Jewish American Heritage Month

Page 1,129«..10 20..1,1281,1291,130 1,131..1,140 1,150..»

The ADL wants to fight hate in video games, but ham-fisted CENSORSHIP is the last thing we gamers need – RT

Posted By admin on April 22, 2020

The Anti-Defamation League, which previously sought to outlaw the OK sign and Pepe the Frog, is now setting its sights on hate speech in video games. The gaming community can be toxic, but ADL-level censorship is not the answer.

Issues when it comes to the gaming community are never easy to tackle. Especially when it comes to the way that people decide to speak online. It goes without saying that inhibitions are dialed down on the internet. People will often speak in a way that they never would in public, when they realize they wont get fined, arrested, socially canceled or struck down by God if they drop a racist or homophobic slur. There were moments of playing Call of Duty 4 years ago where Id mute every single person whenever Id enter a match. The last thing I wanted to hear when shooting terrorists was some thirteen year old squawking like hes Richard Spencer at Charlottesville.

There are absolutely reprehensible things that are said on the internet. You can browse 4chan for ten seconds to realize that. But when it comes to gaming, especially competitive match environments, trash talk is almost part of the deal. People do it, and some tend to take it too far. Thats undisputable. Whats also undisputable is that there are already methods in place to deal with it. There exist mechanisms for reporting and banning players who break community rules which in virtually any game with a chat (voice or text) include prohibitions against racism, homophobia and other ways of inciting hatred.

Are those measures perfect? No. It goes without saying that, from the developers perspective, it probably feels like herding cats. But these arent idiots who are developing these games. They have experience and they have the agency to make their own rules for their own games and the interactions within.

Whether or not gamers feel safe with the community rules and the way they are enforced, they can decide for themselves by choosing or refusing to invest their dollars and their time in a given studios product. Ultimately, the fact of the matter is if you dont want to deal with other people in multiplayer outside of the competition, you dont have to.

Enter the Anti-Defamation League.

The Anti-Defamation League is a non-profit organization that works to combat anti-semitism and bigotry.

They are also the guys who branded Pepe the Frog as a hate symbol just because some online morons decided to photoshop it into something offensive and saw alt-right hate code in the OK sign and the word Boogaloo.

Oftentimes, theyre seen making public declarations whenever a public person says something particularly nasty. Other times theyre doing things that seem rather pointless, like hosting a virtual panel about xenophobia and Coronavirus. They also were rather infamously involved in the most recent adpocalypse at YouTube, where they were brought in to consult and fight hate speech.

Theres no reason not to believe the ADL will not take the same sledgehammer approach to gaming. Their ability to ignore context has already been demonstrated in the Gamesindustry.biz interview with Daniel Kelly, the assistant director for the ADLs Center for Technology, when it was first reported that the organization is preparing its foray.

The norms that come up in the qualitative research is that women and people of color go into game spaces and just turn off the mic and don't speak, because they know if they speak, they'll be identified, targeted, and harassed. That's just the reality of how they play, Kelly said.

Heres the reality. Everyone gets that sort of treatment online. Men are just as likely to receive online harassment as women, and video games are no different. Trash talk exists, and its not a pretty thing.

Kelly is worried that the video game industry fights hate by adopting the tactics of Facebook or Twitter circa 2006 . as if the Twitter and Facebook of today have it all figured out and are not suffering from excess censorship and liberal moderator bias.

There have been attempts at applying woke censorship to games before, and they have shown that those trying this approach have zero understanding of the environment and that actual gamers have zero wish for such interventions. If Bully Hunters was unnecessary, and if Anita Sarkeesians nonsense was unnecessary, then so is the ADLs.

Its certainly not fun for a twelve-year-old to tell me hes going to throw me in Auschwitz, but I can mute him because a developer thought of that ahead of time.

What you also notice is that, in the interview, the ADL is mum when it comes to the means of helping games. Thats because theyre not developers. Theyre protesters. They dont have a solution outside of censorship. Maybe they want something genuine, like less hate in the world. Maybe they want more control over peoples speech. If its the former, theyre terrible at what theyre trying to do. If its the latter, theyre sinister.

Though the systems already in place arent perfect by any means, the fact that the ADL isnt coming into it with anything aside from platitudes comes across like a power play, not genuine concern. If the ADL knew what to do from the get-go aside from doing something about hate speech they would have said it already.

To put it succinctly, the ADL is trying to bully its way into a situation that it has no business in on the assumption that companies like Valve and Blizzard have no clue what theyre doing. Id ask this of the ADL. Of your organization, Valve, and Blizzard, which is the one that makes money off of innovation? I think they can handle things themselves.

Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

The rest is here:
The ADL wants to fight hate in video games, but ham-fisted CENSORSHIP is the last thing we gamers need - RT

Category: Anti-Defamation League | Comments Off on The ADL wants to fight hate in video games, but ham-fisted CENSORSHIP is the last thing we gamers need – RT
Tags:

Anti-Zionism and the new Blackshirts | Maurice Solovitz – The Times of Israel

Posted By admin on April 22, 2020

Embed from Getty Images

On the 2nd of March 2020 I attended a lecture given by an apparently well-known media pundit and university lecturer at SOAS. The title was How to Argue with a Racist: History, Science, Race& Reality.

If I had looked at the comments on Dr Adam Rutherfords Twitter feed I would have either stayed away or not have been disarmed. He had one racists quote prominently highlighted next to his profile and it was about how all Jews and all Nazis were related.

His principle that we are genetically all related is nothing to argue with. I am certain that most of us are happy to be members of the human race! It is an act of hatred and pernicious mischief however, to go from basic biological connection, to creating an implied, positive association with all Jews with all their persecutors.

The doctor spoke about his thesis without explaining how hate can be defeated, or perhaps, his book title was deliberately misleading. A preachy discourse on biology that may be exploited by bigots to ignore the one thing that separates us from the beast but encouraged too many people to behave as beasts do our cerebellum. It is a learning machine that has taken us to the next level in evolution. Intellectual capacity is biological, but it is only half of the story. Empathy, psychology, and emotional intelligence may or may not have neuroscientific explanations but creating a sympathetic linkage between the murderer and his victim is specious at best.

We are biologically connected, and this has been the case since Adam and Eve. That did not stop Cain from killing Abel, nor has it ever prevented Jacob from being jealous of Esau.

Two racists joined the speaker at this event, held at the House of Commons. Neither would identify themselves, either by name or, by organisation. She was the first to speak and proceeded to read out an unidentified Anti-Defamation League (ADL) statement. No person, no date, no context, or attribution of any kind. She stated, authoritatively, that ADL was an Israeli organisation (it is not). Dr Rutherford accepted the speakers comments at face value and responded as if the questioner had asked a reasonable question. Perhaps she was primed to ask the question? If this was so, then the so-called academic broadcaster behaved, like an intellectual charlatan. I did something I have never done before in over 12 yeas of attending events at this venue. I interrupted.

I asked her why she was lying in the British parliament. I explained that, ADL is an American based and American financed organisation, its aim is, to fight prejudice (and it was founded in 1913, 35 years before the State of Israel was declared). She refused to respond. But Dr Rutherford did, in support of his biological thesis, reiterating that we are all related. The anonymous womans friend filmed the event and told me I should look at the ethnicity of all those who are employed by ADL First, I pointed out the racism inherent within his statement; second, I explained that the senior Israeli researcher (in the Israel Office of ADL) is (was) a Muslim, an Arab. He then said, Look at Bnai Brith, another Israeli company. The name is Hebrew! In fact Bnai Brith was founded in America in 1843, 105 years before the State of Israel was created and if the use of the Hebrew language in a name is all that this antisemite needed to damn an organisation, or person, then I cannot emphasise more strongly, just to what degree this is racism at its most pernicious.

80% of all English names are, or used to be, based on the Bible. Most Jewish places of worship have Hebrew names as do many communal organisations. Hebrew is the language of Jewish prayer. The word insidious, genocidal bigotry immediately came to mind. If anything, this anonymous hate monger provided concrete proof that anti-Zionism is anti-Judaism / anti-Semitism. The laziness of the logic displayed by both these interlocutors was frightening in its simplicity and in its ignorance. If, we are going to follow through on these racists and their logic then tit for tat would necessitate the global banning of the Arab language. After all, Arabic is the language of the international slave trade and of the Muslim Brotherhood, of Islamic State and it is the language of all those Islamist institutions and cults that globally threaten international stability (both Pre and Post Covid19).

