Views that do not have any evidentiary basis do not deserve equal, or sometimes even any, mention in an encyclopedia entry. Some people believe the earth isn't round, is 6000 years old, or that the sun orbits it. The Wikipedia entries on earth's basic geology or the solar system's basics need not include those views. The logic of Sanger's article is essentially because *some* people believe something, you cannot say they're wrong.
Quite telling, imo, is Sanger's inclusion of "Obamagate". A scandal that has yet to be even truly defined, much less any evidence produced. A scandal where Sanger's own characterization contradicts what Trump & co. are alleging. Sanger says "Obama was personally involved in surveilling Donald Trump." The allegation from Trump is that the Obama administration spied on Michael Flynn. This is indicative of someone unwilling to do even cursory due diligence about the facts.
He had me up until he mentioned that Obamagate should be part of Obama’s Wikipedia page. It shouldn’t, neither should Clinton’s emails since that involved Clinton and not Obama.
Wikipedia is also open source. If he wants to provide credible articles then go at it.
His point about Obama not having a “Public Profile” subsection is also misleading. Obama wasn’t a well known celebrity since the ‘80s with his own tabloid headlining life.
That said, yes there is bias in a lot of Wikipedia articles. It’s what happens when you have an open source publishing that anyone can edit. It is very difficult to write something without bias, however, it is very easy to read something and pick out the biases in it. For example, this whole article is biased leaning right in its examples.
In response to Trump declaring churches "essential", and his Press Secretary saying "We can all hope this Sunday people are allowed to pray to their gods", I offer actual scripture:
"And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites
are, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and
in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men.
Verily I say unto you, They have their reward." Matthew 6:5
Not a coincidence that Bush's consigliere Karl Rove has joined the campaign this week. We're going right back to 2004 Evangelical dog whistles.
It's not about praying, it's about fellowship. I know how Evangelicals think. They're a tight-knit group that bond around their time in church. It's almost as much about friendship and bonding as it is about religion (maybe even more so). This is a desperation move by Trump, but that doesn't mean it won't work. Other religious groups that aren't so-called Evangelicals might even join in if this goes on much longer. The US is not Asia or even Europe. People here will not forgive politicians that are deemed to be 'oppressive'.
We live in the age of live video calls. There's no reason to risk your and your neighbors lives on physical contact. It says more about the people than the religion that this is apparently desirable.
From my experience and practice I can say that @Balrog99 is right. People come together in unity to bring up energy for their deity (pray, eucharist, fellowship) but also for the knowing they belong to each other through their beliefs.
Many have come to me/my group for teachings and to join our path but once they are told that we meet in person, they also ask for skype or video audiences. The ones that ask/demand this of us is usually a social introvert with self loathing issues. They are told that coming together is essential to their growth in the path they choose, some understand this and come around and others with a more rooted belief in that they have to get what they want, will try their best to slander or call the authorities to break up our gatherings.
Every person has the right to spiritual and personal betterment even during a pandemic. In conclusion I have found that the ones that cry the most for others to change society and the way humans act with each other is to justify their self loathing and social withdrawal.
I'm not placing everyone into this category but just those I have dealt with even at work. Physical distancing is the norm for the immediate future but the mental and spiritual well being of humanity is much more needed in this new present.
He had me up until he mentioned that Obamagate should be part of Obama’s Wikipedia page. It shouldn’t, neither should Clinton’s emails since that involved Clinton and not Obama.
Wikipedia is also open source. If he wants to provide credible articles then go at it.
His point about Obama not having a “Public Profile” subsection is also misleading. Obama wasn’t a well known celebrity since the ‘80s with his own tabloid headlining life.
That said, yes there is bias in a lot of Wikipedia articles. It’s what happens when you have an open source publishing that anyone can edit. It is very difficult to write something without bias, however, it is very easy to read something and pick out the biases in it. For example, this whole article is biased leaning right in its examples.
Why shouldn't "Obamagate" be part of the article? Why is it any less relevant information than any Trump scandal, each of which is covered in great detail? It's not, unless you have preconceived opinions and want to enforce them on others. That's not presenting information with neutrality.
"He should write his own articles"? That's silly. He is the one of the founders of wikipedia. He personally wrote the neutrality policy. If there is anyone with a legitimate basis to criticize what it has become, it's him.
All big scandals should be treated equally, with bias-free coverage of the allegations and results, from a supposedly neutral source. An encyclopedia isn't in the business of taking sides, nor should it be. Every point of view widely held by a large number of people deserves mention, because it's relevant information, provided you are an encyclopedia trying to summarize information on a topic and not The Washington Post, trying to enforce a particular interpretation of that information.
Most people are so insulated within their own ideological bubbles they no longer even pretend to understand the need for sources of information that are as impartial as possible and that present all sides. Clearly, there is only one acceptable interpretation of any event, which is handed down to us from on high by our journalistic and government elites.
As an aside, it might be difficult to write without bias, but it's not impossible, and it certainly needs to be attempted. That something is hard to do is a lame excuse for systemic failure, in my opinion.
For an example of neutral writing, many legal articles do this just fine. It is often the case that you can read an entire article about a controversial topic and not know what the opinion of the author is at all.
This is never the case with any journalism anymore, and now not even with encyclopedias. People can no longer separate their own opinions with what is objectively true.
But these are market forces at work. People don't want quality, objective journalism, they want to be told everything they heard on The Daily Show was true. Or some weird Qanon stuff if you're a righty. Quality journalism died a slow death and is now almost non-existent.
But would state run journalism really be any better? The obvious conflicts of interest are obvious. It's a difficult question since there doesn't seem to be any good incentive structure for anything that's not a gloried comment section.
He had me up until he mentioned that Obamagate should be part of Obama’s Wikipedia page. It shouldn’t, neither should Clinton’s emails since that involved Clinton and not Obama.
Wikipedia is also open source. If he wants to provide credible articles then go at it.
His point about Obama not having a “Public Profile” subsection is also misleading. Obama wasn’t a well known celebrity since the ‘80s with his own tabloid headlining life.
That said, yes there is bias in a lot of Wikipedia articles. It’s what happens when you have an open source publishing that anyone can edit. It is very difficult to write something without bias, however, it is very easy to read something and pick out the biases in it. For example, this whole article is biased leaning right in its examples.
Why shouldn't "Obamagate" be part of the article? Why is it any less relevant information than any Trump scandal, each of which is covered in great detail? It's not, unless you have preconceived opinions and want to enforce them on others. That's not presenting information with neutrality.
"He should write his own articles"? That's silly. He is the one of the founders of wikipedia. He personally wrote the neutrality policy. If there is anyone with a legitimate basis to criticize what it has become, it's him.
All big scandals should be treated equally, with bias-free coverage of the allegations and results, from a supposedly neutral source. An encyclopedia isn't in the business of taking sides, nor should it be. Every point of view widely held by a large number of people deserves mention, because it's relevant information, provided you are an encyclopedia trying to summarize information on a topic and not The Washington Post, trying to enforce a particular interpretation of that information.
Most people are so insulated within their own ideological bubbles they no longer even pretend to understand the need for sources of information that are as impartial as possible and that present all sides. Clearly, there is only one acceptable interpretation of any event, which is handed down to us from on high by our journalistic and government elites.
