As #EndSars trends online, Nigerian police squad disbanded
Amnesty International listed an alleged 82 cases of torture and execution carried out by SARS (Special Anti-Robbery Squad) 

Renee G October 11, 2020

The Grio Top 3 10/9

Following days of widespread protests against police brutality, Nigeria’s police chief has announced the dissolution of a notorious anti-robbery unit.

As previously reported in theGrio, the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) has long been accused of harassing and extorting young people and targeting those who have dreads, are dressed in nice clothing, or driving nice cars.

Read More: Nigerians rally against police brutality with #EndSARS campaign

Along with unlawful arrests, SARS has also been accused of being responsible for kidnappings, inflicting torture, and even murdering innocent people.

While #EndSars trended online in Nigeria for several days, thousands of people marched across Nigerian and in multiple cities across the world this week to demand the unit be disbanded.

Hello @PoliceNG. You have told US that SARS has been dismantled. But have you told THEM??
— Anto Lecky (@AntoLecky) October 11, 2020

In a statement on Sunday, Muhammed Adamu, inspector general of police, said the unit had been abolished “with immediate effect,” a move that was “in response to the yearnings of the Nigerian people.”

However, according to Adamu, the unit would be redeployed to other police commands, formations and units, which sparked outrage and condemnation by some activists online who vowed to keep up their campaign, demanding accountability and justice for the victims of police brutality.

The “disbanding” of SARS is step 1. This has happened before. We have to build a form of community safety that actually makes Nigerians feel safe. Let this be a battle that’s part of a larger movement against corruption to demand a government that truly serves us 🇳🇬#EndSARS
— Jidenna (@Jidenna) October 11, 2020

Adamu added that the Nigerian police force intended to investigate cases of alleged human rights violations by working with civil society organizations and human rights groups.

In a Twitter post, the Nigerian presidency promised that the police unit, which was founded in 1992 in an attempt to combat robbery, would be disbanded immediately.

Read More: South Africa ruling opens way for apartheid-era prosecutions of police who tortured and killed activists

In June, a report by Amnesty International listed an alleged 82 cases of torture and execution carried out by SARS under the supervision of high-ranking officers. The report accused the squad of “systematic use of torture” and alleged the existence of torture chambers within the Nigerian Police Force.

NZ ELECTION
Sam Neill Is Team Legalize Marijuana

By Kristy Puchko | Celebrity | October 9, 2020 |


Election day is coming! Not just in the U.S., but also for New Zealand. That not only means a chance to vote for politicians who support causes Kiwis care about but also the chance to vote on referendums. This year, that includes “Cannabis legalization and control referendum,” which as you might guess is about whether or not the recreational use of marijuana should be legal in New Zealand.

Among those supporting the referendum is national treasure Sam Neill, who took a break from posting about wine, pigs, and Jeff Goldblum to share this on Twitter:


NEW ZEALANDERS everywhere! Make sure to VOTE in this critical election. Have YOUR say. And while you’re at it, let’s get sensible and finally LEGALISE cannabis .Decriminalise it, regulate it, tax it- the whole community benefits( not gangs) #makeitlegal #VoteYesOnCannabis #CBD pic.twitter.com/ETeyr6paK3— Sam Neill (@TwoPaddocks) October 9, 2020

OK. While we’re at it, here’s the pigs and Goldblum content that Neill offered up this week.

First up: Please enjoy a #badpig scratching himself.

No wonder my fences are shagged. Even the rams are shocked #BadPig . pic.twitter.com/0d9C6C7i52— Sam Neill (@TwoPaddocks) October 8, 2020

Then, the best Pence/fly joke on the internet.

We say it again: Follow Sam Neill on social media. It is basically self-care.

Trump slight against Gold Star families adds to military woes

BY REBECCA KHEEL - 10/11/20 

President Trump has sparked a new wave of criticism over his treatment of members of the military after suggesting he may have caught the coronavirus from Gold Star families.

The latest row comes after a series of scandals in which Trump was accused of disparaging service members, giving his political rivals an opening and calling into question whether he can hold on to a bloc of voters seen as central to his base.

With the presidential election now less than a month away and Trump trailing in both national polls and key battleground states, the president can ill afford more incidents that generate negative headlines and risk alienating any service members, veterans or other military supporters.