The problem is that the Wild West nature of cyberspace has resulted in the cyberthug and the cyber-Nazi gaining the confidence to transfer their lies from cyberspace into the public, physical domain. They fear no consequences for their actions. And, to be clear on this, by neo-Nazi I mean Nazis on both the Left and, on the Right.

An internal report into anti-Semitism by the British Labour Party, leaked to a British newspaper on 13th April 2020 conceded that The events which led to this investigation, including the party becoming host to a small number of members holding views which were unarguably hostile to Jewish people and in some cases frankly neo-Nazi in their nature, are deeply disturbing. The unstated issue is that for every person referred to the investigators there would be ten who were more discreet but equally racist. That, the unspoken and implied reality, is what is truly frightening. Perhaps then, the principle difference between the two, is that Nazis on the Right are far more likely to be fearful of a reaction against them than Nazis on the Left.

Its results, to paraphrase Jeremiah 5:21, are there for anyone who has eyes and can see, who has ears and listens. At another recent meeting, one Briton, not Jewish, had recently returned from Cornell University in the USA (one of the worlds top higher education establishments). He said that Jews, whether on staff or as part of the student body, and, their supporters, on Campus, were frightened to openly identify as such. The Nazis of the Left have done their job well throughout the Western University universe.

Dr Rutherfords lecture was a good demonstration of how contemporary fascism is re-writing Jewish history to either exclude Jews or to deny Jews either equality or justice on any issue. It is about returning Diaspora Jewry to a position of institutional inferiority. If you have no right of reply then you cannot defend yourself when contemporary Blackshirts come for you. The anti-Zionists are the new Blackshirts.

Maurice Solovitz is an Aussie, Israeli, British Zionist. He blogs at https://msolovitz.wixsite.com/mysite and previously at http://thebilateralist.blogspot.com/

Category: Anti-Defamation League | Comments Off on Anti-Zionism and the new Blackshirts | Maurice Solovitz – The Times of Israel
Tags:

Got a Zoom-Bombing Problem? Zoom Will Soon Let You Report Attacks in Real Time – PCMag

Posted By admin on April 22, 2020

(Photo Illustration by Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Did your Zoom meeting just get hijacked? Well, youll soon be able to report the incident directly to the company.

The video conferencing service is adding a new report a user to Zoom button, which is scheduled to roll out on Sunday, April 26 in a software update. This feature will generate a report which will be sent to the Zoom Trust and Safety team to evaluate any misuse of the platform and block a user if necessary, according to the companys release notes for the video service.

The new button is intended to catch those behind Zoom-bombing attacks. For weeks now, teenagers and internet trolls have been successfully hijacking Zoom meetings in order to harass unsuspecting users, sometimes with child porn or racist attacks.

Currently, victims have been reporting the incidents to Zoom by tweeting to the company on Twitter, and hoping it notices. Now the video conferencing service is working to streamline the process.

That report button will be added to the security menu, Zoom Chief Product Officer Oded Gal said in a webinar with the Anti-Defamation League last week. That helps us capture information about what happened in the meeting.

The company hasnt spelled out how itll use the information to stop the hijackers.But at the very least, itll enable Zoom to capture the culprits' IP addresses and blacklist them from the service. It's also possible the company could report the information to law enforcement.(That said, the attacker could use a VPN service to bypass the IP ban and scramble their location.)

Gal also recommends victims take screen captures of the attack as it occurs. If they have the meeting recorded, it will help us track that person as well, he added.

The company was originally scheduled to add the "report a user to Zoom" feature on Sunday but pushed back the release for a week. It's now slated forversion 4.6.12 of the software. The button will appear specifically for users who host a Zoom meeting. In the event a hijacker intrudes, go to the Security icon on the bottom and click Report.

In the meantime, the company also has a dedicated web page where you can report Zoom-bombing attacks to the service. The FBI is also encouraging victims to report teleconferencing hijacking incidents to the bureau and local law enforcement.

Here is the original post:
Got a Zoom-Bombing Problem? Zoom Will Soon Let You Report Attacks in Real Time - PCMag

Category: Anti-Defamation League | Comments Off on Got a Zoom-Bombing Problem? Zoom Will Soon Let You Report Attacks in Real Time – PCMag
Tags:

Oklahoma City bombing: 25 years on and right wing extremists just as dangerous, with violence likely if Trump loses election, experts warn – The…

Posted By admin on April 22, 2020

The threat from right wing extremism is as high now as it was at the time of the Oklahoma City bombing, experts say, and further violent attacks are likely especially if Donald Trump fails to win reelection.

A generation after 168 people were killed and more than 680 injured in a bomb attack on the Alfred P Murrah federal building an incident that remains the USs deadliest domestic terror attack the nation is once again experiencing a wave of right wing extremism.

As Oklahoma City prepares to mark the 25th anniversary, with a Covid-19 enforced streamed memorial service replacing the usual public gathering and reading of the names of victims, experts have issued a stark warning that far right extremists such as perpetrators Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, remain active and energised.

Sharing the full story, not just the headlines

Last year alone, right-wing extremists were responsible the vast majority of extremist attacks, with a much smaller number being carried out by homegrown Islamist terroristsand left wing extremists. Those incidents included the mass shooting in El Paso.

Despite attempts by Donald Trump to play down the threat of the far right, FBI director Christopher Wray, told Congress in November: I will say that a majority of the domestic terrorism cases that weve investigated are motivated by some version of what you might call white supremacist violence.

White nationalist demonstrators clash with counter demonstrators at the entrance to Lee Park in Charlottesville, Virginia. A state of emergency is declared, August 12 2017

A white nationalist demonstrator walks into Lee Park in Charlottesville, Va., Saturday, Aug. 12, 2017. Hundreds of people chanted, threw punches, hurled water bottles and unleashed chemical sprays on each other Saturday after violence erupted at a white nationalist rally in Virginia.

AP Photo

Virginia State Police cordon off an area around the site where a car ran into a group of protesters after a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia

AP Photo

White nationalists, neo-Nazis and members of the 'alt-right' with body armor and combat weapons evacuate comrades who were pepper sprayed after the 'Unite the Right' rally was declared a unlawful gathering by Virginia State Police. Militia members marched through the city earlier in the day, armed with assault rifles.

Getty Images

The statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee stands behind a crowd of hundreds of white nationalists, neo-Nazis and members of the 'alt-right' during the 'Unite the Right' rally 12 August 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia. They are protesting the removal of the statue from Emancipation Park in the city.

Getty Images

White nationalists, neo-Nazis and members of the 'alt-right' exchange insults with counter-protesters as they attempt to guard the entrance to Lee Park during the 'Unite the Right' rally

Getty

A vehicle drives into a group of protesters demonstrating against a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. The incident resulted in multiple injuries, some life-threatening, and one death.

AP Photo

Rescue personnel help injured people after a car ran into a large group of protesters after an white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia

AP Photo

President Donald Trump speaks about the ongoing situation in Charlottesville, Virginia from his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. He spoke about "loyalty" and "healing wounds" left by decades of racism.

White nationalist demonstrators clash with counter demonstrators at the entrance to Lee Park in Charlottesville, Virginia. A state of emergency is declared, August 12 2017

AP Photo

Virginia State Police cordon off an area around the site where a car ran into a group of protesters after a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia

AP Photo

Getty Images

White nationalists, neo-Nazis and members of the 'alt-right' exchange insults with counter-protesters as they attempt to guard the entrance to Lee Park during the 'Unite the Right' rally

Getty

AP Photo

Rescue personnel help injured people after a car ran into a large group of protesters after an white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia

AP Photo

1995 came in the middle of a surge of right wing extremism. And in 2020, we are in another surge of right wing extremism, Mark Pitcavage, an expert on the US far right and a consultant to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a group that monitors hate crimes, told The Independent.

Mr Pitcavage said the extremists fell into two main groups white supremacists and anti-government. After the 2008 election of Barack Obama, the nations first African American president, experts noticed an increase in anti-govermentactivity.