As an aside, it might be difficult to write without bias, but it's not impossible, and it certainly needs to be attempted. That something is hard to do is a lame excuse for systemic failure, in my opinion.
Link me a credible source which explains Obamagate in detail with Obama’s proven role is the conspiracy.
If you can’t do that, then Wikipedia shouldn’t mention it.
And sure all big scandals should be treated equally, but Obamagate isn’t a scandal, it’s a conspiracy derived from the political campaign of Republicans. It should not be treated as equally as say Trump’s impeachment.
If he (or anyone else for that matter) finds an article to be biasedly written, he can edit it himself to remove said bias instead of writing an article pandering a bias of his own biases.
For an example of neutral writing, many legal articles do this just fine. It is often the case that you can read an entire article about a controversial topic and not know what the opinion of the author is at all.
This is never the case with any journalism anymore, and now not even with encyclopedias. People can no longer separate their own opinions with what is objectively true.
But these are market forces at work. People don't want quality, objective journalism, they want to be told everything they heard on The Daily Show was true. Or some weird Qanon stuff if you're a righty. Quality journalism died a slow death and is now almost non-existent.
But would state run journalism really be any better? The obvious conflicts of interest are obvious. It's a difficult question since there doesn't seem to be any good incentive structure for anything that's not a gloried comment section.
I’d be hard pressed to find any Reuters non-opinion labeled articles that are written with a bias.
And the case with opinion and truth, you live in a democracy. Majority opinion is truth when it comes to questions that need to be answered. And I think that is the bias that you are seeing.
Take the whole Church Service debacle going on. Questions like is it safe to open in places of worship is being asked instead of can a governors order override a person’s freedom of religion when it comes to pandemics like this one. Majority of people (or readers of publications) wouldn’t care about a freedom they take for granted, but would care about their wellbeing and the wellbeing of a community - so covering that side of the story is paramount to the success of that publication.
And both those questions are equally important. I do wish more publications were asking about persons freedoms and liberties being infringed upon without devolving into ranting protests.
And journalism died with the rise of click-bate. It no longer information that needs to said, it’s what wants to be heard. And no state run journalism is never a good thing.
There's two ways to think about what should be in an encyclopedia in relation to conspiracy theories:
(i) It's intended to provide factual information on all aspects of knowledge and should therefore accurately report anything that has been widely said.
(ii) It's intended to provide factual information on the reality of the world around us and should therefore not report on allegations without evidence.
Although I have some sympathy with the second approach, I don't think it sufficiently meets people's need for information. In principle it should be helpful for an encyclopedia to report neutrally on the basis for conspiracy theories and scandals. However, I think it is also reasonable to expect such a report to refer to whether the theories are consistent with reality.
If there is no check against reality, that effectively endorses the Trumpian belief in alternate facts, i.e. that anything he says is true simply because he says it. Covid-19 has harshly exposed the problems with that approach, but those were pretty evident before when dealing with physical realities - such as wildfire and hurricanes.
In some cases Trump's statements about his beliefs appear ridiculous (“I've always known this is a real, this is a pandemic. I've felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic”), but as no-one can know what goes on in his mind it's not possible to be 100% certain about that. However, in many cases his statements relate to conditions in the world that can be measured and either have no evidence ("millions of people voted illegally") or are verifiably untrue (“we’ve tested more than every country combined”; “we inherited a broken test”).
If an encyclopedia (or anything else), portrays themselves as neutral, I think that has to mean more than simply reporting uncritically "both sides" of an argument. I do understand the problems that could cause when discussing issues which are less black and white, so am not advocating that every article tries to establish the "truth". However, I think the greater problem is associated with not challenging unsupported statements. An example of a possible approach is this Wikipedia article on the flat earth theory. That helpfully sets the modern conspiracy theory in its historical context. While not being rude, the article also makes clear that the theory is inconsistent with evidence.
The only thing it took to create "Obamagate" was for someone to take the words "Obama" and "Gate" and then merge them together. When asked a direct question about what it is, Trump didn't answer because there IS no answer.
I'll go over this again. Michael Flynn was not being "spied" on. It didn't take place during the campaign. After Trump was elected (but not sworn in), intelligence agencies were listening to the calls of Russian officials since they had just tried to sabotage the election. Michael Flynn shows up on one of the calls, directly undermining the foreign policy of the current Administration and their attempts to retaliate for what happened. He was free to do this on January 20, 2017 at noon EST, but not a second earlier. This was OBVIOUSLY made known to the President. Is someone going to argue he didn't have a right to know the incoming Administration was attempting to usurp power 2 months early?? Well, of course some people will argue that. They also believe it was right and proper he didn't get to fill a Supreme Court vacancy.
Point being, Flynn put himself in the pot. He wasn't being tracked, he showed up talking with foreign agents who had been engaged in the Russian attack on the American election. He was scoring rock when the crack den was raided, if you want to be blunt about it. And it was such a conspiratorial "scandal" that the FIRST time Obama personally met with Trump during the transition, he went out of his way to warn him about hiring Flynn, which became prophecy within 3 weeks of them taking power. So, yeah, hell of a covert effort they were undertaking there. Where Obama apparently just gives away the whole thing on a whim at the first opportunity to the guy who questioned his very citizenship on a daily basis for 8 years. Give me a fucking break with this shit.
I definitely didn't mean to give any legitimacy to Obamagate, not that I'm saying this is what you're suggesting. But I think it's a prime example of how Sanger isn't actually interested in what I'd call "neutral point of view" in his essay. He seems very much sunken in the rabbit hole of American conservative conspiracy mongering, and is plainly someone incapable of looking at these issues dispassionately. I think that's exactly the opposite perspective of what Wikipedia should be.
And I don't care what his role was in creating it. I certainly am grateful for the work he did back then, but he's not even trying to be objective now. The inclusion of Obamagate in his arguments -- and his own failure to even cohere with Trump's allegation -- is extremely telling.
Similarly, I'd add, 9/11 conspiracy theories do not appear on the George W Bush page. I don't think such baseless theories belong there either. But plenty of Americans do believe them. That's immaterial.
I definitely didn't mean to give any legitimacy to Obamagate, not that I'm saying this is what you're suggesting. But I think it's a prime example of how Sanger isn't actually interested in what I'd call "neutral point of view" in his essay. He seems very much sunken in the rabbit hole of American conservative conspiracy mongering, and is plainly someone incapable of looking at these issues dispassionately. I think that's exactly the opposite perspective of what Wikipedia should be.
And I don't care what his role was in creating it. I certainly am grateful for the work he did back then, but he's not even trying to be objective now. The inclusion of Obamagate in his arguments -- and his own failure to even cohere with Trump's allegation -- is extremely telling.
Similarly, I'd add, 9/11 conspiracy theories do not appear on the George W Bush page. I don't think such baseless theories belong there either. But plenty of Americans do believe them. That's immaterial.
