sensitive information has been exfiltrated;

use the stolen data to target the company’s clients and business partners.

Maze attacks

The first notable attack conducted by the group behind Maze took place in November 2019, when they attacked Allied Universal, a security staffing firm, managing to encrypt and exfiltrate some of the company’s data. After Allied Universal refused to cooperate and pay the ransom, the hackers published 700 megabytes worth of stolen data, claiming that it only represented 10% of the total files stolen and that the rest will soon be published if they fail to meet their demands.

The IT staff of Hammersmith Medicines Research (HMR), a London-based medical research company, discovered on March 14th, 2020 that it had been attacked by the cybercriminals behind Maze. At that time, HMR was carrying out trials for a possible vaccine for the coronavirus. HMR has previously worked on developing a vaccine for the Ebola virus and a treatment for Alzheimer’s disease. Similar to the Allied Universal case, HMR failed to meet the deadline forwarded by the Maze group which resulted in the publishing of personal details of thousands of former patients.

How to prevent ransomware attacks?

To follow up on the analogy with the common flu, cybersecurity guidelines recommend companies adopt strategies and incorporate practices that help prevent an attack. After a system has been compromised by a ransomware group there is a very small chance of successfully decrypting the information without paying the ransom for the decryption key. Losing corporate data can be a significant blow for any company and enterprise, but as the group behind Maze has demonstrated, data exfiltration is a more somber outcome as confidential corporate data will become available for anyone to disseminate.

To ensure a higher degree of resistance to ransomware attempts, companies should consider rethinking their cybersecurity strategy and implement a series of best practices that can help protect the network against compromise:

Use a Virtual Private Network (VPN): as we have previously mentioned, exploiting exposed RDP ports ranks among the most common penetration methods employed by hackers. To circumvent this, companies should always rely on a VPN to enable remote users to securely access corporate private networks without exposing their system to prying eyes that are constantly searching for potential victims;

Multi-factor authentication (MFA): MFA adds an additional layer of complexity to the login process by requiring users to provide more than one form of authentication (such as biometric notifications, one-time use codes) to prove their identity. Ideally, MFA should be implemented across every user account, if it is not possible, administrator accounts should be the top priority. Paired together with stronger passwords, MFA makes it much harder for malicious actors to compromise user credentials;

Use a firewall to limit access: companies should employ a firewall to limit RDP access to specific IP addresses;

Periodically reimaging devices: device reimaging is the process through which a device is wiped clean and brought back to its default configuration. Periodical device reimaging is recommended as it can remove hidden malware from the device;

Block IPs that fail multiple logins: everybody tends to forget their passwords once in a while so it’s normal for users to sometimes fail their login. But a high number of failed logins in a short time frame may be a sign that indicates a brute force attack. As such, it’s a smart choice to limit the number of times a user can attempt to login to RDP or other systems;

Keep your system up to date: hackers seem to be the best testers in the world as they are usually the first to uncover software vulnerabilities that they quickly exploit to compromise a network and execute malicious code. Software products will never be free of bugs and other vulnerabilities. Maintaining a software up and running often entails discovering and fixing vulnerabilities through patches and updates in an attempt to close any potential backdoors;

System hardening: system hardening is the process through which a system is secured by reducing its surface of vulnerability. Each organization serves a different business logic that requires different tools and services that can be exploited by external actors such as RDP, PowerShell, Microsoft Office macros, Windows Script Host. By removing some of the tools that are redundant to your business, you are also blocking potential attack vectors;

Implement the principle of least privilege: enterprises and companies should implement the principle of least privilege which stipulates that users and applications should only have the minimum privilege required to perform their attributions. Minimizing privilege levels and knowing exactly who has access to what data will significantly reduce the time required to detect the point of infection. More importantly, it reduces the volume and value of data that can be accessed by an attacker that manages to compromise a single endpoint. By making lateral movement more difficult for ransomware groups, the chance of an infection spreading through the whole system is reduced;

Network segmentation: network segmentation enables better security and access control of network partitions. Besides providing better control and visibility over the overall network, segmentation prevents unauthorized users from accessing restricted corporate data. In case of a network breach, network segmentation prevents malware from propagating throughout the system.

Is blockchain an answer to the ransomware threat?

To some extent blockchain technology can be a viable mechanism for increasing a company’s tolerance to ransomware and other cybersecurity incursions. This is because blockchain has a set of inherent characteristics that provide an answer to some of the attack vectors employed by ransomware groups. Before we delve deeper into the matter, let’s formulate a brief definition for blockchain to better understand how it manages to deliver some of its key features.

A type of Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT), blockchain is a digital, distributed, and decentralized ledger of transactions that can be programmed to store any type of data that has value. By design, blockchain stores information in data containers named blocks that are linked together in a chain-like structure through a hashing algorithm (SHA-256 is the most popular). When a new block of transactions is added to the chain, it incorporates the hash of the previous block before calculating its own hash value that will be used by the next block.

This complex design is what gives blockchain technology two of its most valuable characteristics, immutability, and integrity. This state of dependency between the blocks makes it virtually impossible for a malicious actor to tamper with the data containers because it will modify the hash, rendering all the following blocks invalid as the hash values will no longer match. As such, blockchain is characterized as an append-only structure where users can add new data, but never alter past records.

Modex Blockchain Database (BCDB) is an innovative take on blockchain technology that fuses the benefits of traditional database systems with blockchain. By positioning itself as an additional layer between the application server and database engine of a company, Modex BCDB acts as a sort of data funnel that sends the information to the database, and the metadata of that information to a blockchain to create immutable references. Designed to be agnostic from both database and blockchain perspective, the BCDB solution enables companies and enterprises to create their own custom solution that falls in line with their business logic.

Distribution, decentralization, and immutability are a powerful combination against ransomware attacks. Decentralization means that the network does not rely on a central server to host all the data, but distributes it across every network participants, also known as nodes. There are many types of nodes in a blockchain network, full nodes for example store a copy of the entire blockchain. As a result, the network doesn’t have a single point of failure. If a node is compromised by Newalker for example, admins just have to address the vulnerability that permitted access to the network and restore the node to its previous version, or they can simply cut out the node from the network. In case of encryption by ransomware, the attacker would find it impossible to hold all the data hostage because the entire network is distributed among thousands of users (even more depending on the size of the blockchain). Even if they manage to encrypt a node, admins close the backdoor through which the attacker entered and restore the node to its previous version.

Immutability and integrity are self-explanatory. If company files are encrypted, the hash value of the block they are a part of will change, and in a domino effect, all the following hashes down the chain will be changed, signaling to the system that unlawful changes occurred. Due to its append-only nature, blockchain does not support alterations to blocks that have already been added to the chain. When a piece of data is updated, the system creates a new entry which includes the modified version, but all previous versions are kept down the chain. The ability to provide transparency, record versioning and data traceability are other valuable characteristics of blockchain technology.

The question remains if blockchain is capable of handling the new trend imposed by the Maze ransomware, where data is also exfiltrated. By itself, no! But the Modex BCDB solution has an answer, encryption. To supplement the security capabilities of a standard blockchain network, Modex BCDB comes with a data encryption mechanism that removes the need for programmers to write new code to encrypt the data. To enhance user experience and add a layer of flexibility to the BCDB environment, users have the option to enable automatic encryption at the field level. As such, any new data inserts are automatically stored in an encrypted format. In case of a data breach by ransomware or by any other cybersecurity threat, encryption will act as the last line of defense, as malicious actors will steal only ciphertext.

Conclusion

In the cybersecurity field, there are two opposing forces that are engaged in a constant race to outsmart each other, those who seek to compromise, steal and destroy for their personal gain and those who seek to preserve and protect. For the past decade, ransomware has evolved in complexity at an alarming rate, managing to outwit and elude cybersecurity experts. To even the playing field, businesses and enterprises implement preemptive measures and cybersecurity tools. But recent attacks have demonstrated that most of the time the traditional approach towards combating ransomware is no longer viable. Maybe its time for enterprises and companies to look towards blockchain technology to get the upper hand on the ransomware threat.

The post Ransomware on the rise, blockchain to the rescue appeared first on Modex.