“If the polls can be believed, he’s in the stop-the-bleeding phase of the operation,” said Peter Feaver, a political science professor at Duke University who was a White House adviser to former President George W. Bush. “And he keeps nicking himself, sometimes with paper cuts, sometimes with deeper slices. But whatever it is, it's not the thing that he needs.”

The latest self-inflicted wound came when Trump said he thinks an event at the White House that honored families of slain service members could be the source of his COVID-19 infection.

“I figured there would be a chance that I would catch it,” Trump said in a phone interview with Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo on Thursday. “Sometimes I'd be with, in groups of, for instance, Gold Star families. I met with Gold Star families. I didn't want to cancel that. But they all came in, and they all talked about their son and daughter and father.”

“And I can't back up, Maria, and say, ‘Give me room. I want room. Give me 12 feet. Stay 12 feet away when you talk.’ They come within an inch of my face sometimes,” he added.

“They want to hug me, and they want to kiss me. And they do. And frankly, I'm not telling them to back up. I'm not doing it. But I did say it's like — it's obviously dangerous. It's a dangerous thing I guess if you go by the COVID thing,” he said.

Trump appeared to be alluding to a Sept. 27 event at the White House for Gold Star families. One person who was at that event is known to have since tested positive for the virus: Coast Guard Vice Commandant Adm. Charles Ray.
ADVERTISEMENT

None of the Gold Star families are known to have since tested positive as of Friday.

Doctors have not disclosed how or when Trump may have gotten the virus, and White House officials have repeatedly refused to answer questions on when his last negative coronavirus test was.

“Considering it has been 13 days since the event, all Gold Star family are all doing well and exhibit no symptoms of COVID-19,” Timothy Davis, president and chief executive of the Greatest Generations Foundation, a nonprofit that helped families attend the event, said in a statement.

All Gold Star family attendees were tested by the White House medical team before entering the building and tested negative, he added.

The White House has sought to clean up Trump’s comments. Communications director Alyssa Farah told reporters he was not blaming Gold Star families for his infection but rather laying out a timeline of events within the period in which he might have been exposed.

“His point was merely that in the time frame that he was potentially exposed, there were a number of different venues he'd been at and individuals he had interacted with that it could have come from — and by no means are blaming anyone who was present,” Farah said. “And we did take a lot of precautions for that event. So based on contact tracing, the data we have, we don't think it arose from that event."

But Trump did not call out any other recent event specifically, such as the Sept. 26 White House ceremony where he announced his latest Supreme Court nominee. Dozens of attendees and their contacts have tested positive for COVID-19 since that event, which top infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci referred to as a “superspreader” Friday.

Nor was it the first time Trump appeared to blame military-connected individuals for the White House outbreak.

After close aide Hope Hicks tested positive at the beginning of the month, Trump told Fox News’s Sean Hannity that “it’s very, very hard when you are with people from the military or from law enforcement.”

“And they come over to you, and they — they want to hug you, and they want to kiss you because we really have done a good job for them. And you get close, and things happen,” he said.

After Trump’s Gold Star families comments, congressional Democrats pounced.

“Can you believe that he would say such a thing?” Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) asked at her weekly press conference.

The top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, meanwhile, called the remarks “a shocking statement even for this president.”

“Instead of casting aspersions on the families of the fallen for infecting him, President Trump should be transparent about his own actions, who he met with and when, and release detailed medical information including a timeline and do some real contact tracing to help stop the spread,” Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) said in a statement. “Stop blaming, deflecting and denying, Mr. President, and start leading.”

Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), an Army veteran who lost both her legs when her helicopter was shot down in Iraq, tweeted that Trump “has no shame,” while Marine veteran Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) tweeted that Trump blaming Gold Star families “when he has been flouting medical advice since day one of the pandemic would be laughable if it weren't so reprehensible.”

“The President who refused to stand up to Putin in defense of our troops is now offloading blame on Gold Star families, who've sacrificed everything for our nation,” Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner (D-Va.) said in his own tweet. “It’s time for this President to show respect for our military & take responsibility for his failed #COVID response.”

Warner appeared to be alluding to an alleged Russian plot to offer the Taliban bounties for killing U.S. and coalition troops in Afghanistan. Reports about the bounties over the summer caused a firestorm for Trump, who has said he never raised the issue in calls with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Trump also faced a scandal last month over allegations first reported by The Atlantic that he called U.S. troops who died in battle “suckers” and “losers.” He has denied the reporting but fanned the flames of that scandal by then accusing Pentagon leaders of deciding to send forces into war to appease defense contractors.