Conspiracies in general should be mentioned, just in case, but should be viewed through the eyes of logic. Both the extreme right (NWO, Christian millennial conspiracies, mind-control, Mark of the Beast, anti-Climate Change, George Soros, anti-vax, UFO's, etc...) and the extreme left (Russia conspiracies, multi-national companies want to kill you, every conservative is a racist, pharma companies want to kill you, oil companies buy up cheap energy patents, Trump wants to kill you, conservatives are all fascists or white supremacists, etc...) should be viewed with a sceptical eye IMHO. There's always a chance, no matter how remote, that they're right though...
Wikipedia has to practice some kind of editorial judgement. Otherwise the entries on every topic would be filled with every half-cocked conspiracy or belief. The entries would become endless. And -- importantly -- the most critical information in them would be buried beneath a deluge of bad information.
It is perfectly fine for Wikipedia to practice some kind of standard for what makes it into its articles. Failing to do so would defeat the whole point of why people consult encyclopedias in the first place. If I'm a young person looking to educate myself on the basics of biological evolution, I shouldn't have to wade through reams of text about creationism or Lysenkoism to get to what it is most biologists today actually subscribe to.
Wikipedia has to practice some kind of editorial judgement. Otherwise the entries on every topic would be filled with every half-cocked conspiracy or belief. The entries would become endless. And -- importantly -- the most critical information in them would be buried beneath a deluge of bad information.
It is perfectly fine for Wikipedia to practice some kind of standard for what makes it into its articles. Failing to do so would defeat the whole point of why people consult encyclopedias in the first place. If I'm a young person looking to educate myself on the basics of biological evolution, I shouldn't have to wade through reams of text about creationism or Lysenkoism to get to what it is most biologists today actually subscribe to.
Using Wikipedia as your only source likely isn't wise. But since there are millions of topics to discuss in this world, reading an entry will certainly give you basic rundown of what the subject is about, whether it's a Presidency or poisonous Japanese pufferfish.
Of course that would be true of any encyclopedia. The purpose of an encyclopedia isn't to be the definitive source on anything. It's to be a basic reference on everything.
It's getting hard to overstate at this point just how abjectly terrified the Republican Party is of people actually voting. Denying it at this point has to be an exercise in mental gymnastics the likes of which I don't even want to contemplate. Notice how Newsom is sending them to EVERY voter. Not Democratic voters. All voters. All being treated equally:
They aren't trying to hide this, they haven't been trying to hide it for at least a decade. As I've said on other occasions, even if I agreed with them on all their policy, I could not support them because they simply do not believe all Americans should be able to exercise their right to vote. The don't believe in "small d" democratic principles. The only thing they believe in is rigging the board so they can disenfranchise enough people to hang on by their fingernails to power despite being universally unpopular since the early-90s.
The reason we KNOW they don't care about voter fraud is because no one ever brings up a single example of it while pretending to be concerned. If they were to bring one up, they'd, of course, have to point to their OWN side, the absentee ballot harvesting in NC by a Republican operative that literally caused a Congressional race to be invalidated because it was so pervasive. And I guess we never did find out about that wiped hard drive in Georgia.
They draw Congressional districts that look like the scribblings of a toddler on a wall (Dan Crenshaws district in Texas being one of the best examples). The make-up of the Wisconsin legislature relative to the state vote is the height of absurdity. They purge voter rolls, pass onerous ID requirements, and then make it impossible to meet them by closing the public services that provide them. All effort is on dropping turnout as much as possible. And even with these systematic efforts, they BARELY win. And in the midst of this fake outrage about mail-in ballots, Trump brazenly saying it's fine if HE does is another dog whistle. It says he's fine if HIS people vote by mail. Just no one else. Because they aren't true Americans. He's Bill the Butcher from "Gangs of New York" without a hint of the personality or actual willingness to get his hands dirty.
I see the US has added non-US travellers from Brazil to its banned list - not before time since I imagine the real chance of a Brazilian having Covid-19 at the moment is vastly greater than that of a European (who are still banned).
Meanwhile, Trump continues to be either blind or stupid (or, more likely, just willing to lie through his teeth about it) to what's happening in his own country.
As far as I can see, new case numbers have been static or rising in most parts of the country even with the various restrictions in place. The national picture does show a slight decline, but only because of the considerable reductions in New York and New Jersey.
My criticism of Trump doesn't mean I'm certain he's wrong about wanting to 're-open' the economy despite the stubbornly high number of cases. I am certain that will lead to more Covid-19 cases, but that needs to be balanced against the huge costs associated with the disease that will be a burden on society for at least a generation to come. How to compare those different costs is incredibly difficult and I wouldn't criticize anyone who attempts to do that in good faith in order to arrive at what they believe is the best long-term solution. However, I don't think Trump is either willing or capable of doing such an analysis. It seems to me he's essentially driven by short-term considerations of what's good for him - and makes no distinction between lies and truth in his attempts to get to his goals.
We're going to hit 100,000 dead tomorrow. Fittingly, on Memorial Day, 2020. The idea that the US is banning anything from other countries at this point is laughable. The United States IS the hotspot. As for the cases and deaths, I mean, it varies because the weekend reporting is so low, and the numbers always shoot up Tuesday-Thursday. While we are no longer losing 2000 people a day, we are consistently still losing 1000-1500 and racking up 20,000-25,000 new cases rather than 30,000. Essentially, while we have hit a plateau, we have simply stayed there. It's no longer skyrocketing exponentially, but the rate of decline is painfully slow, and at this rate, even assuming no large outbreak because of the push to re-open, we still won't fall to the area of 10,000 cases a day and say, 500 deaths on average til at least the end of June. And that is assuming the absolute BEST of luck in all 50 states.
And again, these numbers are the BARE minimum of what has taken place. They are of course being under-counted, whether by the edict of red-state governors (Florida, Georgia) or by the simple fact that we just don't know how many people are asymptomatic and how many people are dying in their homes before reaching a hospital.
Dr. Birx (who in my mind lost all credibility LONG ago) was doing the media rounds the last two days telling people to get out and enjoy Memorial Day, as long as you practice social distancing and mask usage. She could just take a quick trip to social media to find out that shit ain't happening. Hundreds of co-eds jammed into a pool, with not even so much as six INCHES between them, much less six feet. A market packed to the gills with people, nearly no one wearing masks. Those are just two.
The only thing the US can "hang it's hat on" is that our deaths per million are not as high as Italy, France, Spain and the UK. But they ARE worse than nearly everyone else, and climbing daily (just broke 300 deaths per million for the first time this morning). And if you look at total cases, you'll see 3 countries led by 3 birds of a feather at the top: the US (Trump), Brazil (Bolsonaro) and Russia (Putin). The death numbers out of the later two countries are obviously complete lies that would make China blush in shame. In every metric of abject failure, the US is either at the top or well within the top-10 worst.
There's a significant Covid-19 'scandal' occupying the attention of the government in the UK at the moment.
In brief, Dominic Cummings took his wife and child away from London when she fell ill and drove 260 miles north to his parents' farm near Durham to isolate themselves in a separate building. The day before he returned to London he also drove 60 miles to visit another town on the basis he was checking if his eyesight was good enough to drive back to London. There's a timeline here if anyone is interested.