The campaign and electoral victory of Mr Trump, who pitched himself as an anti-establishment immigration hardliner, gave a fresh boost to white supremacists. Anti-government groups, such as the militia movement, also supported Trump, and many threatened violence if he had lost to Hillary Clinton.

For the first three years those groups were largely quiet, but in the past year have become more active, partly as a result of so-called red flag laws that seek to control gun violence, and more recently in angry displays against anti-coronavirus orders put in place by state.

Asked if Joe Biden or another Democrat were elected president in November, whether there would be another surge in anti-government extremist and attendant violence, Mr Pitcavage said: Its certainly fairly likely.

No hype, just the advice and analysis you need

JJ MacNab, a fellow at George Washington University and another expert on extremists, has been monitoring anti-government this week protests in Michigan, Ohio and elsewhere. She said there had been a blurring between mainstream protesters and extremists, so that the thousands of protesters who gathered on the steps of the legislative buildings in the city of Lansing, included armed militia members and people waving Make America Great Again banners.

Oklahoma City bombing survivor says coronavirus triggers emotional pain not experienced in 25 years

She said the threat from right wing extremists was very much alive, and pointed to a failed terror plot in Kansas City, made public by the unsealing of court documents, that showed that 36-year Timothy Wilson, a father of four who had served in the military, was seeing to attack a hospital.

Wilson had been planning some sort of attack for at least six months, according to an FBI undercover agent, and was apparently angered enough by the coronavirus lockdown, to attack the Belton Regional Medical Centre.

According to the FBIs affidavit, Wilson, who was shot and killed in a shoot-out last month with FBI agents, wanted to create enough chaos to kick start a revolution.

Asked to compare the threat posed by right wing extremists today to 25 years ago, she said: I think social media made it bigger in terms of numbers, but social media also allows for a sense of community.

Because these guys can kind of blow off steam to each other rather than going off on their own to do something big. Its a mixedbag.

She added: The threatis alive and real, and thank god for the FBI and for informants.

At the weekends memorial, survivors and city officials will seek to look forward, rather than backwards.

Bob Ross, the chairman of the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum Foundation, told ABC News: Watching the show, which will reflect back on the bombing, while also very much looking forward in terms of what we can do as a community to make sure this never happens again.

Others have echoed the need to do that. They accuse the authorities not only of failing to properly investigate those beyond the three men convicted who may have played a role, but of the nature of the threat, then and today.

Writer and journalist Andrew Gumbel is a former US correspondent for the The Independent. He is also author of Oklahoma City: What the Investigation Missed and Why It Still Matters, which details a disturbing picture of government dysfunction and agency rivalry, something that would also be exposed by the attacks of 9/11.

The most important lessons of the bombing were never learned because the US government was interested only in convicting McVeigh and Nichols, not in an honest reckoning of its own missteps and missed opportunities, he said this week. Federal law enforcement at the time managed both to underestimate the threat from the radical far right and to be paralysed by fear in the wake of Ruby Ridge or Waco confrontations with anti-government radicals that spiralled out of control."

He added: Today, the threat is being underestimated just as woefully but for different reasons. Most strikingly, the ideology that once put Tim McVeigh on the violent fringe of American political thinking is now much closer to the Republican Party mainstream. We have to hope it doesnt take another large-scale disaster for the country to understand the danger of amplifying and encouraging white supremacy in the name of political expediency.

Here is the original post:
Oklahoma City bombing: 25 years on and right wing extremists just as dangerous, with violence likely if Trump loses election, experts warn - The...

Category: Anti-Defamation League | Comments Off on Oklahoma City bombing: 25 years on and right wing extremists just as dangerous, with violence likely if Trump loses election, experts warn – The…
Tags:

Coronavirus misinformation is putting Facebook to the test – The Verge

Posted By admin on April 22, 2020

A few years ago, Facebook became aware that Russia kept posting misinformation all over the network. The misinformation was designed to rile people up and make them share with their friends, and because people are generally pretty easy to rile up, Russias strategy was very successful. Some prominent political scientists believe that the countrys election interference, both on and off Facebook, ushered Donald Trump into office. And weve spent a good portion of the past three and a half years arguing about it.

About a year after the election, Facebook introduced a tool to let people know if they had unwittingly interacted with the Russian troll army. If you liked the page of a troll in disguise, you could visit an obscure part of Facebook and it would tell you. The tool would not tell you if you had viewed any of the pages posts, or even if you had shared them. Alex Hern wrote about this flaw at the time in The Guardian:

Facebook will not tell those users about their exposure to misinformation, although the company has not said whether it is unable, or simply unwilling, to provide that information. A source close to the company described it as challenging to reliably identify and notify everyone who had been incidentally exposed to foreign propaganda.

Fast-forward to today, when the misinformation were worried about primarily has to do with COVID-19. Over the past few weeks, weve talked about hoaxes attempting to link the coronavirus to new 5G networks, dangerous fake cures based on drinking bleach, and so on. Reporting has consistently found these sorts of articles racking up thousands of shares on Facebook. Even more than Russian misinformation, the COVID-19 hoaxes pose clear public health risks. So what should Facebook do about it?

On Thursday, the company said it would invite people who had shared a hoax to visit a page created by the World Health Organization debunking popular COVID-19 myths. Heres Guy Rosen, Facebooks vice president of integrity, in a blog post:

Were going to start showing messages in News Feed to people who have liked, reacted or commented on harmful misinformation about COVID-19 that we have since removed. These messages will connect people to COVID-19 myths debunked by the WHO including ones weve removed from our platform for leading to imminent physical harm. We want to connect people who may have interacted with harmful misinformation about the virus with the truth from authoritative sources in case they see or hear these claims again off of Facebook. People will start seeing these messages in the coming weeks.

If you didnt read the above paragraph closely, you might assume Facebooks system would work something like this: You share an article that says something like, huffing macaroni and cheese fumes cures coronavirus, that article gets debunked by an independent fact checker, and then Facebook links you to the WHOs page about macaroni and cheese myths. Maybe there would even be a message that said something like, Just so you know, huffing macaroni and cheese does not cure coronavirus. Click here for more.

But we have learned that people are hard-headed and do not enjoy being told that they have been duped. There was a famous moment after the 2016 election when Facebook began labeling false posts as disputed and discovered that doing so made people share them more. And so the company has taken a different approach here.

A few weeks from now, people who have shared mac-and-cheese-cured-my-COVID type posts will see a big story in the News Feed. It is not labeled Hey, you have been duped. Rather, it says: Help friends and family avoid false information about COVID-19. It then invites them to share a link to the WHOs myth-busting site, as well as a button that will take the user to the site directly.

The goal of this type of approach is to make people less defensive about the fact that they may have been wrong, and try to smuggle some good information into their brains without making them feel dumb about it. The appeal to helping friends and family is also a nice touch. Who doesnt want to help their friends and family? And Facebook is putting the information directly into the News Feed no need to visit some arcane help center buried beneath layers of taps. (If you share a post that gets contains misinformation and is removed, youll also get a separate notification about that.)

But this approach also has downsides. If you do want to know if youve accidentally shared a lie to all your friends, this tool wont help you. And the WHO myth-busting page currently debunks 19 different hoaxes what are the odds youre going to scroll all the way down to the one you accidentally shared and read it? What about next month, when that list has grown to 40?

This is not a small problem. Avaaz, a human rights group that tracks misinformation closely, published an in-depth report this week that examined 100 pieces of misinformation, written in six languages, that were shared on Facebook. It found that those posts were shared more than 1.7 million times and seen an estimated 117 million times. (Vice talks to the authors.)

The authors of the Avaaz report argue that Facebook should inform each person who has viewed coronavirus misinformation about exactly what they got wrong. The group even conducted a test of this system that it says shows something like this can work:

In order to test the effectiveness of corrections, a hyper-realistic visual model of Facebook was designed to mimic the user experience on the platform. Then a representative sample of the American population, consisting of 2,000 anonymous participants, chosen and surveyed independently by YouGovs Academic, Political, & Public Affairs Research branch, were randomly shown up to 5 pieces of false news that were based on real, independently fact-checked examples of false or misleading content being shared on Facebook.