#blockchain #initial coin offering #token sale #crypto #renewable

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denisehil0 · 4 years ago

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2020 Watch: Has Trump surrendered to the coronavirus?

Presidential politics move fast. What we’re watching heading into a new week on the 2020 campaign:

Days to next set of primaries (New Jersey and Delaware): 1

Days to general election: 120

___

THE NARRATIVE

We’re moving into the heart of summer, but if you’re expecting the traditional summertime slowdown in presidential politics, don’t. The coronavirus pandemic is raging, family vacations are on hold, cable news viewership is booming and President Donald Trump is inflaming the nation’s culture wars to keep his base engaged.

Much of the political world, including people we speak to close to the Trump campaign, believes that the Republican president is facing the prospect of a blowout loss in four months unless the political landscape shifts dramatically. Recent history suggests there is time for a turnaround, although Trump is taking no steps to expand his coalition.

He briefly celebrated stronger-than-expected jobs numbers late last week, but he ignored the economy in a series of Independence Day appearances focused instead on what he described as “angry mobs” of radical leftists trying to destroy cultural monuments.

Meanwhile, Joe Biden handled his first news conference in almost three months last week without any major stumbles. The gaffe-prone former vice-president will continue to face difficult questions, but until Trump manages to get the pandemic under control, it may be hard to hear them.

___

THE BIG QUESTIONS

Has Trump surrendered to the coronavirus?

Biden last week accused Trump of surrendering to the pandemic, and given the president’s apparent lack of attention to COVID-19 as infections skyrocket, it’s worth asking whether the Democrats’ presumptive nominee is right.

Millions of voters saw images of Trump addressing thousands of unmasked supporters at Mount Rushmore on Friday, ignoring the guidance of his own administration’s medical experts — and his daughter. In case you missed it, Ivanka Trump urged Americans to practice “social distancing and wear a mask when in close proximity to others” just before her father faced a large South Dakota crowd that was doing the opposite.

The U.S. reported at least 50,000 new infections for three consecutive days to open July, staggering numbers fueled by a surge of cases focused largely in Sun Belt states that backed Trump four years ago. More people in America have died from the disease, and more have been infected, than in any other country in the world, according to figures compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

Trump has offered no comprehensive national strategy to contain the pandemic. Despite evidence to the contrary, he’s blaming the surge on increased testing, and last week he suggested the coronavirus would “sort of just disappear.”

Will Trump’s culture wars move the needle?

The nation is facing a public health crisis, economic devastation and a national awakening on racial disparity. What did Trump focus on over Independence Day weekend? “Angry mobs are trying to tear down statues of our founders, deface our most sacred memorials and unleash a wave of violent crime in our cities,” he warned.

The dark and divisive language is a fresh example of the kind of race-baiting that has defined Trump’s rise in politics, but political operatives in both parties tell us that it’s unlikely to help the first-term president improve his weak standing with key constituencies — women, minorities and college-educated voters, among them.

Still, absent any other consistent reelection message, Trump is leaning hard into white grievance politics to help energize his base of white, working-class men. He’s doing so even as a broader shift takes place in American culture away from symbols of white supremacy. Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves, a Republican, signed a bill last week to remove the Confederate symbol from the state flag, while Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill support changing the names of military bases named for Confederate military leaders.

Trump’s instinct to stoke culture wars fueled his victory against Hillary Clinton in 2016. He’s betting everything that he can win the same way against Biden in 2020.

Will the job growth continue?

The economy took a big step forward last week after we learned the U.S. added 4.8 million jobs over the previous month. That was significantly better than most analysts expected, and it smashed the previous one-month record as the nation begins to restore some of the 30 million or so jobs it lost because of the pandemic.

Economists tell us it’s far too soon to celebrate, however, given the explosion of new coronavirus cases across the country and the number of businesses that have permanently closed.

Trump badly needs significant job growth to continue if he hopes to convince voters the nation is moving in the right direction by Election Day, even if it’s not back to normal. He’s got a lot of work to do. Several Republican officials have rolled back reopening plans in recent days because of the explosion of infections. And a Monmouth University poll found last week that only 18% of registered voters believe the country is moving in the right direction. For context, Republican pollsters we spoke to were worried about Trump’s reelection when the right-track number was in the 30s.

Et tu, Kanye?

Kanye West has been teasing a run for a while now, but the enigmatic rapper formally declared over the weekend that he was joining the 2020 presidential race.

There are more questions than answers about West’s plans at this point. (His agent didn’t respond to our email requesting more information.) West has already missed the deadline to qualify for the ballot in several states, and it’s unclear if he has the ability or willingness to collect the signatures required to qualify in others. But to be a significant factor in 2020, he doesn’t necessarily need to appear on the ballot.

Democratic leaders may try to laugh him off, but the celebrity candidate could emerge as a real threat to Biden if he attracts even a small portion of the African American vote through a write-in campaign this fall. Remember, Trump won Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin by a combined 107,000 votes four years ago in no small measure because Hillary Clinton failed to energize voters in those states’ minority strongholds.

Biden’s allies were already worried about his standing with younger Black men. Even a half-hearted campaign from West could make his job harder.

___

THE FINAL THOUGHT

Lest anyone think Trump might refocus his campaign message on the economy following last week’s better-than-expected jobs numbers, the president uttered the word “jobs” just three times combined across two major speeches over Independence Day weekend. He referenced “statue” nine times.

In doing so, the Republican president sent the political world a resounding message: Even on a national day of unity, he cannot or will not change his instinct to embrace culture wars and race baiting. Not surprising perhaps, but light years away from what the GOP recommended just seven years ago when it commissioned a report highlighting “the importance of a welcoming, inclusive message in particular when discussing issues that relate directly to a minority group.”

___

2020 Watch runs every Monday and provides a look at the week ahead in the 2020 election.

___

Catch up on the 2020 election campaign with AP experts on our weekly politics podcast, “Ground Game.”

Steve Peoples, The Associated Press

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coronaviruscorner · 5 years ago

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Coronavirus Myths and Facts

I am writing this as a doctor with an interest in infectious diseases who is currently studying a masters of international public health. Myths and facts about COVID-19.

MYTHS

Myth: “COVID-19 is just like getting the flu”

COVID-19 is not just like the flu! The symptoms are often similar, that’s true. But there are key differences:

Influenza

Mortality: 0.1%

Vaccine availability: Vaccine updated yearly

Scientific understanding: Excellent

R0: 1.2

COVID-19

Mortality: ~3%

Vaccine availability: Does not exist

Scientific understanding: Limited, highly unpredictable

R0:2-4

Note: R0 is the number of people that the average infected person then goes on to infect

So essentially - coronavirus is much more contagious, is many times more deadly, there’s no vaccine and it’s highly unpredictable.

Myth: “Coronavirus is killed by warm weather”

Myth: “Drinking warm water kills viruses”

Nope. Water doesn’t have any toxic effects, and warming it slightly doesn’t change that. Even if it did, the virus is in your airways, not your stomach.

Myth: “If you have a runny nose, you cannot have COVID-19”

Myth: “Hand sanitiser is better than soap and water”

Myth: “I’m young and healthy, if I get coronavirus I’ll be fine”

Myth: “If you can hold your breath for ten seconds without coughing, you cannot have COVID-19”

If it were that easy to diagnose coronavirus, the hospital and GP system would be under a whole lot less pressure. Once again, these simple, “too good to be true” claims are exactly that.

Myth: “Antibiotics can treat COVID-19”

FACTS

Fact: Ibuprofen should be avoided in patients with COVID-19.

Fact: Healthcare workers on the front line are doing their absolute best in a very difficult time.

Fact: Panic buying deprives vulnerable people of vital necessities, and is completely unnecessary.

Fact: We still have a lot of control over what happens over the next few weeks.

Fact: Social distancing will save lives.