I don't think it's certain that the full story has yet emerged. However, there are already plenty of dodgy things about this expedition:
- after hearing his wife was unwell he went to see her, but returned to work in the afternoon, despite the rules requiring isolation after anyone in the household displays Covid-19 symptoms. The response to that was that she didn't have such symptoms. However, that same evening the family left to drive to Durham on the basis that she was ill with Covid-19 and he expected to catch it and was worried no-one would be available to look after their child.
- government guidance requires people to isolate at home when they have symptoms. Buried in the detail there is provision for exceptional circumstances, but it's certainly not clear this qualifies.
- if you are concerned about your eyesight, it's dubious that the best way to test it is by driving 60 miles.
- after returning to London, both Cummings and his wife wrote articles about their experiences for the Spectator magazine (of which she is an editor). Durham was not mentioned at all and his wife referred to emerging from lockdown in London.
- the story only came out as a result of eyewitnesses seeing Cummings in Durham. The reaction for several days after the story broke was to try and undermine it before Cummings eventually provided his own detailed version. Part of his explanation for his actions was that he was important for the governance of the country and therefore everyone gained from getting him well as quickly as possible.
These are not a couple of innocents, but two of the most media-savvy people you could imagine. It seems blindingly obvious to me that they deliberately omitted for 6 weeks to say anything about being in Durham because they knew they'd done something wrong - even if it's arguable it was within the letter of the rules, it's clear it was not within the spirit.
What is highly unusual about this is that Dominic Cummings is a political adviser to Boris Johnson, not a politician. While it is fairly standard for advisers to take flack for ministers, the reverse is not standard at all. However, Johnson has invested a huge amount of political capital in attempting to protect Cummings. That's reflected in a radical reduction in his personal rating - falling from +19% last Friday to -1% today. A lot of people are also concerned that this story will make it significantly harder to get people to keep to the continued need for social distancing as the country gradually starts to open up again. Nevertheless, the campaign by the government to protect Cummings (who is credited as the brains behind the Brexit campaign) continues with a number of ministers being trotted out in support today. In the latest twist the Health Secretary says they will review any cases where people have been fined for breaching lockdown arrangements in an attempt to protect their children, i.e. rather than treat Cummings in the same way as others initially, it looks like they are proposing to reinterpret the guidance retrospectively to treat others like him. To me this feels like an unhealthy amount of influence for an un-elected adviser to have ...
There's a significant Covid-19 'scandal' occupying the attention of the government in the UK at the moment.
In brief, Dominic Cummings took his wife and child away from London when she fell ill and drove 260 miles north to his parents' farm near Durham to isolate themselves in a separate building. The day before he returned to London he also drove 60 miles to visit another town on the basis he was checking if his eyesight was good enough to drive back to London. There's a timeline here if anyone is interested.
I don't think it's certain that the full story has yet emerged. However, there are already plenty of dodgy things about this expedition:
- after hearing his wife was unwell he went to see her, but returned to work in the afternoon, despite the rules requiring isolation after anyone in the household displays Covid-19 symptoms. The response to that was that she didn't have such symptoms. However, that same evening the family left to drive to Durham on the basis that she was ill with Covid-19 and he expected to catch it and was worried no-one would be available to look after their child.
- government guidance requires people to isolate at home when they have symptoms. Buried in the detail there is provision for exceptional circumstances, but it's certainly not clear this qualifies.
- if you are concerned about your eyesight, it's dubious that the best way to test it is by driving 60 miles.
- after returning to London, both Cummings and his wife wrote articles about their experiences for the Spectator magazine (of which she is an editor). Durham was not mentioned at all and his wife referred to emerging from lockdown in London.
- the story only came out as a result of eyewitnesses seeing Cummings in Durham. The reaction for several days after the story broke was to try and undermine it before Cummings eventually provided his own detailed version. Part of his explanation for his actions was that he was important for the governance of the country and therefore everyone gained from getting him well as quickly as possible.
These are not a couple of innocents, but two of the most media-savvy people you could imagine. It seems blindingly obvious to me that they deliberately omitted for 6 weeks to say anything about being in Durham because they knew they'd done something wrong - even if it's arguable it was within the letter of the rules, it's clear it was not within the spirit.
What is highly unusual about this is that Dominic Cummings is a political adviser to Boris Johnson, not a politician. While it is fairly standard for advisers to take flack for ministers, the reverse is not standard at all. However, Johnson has invested a huge amount of political capital in attempting to protect Cummings. That's reflected in a radical reduction in his personal rating - falling from +19% last Friday to -1% today. A lot of people are also concerned that this story will make it significantly harder to get people to keep to the continued need for social distancing as the country gradually starts to open up again. Nevertheless, the campaign by the government to protect Cummings (who is credited as the brains behind the Brexit campaign) continues with a number of ministers being trotted out in support today. In the latest twist the Health Secretary says they will review any cases where people have been fined for breaching lockdown arrangements in an attempt to protect their children, i.e. rather than treat Cummings in the same way as others initially, it looks like they are proposing to reinterpret the guidance retrospectively to treat others like him. To me this feels like an unhealthy amount of influence for an un-elected adviser to have ...
This wouldn't even make page A25 in America. Remember when the Administration sent officials to meet some of the initial patients in the US without any protective gear whatsoever in the early days of this?? I doubt many people do. There are 3 scandals this size every 48 hours with Trump. Mike Pompeo getting yet ANOTHER inspector general fired because he was looking into his lavish dinners and treatment of his aides was a story for about 6 hours.
Twitter has really dropped the ball here and has proved that their labelling of offensive tweets was all talk.
But what can anyone do? No one can force the company do anything it doesn’t want. Perhaps the widower needs to press civil charges against Twitter for mental anguish. I donno.
~
The UK thing does seem a bit harmless. It sounds like this guy is human and panicked when he realized his wife was sick. Then panicked when he realized they broke the law. People make mistakes, and if this public incident need to show how cruel some of these fines were then all the better IMO. The alternative might have been a worse message, “I can afford the fine so I am allowed to break this law,” would have been my perception if he just shrugged it off.
There's a significant Covid-19 'scandal' occupying the attention of the government in the UK at the moment.
In brief, Dominic Cummings took his wife and child away from London when she fell ill and drove 260 miles north to his parents' farm near Durham to isolate themselves in a separate building. The day before he returned to London he also drove 60 miles to visit another town on the basis he was checking if his eyesight was good enough to drive back to London. There's a timeline here if anyone is interested.
I don't think it's certain that the full story has yet emerged. However, there are already plenty of dodgy things about this expedition:
- after hearing his wife was unwell he went to see her, but returned to work in the afternoon, despite the rules requiring isolation after anyone in the household displays Covid-19 symptoms. The response to that was that she didn't have such symptoms. However, that same evening the family left to drive to Durham on the basis that she was ill with Covid-19 and he expected to catch it and was worried no-one would be available to look after their child.
- government guidance requires people to isolate at home when they have symptoms. Buried in the detail there is provision for exceptional circumstances, but it's certainly not clear this qualifies.
- if you are concerned about your eyesight, it's dubious that the best way to test it is by driving 60 miles.
- after returning to London, both Cummings and his wife wrote articles about their experiences for the Spectator magazine (of which she is an editor). Durham was not mentioned at all and his wife referred to emerging from lockdown in London.