The successive scandals have given the Biden campaign ammunition to attack. Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden hit Trump over the “suckers” and “losers” comments at the first presidential debate, though Trump quickly pivoted to attacking Biden’s son Hunter.

At the vice presidential debate on Wednesday, Biden’s running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), cited all of those scandals — as well as Trump dismissing troops’ brain injuries in Iraq earlier this year as “headaches” and his repeated criticism of the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) for being a prisoner of war — to argue Trump has a “pattern” of disparaging the military. Vice President Pence defended Trump against “slanders” he described as “absurd.”

Trump has weathered controversies over his treatment of the military and veterans before. His criticism of McCain dates back to the 2016 election, and during the same cycle, Trump also feuded with a Gold Star family.

But Trump’s political situation is more precarious now, Feaver said.

“It's hard for anything to penetrate and sink in nowadays,” he said. But the White House “went to some length to try to walk that statement back, clarify what the president meant to say, etc., etc., which they don't bother for many of his other equally offensive comments. And so that tells you that the White House political people understand that this is toxic in a way so that even though it's hard for anything to sink in, it may still matter.”

Remembering Ruben Salazar, pioneer Latino journalist
BY RAUL REYES, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 08/29/20 

© Getty Image

Fifty years ago, journalist Ruben Salazar, 42, set off to cover an anti-war protest in East Los Angeles and never returned.

The march, known as the Chicano Moratorium, drew over 25,000 people on Aug. 29, 1970. It was a largely peaceful gathering until law enforcement moved in, drawn by reports of looting. Then the rally descended into chaos and violence. By the end of the day, hundreds had been arrested and three people were dead, including Salazar. He died after being struck by a canister fired by a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputy.

On the anniversary of his death, Salazar’s legacy deserves to be remembered and celebrated. He was a pioneering Latino journalist whose impact is still felt today. His killing was a seminal moment in the Mexican American civil rights movement. And the issues that he cared about matter now as much as they did half a century ago.
ADVERTISEMENT

Salazar was born in Juarez, Mexico, in 1928 and grew up in El Paso. In an age when opportunities for Latino journalists were extremely limited, he carved out an exceptional career. He was a foreign correspondent and one of the first Latino reporters at the Los Angeles Times. He interviewed President Eisenhower, Cesar Chavez, and Robert F. Kennedy. Later he became news director for a Spanish-language television station, while continuing as a columnist for the L.A. Times. He illuminated the lives of Latinos for his readers, explaining in a 1970 column that “A Chicano is a Mexican-American with a non-Anglo image of himself.”

The circumstances around Salazar’s death have long been viewed as suspicious among activists of his generation. Prior to his death, he had confided to his friends that he was worried about being targeted by law enforcement. But the 1970 coroner’s inquest did not result in any criminal charges against the deputy who killed him, and a 2011 review of Salazar’s case by an independent watchdog agency found that Salazar’s killing was neither intentional nor targeted.

Fast-forward 50 years: Police violence against Latinos continues to be a significant problem. Research from the Washington Post has found that, since 2015, Latinos are the second-highest demographic killed by police, after African Americans. Just this year, James Porter Garcia, 28, was killed by Phoenix police in July as he sat in a parked car; Andres Guardado, 18, was fatally shot in the back by a Los Angeles County Sheriff‘s deputy in June; and Carlos Ingram Lopez, 27, died while being pinned down by police officers in Tucson in April. Like Salazar’s case, none of these incidents has received sustained national attention. So Latinos have much to learn from the Black Lives Matter movement about amplifying the need for justice in our communities.

Salazar forged his career before the concept of “diversity” existed. Yet even as the U.S. Latino population has grown to nearly one-in-five Americans, Latinos remain under-represented in the media. A 2018 Pew Center report found that newsrooms were 77 percent white. Ironically, the lack of Latino representation continues to be an issue at the L.A. Times, where Salazar once worked. In July, a caucus of Latino employees wrote an open letter to management calling for better community coverage and representation.