Through a randomized model, some of the users, after seeing the false news, were shown corrections. Some users saw only the false or misleading content, and some saw neither. Then the surveyed participants answered questions designed to test whether they believed the false news.

Avaad said its study showed that belief in misinformation declined at least 50 percent in study participants.

Rosen told me that calling out these hoaxes with a special message might give them more visibility than they originally had, amplifying the misinformation. Maybe you scrolled by a piece of misinformation without internalizing its contents; if Facebook puts a big red box in the News Feed that says by the way, this is false, the effects could be counterproductive.

Still, he said, Facebook is testing the use of language that more explicitly says that a person is seeing the WHO messages because they saw misinformation. The goal is to provide the most effective messaging possible, he said.

One possibility I see is to offer different interventions based on whether someone simply saw a hoax, or actively commented on or shared it. People who share hoaxes arguably deserve a stronger response than someone who simply saw something or maybe even just thumbed past it in their feed.

Compared to its early work on the Russian troll problem, Facebook has taken a refreshingly interventionist approach to stopping the spread of COVID-19 misinformation. But it also remains unclear which of those interventions actually work. Given the risks to public health, heres hoping that Facebook learns quickly.

On Tuesday, we announced that the next edition of our Interface Live series featuring me in (live-streamed) conversation with Sarah Frier, author of No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram. The event takes place April 21st at 5:30 p.m. PT, and you can register here. Its free, but you do have to RSVP and were now almost at capacity. If youd like to join, please RSVP today!

Today in news that could affect public perception of the big tech platforms.

Trending up: Facebook rolled out a new alert on Facebook and Instagram to tell people whove lost their job and health insurance due to COVID-19 to check out HealthCare.gov to see if theyre eligible for coverage through the Affordable Care Act.

Trending up: Google finally tightened up Play store rules in an effort to crack down on subscription scam apps.

Trending down: A YouTube video falsely accusing Dr. Anthony Fauci of being part of the deep state has gone viral, with more than 6 million views in a week. The video also advises people to treat COVID-19 with vitamin C a claim that wasnt backed up by science. Not good, YouTube.

Trending down: An outbreak of coronavirus infections at an upscale Whole Foods in Washington DC has highlighted how dangerous it is for grocery store workers during the pandemic. At least six employees have the virus, but the company wont close the store. Workers are instead free to take leave without penalty through the end of April but its unpaid.

Trending down: Construction on Amazons HQ2 in Pentagon City, Virginia is moving forward during coronavirus pandemic. Some neighbors said theyve been surprised to see the job site has remained busy. Whats the argument that this is essential business?

President Trump released guidelines for easing social distancing. (Washington Post)

San Francisco announced that its ramping up a human-centered approach to contact tracing in the coming weeks.

Meanwhile at Eater, Eve Batey reports that the Bay Area may allow gatherings of up to 10 people starting next month.

Getting a coronavirus test still depends heavily on what state you live in. (Colin Lecher, Maddy Varner, and Emmanuel Martinez / The Markup)

Facebook has canceled all in-person conferences through June 2021. Many others will follow. Including most of the entertainment and professional sports industry, I imagine. (Queenie Wong / CNET)

Jeff Bezos said mass testing around the world for the coronavirus is needed to get the economy back up and running. In a letter to Amazon shareholders, he also announced plans to test all Amazon workers, even those not showing symptoms. You can read the full letter here. (Annie Palmer / CNBC)

Amazon is redesigning its website to encourage shoppers to buy less, in an effort to keep up with surging demand. It removed most of its popular recommendation widgets and canceled Mothers and Fathers Day promotions. (Dana Mattioli / The Wall Street Journal)

Now that presidential campaigns are mostly happening remotely, reporters dont have access to face-to-face interviews with swing voters or political operatives. There is no more campaign trail, says this author. (Michael M. Grynbaum / The New York Times)

The Anti-Defamation League warns white supremacists are targeting Jewish groups on Zoom. While the company has rolled out new security measures, the ADL says it still must do more to protect people. (Zoe Schiffer / The Verge)

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai talks to Time about the role he thinks Big Tech should play in the coronavirus pandemic. Another journalist sits down with Googles CEO for an interview hoping for some news and comes away empty-handed. Whats the point? (See also.) (Nancy Gibbs / Time)

Across Asia, hackers, web developers, and students are collaborating to track Covid-19 data. A site in South Korea has become one of the countrys leading sources of accurate, up-to-the-minute tallies of confirmed infections and places where infected people have traveled. (Sheridan Prasso and Sohee Kim / Bloomberg)

The US Department of Veterans Affairs began making Portal from Facebook devices available to Veterans and their families, to reduce isolation and improve social connectedness at home.

In the quarantine age, Cameo has become the gig economy for niche celebs. Some are using it to compensate for a loss of income due to the pandemic. Others say theyre just bored. (Zach Schonfeld / Vice)

Across the games industry, developers are adjusting to a new work-from-home mandate. Some struggle to stay motivated as they grapple with isolation, others say their routines remain largely unchanged. (Megan Farokhmanesh / The Verge)

Total cases in the US: At least 662,441

Total deaths in the US: More than 30,000

Reported cases in California: 27,250

Reported cases in New York: 222,284

Reported cases in New Jersey: 75,317

Reported cases in Massachusetts: 32,181

Reported cases in Michigan: 29,119

Data from The New York Times.

How India, the worlds largest democracy, became the worlds largest experiment in social media and WhatsApp-fueled terror. The country has seen a sharp rise in right-wing Hindu vigilantism and violence against Muslims over the past few years. Heres Mohammad Ali at Wired:

But what seemed very real was that even if social media platforms hadnt created the mass delusions of Hindu extremism, they had provided a shockingly efficient infrastructure for their spread. India has 400 million WhatsApp users and 260 million users of Facebook, and it is the largest global market for both platforms. Facebook has come under heavy fire in India for uneven enforcement of its community standards against hate speech and misinformation. A 2019 report by the NGO Equality Labs found that Islamophobic posts often stayed up on the platform. In a particularly chilling example, Equality Labs found a huge number of Indian Facebook posts targeting Muslim Rohingya refugees from Myanmar, who had already been the victims of one social-media-fueled ethnic cleansing in their home country. The Indian pages called the Rohingya cockroaches and posted fake videos that purported to show them cannibalizing Hindusclear violations of Facebooks standards.

Joe Biden isnt very good at the internet. Thats a liability heading into a general election with Donald Trump. (Kevin Roose / New York Times)

Libra is pulling back from its ambitions to create a global digital currency in a bid to appease global regulators. The Libra Association, set up last year by Facebook, now plans to develop a handful of stablecoins each representing a different fiat currency. I would be lying if I told you I understood what that means, or what Libra is, or why it is moving forward. Brady Dale at CoinDesk reports:

The pivot, announced Thursday, represents a major concession to governments and central bankers around the world who balked at Libras original plan, partly out of concern it could undermine their monetary sovereignty.

The journey since the original white paper was released has really provoked an important conversation around the world about, How do we appropriately regulate digital payments and digital currencies? Libra Association vice-chairman Dante Disparte said in an interview.

YouTube ad prices have dropped 20 percent during the pandemic. Theres simply more inventory than there are advertisers. (Max Willens / Digiday)

Tim Cook talked up Apples strengths during an all-hands meeting about the pandemic with employees. (Mark Gurman / Bloomberg)

Amazon might offer health insurance to its sellers as part of a gradual push into healthcare. (Jason Del Rey / Recode)

The United Nations backtracked on a deal made with Chinese tech giant Tencent to provide videoconferencing services for the organizations 75th anniversary. The move follows backlash from US officials and critics who claimed the arrangement rewarded a company that has enabled Beijings digital surveillance efforts and stifled free speech. Tencent is a big investor in Snap, among other US companies. (Colum Lynch and Robbie Gramer / Foreign Policy)

Google is launching a new Kids section for the Google Play Store, which will offer a selection of Teacher Approved apps. Each app includes a list of reasons why teachers like it, including age-appropriateness, and what its trying to teach children. (Jon Porter / The Verge)

Google integrated its videoconferencing tool Meet with Gmail in order to better compete with Zoom. Now business and education users can take calls directly from the email app. (Paresh Dave / Reuters)

Verizon is buying the video conferencing platform BlueJeans as workers increasingly rely remote working tools to connect during the coronavirus pandemic. Verizon will pay about $400 million in the deal. BlueJeans is Facebooks internal video chat app of choice, for what its worth. (Lauren Feiner / CNBC)

TikTok amped up its parental controls with a feature that lets parents remotely set restrictions on their kids accounts. The new feature, called Family Pairing, allows parents disable direct messages, turn on restricted content mode, and set screen time limits. (Jacob Kastrenakes / The Verge)

Animal Crossing fans are using the game to take people on Tinder dates. (Patricia Hernandez / Polygon)

Instagrams favorite psychologist, Dr. Nicole LePera, is part of the #selfhealer movement that teaches people to reject established science and question traditional psychotherapy in order to heal themselves from within. (Katie Way / Vice) That doesnt always work!