- the story only came out as a result of eyewitnesses seeing Cummings in Durham. The reaction for several days after the story broke was to try and undermine it before Cummings eventually provided his own detailed version. Part of his explanation for his actions was that he was important for the governance of the country and therefore everyone gained from getting him well as quickly as possible.
These are not a couple of innocents, but two of the most media-savvy people you could imagine. It seems blindingly obvious to me that they deliberately omitted for 6 weeks to say anything about being in Durham because they knew they'd done something wrong - even if it's arguable it was within the letter of the rules, it's clear it was not within the spirit.
What is highly unusual about this is that Dominic Cummings is a political adviser to Boris Johnson, not a politician. While it is fairly standard for advisers to take flack for ministers, the reverse is not standard at all. However, Johnson has invested a huge amount of political capital in attempting to protect Cummings. That's reflected in a radical reduction in his personal rating - falling from +19% last Friday to -1% today. A lot of people are also concerned that this story will make it significantly harder to get people to keep to the continued need for social distancing as the country gradually starts to open up again. Nevertheless, the campaign by the government to protect Cummings (who is credited as the brains behind the Brexit campaign) continues with a number of ministers being trotted out in support today. In the latest twist the Health Secretary says they will review any cases where people have been fined for breaching lockdown arrangements in an attempt to protect their children, i.e. rather than treat Cummings in the same way as others initially, it looks like they are proposing to reinterpret the guidance retrospectively to treat others like him. To me this feels like an unhealthy amount of influence for an un-elected adviser to have ...
This wouldn't even make page A25 in America. Remember when the Administration sent officials to meet some of the initial patients in the US without any protective gear whatsoever in the early days of this?? I doubt many people do. There are 3 scandals this size every 48 hours with Trump. Mike Pompeo getting yet ANOTHER inspector general fired because he was looking into his lavish dinners and treatment of his aides was a story for about 6 hours.
What's interesting about it though is not the scandal itself, but the role reversal involved of the prime minister getting personally involved to defend a political adviser. That may not seem so unusual to people based in the US where the structure of government as a whole is much more political to start with, but it's extremely unusual for the UK.
One of the projects Cummings has been trying to promote in recent months is to change the nature of the civil service - bringing in more people from outside government and encouraging more innovative mentalities to join government. Depending on your point of view that could be seen as freshening up the system or a politicization of what should be a neutral structure to reduce instability when governments change. In practice, the main result of the changes so far has been for the no. 10 team to become more divorced from the rest of government, but it's still early days of course. I suspect that the desire to reform the civil service is a major reason why Johnson is so keen to hang on to Cummings. However, Cummings wasn't popular to start with and this is not going to make it any easier for him to push through controversial changes.
Add simply being suspected of attempting to pass a bad check to the list of things that is a potential death sentence for African-Americans. What happened in Minnesota with this cop was a slow-motion murder in broad daylight in front of the public.
And this is also why the video of the woman in NY who has now lost her job is important. You can argue this guy should have minded his own business, but he was bird watching, and this woman did not have her dog on a leash per regulations. But that isn't the issue. The issue is her reaction, which is to tell him she was going to call the cops and say "an African-American man is threatening my life". Which she then does.
First off, this is a false police report. He most certainly did not threaten this woman's life. It's essentially her attempting to SWAT him for asking her to leash her dog. Because there is a TON of subtext in her statement that doesn't need to be said out loud. What she is really saying to him is "I know how cops treat black men, you know how cops treat black men, and they'll believe me and not you, and I'm going to use that power to hurt you." And as we can see from the incident in the Twin Cities, it's basically a roundabout way of getting to attempted murder. Whether she knows it or not, she is indistinguishable from the woman who lied about Emmet Till. She was leveraging her protected status as a middle-aged, middle-class white woman against someone she KNEW instinctively would be treated as less than her by the police.
This is just everyday life for anyone with black or brown skin in this country. You are a suspect by default, you are guilty by default, and your life is MEANINGLESS to a large portion of society:
Repeating the phrase African-American man in this context seems to carry a few messages:
Message to the 911 operator: I expect you to treat this with the greatest urgency possible.
Message to the man who approached her and asked her to leash her dog (Not a crime) : These cops know you’re black now. You KNOW what they do to black people right? Better leave me alone immediately.
Though both people pay the taxes that pay the Police, only one person in this incident considered them to be their personal security squad.
Lmao.....so since Twitter decided to add a disclaimer to his lies about mail in ballots, Trump is, of course, crying "free speech!!!". Even though if he was a regular citizen he would have been banned under their clear terms of service mutiple DOZENS of times. This entire free speech charade has been performative, disingenuous horseshit from the beginning, and at this point I don't really care if the people who complain about it just aren't intelligent enough to understand the parameters of the First Amendment, or they are willfully pretending it's something it's not. If anyone else was libeling someone as a murderer, they'd be gone. He isn't, because he's the President. But let's be clear. Trump needs Twitter more then Twitter needs Trump. They're just too cowardly to do anything because they are scared shitless of bad faith right-wing attacks. So they go for a weak-sauce middle ground that (of course) the right bitches about ANYWAY.
Lmao.....so since Twitter decided to add a disclaimer to his lies about mail in ballots, Trump is, of course, crying "free speech!!!". Even though if he was a regular citizen he would have been banned under their clear terms of service mutiple DOZENS of times. This entire free speech charade has been performative, disingenuous horseshit from the beginning, and at this point I don't really care if the people who complain about it just aren't intelligent enough to understand the parameters of the First Amendment, or they are willfully pretending it's something it's not. If anyone else was libeling someone as a murderer, they'd be gone. He isn't, because he's the President. But let's be clear. Trump needs Twitter more then Twitter needs Trump. They're just too cowardly to do anything because they are scared shitless of bad faith right-wing attacks. So they go for a weak-sauce middle ground that (of course) the right bitches about ANYWAY.
Indeed, someone should have to explain this. But we all know what the answer is. You wanna protest public health directives that are aimed at saving thousands of lives while carrying assault rifles?? Perfectly fine. But protest the murder of a unarmed, prone man lying on the concrete in police custody?? We'll tear gas the shit out of you. This country is a racist cesspool:
I wonder how many examples we'll have to present in this country before everyone just admits that African-Americans are still second class citizens in all but name. I mean, the evidence at this point is overwhelming. We're going backwards at this point.
Indeed, someone should have to explain this. But we all know what the answer is. You wanna protest public health directives that are aimed at saving thousands of lives while carrying assault rifles?? Perfectly fine. But protest the murder of a unarmed, prone man lying on the concrete in police custody?? We'll tear gas the shit out of you. This country is a racist cesspool:
I wonder how many examples we'll have to present in this country before everyone just admits that African-Americans are still second class citizens in all but name. I mean, the evidence at this point is overwhelming. We're going backwards at this point.
It looks like the Minneapolis police chief is going to run out of officers to fire.
I was going to comment that the police chief did the right thing and fired the officers involved immediately and not wait for an investigation into the events. Although, I doubt without the video evidence provided by bystanders they wouldn’t have been fired.