Salazar’s death is also relevant because Americans are living under an administration that is generally hostile to Latinos, immigrants, and journalists. The ideals that Salazar believed in, like freedom of the press, seem under siege. Consider that Latinos were among the many journalists who reported experiencing excessive police force this summer while covering the George Floyd protests. Or that President Trump has labelled the news media “the enemy of the American people.”

True, Salazar likely would never have seen himself as a martyr for a cause. He was not a political figure or an activist. But his reporting on immigration, racial profiling, and Latino identity was ahead of his time. He achieved success despite his facing discrimination. His death led to the formation of a professional organization for Latino reporters in California, which paved the way for the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. It’s no wonder that he was known as la voz de la Raza, the voice of the people.

Ruben Salazar was dedicated to seeking the truth and to accurately depicting the Mexican American experience. His story is a reminder of how far Latinos have come in the struggle for visibility and justice – and how far our community still has to go.

Raul A. Reyes is an immigration attorney and member of the USA Today Board of Contributors. A graduate of Harvard University and Columbia Law School, he is also a contributor to NBCNews.com and CNN Opinion. You can follow him on Twitter at @RaulAReyes, Instagram: raulareyes1.

THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL

Kaepernick: Abolish police, prisons
BY JOSEPH CHOI - 10/11/20 

© Getty Images

Former NFL player Colin Kaepernick called for the abolition of police and prison systems in a new essay, abandoning his former demands for reform as ineffective and incapable of solving the issues of police brutality and high incarceration rates in the U.S.

The essay is part of a new series called "Abolition for the People" which is created through a partnership with Kaepernick Publishing and "LEVEL", a publication by Medium that concentrates on the lives of Black and Brown men. Kaepernick's essay is the first of 30 that will be published in the next few weeks.

In his piece, "The Demand for Abolition," Kaepernick argues that institutions of justice should concentrate more on the well-being of people instead of controlling them. He laments the lack of progress and the continued killing of unarmed black people by the police that has occurred since he began protesting in 2015.

Kaepernick said reform was unviable during the ongoing discourse.

"Ultimately, I realized that seeking reform would make me an active participant in reforming, reshaping, and rebranding institutional white supremacy, oppression, and death," Kaepernick wrote.

"To be clear, the abolition of these institutions is not the absence of accountability but rather the establishment of transformative and restorative processes that are not rooted in punitive practices," he writes. "By abolishing policing and prisons, not only can we eliminate white supremacist establishments, but we can create space for budgets to be reinvested directly into communities to address mental health needs, homelessness and houselessness, access to education, and job creation as well as community-based methods of accountability."

Police reform and spending has become a central issue in a year filled with protests against police brutality amid a renewed Black Lives Matter movement. In Minneapolis, where George Floyd was killed, the city council vowed to "dismantle" the police department and set up a "transformative new model of public safety" in its place.

Kaepernick first made national news when he kneeled during the national anthem in 2015 to protest police brutality against Black people in the U.S. At the time he was a quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, though he has gone unsigned since 2015. His silent protest began a nationwide trend of players kneeling during the national anthem.

These acts of protest have been become highly divisive with many calling for players to be kept from playing if they protest. The NFL initially required players to stand or remain in the locker room, but Commissioner Roger Goodell has since said the league was wrong to oppose players' peaceful protests.

Void the police contracts
BY ANDREW KOPPELMAN, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 09/13/20 




© Getty Images

Police unions all over the United States have negotiated contracts that protect officers from discipline for misconduct. The result is that, so long as these deals are in force, cities are stuck with officers who are uncontrollably reckless and violent. But a body of forgotten law from the 19th century shows that states can free themselves from these fetters.

In most large urban departments, the contracts thwart misconduct investigations by protecting officers from being interrogated immediately after an incident. Often the officer is given all the information that the questioners have before the interrogation, including any videos, making it easier to lie about what happened. Complaints are voided unless they are filed within a very short time. Anonymous complaints are prohibited. Investigations that are not concluded quickly are automatically ended. They are not recorded in the officer’s personnel file.