#coronavirus covid-19 health australia medicine

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newstfionline · 4 years ago

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Headlines

NOAA’s new hurricane outlook shows so many storms, we may have to turn to the Greek alphabet (Washington Post) The 2020 Atlantic hurricane season has already set records for being so active, with Hurricane Isaias being the earliest ninth named storm on record. Now, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is predicting that many more records may fall in the coming months, as the Atlantic hurricane season cranks out at least 10 more named storms. The updated outlook released Thursday calls for a total of 19 to 25 named storms (winds of 39 mph or greater), of which 7 to 11 are expected to become hurricanes (winds of 74 mph or greater), including three to six that could become major hurricanes (winds of 111 mph or greater). In more than two decades of issuing these forecasts, NOAA has never predicted that as many as 25 named storms would form in a single season. It would take only 21 named storms before all the names on the Atlantic list, determined ahead of time by the World Meteorological Organization, are exhausted and forecasters would turn to the Greek alphabet. This happened only once before, in 2005, a devastating season that was the most active on record.

The Workforce Is About to Change Dramatically (The Atlantic) In march, tens of millions of American workers—mostly in white-collar industries such as tech, finance, and media—were thrust into a sudden, chaotic experiment in working from home. Four months later, the experiment isn’t close to ending. For many, the test run is looking more like the long run. Google announced in July that its roughly 200,000 employees will continue to work from home until at least next summer. Mark Zuckerberg has said he expects half of Facebook’s workforce to be remote within the decade. Twitter has told staff they can stay home permanently. With corporate giants welcoming far-flung workforces, real-estate markets in the superstar cities that combine high-paid work and high-cost housing are in turmoil. In the San Francisco Bay Area, rents are tumbling. In New York City, offices are still empty; so many well-heeled families with second homes have abandoned Manhattan that it’s causing headaches for the census. When the pandemic is over, one in six workers is projected to continue working from home or co-working at least two days a week, according to a recent survey by economists at Harvard Business School.

Virus talks on brink of collapse, sides still ‘far apart’ (AP) Washington talks on vital COVID-19 rescue money are teetering on the brink of collapse after a marathon meeting in the Capitol generated lots of recriminations but little progress on the top issues confronting negotiators. Both sides said the future of the talks is uncertain. President Donald Trump is considering executive orders to address evictions and on unemployment insurance, but they appear unlikely to have much impact. A breakdown in the talks would put at risk more than $100 billion to help reopen schools, a fresh round of $1,200 direct payments to most people, and hundreds of billions of dollars for state and local governments to help them avoid furloughing workers and cutting services as tax revenues shrivel.

Portland protesters cause mayhem again, police officer hurt (AP) Portland’s nightly protests turned violent again even after the city’s mayor pleaded for demonstrators to stay off the streets and a police officer hit by a rock early Friday suffered what was described as a serious injury. The protesters who came out Thursday night clashed with officers near a police precinct station and also used metal bars to disable police vehicles, police said in a statement. The nightly clashes this week have ratcheted up tensions in the city after an agreement was reached last week between state and federal officials for federal agents to pull back from their defense of a federal courthouse that was previously the focus of the protesters’ rage. The strategy initially appeared to calm down the protesters, but violent demonstrations re-emerged on the streets this week, miles away from the courthouse—marking a new phase in the nightly protests for Portland that have happened since May 25, following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

U.S. pandemic worse than Mexico, Lopez Obrador says after travel warning (Reuters) Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Friday the United States had greater problems from the coronavirus than his country, a day after the U.S. State Department urged citizens not to travel south of the border, citing high contagion rates. “We have many fewer problems with the pandemic than the problems that, unfortunately, they are facing,” Lopez Obrador said during a Friday morning press conference. “Our situation is better,” he said. The United States on Thursday lifted a global health advisory imposed in March that advised U.S. citizens to avoid all international travel because of the coronavirus pandemic. But the stringent Level 4 advisory, usually reserved for countries at war, remained in place for Mexico, with U.S. ambassador to Mexico Christopher Landau citing the spread of COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the virus. In Mexico, 40 people per every 100,000 have died from COVID-19 - a lower number than the United States, which is at 49 deaths per 100,000 - according to Johns Hopkins. It also has fewer per capita deaths than Latin American peers Chile, Peru, Brazil and several European nations.

Brits quietly emigrating (The Guardian) The number of British nationals emigrating to other EU countries has risen by 30% since the Brexit referendum, with half making their decision to leave in the first three months after the vote, research has found. Analysis of data from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and Eurostat shows that migration from Britain to EU states averaged 56,832 people a year in 2008-15, growing to 73,642 a year in 2016-18. The study also shows a 500% increase in those who made the move and then took up citizenship in an EU state. Germany saw a 2,000% rise, with 31,600 Britons naturalizing there since the referendum. “These increases in numbers are of a magnitude that you would expect when a country is hit by a major economic or political crisis,” said Daniel Auer, co-author of the study by Oxford University in Berlin and the Berlin Social Science Center.

The future of Belarus is at stake (Foreign Policy) Belarusians will head to the polls on Sunday in an election that could dramatically change the country’s political landscape. President Aleksandr Lukashenko is trying to extend his 16-year presidency, a term that stretches back to the early post-Cold War days. But he’s fighting an uphill battle. Facing his stiffest opposition in years and massive protests against his rule, Lukashenko’s behavior has become increasingly paranoid and erratic. The one-time Moscow favorite recently defended the arrest of 33 Russian mercenaries in the country, claiming they were quietly staging a revolution to overthrow him. Lukashenko’s shift away from Russia is reflective of the fact that even he doesn’t know whether Belarus should tilt east or west. If he loses and the election is followed by a prolonged period of political instability, it may entice Russia to make that decision itself.

India surges past 2 million coronavirus cases, angry health workers launch a strike (Reuters) India, the country hardest hit in Asia by the coronavirus pandemic, reported on Friday a record daily jump in infections, taking its total number of cases over two million, as government struggled to contain the spread amid striking health workers. More than 3.5 million health workers, who have been the foot-soldiers in the Covid-19 detection efforts across India, embarked on a two-day strike from Friday to secure better wages and proper protective equipment. Accredited Social Health Activists or ASHA workers, are the government’s recognised health workers who are usually the first point of contact in economically deprived sections, where there is limited or no direct access to health-care facilities. A total of 10 unions representing the workers, who also include ambulance drivers and cooks at community centers, joined the strike. A majority of them work on contracts with state governments at a monthly salary of about 3,000 Indian rupees ($40.02).

Plane skids off runway in India; 16 killed, dozens hurt (AP) A special evacuation flight bringing people home to India who had been trapped abroad because of the coronavirus skidded off a runway and split in two while landing Friday in heavy rain in the southern state of Kerala, killing at least 16 passengers and injuring 123 more, police said. Abdul Karim, a senior Kerala state police officer, said the dead included one of the pilots of the two-year-old Boeing 737-800 flying for Air India Express airline. He said at least 15 of the injured were in critical condition, and that rescue operations were over. The NDTV news channel said the plane flew from Dubai to Kozhikode, also called Calicut, in Kerala, India’s southernmost state.

Sri Lanka president, brother tighten grip with big election win (Reuters) Sri Lanka’s parliamentary elections handed President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his older brother an overwhelming majority, results showed on Friday, giving the family power to enact sweeping changes to the constitution of the island nation. Rajapaksa had sought, and achieved, a two-thirds majority for his Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna party and its allies to be able to restore full executive powers to the presidency, a move analysts say could push the country toward authoritarianism.

Rescuers in Lebanon recover more bodies days after blast (AP/Foreign Policy) Rescue teams were still searching the rubble of Beirut’s port for bodies on Friday, nearly three days after a massive explosion sent a wave of destruction through Lebanon’s capital, killing nearly 150 people and wounding thousands. At least four more bodies have been recovered in the last 24 hours, and authorities say the death toll has risen to 149. The blast shredded a large grain silo, devastated neighborhoods near the port and left several city blocks littered with glass and rubble. French President Emmanuel Macron paid a visit to the city on Thursday and delivered a speech in which he announced aid to support relief efforts and assured citizens that he would propose a new political pact to the country’s leaders. During the speech, protesters chanted “revolution, revolution!,” echoing a growing chorus of opposition to the government. Information showing that high-level officials not only knew about a massive supply of ammonium nitrate in the city, but that they were aware of the immense danger it posed is emerging. The resulting backlash against the government is part of a much wider feeling of discontent that has been evident in the country since late last year. Protests against government corruption erupted in October and were further inflamed more recently after the pandemic hit and a severe financial crisis set in.