Indeed, someone should have to explain this. But we all know what the answer is. You wanna protest public health directives that are aimed at saving thousands of lives while carrying assault rifles?? Perfectly fine. But protest the murder of a unarmed, prone man lying on the concrete in police custody?? We'll tear gas the shit out of you. This country is a racist cesspool:
I wonder how many examples we'll have to present in this country before everyone just admits that African-Americans are still second class citizens in all but name. I mean, the evidence at this point is overwhelming. We're going backwards at this point.
It looks like the Minneapolis police chief is going to run out of officers to fire.
I was going to comment that the police chief did the right thing and fired the officers involved immediately and not wait for an investigation into the events. Although, I doubt without the video evidence provided by bystanders they wouldn’t have been fired.
Fired is one thing. The MOMENT the autopsy comes back the officer who had his knee on his neck should be indicted on murder charges.
Why's Trump hate the first amendment? Never before has there been a president with such a poor understanding of the Constitution. It's just so damn embarrassing! Twitter is not deleting his tweets, they're just adding a fact check link.
Free speech: the right for individuals to express themselves without fear of restriction or reprisal from the government.
In this beautiful self-criticizing sentence, Trump firstly complains that Twitter (a private company) is somehow stifling free speech by adding commentary to his tweets. Trump then threatens to use his powers "as President" to restrict Twitter's freedom of expression.
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Quite telling, imo, is Sanger's inclusion of "Obamagate". A scandal that has yet to be even truly defined, much less any evidence produced. A scandal where Sanger's own characterization contradicts what Trump & co. are alleging. Sanger says "Obama was personally involved in surveilling Donald Trump." The allegation from Trump is that the Obama administration spied on Michael Flynn. This is indicative of someone unwilling to do even cursory due diligence about the facts.
Wikipedia is also open source. If he wants to provide credible articles then go at it.
His point about Obama not having a “Public Profile” subsection is also misleading. Obama wasn’t a well known celebrity since the ‘80s with his own tabloid headlining life.
That said, yes there is bias in a lot of Wikipedia articles. It’s what happens when you have an open source publishing that anyone can edit. It is very difficult to write something without bias, however, it is very easy to read something and pick out the biases in it. For example, this whole article is biased leaning right in its examples.
From my experience and practice I can say that @Balrog99 is right. People come together in unity to bring up energy for their deity (pray, eucharist, fellowship) but also for the knowing they belong to each other through their beliefs.
Many have come to me/my group for teachings and to join our path but once they are told that we meet in person, they also ask for skype or video audiences. The ones that ask/demand this of us is usually a social introvert with self loathing issues. They are told that coming together is essential to their growth in the path they choose, some understand this and come around and others with a more rooted belief in that they have to get what they want, will try their best to slander or call the authorities to break up our gatherings.
Every person has the right to spiritual and personal betterment even during a pandemic. In conclusion I have found that the ones that cry the most for others to change society and the way humans act with each other is to justify their self loathing and social withdrawal.
I'm not placing everyone into this category but just those I have dealt with even at work. Physical distancing is the norm for the immediate future but the mental and spiritual well being of humanity is much more needed in this new present.
Why shouldn't "Obamagate" be part of the article? Why is it any less relevant information than any Trump scandal, each of which is covered in great detail? It's not, unless you have preconceived opinions and want to enforce them on others. That's not presenting information with neutrality.
"He should write his own articles"? That's silly. He is the one of the founders of wikipedia. He personally wrote the neutrality policy. If there is anyone with a legitimate basis to criticize what it has become, it's him.
All big scandals should be treated equally, with bias-free coverage of the allegations and results, from a supposedly neutral source. An encyclopedia isn't in the business of taking sides, nor should it be. Every point of view widely held by a large number of people deserves mention, because it's relevant information, provided you are an encyclopedia trying to summarize information on a topic and not The Washington Post, trying to enforce a particular interpretation of that information.
Most people are so insulated within their own ideological bubbles they no longer even pretend to understand the need for sources of information that are as impartial as possible and that present all sides. Clearly, there is only one acceptable interpretation of any event, which is handed down to us from on high by our journalistic and government elites.
As an aside, it might be difficult to write without bias, but it's not impossible, and it certainly needs to be attempted. That something is hard to do is a lame excuse for systemic failure, in my opinion.
This is never the case with any journalism anymore, and now not even with encyclopedias. People can no longer separate their own opinions with what is objectively true.
But these are market forces at work. People don't want quality, objective journalism, they want to be told everything they heard on The Daily Show was true. Or some weird Qanon stuff if you're a righty. Quality journalism died a slow death and is now almost non-existent.
But would state run journalism really be any better? The obvious conflicts of interest are obvious. It's a difficult question since there doesn't seem to be any good incentive structure for anything that's not a gloried comment section.
Link me a credible source which explains Obamagate in detail with Obama’s proven role is the conspiracy.
If you can’t do that, then Wikipedia shouldn’t mention it.
And sure all big scandals should be treated equally, but Obamagate isn’t a scandal, it’s a conspiracy derived from the political campaign of Republicans. It should not be treated as equally as say Trump’s impeachment.
If he (or anyone else for that matter) finds an article to be biasedly written, he can edit it himself to remove said bias instead of writing an article pandering a bias of his own biases.
I’d be hard pressed to find any Reuters non-opinion labeled articles that are written with a bias.
And the case with opinion and truth, you live in a democracy. Majority opinion is truth when it comes to questions that need to be answered. And I think that is the bias that you are seeing.
Take the whole Church Service debacle going on. Questions like is it safe to open in places of worship is being asked instead of can a governors order override a person’s freedom of religion when it comes to pandemics like this one. Majority of people (or readers of publications) wouldn’t care about a freedom they take for granted, but would care about their wellbeing and the wellbeing of a community - so covering that side of the story is paramount to the success of that publication.
And both those questions are equally important. I do wish more publications were asking about persons freedoms and liberties being infringed upon without devolving into ranting protests.
And journalism died with the rise of click-bate. It no longer information that needs to said, it’s what wants to be heard. And no state run journalism is never a good thing.
I wonder how much this is going to blow up as it sounds like this consultant had other people taking bribes as well.
(i) It's intended to provide factual information on all aspects of knowledge and should therefore accurately report anything that has been widely said.
(ii) It's intended to provide factual information on the reality of the world around us and should therefore not report on allegations without evidence.
Although I have some sympathy with the second approach, I don't think it sufficiently meets people's need for information. In principle it should be helpful for an encyclopedia to report neutrally on the basis for conspiracy theories and scandals. However, I think it is also reasonable to expect such a report to refer to whether the theories are consistent with reality.
If there is no check against reality, that effectively endorses the Trumpian belief in alternate facts, i.e. that anything he says is true simply because he says it. Covid-19 has harshly exposed the problems with that approach, but those were pretty evident before when dealing with physical realities - such as wildfire and hurricanes.
In some cases Trump's statements about his beliefs appear ridiculous (“I've always known this is a real, this is a pandemic. I've felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic”), but as no-one can know what goes on in his mind it's not possible to be 100% certain about that. However, in many cases his statements relate to conditions in the world that can be measured and either have no evidence ("millions of people voted illegally") or are verifiably untrue (“we’ve tested more than every country combined”; “we inherited a broken test”).