In Chicago, Officer Jason Van Dyke had more than 20 complaints against him, but the union contract prohibited the city from placing them in his file. So, his pattern of bad behavior went unnoticed until he shot Laquan McDonald 16 times. Van Dyke claimed self-defense, asserting that McDonald threatened him with a knife. No action was taken until the public release of a video showing that Van Dyke was lying and that he started shooting while McDonald was walking away. Van Dyke was subsequently convicted of second-degree murder. Absent the union contract, he might have been taken off duty before he could kill anyone. Better discipline of the worst officers would have a huge effect: The 1 percent of officers who have the largest number of civilian allegations against them generate almost five times the number of payouts and over four times the total damage payouts in civil rights litigation as police as a whole.

Discipline of police officers should not be a subject of collective bargaining. Yet the contracts are there, and some of them will not be revisited for years to come. They are the reason why unionized police are more likely to engage in violent misconduct and more likely to kill civilians, particularly nonwhite ones. The foolish concessions of past governments protect that small minority of cops who are as bad as Van Dyke.

America has faced this kind of problem before. When that happened, the Supreme Court empowered states to escape contracts that threatened the public — and that power still exists.

In the early 19th century, the nation experienced a religious revival. Its most momentous consequence was the new antislavery movement that led to the Civil War. But it also targeted other moral failings, notably gambling.

States had for many years funded public works by contracting with private corporations to run lotteries, typically for a term of years or until a given sum of money had been raised. By the late 1820s, there were hundreds of such grants.

The Constitution prohibits states from “impairing the obligation of contracts.” In the 19th century, the Supreme Court cited the Contracts Clause in nearly half of the cases in which it struck down state laws. No agreement between a legislature and a private entity could be undone. In one notable case, a legislature could not reverse a corrupt land deal enacted by its predecessor.

So, states that wanted to abolish gambling had their hands tied. Courts held that opponents of lotteries had to wait until the existing grants expired.

Eventually, however, the courts took a different view, one that remains the law today. In 1879, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a state law rescinding a 25-year grant of the right to operate a lottery. It declared, in a decision that has never been overruled:

“No legislature can bargain away the public health or the public morals. . . . Government is organized with a view to their preservation, and cannot divest itself of the power to provide for them. For this purpose the largest legislative discretion is allowed, and the discretion cannot be parted with any more than the power itself.” The agencies of government “can govern according to their discretion . . . but they cannot give away nor sell the discretion of those that are to come after them.”

Kaepernick: Abolish police, prisons

If states can abolish lotteries, even when past legislatures have contracted away that right, then they must have the power to abolish contractual terms that endanger the safety of their citizens. The problem might be addressed by a simple state law declaring that discipline of police officers may not be a subject of collective bargaining, and that any contractual limitation on such discipline is void as against public policy. There are notorious political obstacles to reform, but in some states, the police unions will be less powerful at the state level than when dealing with individual cities.

Discussions of police misconduct today tend to focus on broad remedies such as abolishing qualified immunity or criminal prosecution of officers. But before reaching for this heavy artillery – tools that are only likely to have any effect in the most egregious cases, leaving most police misconduct untouched – states should consider reclaiming their power of ordinary supervision, the capacity to get rid of employees who cannot do their jobs competently and safely.

Andrew Koppelman, John Paul Stevens Professor of Law at Northwestern University, is the author of “Gay Rights vs. Religious Liberty? The Unnecessary Conflict” (Oxford University Press, 2020).

A Black man is suing a Texas city for $1 million after he was tied to police on horseback during an arrest

Taylor Ardrey, INSIDER•October 11, 2020

Galveston police officer Amanda Smith secures Donald Neely with a rope after she and officer Patrick Brosch arrested the homeless man for criminal trespass in Galveston, Texas, U.S. August 3, 2019, in a still image from video released October 2, 2019. Galveston Police Department/Handout via REUTERS

A Black man is suing Galveston, Texas for $1 million following his 2019 arrest where he was led by city police officers on a rope as they were riding horseback.

Donald Neely's lawsuit said the incident resulted in "embarrassment, humiliation, and fear," according to KPRC.

Galveston Police Department's Police Chief Vernon L. Hale apologized after the arrest saying his "officers showed poor judgment in this instance and could have waited for a transport unit at the location of the arrest."

A homeless Black man whose handcuffs were attached to a rope while police were riding on horseback during an arrest last year is suing Galveston, Texas for $1million, according to KPRC.

According to his lawsuit, Donald Neely was arrested for trespassing in August of last year and said the incident resulted in "embarrassment, humiliation, and fear," KPRC reported.