Former Saudi intelligence officer accuses crown prince of ordering his assassination in Canada (Washington Post) A former top Saudi intelligence officer and close U.S. intelligence ally has accused Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of targeting him for assassination and taking his children hostage because he has knowledge of damaging secrets about the prince’s rise to power. In a federal lawsuit filed in Washington on Thursday, SaadAljabri alleged “there is virtually no one Defendant bin Salman wants dead” more than him because of his relationship with the American government as “a longtime trusted partner of senior U.S. intelligence officials.” In a detailed complaint running more than 100 pages, Aljabri alleges that the Saudi leader orchestrated a conspiracy to kill him in Canada that parallels one that resulted in the death and dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi, the dissident Saudi columnist and Washington Post contributor. The CIA has assessed that Mohammed probably ordered Khashoggi’s killing himself, The Post previously reported. Aljabri asserts the prince and his allies pressured him to return to Saudi Arabia, with Mohammed sending agents to the United States to locate him and having malware implanted on his phone. When Aljabri was ultimately located, Mohammed sent a “hit squad” to kill him, the lawsuit asserts. The team was stopped by Canadian customs officials, who, in a grisly echo of the Khashoggi case, were found carrying forensic tools that could have been used to dismember a corpse, Aljabri alleges.

#headlines #news

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neptunecreek · 4 years ago

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Mexico's New Copyright Law Undermines Mexico's National Sovereignty, Continuing Generations of Unfair "Fair Trade Deals" Between the USA and Latin America

Earlier this month, Mexico's Congress hastily imported most of the US copyright system into Mexican law, in a dangerous and ill-considered act. But neither this action nor its consequences occurred in a vacuum: rather, it was a consequence of Donald Trump's US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), the successor to NAFTA.

Trade agreements are billed as creating level playing fields between nations to their mutual benefit. But decades of careful scholarship show that poorer nations typically come off worse through these agreements, even when they are subjected to the same rules, because the same rules don't have the same effect on different countries. Besides that, Mexico has now adopted worse rules than its trade partners.

To understand how this works, we need only look to the history of the USA's relationship with the copyrights and patents of foreign persons and firms. When the USA was a new, poor, developing nation that imported more copyrights and patents than it exported it did not honor foreigners' copyrights or patents, but rather allowed its people and its businesses to use them without paying, to develop the nation. Once the USA became an industrial and cultural powerhouse, it entered into agreements with other countries for mutual recognition of one another's copyrights and patents in order to extract wealth based on rights to its technology and culture.

But the USA has a short memory for what it once considered just; it has made the foreign enforcement of US copyrights a trade priority for decades, often demanding that its trading partners extend more legal privileges to US copyright holders than they (or anyone else) receive at home in the United States; and preventing local users from benefiting from fair use or other balancing rights available in the United States. The poorer the trading partner, the more the US government and US industry expect it to surrender.

Mexico's copyright is a sad and enervating example of this principle in action. The law imposes restrictions that do not — and could not — exist under US law, because they violate US Constitutional principles (these laws also violate Mexican Constitutional principles).

For example, Mexico's copyright law effectively mandates copyright filters, which automatically screen Mexican Internet users' expressive speech and arbitrarily censor some of it based on an algorithm's decision to treat it as a copyright infringement.

Neither the US nor Canada has such a requirement, which puts Mexican online firms at a significant trade disadvantage relative to its "equal partners" under USMCA. These filters can be very costly to develop and maintain. For example, YouTube has invested over $100,000,000 to develop its content filtering systems. Those are costs that Mexican online services will have to shoulder if they compete with Canadian and US firms, while their counterparts in the USA and Canada face no such requirement.

Just as dangerous to Mexico's prosperity are its new rules on TPMs (including "Digital Rights Management" or DRM). The US version of these rules, Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA 1201), sets out a procedure for granting exemptions to the ban on bypassing digital locks. The Mexican version holds out the possibility of creating such a process but does not describe it.

Even if the Mexican government eventually develops an equivalent procedure, people and businesses in the USA will still enjoy more flexibility than their Mexican counterparts: that's because the US system has produced a long, extensive list of exemptions that Mexico will have to develop on its own, through whatever process it eventually creates (if it ever does).

These rules interfere with many key activities, including accessibility adaptations for people with disabilities, education, and repair, including repair of agricultural and medical equipment, most of which come from US firms, who can charge Mexican consumers and the Mexican health-care system arbitrarily high prices for repairs, without having to fear competition from Mexican repair shops. They can also unilaterally declare equipment to be "beyond repair" and insist that it be replaced at full cost.

All of this happened even as the US government is facing a legal challenge to its ban on circumventing access controls that might see the law struck down in the USA, but still in force in Mexico.

Mexico's new copyright law also includes a much narrower set of limitations and exceptions than either the US ("fair use") or Canadian ("fair dealing") systems provide for. That means that Mexican consumers must pay US and Canadian firms for activities that people in the USA and Canada can undertake for free.

This is especially dangerous when coupled with Mexico's new Notice and Takedown system, which allows anyone to have content removed from the Internet simply by claiming to be the victim of copyright infringement. Under the US system, companies that do not act on these notices are only penalized if they actually commit indirect copyright infringement. But Mexico's version of these rules (Article 232 Quinquies (II)) forces compliance with a copyright owner’s takedown demands even if the platform believes the content is a noninfringing use.

That means that US firms and individuals can remove material — for example, negative reviews quoting a book or warnings about defective software — from Mexican online services, while such a tactic could be ignored by US online services.

This asymmetry is not new. It is a recurring feature of US-Mexico trade relations, something that was already present under NAFTA, but which USMCA expands to the digital realm through this outrageous copyright law.

Under NAFTA, US exports of corn syrup to Mexico surged, and Mexican anti-obesity campaigners who tried to stem the tide were rebuffed by the rules of the trade agreement.

As a result, Mexico's obesity epidemic is among the worst in the region, as is Mexican consumption of processed food. Julio Berdegué, a regional representative of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, said "Unfortunately, Mexico is one of the leading countries in obesity, both in men and women and children. It is a very serious problem.” Mexico's export sector has also shifted, with much of the fresh fruits and vegetables that once made up the country's dietary staples now being exported to the USA.

Mexico's new copyright law only exacerbates this problem. Mexico's TPM rules hamper the security research that is the country's best hope to secure its people's digital devices. During Mexico's "sugar wars," activists were hacked with weapons sold by the cyber-arms dealer NSO Group, as part of an illegal campaign to neutralize their opposition to the powerful US sugar industry. That attack exploited a vulnerability in the activists' mobile apps, and Mexico's new copyright law impedes the work of those who would reveal those vulnerabilities.

The history of Latin America is filled with shameful instances of US interference to improve its prosperity at the expense of its southern neighbors.

The passage of the Mexican copyright law, rushed through in the middle of the pandemic without adequate consultation or debate, continues this denial of dignity and sovereignty. Lobbyists for just laws don't fear public scrutiny, after all. The only reason to undertake a lawmaking exercise like this under the shroud of haste and obscurity is to sneak it through before the public knows what's going on and can organize in opposition to it.

If you are based in Mexico, we urge you to participate in the R3D’s and allies campaign "Ni Censura ni Candados" and send a letter to Mexico's National Commission for Human Rights to asking them to invalidate this new flawed copyright law. R3D will ask for your name, email address, and your comment, which will be subject to R3D's privacy policy.

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yeonchi · 7 years ago

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Kamen Rider New Form Cannon Fodder Part 2 (SPOILERS)

Continued from Part 1. Read first for context to this post.

Kamen Rider Drive

Chase/Mashin Chaser (Proto-Zero)

Defeated by: Drive Type Formula’s Trailer Impact (Speed and Wild)

Before the first Global Freeze, Chase was Proto-Zero, a human-type Roidmude who was reactivated to become Protodrive when the other 108 Roidmudes were awakened. He was able to destroy the bodies of various Roidmudes and save a certain policewoman from one, but his days as a hero would come to an end (at least, for the time being) when he was defeated and captured by Roidmude 002, who had evolved into the Roidmude we now know as Heart. Proto-Zero was operated on by the first three Roidmudes (including Heart), brainwashing them to their side. He is given a new name and weapon, which he uses to transform into Mashin Chaser. He also takes on a human disguise at Brain’s suggestion.