If an encyclopedia (or anything else), portrays themselves as neutral, I think that has to mean more than simply reporting uncritically "both sides" of an argument. I do understand the problems that could cause when discussing issues which are less black and white, so am not advocating that every article tries to establish the "truth". However, I think the greater problem is associated with not challenging unsupported statements. An example of a possible approach is this Wikipedia article on the flat earth theory. That helpfully sets the modern conspiracy theory in its historical context. While not being rude, the article also makes clear that the theory is inconsistent with evidence.
I'll go over this again. Michael Flynn was not being "spied" on. It didn't take place during the campaign. After Trump was elected (but not sworn in), intelligence agencies were listening to the calls of Russian officials since they had just tried to sabotage the election. Michael Flynn shows up on one of the calls, directly undermining the foreign policy of the current Administration and their attempts to retaliate for what happened. He was free to do this on January 20, 2017 at noon EST, but not a second earlier. This was OBVIOUSLY made known to the President. Is someone going to argue he didn't have a right to know the incoming Administration was attempting to usurp power 2 months early?? Well, of course some people will argue that. They also believe it was right and proper he didn't get to fill a Supreme Court vacancy.
Point being, Flynn put himself in the pot. He wasn't being tracked, he showed up talking with foreign agents who had been engaged in the Russian attack on the American election. He was scoring rock when the crack den was raided, if you want to be blunt about it. And it was such a conspiratorial "scandal" that the FIRST time Obama personally met with Trump during the transition, he went out of his way to warn him about hiring Flynn, which became prophecy within 3 weeks of them taking power. So, yeah, hell of a covert effort they were undertaking there. Where Obama apparently just gives away the whole thing on a whim at the first opportunity to the guy who questioned his very citizenship on a daily basis for 8 years. Give me a fucking break with this shit.
And I don't care what his role was in creating it. I certainly am grateful for the work he did back then, but he's not even trying to be objective now. The inclusion of Obamagate in his arguments -- and his own failure to even cohere with Trump's allegation -- is extremely telling.
Similarly, I'd add, 9/11 conspiracy theories do not appear on the George W Bush page. I don't think such baseless theories belong there either. But plenty of Americans do believe them. That's immaterial.
Conspiracies in general should be mentioned, just in case, but should be viewed through the eyes of logic. Both the extreme right (NWO, Christian millennial conspiracies, mind-control, Mark of the Beast, anti-Climate Change, George Soros, anti-vax, UFO's, etc...) and the extreme left (Russia conspiracies, multi-national companies want to kill you, every conservative is a racist, pharma companies want to kill you, oil companies buy up cheap energy patents, Trump wants to kill you, conservatives are all fascists or white supremacists, etc...) should be viewed with a sceptical eye IMHO. There's always a chance, no matter how remote, that they're right though...
It is perfectly fine for Wikipedia to practice some kind of standard for what makes it into its articles. Failing to do so would defeat the whole point of why people consult encyclopedias in the first place. If I'm a young person looking to educate myself on the basics of biological evolution, I shouldn't have to wade through reams of text about creationism or Lysenkoism to get to what it is most biologists today actually subscribe to.
Using Wikipedia as your only source likely isn't wise. But since there are millions of topics to discuss in this world, reading an entry will certainly give you basic rundown of what the subject is about, whether it's a Presidency or poisonous Japanese pufferfish.
They aren't trying to hide this, they haven't been trying to hide it for at least a decade. As I've said on other occasions, even if I agreed with them on all their policy, I could not support them because they simply do not believe all Americans should be able to exercise their right to vote. The don't believe in "small d" democratic principles. The only thing they believe in is rigging the board so they can disenfranchise enough people to hang on by their fingernails to power despite being universally unpopular since the early-90s.
The reason we KNOW they don't care about voter fraud is because no one ever brings up a single example of it while pretending to be concerned. If they were to bring one up, they'd, of course, have to point to their OWN side, the absentee ballot harvesting in NC by a Republican operative that literally caused a Congressional race to be invalidated because it was so pervasive. And I guess we never did find out about that wiped hard drive in Georgia.
They draw Congressional districts that look like the scribblings of a toddler on a wall (Dan Crenshaws district in Texas being one of the best examples). The make-up of the Wisconsin legislature relative to the state vote is the height of absurdity. They purge voter rolls, pass onerous ID requirements, and then make it impossible to meet them by closing the public services that provide them. All effort is on dropping turnout as much as possible. And even with these systematic efforts, they BARELY win. And in the midst of this fake outrage about mail-in ballots, Trump brazenly saying it's fine if HE does is another dog whistle. It says he's fine if HIS people vote by mail. Just no one else. Because they aren't true Americans. He's Bill the Butcher from "Gangs of New York" without a hint of the personality or actual willingness to get his hands dirty.
Meanwhile, Trump continues to be either blind or stupid (or, more likely, just willing to lie through his teeth about it) to what's happening in his own country.
As far as I can see, new case numbers have been static or rising in most parts of the country even with the various restrictions in place. The national picture does show a slight decline, but only because of the considerable reductions in New York and New Jersey.
My criticism of Trump doesn't mean I'm certain he's wrong about wanting to 're-open' the economy despite the stubbornly high number of cases. I am certain that will lead to more Covid-19 cases, but that needs to be balanced against the huge costs associated with the disease that will be a burden on society for at least a generation to come. How to compare those different costs is incredibly difficult and I wouldn't criticize anyone who attempts to do that in good faith in order to arrive at what they believe is the best long-term solution. However, I don't think Trump is either willing or capable of doing such an analysis. It seems to me he's essentially driven by short-term considerations of what's good for him - and makes no distinction between lies and truth in his attempts to get to his goals.
And again, these numbers are the BARE minimum of what has taken place. They are of course being under-counted, whether by the edict of red-state governors (Florida, Georgia) or by the simple fact that we just don't know how many people are asymptomatic and how many people are dying in their homes before reaching a hospital.
Dr. Birx (who in my mind lost all credibility LONG ago) was doing the media rounds the last two days telling people to get out and enjoy Memorial Day, as long as you practice social distancing and mask usage. She could just take a quick trip to social media to find out that shit ain't happening. Hundreds of co-eds jammed into a pool, with not even so much as six INCHES between them, much less six feet. A market packed to the gills with people, nearly no one wearing masks. Those are just two.
The only thing the US can "hang it's hat on" is that our deaths per million are not as high as Italy, France, Spain and the UK. But they ARE worse than nearly everyone else, and climbing daily (just broke 300 deaths per million for the first time this morning). And if you look at total cases, you'll see 3 countries led by 3 birds of a feather at the top: the US (Trump), Brazil (Bolsonaro) and Russia (Putin). The death numbers out of the later two countries are obviously complete lies that would make China blush in shame. In every metric of abject failure, the US is either at the top or well within the top-10 worst.
A fairly long video (1:32:14) about the toxicity of social media.
Timestamps in video description.
In brief, Dominic Cummings took his wife and child away from London when she fell ill and drove 260 miles north to his parents' farm near Durham to isolate themselves in a separate building. The day before he returned to London he also drove 60 miles to visit another town on the basis he was checking if his eyesight was good enough to drive back to London. There's a timeline here if anyone is interested.