"Neely felt as though he was put on display as slaves once were," the lawsuit said. "He suffered from fear because one of the horses was acting dangerously, putting Neely in fear of being drug down the street by a run-away horse."

Following Neely's 2019 arrest, the Galveston Police Department's Police Chief Vernon L. Hale issued an apology for how the situation was handled by officers P. Brosch and A. Smith.

"First and foremost I must apologize to Mister Neely for the unnecessary embarrassment. Although this is a trained technique and best practice in some scenarios, I believe our officers showed poor judgment in this instance and could have waited for a transport unit at the location of the arrest. My officers did not have any malicious intent at the time of the arrest, but we have immediately changed the policy to prevent the use of this technique and will review all mounted training and procedures for more appropriate methods," Chief Hale said in a 2019 press release.

Footage of the incident circulated on social media and sparked outrage and criticism about the way Neely— who was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia when he was young— was escorted by the officers.
—ABC13 Houston (@abc13houston) October 11, 2020

"Especially being African-American. Not that we lived in that day and time, but we all studied. We know the history, and to think in 2019 they saw fit to treat him like they would have treated us back then, it's just very disturbing," Neely's sister-in-law told KTRK-TV.

Neely wants a trial by jury for his case, according to ABC News.

Read the original article on Insider

Black man sues over incident in viral video showing police on horse leading him by rope
BY JOHN BOWDEN - 10/11/20

© Storyful

A Black man from Galveston, Texas, is suing city officials after two officers on horseback used a rope to lead him down the street.

Video that went viral in August showed 43-year-old Donald Neely handcuffed being led by two officers with the Galveston Police Department who had arrested Neely for criminal trespassing. 

The lawsuit obtained by ABC News said that Neely "suffered from handcuff abrasions, suffered from the heat, and suffered from embarrassment, humiliation and fear as he was led by rope and mounted officers down the city street" during his arrest.

The suit also says officers should have realized that Neely "being led with a rope and by mounted officers down a city street as though he was a slave, would find this contact offensive."

The city's police chief apologized for the spectacle at the time and pledged to no longer use mounted officers to transport arrested persons.

“Although this is a trained technique and best practice in some scenarios, I believe our officers showed poor judgment in this instance and could have waited for a transport unit at the location of the arrest,” the city's police chief said in a statement at the time.

“My officers did not have any malicious intent at the time of the arrest, but we have immediately changed the policy to prevent the use of this technique and will review all mounted training and procedures for more appropriate methods,” he added.

Neely's sister sharply criticized the manner of her brother's arrest in an interview with The New York Times in August, explaining that Neely battled homelessness and mental illness.

“They don’t care to know the whole story,” Taranette Neely said at the time. “You're a criminal in their eyes. You’ll always be a criminal. Ain’t no redemption for you. You’re trash. And that’s how they treated him.”

NUTTY AMERICANS
One-third of Americans believe the coronavirus was sent by God, poll finds

Most Americans believe the coronavirus crisis has a lesson to teach humanity.

BELEIVE IN SCIENCE NOT RELIGON

By Joseph Guzman | Oct. 9, 2020 THE HILL

Story at a glance

86 percent of U.S. adults said they believe there is a lesson for society to learn from the pandemic.

35 percent said they believe the lesson was sent by God.

The poll was conducted among more than 10,000 U.S. adults from July 13-19.

Life has gone sideways for millions of Americans due to the coronavirus pandemic. Businesses and schools have closed, many are unemployed and more than 212,000 people in the U.S. have died from COVID-19.

As the country continues to grapple with the health crisis, the majority of Americans believe there is some kind of lesson to be learned from the tragedy.

Our country is in a historic fight against the Coronavirus. Add Changing America to your Facebook or Twitter feed to stay on top of the news.

A Pew Research Center Survey conducted in July found that 86 percent of U.S. adults said they believe there is a lesson for humanity to learn from the pandemic. More than one third, 35 percent, said they believe the lessons were sent by God, compared to 37 percent who disagree with that claim.

Thirteen percent of respondents said they didn’t believe in God or believe there was a lesson to be learned from the coronavirus crisis.

The poll was conducted among more than 10,000 U.S. adults from July 13-19, with 3,700 who gave qualitative responses about what kind of lessons could be learned from the pandemic.

The responses included lessons about God and religion, government and politics, and priorities with respect to relationships with others.