Stuff to occupy you online during the quarantine.

Anonymously AirDrop a photo telling people to get further away from you if theyre not social distancing. Hilarious, although perhaps less effective than just telling them.

Listen to a new podcast from New York Times reporter and friend of the newsletter Kevin Roose about the internet. Among other things, Rabbit Hole will delve into how YouTube can radicalize viewers.

Go on a virtual tour of Disneyland, Anaheim, broken down by each individual land in the park.

Send us tips, comments, questions, and macaroni and cheese posts: casey@theverge.com and zoe@theverge.com.

Go here to see the original:
Coronavirus misinformation is putting Facebook to the test - The Verge

Category: Anti-Defamation League | Comments Off on Coronavirus misinformation is putting Facebook to the test – The Verge
Tags:

East Longmeadow man accused of trying to firebomb Jewish nursing home ordered back to jail – MassLive.com

Posted By admin on April 22, 2020

SPRINGFIELD - A man accused of attempting to bomb a Jewish nursing facility was ordered back to jail by a federal judge on Friday, following his release on bail just two days earlier.

John Michael Rathbun, of Lori Lane in East Longmeadow, was arrested on April 15 after FBI agents searched his home for evidence related to a makeshift firebomb placed outside the entrance of Ruths House in Longmeadow.

He was charged with two arson-related counts and faces up to 20 years in prison.

A large container filled with five gallons of gasoline, stuffed with a Christian church pamphlet and set on fire was discovered outside the facility around 10 a.m. on April 2, according to court records.

The homemade bomb flamed out before it caused any injuries, police have said.

The alleged arson attempt seemed one of thousands of recorded hate crimes cropping up across the U.S. each year -- a large number targeting Jews, watchdogs have said.

Rathbun, 36, is an admitted, longtime drug user and petty criminal. He was released by U.S. Magistrate Judge Katherine Robertson to home confinement on April 15, the same day he was arrested.

Prosecutors who believe Rathbun is linked to white supremacy groups appealed the ruling.

The defendants freedom proved fleeting. He was remanded to the U.S. Marshals Service and went back to jail by late Friday afternoon.

The defendant not only built the device, he deployed it at an extremely vulnerable place, at an extremely vulnerable time, Assistant U.S. Attorney Steven H. Breslow argued during a hearing on Friday afternoon, referring to the persisting plight of the elderly during the COVD-19 pandemic.

Rathbun was ordered back behind bars pending trial by U.S. District Judge Mark G. Mastroianni. The judge ruled Rathbun was too unstable to remain at his parents home with scant supervision in the coronavirus criminal justice world where electronic monitoring is essentially not possible.

Ruths House, a picturesque campus set back from Converse Street, offers 68 assisted living apartments for seniors. The facility is managed by JGS Lifecare, a nonprofit organization dedicated to caring for Jewish elders and those of all faiths, according to its website.

Breslow argued the would-be firebomb potentially placed many in danger, targeting Jewish seniors during the coronavirus crisis, when they and all nursing home residents are already in peril.

Rathbun has denied the allegations and any affiliations with anti-Semitic or white supremacy groups.

Had the device ignited, it may have sparked an inferno at a well-traveled spot in the Western Massachusetts bedroom community -- where pedestrians, joggers, parents pushing strollers and staff heading in and out of the campus are plentiful, Breslow said.

A private Jewish elementary school, three synagogues and a Jewish community center also sit in close proximity. Rathbuns family home in the neighboring town is less than two miles away, the prosecutor said. Rathbun admitted traveling by there each day to go to a methadone clinic to mitigate his heroin addiction.

According to court records, Longmeadow police discovered a sturdy plastic container filled with five gallons of gasoline, and a charred Christian church pamphlet jammed in its spout around 10 on that April morning.

The DNA profile of Rathbun -- a previously convicted felon whose DNA had already been logged into law enforcement databases -- was discovered on both the container and the leaflet, FBI agents said. The items were speckled with blood and Rathbun had fresh wounds on his hands when his house was raided at 7:30 a.m. on Wednesday, court records show.

He was charged with two arson-related offenses and federal prosecutors have characterized the incident as a hate crime. An online war had been waged against the Jewish geriatric care campus by anonymous white supremacists, FBI agents have said.

An online user logged into a white supremacy chatroom in March and invited others to target that jew nursing home in longmeadow (sic) massachusetts in addition to deeming April 3 jew killing day, according to an FBI affidavit filed in connection with the case.

Another post from the same apparent user read F--- JEWS, according to court records.

An Illinois synagogue also was cited as a possible target in the same chatroom, Breslow said.

The FBI and the Anti-Defamation League indicate Jews were the most targeted for hate crimes among religion-based groups in 2018, a consistent statistic since 1991. Nearly 60 percent of hate crimes were leveled at Jews, the organizations reported.

Leaders of Ruths House and JGS submitted letters to the court saying the April 2 incident -- which occurred six days before Passover -- placed residents and staff in fear.

Our staffs, already under tremendous mental stress, now fear for their lives as they come to work. Our residents, already fighting for their lives against COVID-19, now are in fear of their lives from a man filled with hate with the audacity to take action to kill because of that hate, and others like him, said a JGS director, in court filings.

Rathbuns attorney, Timothy Watkins, argued that agents found no evidence of white supremacy propaganda at his clients home or in his car while executing search warrants.

This court has had its share of fringe defendants. These are not people who keep quiet about it ... There is absolutely zero evidence of this at his house or in the cars, Watkins said.

Agents discovered gasoline containers at Rathbuns home, where he lives with his parents and daughter. But, Watkins said they were intended for a lawnmower and a leaf blower the family kept in a shed.

Rathbun has a history of OUIs, breaking and entering offenses, receiving stolen property, restraining orders and violations of those, Breslow said.

Rathbun was on probation for violating a restraining order last year when the Wednesday arrest occurred, and a brand new arrest warrant issued out of Palmer District Court for while the federal court hearing was literally midstream on Friday, Breslow said.

So, Rathbun was going to be held by state court officials if not by the federal system.

While Watkins argued there was little to no evidence his client was part of a white supremacy hatred group and the governments evidence was thin on that point, Mastroianni seemed intent on detention.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Katheriene Robertson on Wednesday appeared heavily focused on the COVID-19 pandemic and keeping pretrial defendants out of jails where they could be exposed to the disease. But Breslow argued there were no cases among Hampden County inmates.

I find it ironic ... if not terribly disturbing that the defendant would particularly target a nursing home, of whatever faith, already under siege from this pandemic and then seek shelter, and argue the COVID-19 pandemic should keep him out of jail, Breslow said.

He added that there were no cases of COVID-19 among inmates at the Hamdpen County House of Corrections.

Watkins countered that there were nine cases among staff who had contracted the virus.

Make no mistake-- this is a pandemic, and its only a matter of time, Watkins said.

Mastroianni reversed Robertsons earlier ruling. Rathbun will remain behind bars.

"I find easily that Mr. Rathbun is a danger to the community through clear and convincing evidence, " the judge said.

He was led away in handcuffs.

Category: Anti-Defamation League | Comments Off on East Longmeadow man accused of trying to firebomb Jewish nursing home ordered back to jail – MassLive.com
Tags:

Coronavirus daily news updates, April 17: What to know today about COVID-19 in the Seattle area, Washington state and the nation – Seattle Times

Posted By admin on April 22, 2020

Editors note: This is a live account of updates from Friday, April 17, as the events unfolded. Click hereto find the latest extended coverage of the outbreak of the coronavirus known as SARS-CoV-2; the illness it causes, COVID-19; and its effects on the Seattle area, the Pacific Northwest and the world.