I don't think it's certain that the full story has yet emerged. However, there are already plenty of dodgy things about this expedition:
- after hearing his wife was unwell he went to see her, but returned to work in the afternoon, despite the rules requiring isolation after anyone in the household displays Covid-19 symptoms. The response to that was that she didn't have such symptoms. However, that same evening the family left to drive to Durham on the basis that she was ill with Covid-19 and he expected to catch it and was worried no-one would be available to look after their child.
- government guidance requires people to isolate at home when they have symptoms. Buried in the detail there is provision for exceptional circumstances, but it's certainly not clear this qualifies.
- if you are concerned about your eyesight, it's dubious that the best way to test it is by driving 60 miles.
- after returning to London, both Cummings and his wife wrote articles about their experiences for the Spectator magazine (of which she is an editor). Durham was not mentioned at all and his wife referred to emerging from lockdown in London.
- the story only came out as a result of eyewitnesses seeing Cummings in Durham. The reaction for several days after the story broke was to try and undermine it before Cummings eventually provided his own detailed version. Part of his explanation for his actions was that he was important for the governance of the country and therefore everyone gained from getting him well as quickly as possible.
These are not a couple of innocents, but two of the most media-savvy people you could imagine. It seems blindingly obvious to me that they deliberately omitted for 6 weeks to say anything about being in Durham because they knew they'd done something wrong - even if it's arguable it was within the letter of the rules, it's clear it was not within the spirit.
What is highly unusual about this is that Dominic Cummings is a political adviser to Boris Johnson, not a politician. While it is fairly standard for advisers to take flack for ministers, the reverse is not standard at all. However, Johnson has invested a huge amount of political capital in attempting to protect Cummings. That's reflected in a radical reduction in his personal rating - falling from +19% last Friday to -1% today. A lot of people are also concerned that this story will make it significantly harder to get people to keep to the continued need for social distancing as the country gradually starts to open up again. Nevertheless, the campaign by the government to protect Cummings (who is credited as the brains behind the Brexit campaign) continues with a number of ministers being trotted out in support today. In the latest twist the Health Secretary says they will review any cases where people have been fined for breaching lockdown arrangements in an attempt to protect their children, i.e. rather than treat Cummings in the same way as others initially, it looks like they are proposing to reinterpret the guidance retrospectively to treat others like him. To me this feels like an unhealthy amount of influence for an un-elected adviser to have ...
This wouldn't even make page A25 in America. Remember when the Administration sent officials to meet some of the initial patients in the US without any protective gear whatsoever in the early days of this?? I doubt many people do. There are 3 scandals this size every 48 hours with Trump. Mike Pompeo getting yet ANOTHER inspector general fired because he was looking into his lavish dinners and treatment of his aides was a story for about 6 hours.
Twitter has really dropped the ball here and has proved that their labelling of offensive tweets was all talk.
But what can anyone do? No one can force the company do anything it doesn’t want. Perhaps the widower needs to press civil charges against Twitter for mental anguish. I donno.
~
The UK thing does seem a bit harmless. It sounds like this guy is human and panicked when he realized his wife was sick. Then panicked when he realized they broke the law. People make mistakes, and if this public incident need to show how cruel some of these fines were then all the better IMO. The alternative might have been a worse message, “I can afford the fine so I am allowed to break this law,” would have been my perception if he just shrugged it off.
What's interesting about it though is not the scandal itself, but the role reversal involved of the prime minister getting personally involved to defend a political adviser. That may not seem so unusual to people based in the US where the structure of government as a whole is much more political to start with, but it's extremely unusual for the UK.
One of the projects Cummings has been trying to promote in recent months is to change the nature of the civil service - bringing in more people from outside government and encouraging more innovative mentalities to join government. Depending on your point of view that could be seen as freshening up the system or a politicization of what should be a neutral structure to reduce instability when governments change. In practice, the main result of the changes so far has been for the no. 10 team to become more divorced from the rest of government, but it's still early days of course. I suspect that the desire to reform the civil service is a major reason why Johnson is so keen to hang on to Cummings. However, Cummings wasn't popular to start with and this is not going to make it any easier for him to push through controversial changes.
And this is also why the video of the woman in NY who has now lost her job is important. You can argue this guy should have minded his own business, but he was bird watching, and this woman did not have her dog on a leash per regulations. But that isn't the issue. The issue is her reaction, which is to tell him she was going to call the cops and say "an African-American man is threatening my life". Which she then does.
First off, this is a false police report. He most certainly did not threaten this woman's life. It's essentially her attempting to SWAT him for asking her to leash her dog. Because there is a TON of subtext in her statement that doesn't need to be said out loud. What she is really saying to him is "I know how cops treat black men, you know how cops treat black men, and they'll believe me and not you, and I'm going to use that power to hurt you." And as we can see from the incident in the Twin Cities, it's basically a roundabout way of getting to attempted murder. Whether she knows it or not, she is indistinguishable from the woman who lied about Emmet Till. She was leveraging her protected status as a middle-aged, middle-class white woman against someone she KNEW instinctively would be treated as less than her by the police.
This is just everyday life for anyone with black or brown skin in this country. You are a suspect by default, you are guilty by default, and your life is MEANINGLESS to a large portion of society:
That statement is 110% correct. She is doing a pitch perfect impression of Mayella Ewell on the witness stand in "To Kill a Mockingbird":
And another statement where all I can say is "yup, bingo":
Or, as a poster on another site so aptly put it:
Repeating the phrase African-American man in this context seems to carry a few messages:
Message to the 911 operator: I expect you to treat this with the greatest urgency possible.
Message to the man who approached her and asked her to leash her dog (Not a crime) : These cops know you’re black now. You KNOW what they do to black people right? Better leave me alone immediately.
Though both people pay the taxes that pay the Police, only one person in this incident considered them to be their personal security squad.
I was about to comment about it too!
"
I really, really, really want them to put a “Get the facts about Free Speech” disclaimer on this just to troll him hard. What a douche.
Twitter is completely stifling free speech, by using free speech to say “you’re lying.” The irony. I can’t stop laughing.
But they seriously still need to do something with his Morning Joe conspiracy tweets.
I wonder how many examples we'll have to present in this country before everyone just admits that African-Americans are still second class citizens in all but name. I mean, the evidence at this point is overwhelming. We're going backwards at this point.
It looks like the Minneapolis police chief is going to run out of officers to fire.
I was going to comment that the police chief did the right thing and fired the officers involved immediately and not wait for an investigation into the events. Although, I doubt without the video evidence provided by bystanders they wouldn’t have been fired.
Fired is one thing. The MOMENT the autopsy comes back the officer who had his knee on his neck should be indicted on murder charges.
Why's Trump hate the first amendment? Never before has there been a president with such a poor understanding of the Constitution. It's just so damn embarrassing! Twitter is not deleting his tweets, they're just adding a fact check link.
Free speech: the right for individuals to express themselves without fear of restriction or reprisal from the government.
In this beautiful self-criticizing sentence, Trump firstly complains that Twitter (a private company) is somehow stifling free speech by adding commentary to his tweets. Trump then threatens to use his powers "as President" to restrict Twitter's freedom of expression.