“God is telling us that we need to change our ways or he will send a virus that will make us be alone so that we have time to think about how we live our lives. We all need to live as one, we are all children of God,” a 58-year-old man told Pew Research Center.

Other respondents said the virus has revealed where society has fallen short in confronting issues like racism, climate change and economic inequality.

“Capitalism has caused us to develop an unsustainable and inhumane system,” a 30-year-old man told Pew. “We should take this opportunity to restructure our society so that people can spend more time with family and so that there are appropriate safety nets in place to protect people when disaster strikes.”

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT CORONAVIRUS RIGHT NOW

US SENATOR TOOK OFF MASK REPEATEDLY ON FLIGHT. HE CHAIRS COMMITTEE THAT OVERSEES AIRLINE SAFETY

HERE ARE THE EFFECTS THE STEROID DEXAMETHASONE COULD BE HAVING ON TRUMP

FAUCI SAYS IT'S ‘OBVIOUS’ HE HASN’T BEEN INVOLVED IN TRUMP’S CARE

FAUCI WARNS TRUMP’S RECOVERY COULD GO INTO REVERSAL

THE WHITE HOUSE DECLINED THE CDC’S OFFERS TO HELP CONTACT TRACE THE ADMINISTRATION’S CORONAVIRUS OUTBREAK


Published on Oct 09, 2020

The Psychology of Crowds, Protests, and Riots
Recent findings on crowd psychology are reviewed.

Posted Oct 11, 2020


Source: pixabay/RJA1988
George Floyd protests

In an article published in the October 2020 issue of Current Opinion in Psychology, John Drury of the University of Sussex reviews recent findings on the psychology of crowds. The present article will be a selective review of these findings, as they relate to the psychology of protests and riots.

Recent events have increased public interest in the psychology of protests and riots:

This summer, we saw protests and demonstrations against police brutality toward African-Americans and other minorities.

The protests began after the death of an African-American man named George Floyd. Floyd died after a Caucasian police officer, Derek Chauvin, appeared to kneel on his neck for a long time while arresting him. The video of the incident, which shows Floyd repeatedly saying he cannot breathe, caused public outrage.

The protests turned violent in some places, resulting in riots and looting. Meanwhile, as the police and the military tried to control the crowds, more instances of police brutality were caught on tape.

But violent protests have not been limited to racial justice movements. For instance, anti-mask protests occurred frequently early during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown orders. Most recently, after new lockdown orders in New York, Brooklyn’s Orthodox Jews have been protesting and clashing with the police.

Regardless of the cause, an important question regarding riots and protests is what happens to people, on a psychological level, when they join protest movements? How do protest groups influence the identity of individuals? And what happens when people engage in violent protest or confront the police?

To answer some of these questions, let us examine a model of how conflicts between crowds and the police start and escalate.

Crowd psychology: The elaborated social identity model

According to the elaborated social identity model, conflicts between the crowd and the police emerge when the following two conditions are met:

Asymmetrical categorical representations: Both the crowd and the police view their own actions as legitimate and the actions of the other as illegitimate.
Asymmetrical power relations: The police are able to impose their view of what is legitimate on crowd participants (e.g., through superior technology or organization).

The model also suggests when actions by the police are perceived as treating all members of the crowd in the same negative way, particularly if these actions are seen as illegitimate (e.g., police brutality), the result is an extension of the sense of collective identity in the crowd. In other words, this unifies the previously heterogeneous crowd in their opposition to the police.article continues after advertisement

This is associated with a number of psychological changes in crowd participants.

Crowd identity changes

One change concerns the content of identity. For instance, if “moderates” who are protesting racial injustice are seen as “radicals” by the police and the subject of police brutality, then moderates might see themselves as radicals as well. When they do, they might begin to consider true radicals (e.g., those trying to provoke the police) as part of their larger group too. This results in an expansion of group boundaries.

People in this bigger group might experience greater empowerment too, especially if there is a sense that members can rely on mutual support as they face the police force, now the enemy.

When the collective identity changes, as above, sometimes the group’s goals change too. If the initial goal was protesting against racism or police brutality, the new aim might become overpowering the police in order to defend the right to protest. In this way, legitimacy may also be redefined, and crowd members beginning to view their own violent actions as legitimate forms of self-defense.