National and local leaders continue to weigh how soon to return to normalcy as the number of COVID-19 cases starts to decline in some parts of the country. President Donald Trump on Thursdayunveiled a three-phase plan to reopen U.S. businesses and schools, instructing state governors to move at their own pace, yet insisting the process would happen relatively quickly.

In Seattle, Mayor Jenny Durkan announced Thursday her plans to provide up to 100 hotel rooms for quarantined medical workers and clear cars off some streets to give people more space to walk and bike.

The most recent count of COVID-19 cases in Washington totals 11,445 infections and 603 deaths, according to the state Department of Health.

Throughout today, on this page, well be posting updates from Seattle Times journalists and others on the pandemic and its effects on the Seattle area, the Pacific Northwest and the world. Updates from Thursday can be found here, and all our coronavirus coverage can be foundhere.

The following graphic includes the most recent numbers from the Washington State Department of Health, released Friday evening.

MLS announced Friday its suspending its season until June 8.

The league softened the blow to its fans by announcing earlier this week its extremely unlikely games would resume May 10 due to safety concerns regarding the coronavirus pandemic. The 26 teams played two matches each, Sounders FCs last being March 7 against the Columbus Crew SC at CenturyLink Field.

ESPN reported Friday the league is communicating with the MLS Players Association regarding significant pay cuts to offset losses from the season suspension.

MLS top executives have already had their pay decreased, commissioner Don Garbers by 25 percent.

According to ESPN, the league wants players to take a 50 percent pay cut only if games are canceled. Whether matches are played in front of fans and amount of games could also determine pay.

Read the full story here.

Jayda Evans

OLYMPIA Washington state Republican legislative leaders on Friday released their own road map for reopening Washingtons economy amid the new coronavirus.

Fridays plan doesnt set public health benchmarks for when it would be safe to reopen the economy. But it does specify some lower-risk industries such as residential construction, auto dealers and solo landscapers that could reopen soon.

The plans 16 recommendations focus mostly on assisting small businesses. It would, among other things, slash Business & Occupation (B&O) taxes, provide sales-tax holidays for retail stores and suspend any inflation-adjusted minimum-wage hike for 2021.

The GOP plan recommends, among other things, exempting small businesses from paying B&O taxes and allowing them not to charge sales tax for a year. It would also offer state assistance to small businesses that arent eligible for help from the federal government.

Read the full story here.

Joseph OSullivan

Washington state expects its school districts to provide three things while their buildings are closed: instruction, food and child care. New data from the state Education Department show districts posted uneven progress on those fronts during the first two weeks of the shutdown.

According to the results of a new state survey, the majority of Washington districts said they served meals and provided online learning to students through April 4, the most recent data the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) could share by Friday.

As of April 4, more than a third of the districts who responded to the survey said they werent providing child care. The ones that did were only serving about 2,100 kids collectively.

Between March 29 and April 4, nearly 90% of districts surveyed said they provided meals, 57% said they had or were planning to establish child care, and nearly 100% said they were providing instruction, with 75% reporting some real-time online learning.

Read the full story here.

Dahlia Bazzaz

When Seattles Eritrean Association Community Centershuttered in accordance with the stay-at-home order issued by Gov. Jay Inslee, Isaac Araya was desperate, wondering what in the world to do about more than 100 seniors who usually visit the center to eat lunch and see friends.

First, Araya and his board told his workers to stay home. But they didnt want to leave the seniors hungry and isolated, the centers longtime president said.Next, the workers tried to make food deliveries. But navigating to all the homes took hours and the hot lunches went cold.

Then a lightbulb blinked on. Numerous Eritrean community members drive for ride-hail companies, and they had seen their business mostly disappear.

We came up with the idea to use Uber drivers who speak Tigrinya and Amharic, Araya recalled. They know the streets. They know the city.

Across the Seattle area, otherorganizations that typically serve seniors also are adapting their in-person models to a new reality. Initially stunned by coronavirus closures, hundreds of helpers have built food-delivery programs out of thin air.

Read the full story here.

Daniel Beekman and Anna Patrick

China revised its official coronavirus death toll in Wuhan, the original epicenter of the outbreak, by around 50% on Friday, citing new statistical evidence that has emerged as the city begins to reopen following months of lockdown.

The reassessment counted 1,290 more deaths, bringing the death toll in the city where the outbreak was first recorded to 3,869.

The revision came amid global efforts to produce more accurate data and growing suspicions among experts and world leaders over how Chinas death toll could remain relatively low even as death counts surge across the United States and Europe.

Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for the Chinese foreign ministry, insisted on Friday that this revision in no way indicated a cover-up and is based purely on standard efforts to take into account deaths that were previously miscounted or excluded.

The Washington Post

Gov. Jay Inslees updated statewide eviction moratorium, announced Thursday, is arguably the most far-reaching local action yet to protect renters.

The proclamation protects tenants from eviction until June 4. And it goes further, barring landlords from collecting late fees, raising rents or asking tenants in housing closed due to the coronavirus pandemic including student housing to pay rent owed.

But even before Inslees Thursday announcement, many renters in the state already had some of those protections though they might not have known it.A federal eviction moratorium, covering as many as 19.3 million people nationwide, was enacted as part of the $2 trillion federal stimulus package in late March.

Theres one big problem with the federal moratorium, though: Its hard to know who it applies to.

Is your home covered? Search this map to find out.

Katherine K. Long

Results of first-ever home testing for COVID-19 in Seattle and King County indicate infections are declining but that there still may be thousands of residents infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus undetected in the community, according to a report released Friday by The Greater Seattle Coronavirus Assessment Network (SCAN), which has analyzed the first round of swab and send testing kits from 4,092 county residents.

The research involved sending newly developed self-test kits to individuals who registered with the group online, then analyzing the results.

It is the nations first home-surveillance project on COVID-19 and, while many of the early findings are preliminary and the margins of error wide, the report says the data provides the first real snapshot of the undetected spread of the virus through the community and will be refined as testing expands.

The goal of the study is to give health officials a clearer understanding of how far the virus has penetrated the community and answer the question: Is there an iceberg of cases below the currently recognized tip?

Read the full story here.

Mike Carter

The laboratory processing mostof Washington states COVID-19 tests will soon begin doing another kind of test, to identify people who have recovered from the disease and have developed antibodies to the virus.

Weve heard these stories, said Dr. Keith Jerome,head of the virology division within the UW Medicines department of laboratory medicine. Somebody says, I was really sick in February. Did I have COVID? And we havent been able to tell them.

The UW Medicine Virology Lab plans to begin answering this question next week by testing blood samples from people who have recovered from COVID-19.

Serological testing checking for antibodies is important because it identifies who has had the disease and helps to build a picture of how widespread the virus is, which can inform decisions about lifting distancing orders and allowing businesses to open.

Read the full story here.

Ryan Blethen and Sandi Doughton

Washington could begin easing up on social distancing restrictions the week of May 18, according to the UWs Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME).

Estimates for other states range from as early as May 4 to as late as the end of June, based on the local status of the epidemic.

In a media briefing Friday, IHME director Dr. Chris Murray cautioned that the potential opening dates represent a first stab and are likely to change as more information comes in from individual states. Among the key variables are whether deaths are likely to drop off sharply once they peak, or whether as seems to be happening in New York they will plateau and decrease slowly.

But he also said no one should rely solely on IHME projections as they decide when and how to ease life back toward normal.

Read the full story here.

Sandi Doughton

State health officials confirmed an additional 293 cases and 20 deaths in Washington on Friday evening.

The newly released numbers bring the state's totals to11,445 infections and 603 deaths.

The bulk of the cases remains in King County, which is reporting 4,865cases and 330deaths. New deaths were also reported in Klickitat, Snohomish and Yakima counties.

About 91% of patient samples tested have returned negative, according to the state.

Elise Takahama

U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal is co-sponsoring legislation that would cancel all residential rent and mortgage payments during the coronavirus emergency that has put huge numbers of people out of work, the Seattle Democrat said Friday. The bill has not passed and no payments have been canceled.