When Shinnosuke Tomari became the new Drive, Chase is sent to deal with him. He introduces himself as the Grim Reaper of the Roidmudes, claiming to not destroy their cores, but rather give them a second chance. Drive fights Mashin Chaser various times during the series, with either one gaining new weapons or powers with each fight. Gradually, Chase began regaining his memories, from his former identity as Proto-Zero to him rescuing Kiriko during his time as Protodrive. Brain attempted to dispose of Chase following his failed attempts to defeat Drive, but Medic offers to “reset” him, reprogramming Chase to defend Roidmudes instead of humans, making him a ruthless killer. As a result, his role as the Grim Reaper was given to Medic’s Reaper Legion. It was also around this time that Chase began a rivalry with Go Shijima (Mach), who bore a strong hatred for Roidmudes regardless of their origin.

In an effort to eliminate Drive, the Roidmudes staged the deaths of the human templates they had taken on in the past so they could capture the Shift Cars and turn them to their side. When Drive confronts Mashin Chaser (in Type Wild), he finds himself overpowered by his new Super Heavy Acceleration ability and the brainwashed Shift Cars - not even Shift Dead Heat was good enough to even the score, especially with Mashin Chaser’s new Triple Tune attack. However, right at the last moment, Drive assumed Type Formula for the first time and survived the attack. (The episode only showed a glimpse of the new form at the end, so it is not a proper debut.)

The next day, Chase attempted to lure Drive out again by kidnapping Kiriko, but due to Mach’s interference and Brain’s tampering, Chaser briefly regained his former self, causing Medic to reprogram him again with a maximised destruction impulse. He then goes to attack the city, prompting Shinnosuke and Kiriko to confront him again. Shinnosuke changes into Drive and begins fighting Mashin Chaser, who activates Super Heavy Acceleration. Again, despite using Shift Dead Heat, Drive is unable to even the power difference between them. Luckily, Rinna had finished perfecting a weapon for Type Formula to use instead of the usual finisher. Drive changes into Type Formula and uses the new weapon, the Trailer-Hou, to defeat Mashin Chaser.

Despite this, Chase managed to survive the battle and was found by Kiriko, who healed him with the Mad Doctor Shift Car. He eventually learnt the truth from Kiriko (who still had faith in him) before leaving to do some soul-searching. Kiriko later approached Chase during the advent of the Neo Viral Cores and asked her for a sample of an Advanced Roidmude, as Rinna needed it to upgrade the Riders’ equipment in response to the Roidmudes’ new abilities. That sample was also used to create the Chaser Shift Bike, which was then given to Chase alongside a second Mach Driver, who decided to redeem himself and become a (different) Kamen Rider once more.

Soichi Makage/Freeze Roidmude (001)

Defeated by: Drive Type Tridoron’s Trailer Big Impact (Speed)

Alongside Heart, Brain and later Medic, there was another Roidmude leader lurking in the shadows, namely 001. 001 used his human disguise to establish his position in government and manipulate the police force from inside through his position as secretary of the National Bureau of Defence. This would allow him to cover up any Roidmude activities from police investigation. He was also involved in the creation of Mashin Chaser following the fall of Protodrive.

During the series, Brain reached out to 001 for help after he was humiliated by Medic numerous times. 001 invented the Neo Viral Cores, allowing the Roidmudes to evolve by fusing with humans with dark hearts. He made his first appearance when he retrieved 007′s core and had it restored. He then placed Brain in the police force and framed Shinnosuke, causing him to be suspended from fighting as Drive. Additionally, he managed to have Go Shijima (Mach) defect to their side, but it was revealed to have been a ruse, with his real goal to retrieve Brain’s tablet, which contained the mind of Go’s father, Tenjuro Banno - Go was never affected by 001′s memory-altering abilities.

A major plot point in the series revolved around the fate of Shinnosuke’s father, Eisuke, who died in a bank robbery 12 years before the events of the series. Eisuke confronted 001 with the suspicion of him manipulating the police force from the inside, so 001 revealed himself and used his memory-altering abilities on him, only for it to not work. At this moment, Freeze experienced humiliation for the first time, which would be the key to his eventual evolution.

Later on, 001 would leave an anonymous tip regarding a bank robbery for Eisuke and his partner, Mitsuhide Nira. When the robbery occurred, Eisuke went to the aid of a crying girl while Nira disabled one of the robbers and took his gun. He initially pointed the gun at the other robber, but he decided to shoot Eisuke instead, out of jealousy for his success. 001 revealed himself to Nira and offered to remove any trace of his involvement in the shooting in return for his loyalty. After hiding the gun used to shoot Eisuke, 001 faked a pandemic a couple of years later in order to investigate, weed out and kidnap those who managed to resist his memory-altering abilities. Despite this, 001 was never able to find out why that was the case.

Years later, Shinnosuke goes to arrest 001, having learnt about his human guise as Makage and his ability to alter memories. Makage reveals his new evolved form as the Freeze Roidmude and attempts to alter Shinnosuke’s memories, but like his father, he was immune to Freeze’s ability. Despite being defeated, Shinnosuke was still adamant at finding out who killed his father. He helped develop an antidote for the memory alterations before confronting Freeze over the kidnapped humans. Drive managed to defeat Freeze for good in Type Formula, but that only served to trigger his Super Evolution. With his newfound power, Freeze managed to land a direct hit on Drive, killing him alongside Krim.

At the morgue, the pathologist discovers that he cannot remove the belt or brace from Shinnosuke’s body. Later, Captain Honganji, Rinna and Chase reveal to a surprised Otta, Kyu and Nira that Shinnosuke is not actually dead - Krim had fused with him and preserved his body, acting as a life support system. Thanks to some additional machinations from Go, the Special Investigations Unit proceed to revive Shinnosuke, but Freeze interferes with their experiment despite Chase’s attempts to stop him. Freeze seemingly destroys the Tridoron with Shinnosuke and Kiriko inside, but they manage to survive unharmed. Shinnosuke transforms into Drive Type Tridoron in front of his allies for the first time and proceeds to defeat Freeze with the Trailer-Hou.

For Shinnosuke, however, the mystery of his father’s death continued. He would learn that Nira was the one who killed his father in the bank robbery 12 years ago. Thanks to him, Brain would obtain his Super Evolution when he fused with him following 106′s death. Nira would then take Shinnosuke hostage in an attempt to kill him in self-defence, but his crimes would be exposed, resulting in his arrest.

Tenjuro Banno/Kamen Rider Gold Drive

Defeated by: Kamen Rider Chaser Mach

Before Ex-Aid, Banno and his invention, the Sigma Circular, were some of my favourite villains. I mean think about it; you have the power to steal other people’s weapons, teleport at the speed of light and spam attacks on your enemies. Who wouldn’t want that power to get back at enemies, that is if you are willing to do it the pussy way instead of a one-on-one.

Banno was the father of Kiriko and Go Shijima, but he never cared about them, rather viewing them merely as tools or research subjects. His main focus was on the development of the Roidmudes, which drove him insane. Banno sought help from Krim and was given the prototype Core Driviars to help with his research. These would give Roidmudes the ability to induce Heavy Acceleration. When a businessman named Shinzo Hiroi refused to invest in his research, Banno forced 002 to copy his appearance and tortured him until Krim discovered Banno’s insanity and withdrew his partnership in the project. This would cause Banno to give the Roidmudes negative emotions.

When Krim was killed by the first three Roidmudes, Banno had 004 copy his appearance so that his intelligence could be used as a tool for him. Unfortunately, Banno was killed as well, with his mind being uploaded to Brain’s tablet for use in resetting Roidmude cores. During Go’s defection to the Roidmudes, he bided his time and eventually managed to steal the tablet with Banno’s mind. For a little while, he aided Go during the incident with Nira by restoring the poisoned body of Yukari Karasawa, thereby saving her.