Last month, the Seattle City Council passed a resolution asking Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, Congress and the White House to cancel rent and mortgage payments. While the lobbying move didnt change circumstances on the ground, the citys congresswoman now is pushing the idea in the other Washington.

Jayapal and Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar announced their bill Friday, along with seven Democratic co-sponsors, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib.

The Rent and Mortgage Cancellation Act would constitute a full payment forgiveness, with no accumulation of debt for renters or homeowners and no negative impact on their credit rating or rental history, a Jayapal news release said.

The payment cancellations would apply to primary residences and would be retroactive to cover April 2020 payments, according to a description of the plan shared by the co-sponsors.

The legislation also would establish a relief fund for landlords and mortgage holders to cover losses from the cancelled payments, the news release said. To qualify, landlords and lenders would need to agree to fair renting and lending practices for a period of five years, according to the plan.

Read the full story here.

Daniel Beekman

The first warning of the devastation that the coronavirus could wreak inside U.S. nursing homes came in late February, when residents of a facility in suburban Seattle perished, one by one, as families waited helplessly outside.

In the ensuing six weeks, large and shockingly lethal outbreaks have continued to ravage nursing homes across the nation, undeterred by urgent new safety requirements. Now a nationwide tally by The New York Times has found the number of people living in or connected to nursing homes who have died of the coronavirus to be at least 7,000, far higher than previously known.

In New Jersey, 17 bodies piled up in a nursing home morgue, and more than one-quarter of a Virginia homes residents have died. At least 24 people at a facility in Maryland have died; more than 100 residents and workers have been infected at another in Kansas; and people have died in centers for military veterans in Florida, Nevada, New York, Maine, Massachusetts, Oregon and Washington.

On Friday, New York officials for the first time disclosed the names of 72 long-term-care facilities that have had five or more deaths, including the Cobble Hill Health Center in Brooklyn, where 55 people have died. In New Jersey, officials revealed that infections have broken out in 394 long-term facilities almost two-thirds of the states homes and that more than 1,500 deaths were tied to nursing facilities.

Overall, about one-fifth of deaths from the virus in the United States have been tied to nursing homes or other long-term care facilities, the Times review of cases shows. And more than 36,000 residents and employees across the nation have contracted it.

Read the full story here.

The New York Times

President Donald Trump announced Friday a $19 billion bailout package for farmers hurt financially by the coronavirus crisis.

The aid plan includes $16 billion in direct payments to farmers to boost their incomes, along with $3 billion in government purchases of meat, dairy products and other foods, the president said Friday at a White House briefing. The Agriculture Department will receive another $14 billion in July for further assistance.

This will help our farmers and our ranchers, and its money well deserved, Trump said.

The combination of direct payments to farmers and bulk government purchases of commodities parallels the approach the Trump administration followed in its $28 billion agriculture trade bailout over the past two years. Farmers and rural communities are a critical part of Trumps political base as he seeks re-election.

Bloomberg

Two limited studies, one on humans and the other on monkeys, show thatan experimental antiviral drug that was used to treat Ebola may be effective for treating patients with severe cases of COVID-19.

The drug, remdesivir, was given to 53 patients with severe COVID-19 cases on a compassion-use basis and about two-thirds of them showed improvement.

The results are "promising," UC Davis Healths Stuart Cohen, who led the clinical investigation, told the Sacramento Bee.

It had a small number of enrolled patients and relatively short follow-up timeline, said Cohen, who is chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases in the Department of Internal Medicine. It didnt include a randomized control group and did not collect and compare amount of virus present before and after treatment with remdesivir and other clinical approaches.

A new, small study done in monkeys showed that the drug decreased how much the coronavirus damaged their lungs.

Two groups of rhesus macaques were infected withSARS-CoV-2. The group that was treated with remdesivir for seven days was healthier. The animals had smaller amounts of virus in their lungs, and their lungs had less damage than the untreated control group. The findings of that study have not been peer-reviewed.

The last Jews of Dvinsk, and losing the memory of a forgotten civilization – Jewish Journal

Posted By admin on April 22, 2020

Forverts Archive

If anyone has ever had trouble understanding the Jewish mindset in the 21st Century, consider this: ours is in some ways a post-apocalyptic world.

The headline was first printed in the Yiddish Forverts on Oct. 9, 1944. In nine simple words, it managed to encapsulate the enormity of the Holocaust in a way few other sources do, and I believe it offers some insight into the Jewish psyche of the 21st century.

It reads 10 Yidden geblibn in Dvinsk, 31 toyzent zaynen umgekumen For those of you who dont also read our Yiddish section, Ill translate: 10 Jews remain in Dvinsk, 31,000 are dead.

That number: 31,000. It is impossible for me to comprehend the enormity of it, and Dvinsk, today called Daugavpils in Latvia, was not even a major Jewish center. The Dead of Dvinsk are barely half of 1% of the total Jewish dead of the Holocaust, In the case of Kiev, more Jews died in two days at Babi Yar than have fallen in all of Israels wars.

We sometimes forget how Jewish the Ashkenazi heartland of Eastern Europe was. Dvinsk (Daugavpils), Kovne (Kaunas), Vilna (Vilnius), Grodno (Hrodna), Minsk, Lemberik (Lvov), Tshernovits (Chernvitsi), Vinnitsa, Kharkov, Odes (Odessa) and many more cities that are now country capitals or major economic centers all had Jewish majorities or pluralities at the turn of the 20th century.

In his book The Origins of the Final Solution, Prof. Christopher Browning noted that in Poland alone, the Warsaw ghetto contained more Jews than all of France; the d ghetto more Jews than all of the Netherlands. More Jews lived in the city of Krakw than in all of Italy.

Today there are only ghosts. In six years not only did the Nazis kill 11 million people, but they brought to an end 1,000 years of Ashkenazi civilization between the Black and the Baltic Seas.

So, if anyone has ever had trouble understanding the Jewish mindset in the 21st Century, consider this: ours is in some ways a post-apocalyptic world. We are the remnant of a society that was practically wiped from the face of the earth. Its why the past 70 years of Jewish life have been defined by unchecked messianism and wild attempts at reconstruction in both the secular and religious realms.

In part, I think it has to do with how liberation came. They were expecting their liberator to be riding upon a white donkey beneath a golden flag, instead it came riding green jeeps bearing the Hammer and Sickle, Stars and Stripes or Union Jacks. They were expecting the Messiah and instead got Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin.

So, we became our own messiahs, we built a nation, ingathered the exiles, strived for justice and built great centers of learning, art and culture.

On Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Memorial Day, I found myself dwelling on that old Forward headline. Maybe especially this year, as coronavirus rips through the Jewish community and claims many of the last remaining survivors who are still around to tell us their stories. By losing them we are losing our last connection to the world from which many American Jews came, and thus a large part of our understanding of who we are.

We are still those 10 Jews of Dvinsk, taking stock of our surroundings on Oct. 9, 1944 and realizing everything and everyone we knew is gone. Haunted by 31,000 ghosts, I cant imagine those 10 Jews ever had a normal day for the rest of their lives. That trauma doesnt go away, and as a people, it doesnt go away in one generation or two, or 10.

David Ian Klein is a journalist based in New York and doing a fellowship in Sarajevo, where he is now sheltering in place. Follow him on Twitter @daoudalqasir.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Forward.

Go here to read the rest:

The last Jews of Dvinsk, and losing the memory of a forgotten civilization - Jewish Journal

Category: Ashkenazi | Comments Off on The last Jews of Dvinsk, and losing the memory of a forgotten civilization – Jewish Journal
Tags:

Despite eased virus restrictions, the rabbis are playing it safe – Ynetnews

Posted By admin on April 22, 2020

While Israel on Sunday allowed prayers groups of up to 19 people to congregate in open spaces, many in the ultra-Orthodox community are choosing not to take unnecessary risks, given the outbreak of the coronavirus in many Haredi communities.

Prominent leader Rabbi Gershon Edelstein of Bnei Brak says it might be better to avoid public gatherings, including prayer groups, given the difficulty in adhering to the health regulations.

Worshipers in the Western Wall practice social distancing in prayer

(Photo: Reuters)

Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel David Lau has also called for the public to refrain from joining prayer groups in open spaces if there is no one among the attendees to enforce the Health Ministry guidelines.