When Go showed Banno to Krim, he was suspicious of him due to their past. Indeed, Banno showed his true colours to Krim and the others, having gained all the data he needed to continue his goals. He had 004 take the Drive Driver and bring it to him before analysing it and cloning it so that he could transfer his own mind into the new Driver and use it to take control of a body. He also installed a virus into the Drive Driver so that it could alter his personality, leading to the events of Surprise Future.

Banno initially attempted to control Medic, but Heart separated them. He later took control of 006′s body and destroyed the cores of him and his lackeys before using 006′s body to transform into Kamen Rider Gold Drive. As 006 claimed that his evolved form was on par with Heart’s, Banno’s new form was essentially the same as a Super Evolved Roidmude, making him part of the Promised Number alongside Brain and Heart. He then assisted Medic in attaining her Super Evolution while turning her into his slave who would later be a sacrificial pawn during the activation of the Sigma Circular.

Banno then used the Sigma Circular at the “Promised Land” to commence a second Global Freeze that would digitise the whole world. Mach and Chaser attempted to fight Gold Drive, but they were defeated. Chase sacrificed himself to protect Go, but to no avail. Go then used Chase’s Signal Bike to defeat Gold Drive before destroying the Banno Driver for good with the Shingou-Ax.

Meanwhile, Medic sacrificed herself to heal Shinnosuke before he destroyed the Sigma Circular alongside Heart. With this, Banno’s Global Freeze was successfully thwarted.

Kamen Rider Ghost

Jabel/Gamma Superior

Defeated by: Kamen Rider Ghost Toucon Boost Damashii’s Omega Drive/Kamen Rider Specter Houdini Damashii’s Omega Drive/Kamen Rider Ghost Grateful Damashii’s Omega Drive

Following Wizard’s Phoenix, Jabel is another villain who became new form cannon fodder on multiple occasions.

Jabel was ordered by Adonis to take on the role of being Alain’s “babysitter” and to check on his progress regarding the conquest of the human world. He briefly confronted Makoto once before leaving with Alain. Back then, Makoto was seeking the 15 Heroic Eyecons to revive his sister, Kanon, unlike his former friend and rival, Takeru, who was seeking the Eyecons in the hope of reviving himself within his 99-day time limit. Jabel confronted Makoto (properly) and Takeru during one of their initial confrontations, revealing his monster form as the Gamma Superior. After Ghost and Specter were beaten down, Saionji took their Heroic Eyecons and trapped them out of the Daitenku Temple so that he could gain his wish, though it would backfire on him due to his lack of a fully functioning Ghost Driver.

When the Great Eye appeared in the sky, deactivating Saionji’s forcefield, Jabel attempted to summon some Gundaris to attack it, only for them to be forced back. Meanwhile, Takeru had wished for Kanon to be revived, causing the Great Eye to disappear and the Eyecons to be scattered. While Takeru’s friends went to gather up the Eyecons, Jabel picked up two of them (Grimm and Sanzo) before confronting Takeru and Makoto again with his Gundaris. Jabel used one of the Gundaris to protect himself from Ghost and Specter’s Omega Drives before he was ordered to withdraw. The two Riders then proceeded to finish off the remaining three Gundaris.

Later, Alain scolded Jabel for wasting the Gundaris and had him hand over the two Heroic Eyecons he found. As Alain left, Jabel vowed to himself that he would “leave no liabilities”. Meanwhile, Takeru’s friends were struggling with finding the two Eyecons that were previously unaccounted for. On the last of Takeru’s 99 days, Jabel kidnapped Shibuya, leaving Narita to alert Takeru and the others at the temple. Ghost and Jabel confronted each other, with Specter joining in to assist. Just as Specter engaged Jabel in battle, Takeru began to disappear as his 99 days were up. However, right at the last moment, Takeru’s father, Ryu, merged his soul with his son’s, thereby reviving him for another 99 days and granting him the Toucon Boost Eyecon. Takeru used his new power and the weapon that came with it (the Sunglasseslasher) to fight Jabel and defeat him with an Omega Drive finisher.

This defeat only destroyed his Eyecon body, however, and was later granted another by Alain. Following his master’s orders, he again confronted Ghost and Specter before being ordered to leave, but not without taking Kanon hostage and later, leaving Makoto a message as to her location. At that time, Makoto was struggling to obtain the cooperation of the Houdini Eyecon. When he decided to gain it once and for all, the Eyecon took control of his bike and put him in chains until Makoto learnt to ask for its assistance instead of trying to tame his power. Makoto then assumed Houdini Damashii for the first time and saved Kanon before defeating a Jabel-controlled Gundari with its Omega Drive.

When Adel killed Adonis and took over his throne, he awakened Jabel in his mortal body and gave him a Gamma Ultima Eyecon, allowing him to transform into a stronger form. This time, he was ordered to execute Alain, who was framed for the death of his father and forced back into his mortal body. He confronted the three Riders and was nearly able to kill Alain before Specter stopped him. Later on, Jabel confronted Alain again, resulting in Makoto sacrificing his Eyecon body in order to protect him. Takeru regained his fighting resolve and fought Jabel using the power of all 15 Heroic Eyecons by transforming into Grateful Damashii. At that point, one of the Ganmeizers possessed Jabel, transforming him into Ultima Fire form. Despite this, Ghost activated the Grateful Damashii’s Omega Drive attack (using the same method for Mega Omega Formation), defeating Jabel’s Ultima Fire form and weakening him severely.

Following this defeat, Jabel found himself victim to Adel and Igor’s plans, having been deemed worthless and disposable. He was later found by Onari, who used one of Akari’s inventions to heal him, telling him that kindness can lead to enlightenment. Jabel then helps defend Onari’s friends against Igor to repay his debt. He later fights Alain again, but was defeated thanks to Necrom’s Sanzo Damashii and his new weapon, the Gan Gun Catcher (this doesn’t really count in terms of new forms). Jabel fell into depression following his repeated defeats, leading to Onari teaching Jabel that only he can find his own life’s purpose. Jabel then goes away on his own, before returning later when the Demia Project finally begins. After being revived following his attempt at sacrificing his life for Alain, Jabel joins the Daitenku Temple as a monk-in-training.

Kamen Rider Ex-Aid

Graphite/Dark Graphite

Defeated by: Kamen Rider Ex-Aid/Brave/Snipe/Lazer Level 5′s Drago Knight Critical Strike

Graphite was one of the initial Bugster generals alongside Parado and the boss of the game Drago Knight Hunter Z.

Graphite was born from the body of Zero Day Game Syndrome patient Saki Momose, who was the girlfriend of then-medical student Hiiro Kagami. Thanks in part to Kuroto Dan’s machinations, Graphite was able to defeat then-CR doctor Taiga Hanaya as Kamen Rider Snipe (Proto Shooting Gamer) and attain his complete form, causing Saki to disappear into data. As a result, Taiga lost his medical licence and found himself being blamed by Hiiro for Saki’s death. Graphite would become a rival of both Taiga and Hiiro because of these circumstances.

Five years later, at the start of the series, Graphite’s main role was to spread the Bugster virus and gain new comrades. He was involved in “stealing” the Level 3 Gashats from Genm Corporation, leading to the reveal of his human form being Graphite and not the “black Ex-Aid” that CR initially suspected he was. Brave managed to gain a Level 3 Gashat (DoReMiFa Beat) and defeated him once using its Critical Finish attack. His Gashacon Bugvisor was taken by Kuruto following this defeat.

A little later, Graphite overheard Parado and Kuroto talking about the Proto Gashats and how it would eventually destroy their users despite granting them unlimited power. He later took the Proto Dragon Knight Hunter Z Gashat and used it on himself, becoming Dark Graphite in the process. Following this, he then infected CR’s founder Kyotaro Hinata with the Bugster Virus from his Proto Gashat before confronting Ex-Aid and Brave alongside the Hunter Gamer Bugster Union that emerged from Hinata’s body.

Graphite went on to continue infecting people with his Proto Gashat, causing a mass epidemic. Alongside the evolved Bugster Union, he confronted Ex-Aid, Brave and Snipe in battle before Ex-Aid defeated the Bugster Union and completed the Level 5 Drago Knight Hunter Z Gashat with its data. Ex-Aid then used the Gashat by himself to assume his Hunter Action Gamer Full Dragon form, which caused him to go out of control and attack Brave and Snipe while also managing to weaken Graphite as well.

After Ex-Aid, Brave, Snipe and Lazer “put aside” their “differences”, the four Riders confronted Graphite one last time, sharing the Hunter Gamer’s parts amongst each other as they defeated him with the Drago Knight Critical Strike.

Despite the pandemic being suppressed, Kuroto revealed to the Riders that the Bugster Virus had already been spread across the city. This, alongside Graphite’s actions, was part of his plan to create the “ultimate game”, Kamen Rider Chronicle. Graphite was later revived through the Gashacon Bugvisor upon the completion of the game, having already attained his complete form. This allowed him to become Guren Graphite, a Level 99 Bugster. When the game was hijacked by Masamune Dan/Kamen Rider Cronus, he and Parado went to great lengths to negate his Pause ability by collecting Gamedeus’ data and using it to infect Cronus’ Buggle Driver II, only for their plan to fail. Despite this, the Gamedeus virus in Graphite allowed him to surpass Level 99. Though he was unwilling to cooperate with the Kamen Riders against Cronus, he fought Brave and Snipe for the last time before finally being defeated by Ride-Player Nico with the Rider Critical Finish, despite Cronus’ interference. This opened the path for the Riders to fight the last boss of Kamen Rider Chronicle, namely Gamedeus.

Kuroto Dan/Kamen Rider Genm

Defeated by: Kamen Rider Ex-Aid Maximum Gamer Level 99′s Maximum Critical Break

It’s really funny how a fanbase’s feelings for a character can change over the course of a series. We were entranced by his mysteries at the start of the series (particularly with the matter of Genm’s identity), then we all started to hate him after Kiriya was killed at Christmas, then we all gradually grew to like and love him again up until his revival as a Bugster later in the series. Even before Ex-Aid started, Genm had blessed us with the Shakariki Critical Strike against the Gamma. From then on, we all knew that he would have in important role to play in the series as our lord and saviour. It’s like we’ve started to worship the zookeeper who shot Harambe instead of taking our dicks out for him.

16 years ago, Kuroto was working as a developer at Genm Corporation when he discovered the Bugster Virus on his laptop (during the Y2K incident), which he showed to his father, Masamune. He received some fanmail from a young Emu Hojo, suggesting some ideas for a new game. Unable to believe that someone could be as talented as him, Kuroto sent Emu the still in-development Mighty Action C, which contained the first strain of the Bugster Virus that he found. Emu would become patient zero of the virus thereafter. Kuroto would also infect his mother, Sakurako, with the Bugster Virus in the hope that he could eventually save her one day.

Over the next decade, Kuroto would observe Emu from the shadows in order to monitor the development of the Bugster Virus within him. Following Emu’s win against Nico Saiba in a gaming tournament, Kuroto would hire the Next Genome Institute to extract the Bugster Virus from him. While the members of the Institute vanished, the extracted Bugster known as Parado would begin working with Kuroto as he used the virus extracted from him to create the Bugsters and trigger Zero Day a year later. He framed his father for the incident and worked with the Ministry of Health to design the Gamer Driver and the Gashats while also infecting the populace with the Bugster Virus as part of his master plan. He would use the Proto Mighty Action X Gashat to become Kamen Rider Genm (the black Ex-Aid), with his objective being to allow the Riders to clear the ten Gashat games while also creating obstacles for them to do so by intruding in their battles and allowing the Bugsters to escape.

While Kuroto took precautions to conceal his identity as Genm, Kiriya Kujo managed to see him transforming into Genm, having already blackmailed him into giving him a Gamer Driver after confronting him about Zero Day. However, following his defeat by Lazer Chambara Gamer Level 3, Parado took Kuroto’s Gamer Driver and Gashat to disguise himself as Genm’s true identity, thereby maintaining the charade for a while longer. After the Drago Knight Hunter Z Gashat was completed, Kuroto prepared to move on to the next phase as the Bugster Virus began mutating, causing new game villains to emerge and previously defeated Bugsters to resurface in leveled-up forms. He gave up the Shakariki Sports Gashat in exchange for the death data he required to complete the Dangerous Zombie Gashat, which he managed to attain from himself after being severely weakened by the four Riders in their Level 5 forms and finished off by Ex-Aid, who managed to clear Shakariki Sports and gain its Gashat. Later on, Kuroto discovered that Kiriya had made contact with his father and tricked him into using the newly-completed Dangerous Zombie Gashat, severely weakening him before using it himself to become Kamen Rider Genm Zombie Gamer Level X, killing Kiriya in the process and taking his Giri Giri Chambara Gashat, which he would use to summon the Gashacon Sparrow as his weapon.

Now immortal thanks to the power of the Level X Gashat, Kuroto continued on with his plan to complete “the ultimate game”, namely Kamen Rider Chronicle, by absorbing Bugsters into the Gashacon Bugvisor as they were defeated. He also set about on recovering the Gashats from the Riders, seeing as he no longer needed his “test players”. Upon seeing Emu create the Mighty Brothers XX Gashat, Kuroto became intent on deleting the game, seeing it as a bootleg game that he did not create. Another game that fell into this category was Ju Ju Burger, a game that was created by Tsukuru Koboshi following Kuroto’s departure from Genm Corp. He killed the Burgermon Bugster as a result of this, despite Emu clearing the game and Tsukuru being cured of his game disease. He also created two Level 50 Gashat Gear Duals, one for Parado (after he “squandered” the double Gashat containing lethal amounts of the Bugster Virus to Emu) and one using the updated data of the Taddle Quest and Bang Bang Shooting Gashats, which he stole from Brave and Snipe during battle. It was later taken by Hiiro, who then gave it to Taiga after being unable to withstand the power of Level 50.

Taiga had known about Emu’s status as patient zero from Kuroto and told Hiiro about it as well, warning him not to tell Emu for fear of him becoming stressed at the revelation. Despite this, Kuroto decided to reveal this fact to Emu when Parado became fed up with him not playing by the rules. This caused Emu to explode in stress, leading Parado to re-possess his body in order to relieve it and save his life.

Kuroto later reveals to Parado that he has been using the Dangerous Zombie Gashat in order to unlock the power of the unknown - while ‘Level X’ may represent ‘Level 10′, ‘X’ can also represent an unknown variable. After having been killed 10 times to gather more death data, Kuroto finally unlocked the power of Level X. With Kamen Rider Chronicle nearly completed, the Ministry of Health discovered Kuroto’s hideout and proceeded to arrest him, however he infected himself with the Bugster Virus (overcoming the initial immunity he had as a result of the compatibility surgery), leading him to transform into the Charlie Bugster and be taken to CR for treatment. After he was cured of the Bugster Virus infection, he transformed into Genm Level X and corrupted Emu’s Gamer Driver with the powered-up Critical Dead attack before leaving Emu alive as a thanks for his cooperation. Kuroto returned to Genm Corporation and set about completing Kamen Rider Chronicle by infecting citizens with the DoReMiFa Beat and Drago Knight Hunter Z Bugster Virus strains, but to no avail.

Meanwhile, Taiga and Nico asked Tsukuru to create a game where the player “deals with immortal zombies”. A blank Gashat was made for this purpose and an original game idea was made for it, but it was abandoned in favour of installing a reprogramming system created by Kiriya when he heard from Masamune about the origin of the Bugster virus and Emu’s status as patient zero. Emu was given the new Gashat, which he used with Kiriya’s Gamer Driver (that was given to him just before his death) to create the Maximum Mighty X Gashat and transform into Ex-Aid Maximum Gamer Level 99 for the first time.

As Maximum Mighty X was what Kuroto considered to be “another unauthorised game”, he set out to erase the game, creating an immortal Bugster Union with his zombie Bugster minions. However, Ex-Aid used the Maximum Mighty Critical Finish on him, reprogramming the Dangerous Zombie Gashat and negating Genm’s immortality, refilling his Rider Gauge. Emu untransformed right after, deciding to offer Kuroto a chance to atone for his sins, but he manages to escape, proclaiming to be God himself.