According to Lau, it is an offence to attend a public prayer where there is no strict adherence to the ministrys regulations, including a limit on number of worshipers, social distancing and wearing masks.

"Anyone who organizes a public prayer group needs to know it is his responsibility to safeguard attendants from loss of life," Rabbi Lau said. "Whoever joins such groups is responsible for following the guidelines and ensuring that others do too."

Worshipers in Bnei Brak stand apart to pray

(Photo: Itay Blumenthal)

A statement published on behalf of Rabbi Edelstein on Sunday reads: "Even now, when the authorities are allowing to hold prayer groups in limited format and in open spaces, it is up to everyone to be careful, and to keep to the cautionary rules instructed by physicians, and in no way attend prayers unless full precautions are followed. "

The statement said: Before joining any prayers, everyone should carefully verify whether it is possible to maintain precautionary measures, [including] the required distance between each person. If measures cannot be met, it is better to pray alone at home.

Rabbi Gershon Edelstein

(Photo: Shlomi Cohen, Kikar HaShabbat)

Edelstein added that the elderly and those who suffer from existing conditions such as diabetes or heart disease must pray exclusively in their homes.

Rabbi Edelstein, the 96-year-old head of the Council of Torah Sages, has since the beginning of the coronavirus crisis made sure to adhere to all government guidelines, especially on issues such as public prayer and Torah study.

In contrast, his partner in the leadership of the Lithuanian stream of ultra-Orthodox Jews, 92-year-old Rabbi Haim Kanievsky decided he would not necessarily adhere to the emergency regulations, even holding a prayer group in his own home despite a ban.

Read the rest here:

Despite eased virus restrictions, the rabbis are playing it safe - Ynetnews

Category: Ashkenazi | Comments Off on Despite eased virus restrictions, the rabbis are playing it safe – Ynetnews
Tags:

ABC’s ‘The Baker and the Beauty’ is a half-baked remake – Forward

Posted By admin on April 22, 2020

The epoch of coronavirus is a time of quarantined batch-baking and sourdough starter. Many are now learning that when it comes to baking, the rules of chemistry apply. Things cant be rushed and from scratch is better than a mix. ABCs latest soapy import, The Baker and the Beauty, should take a lesson.

Working from a recipe from the folks at Keshet media, the show is a lot like its Israeli inspiration Lehiyot Ita, following the unlikely rebound romance of a working-class baker and an heiress model who meet one evening at an upscale restaurant. The pilot episode makes use of many of the same set pieces and even recycles some dialogue. The biggest superficial difference is the setting. The Yemenite Jewish family in Bat-Yam is now a Cuban family running a bakery in Miamis Little Havana.

But further tweaks that attempt to sift through the Israeli shows gender issues have resulted in an overdone start to the American iteration with some half-baked pockets throughout.

What a difference a country code makes. The bakery of the Garcia family, the shows main clan, is a pristine affair compared to the cramped, dough-pelting environs of the Dahari family. Theres plenty of room at the back for aspiring DJ, Mateo (David Del Rio), to croon an on-the-nose song about lovers from two worlds and tease his brother, Daniel (Victor Rasuk), about his high maintenance girlfriend, Vanessa (Michelle Veintimilla), whom everyone but Daniel believes is expecting a proposal on the night of their fourth anniversary.

The Vanessa we meet, however, is a major departure from her Israeli equivalent. While the Israeli Vanessa is overbearing and has put her life on hold for Amos (the Israeli Daniel), this Vanessa is a career woman. Its clear the show is trying to get ahead of the marriage-obsessed girlfriend trope, but then why keep the original-to-Israel line Im a 28-year-old woman. This is what we do. We diet, we get married, we have kids and we diet again? And why, when she publicly advertises her single status after she dumps Daniel for refusing her proposal, does she lead with the fact she can cook before saying she has her own business. The show acknowledges that we now expect more from female characters, while simultaneously employing timeworn, gendered cliches.

Vanessa is not the only female character who gets a makeover. Noa Hamilton (Australian actress Nathalie Kelley) is no longer a mere ultra-wealthy model; she is now also a philanthropist who speaks Japanese and launched her own fashion and cosmetics lines as a teen. This is a pretty lazy attempt to substitute CV bullet points for dimension, confusing multi-hyphenates for character development while troublingly implying that a model whos just a model might not be sufficiently interesting or smart (a case that the Israeli show thoroughly filets).

Naturally she has more going on than her various projects; she also has a distant relationship with her father, a fact that is communicated none-too-subtly when she defaces an image of herself posted to the side of a building her dad owns.

At an hour with commercials, the American treatment adds 15 minutes to the Israelis runtime. It makes poor use of that time by telling us things about the characters even as its showing them to us. When Daniel teaches Noa to bake, he admires how fearless she is for being willing to get dirty (he has, by that point, already seen her suspended in a harness and high heels over an active roadway and using a mens bathroom with no embarrassment or explanation). When matriarch Mari (Lisa Vidal) gets teased because she has hot flashes (really), she counters by saying what a supportive mother she is to both Mateos musical aspirations and Natalie her youngests Ivy League potential. When Natalie comes home embarrassed from a dance where Mateo performed unannounced, she says It wasnt enough that everyone at that school thinks Im a freak or a charity case. No, now Im also the sister of MC Cubano. It was plenty, I agree.

Natalie (Belissa Escobedo) may get the worst butchering of the adapted family; the entirety of her overloaded character is established in the first episode. Spouting such sub-Chuck Lorre lines as And you wonder why I have self-esteem issues, we learn she is secretly gay when we see her furtively scrolling a site called Lesbian Teen Chat. Here, a comparison is useful; Natalies Israeli counterpart, Merav, is one of the shows best characters but is allowed to develop at her own pace. While she has far less screen time in the first episode, her big moment getting caught coloring her nails with a marker paints a more vivid picture than any cringey line of dialogue afforded to Natalie.

And therein lies this adaptations biggest problem and one endemic to much of ABCs programming. Characters are not characters so much as a set of ticked-off qualities aimed at projecting a universal family dynamic to a broad viewership. Though marked by ethnic identifiers, the shows are often anodyne and unspecific thats the point. By contrast, the world of Amos Dahari is unique and thats the point. He is Mizrahi and is made to feel his difference with an Ashkenazi girl. Race has yet to be a factor in Americas Baker and the Beauty, a trend which is likely to continue as the show has already drawn up a road map navigating class divides for our main couple. While Lehiyot Ita unfolds its plans for Noa and Amos slowly and with subtext, Noa and Daniel have, in only one night of knowing each other, left little unsaid. Its a more promising first date, but is bound to make second and third ones a snooze .

Its really a shame that this one has none of the charm that made the original resonate, opting for broad strokes instead of the finer details that kept Israeli viewers and those of us watching on Amazon Prime hooked. But as such, its an unnecessary, often tone-deaf corrective that fails its wish fulfillment setup by having little grounding in the real world. This one could have used more time in the oven.

PJ Grisar is the Forwards culture fellow. He can be reached at Grisar@Forward.com.

Jewish American Heritage Month

The ADL wants to fight hate in video games, but ham-fisted CENSORSHIP is the last thing we gamers need – RT

Anti-Zionism and the new Blackshirts | Maurice Solovitz – The Times of Israel

Got a Zoom-Bombing Problem? Zoom Will Soon Let You Report Attacks in Real Time – PCMag

Oklahoma City bombing: 25 years on and right wing extremists just as dangerous, with violence likely if Trump loses election, experts warn – The…

Coronavirus misinformation is putting Facebook to the test – The Verge

East Longmeadow man accused of trying to firebomb Jewish nursing home ordered back to jail – MassLive.com

Coronavirus daily news updates, April 17: What to know today about COVID-19 in the Seattle area, Washington state and the nation – Seattle Times

The last Jews of Dvinsk, and losing the memory of a forgotten civilization – Jewish Journal

Despite eased virus restrictions, the rabbis are playing it safe – Ynetnews

ABC’s ‘The Baker and the Beauty’ is a half-baked remake – Forward

Categories

Recent Posts

Archives

Activist Corner - Please Report These Websites

Tag Cloud

Recent Posts

About The Author: admin