Emu confronted Genm for the final time, transforming into Level 99 again to fight him alongside Brave and Snipe. finishing him off by reprogramming Kuroto’s Bugster antibodies with the Maximum Critical Break finisher, negating his ability to transform once and for all. Emu gave Kuroto a final chance to atone, but Parado comes in and finishes him off by infecting him with the Dangerous Zombie Gashat in the Gashacon Bugvisor. Hiiro and Taiga had now regained all their Gashats and Emu had gained Kiriya’s Giri Giri Chambara Gashat as his own following Genm’s defeat. Parado went on to complete Kamen Rider Chronicle by reviving Graphite and all the other defeated Bugsters while Ren Amagasaki/Lovelica, the new CEO of Genm Corporation, brainwashed Poppy Pipopapo onto their side.

Kuroto’s story would not end there, however. In the spin-off series Kamen Sentai Gorider, Kuroto had created an unbeatable game that would feed on the hope-converted-into-despair of dead Riders so that he would be revived in the real world alongside constantly reviving Bugsters, but the dead Riders sacrifice themselves to stop the plan. In the series proper, Poppy had regained the memories of her human host, namely Kuroto’s mother Sakurako, after returning to CR following her reprogramming by Ex-Aid Level 99. While Parado possessed Emu in an attempt to gain a higher-level form so that the two could properly fight, the memories of Poppy’s host led her to a chest with a Gamer Driver and the alpha-build Proto Mighty Action X Origin Gashat, the first Gashat to be created. Poppy entered the game world generated by the Gashat, where she found and revived Kuroto as a Bugster with human DNA, allowing him to use a Gamer Driver to transform and prevent Parado from possessing Emu. Being revived as a Bugster through the alpha Gashat also granted Kuroto/Genm with 99 lives and the ability to “continue” after being Game Overed (his Level 0 and X-0 stats were still weak against opponents such as Para-DX Level 99, Cronus, Lazer Turbo’s upgraded forms and Build GorillaMond Form).

Kuroto (addressing himself as Neo/Shin Dan Kuroto and Dan Kurotto Deus/Shin) would then play a large role in CR’s mission to end Kamen Rider Chronicle by creating the Hyper Muteki Gashat, Save Energy Items and alongside Kiriya, the Doctor Mighty XX Gashat as a vaccine for Gamedeus’ virus. His initial insanity and psychosis had now devolved into foolishness and comic relief (for the audience), but surely, he became a beloved character to the fans of Kamen Rider Ex-Aid.

#kamen rider

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denisehil0 · 5 years ago

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Concealing virus part of Bolsonaro’s effort shore up base

RIO DE JANEIRO — As the coronavirus claims tens of thousands of lives in Brazil, President Jair Bolsonaro is focused on ensuring his political survival and mobilizing his far-right supporters to do so.

With less than one-third of Brazilians approving Bolsonaro’s handling of the pandemic, and protests against him increasing, analysts say he’s shoring up his base to shield himself from possible impeachment and improve governability.

“He’s losing support and needs something to put in its place,” Maurício Santoro, a professor of political science at the State University of Rio de Janeiro. “Bolsonaro needs people on the street defending him.”

Casting doubt on COVID-19 statistics has been a mainstay in far-right circles and Bolsonaro has amplified that claim. So far COVID-19 has killed more than 36,000 Brazilians, but one wouldn’t know it from the Health Ministry’s website; it stopped publishing cumulative totals on Friday, the day after Brazil surpassed Italy to become third worldwide.

After backlash, it provided a link to an obscure Dropbox site that included subfolder with data, the reliability of which remained uncertain.

Critics complained that the extraordinary move to squelch the death toll’s daily drumbeat resembled tactics of an authoritarian regimes. It came after months of Bolsonaro downplaying COVID-19 and maintaining that economic meltdown would inflict worse hardship than allowing the virus to run its course.

Pollster Datafolha found that roughly 30% of Brazilians surveyed May 25-26 rated Bolsonaro as good or excellent and also approved of his handling of the pandemic.

Bolsonaro foes, seeing weakness, have submitted more than 30 requests for impeachment to Congress, where so far they’ve been stalled by the lower house speaker. The president’s allies hope energized supporters could make it costly to support such moves.

The muted support for Bolsonaro was on display the past weekend, with protests against Bolsonaro’s government in 20 cities while pro-government demonstrations were considerably smaller than prior weekends.

Bolsonaro still enjoys considerable support on the far right. Backers in April were quick to join his call to defy social isolation recommendations even as the outbreak started exploding. Then they echoed the president’s call to treat COVID-19 with chloroquine, which many doctors refuse to prescribe for lack of evidence it can help and fear it may hurt some.

Olavo de Carvalho, an influential far-right idealogue, said May 12 the “supposedly deadly virus” was nothing more than a scare tactic to cow the population into slavery.

Bolsonaro has tried to energize his base by joining weekend rallies in the capital that feature banners denouncing the Supreme Court and Congress, sometimes in lurid terms, for undermining his administration. On May 31, he flew over the crowd in an Army helicopter and, after landing, rode into the plaza on horseback flanked by mounted military police.

On Friday, he pledged to make it easier for police officers and servicemen to import guns for personal use, part of the far-right’s longstanding demand to make guns more accessible.

“What’s making Bolsonaro get more radical is the pandemic; some processes that existed before were accelerated. And he is being seen as he is,” said Adriana Dias, a researcher on far-right groups at University of Campinas. She noted that Bolsonaro never demonstrates empathy about the virus, for example replying, “So what?” when asked about Brazil’s death toll surpassing China’s.

“That didn’t ring well with average Brazilians. That makes him even more dependent on the radicals,” she said.

A fissure emerged Saturday night, however. De Carvalho made an apparently rhetorical threat to topple the government. Once among Bolsonaro’s most strident supporters, he said repeatedly the president has only paid lip service to fighting political enemies without taking aggressive action — a sign of weakness that strengthens opponents and “invites humiliation.”

“There is still time for Bolsonaro to stop following bad advice and correct course of his policy. How much time? Five minutes,” Carvalho wrote on Facebook.

In an effort to bring de Carvalho back into the fold, close Bolsonaro ally Luciano Hang, who owns a chain of department stores, posted a 38-minute video to Facebook.

“I’m on your side and Brazilians need to be, too,” Hang said. “We need to be in the trenches fighting with you.”

Bolsonaro relies on such allies, as well as sons, ministers and advisors, to transmit signals that excite his base, according to Odilon Caldeira Neto, a history professor at the Federal University of Juiz de Fora who researches far-right ideology.

“The far-right embraces the idea of anti-democratic ruptures, and Bolsonaro is giving more space to those voices,” Caldeira said, particularly referring to showdowns with the Supreme Court and Congress, and alluding to the 1964-85 dictatorship that eventually closed Congress and sometimes overruled the Supreme Court.

Bolsonaro denounced a Supreme Court-ordered federal police raid on May 28 against prominent allies suspected of conspiring to circulate false and defamatory social media posts about his foes.

Also apparently angered by the raids was Eduardo Bolsonaro, the president’s son and a lawmaker, who once said it would be easy to shut down the Supreme Court. After the raid he said that there was no longer any doubt if Brazil’s government would suffer institutional rupture, “but rather when that will occur.”

Far-right activist Sara Giromini, also targeted by the investigation, on May 30 led a group of chanting protesters holding torches aloft to the Supreme Court; it was reminiscent of white nationalists’ Charlottesville march in 2017. She has organized a camp in Brasilia and acknowledged there were arms on the premises. Her group has sought to intimidate Bolsonaro’s political enemies, and public prosecutors have likened it to a paramilitary group.

“The radicals want Bolsonaro to stage a coup, but Brazil’s history doesn’t show presidents doing that without popular support,” said Carlos Melo, a political science professor at Insper in Sao Paulo. “The question will be if the military and the police that still support him will believe there are conditions to do this and regain popularity.”

Meantime, the COVID-19 death toll is a drag on approval, even if the narrative among Brazil’s far right is that it has been inflated as part of a conspiracy against Bolsonaro by the establishment, media and globalist organizations like the World Health Organization, according to Santoro, the professor in Rio.

“So, in a sense, the government decision to hide them (the numbers) is also in line with this ideology,” Santoro said.

David Biller And Mauricio Savarese, The Associated Press

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