Predicting riots

So, it seems the actions and reactions of the crowd and the police could quickly escalate to dangerous levels and give rise to rioting.

A good predictor of rioting in one location, Drury observes, is rioting elsewhere. This is because of two different mechanisms, involving strategy and collecting identity.


Source: Pixabay/metaliza01

WHEN THESE GUYS SHOW UP A RIOT BREAKS OUT

One way people, including groups, influence each other involves collective identity—who we are and what we should do. So, when rioting is taking place elsewhere, it serves as a signal that rioting behavior is acceptable by other people who share the same collective identity.

Another method involves rioting as a strategy and is related to the perceived vulnerability of the police. Since rioting is usually prevented by the police, the fact that a riot is taking place somewhere can be seen as a signal that the police are weak.

Long-term influence of protests and riots on identity

Sometimes the identity changes people experience after participating in protests have long-term consequences. Drury notes these changes may be objective (e.g., changes to family and marital status, consumer behavior, work-life balance) and/or subjective (e.g., legitimacy, radicalization, empowerment, self-esteem).

For example, previous research has shown that when compared with non-protesters, people who participated in the 1960s anti-war protests had fewer children and were overall less likely to have children. Activism affects one’s choice of careers as well. In general, after participating in protests, people are more likely to “choose jobs in the knowledge, social and creative area.”

A positive view of crowd psychology

Let me end with some positive aspects of crowd psychology.

Despite the negative consequences of riots and looting, and the general unease regarding any sort of crowds during the current COVID-19 epidemic, the psychology of protests and crowds also suggests mass gatherings—be they to protest injustice, to express joy (e.g., after a game), or to gather for religious purposes (e.g., the Hajj)—could have positive effects.article continues after advertisement

In fact, participating in mass gatherings can be associated with powerful collective emotions, such as self-confidence and pride. As research on religious mass gatherings has shown, positive emotions may be experienced due to a sense of recognition of one’s views, validation of one’s values, and a sense of solidarity in giving and receiving support.


About the Author

Arash Emamzadeh attended the University of British Columbia in Canada, where he studied genetics and psychology. He has also done graduate work in clinical psychology and neuropsychology in U.S.

CRISPR researchers, awarded the Nobel Prize, say the technology could defeat coronavirus

The Nobel Prize was given to scientists who discovered a tool that helps us precisely alter DNA


Artists renderings of COVID spores and CRISPR (Photo illustration by Salon/Getty Images)

MATTHEW ROZSA OCTOBER 11, 2020 

Earlier this week, the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to a pair of scientists who discovered a genetic technology that can alter DNA — and, perhaps, help researchers treat COVID-19 and other future diseases.

The scientists who discovered this technology, known as the CRISPR/Cas9 genetic scissors (or CRISPR for short — clusters of regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats), are Dr. Emmanuelle Charpentier from the Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens in Berlin, and Dr. Jennifer A. Doudna from the University of California, Berkeley. In an interview with TechCrunch last month, Doudna explained that their technology could prove essential in fighting both the novel coronavirus and other dangerous microorganisms.

"It's really interesting to think about the ability to program CRISPR to be detecting not only the current coronavirus, but also other viruses," Doudna told Tech Crunch in September. "I don't think any of us think that, you know, viral pandemics are going away — I think this current pandemic is a call to arms, and we have to make sure that scientifically, we're ready for the next attack by a new virus."

CRISPR has become a household acronym, famous because of its potential to easily edit any organism's genome. CRISPR technology can and has been used to modify crops into genetically modified organisms (GMOs), correct genetic disorders and prevent or treat diseases.

CRISPR works by using a version of the protein Cas9 (one that has been complexed with a synthetic guide RNA) as a pair of molecular scissors, capable of "cutting" strands of DNA at pre-specified locations and adding new genes, removing existing ones or both. 

The award of the Nobel Prize to CRISPR researchers symbolizes its tremendous promise to medicine. Indeed, scientists are already trying to use this technology to treat people with COVID-19. Scientists at Stanford University and the Molecular Foundry were working on using CRISPR technology to fight influenza when, in January, they decided to pivot toward trying to fight the novel coronavirus. Those scientists developed a technique known as PAC-MAN, or Prophylactic Antiviral CRISPR in human cells. Their next step is to try to synthesize PAC-MAN with other gene altering technologies and use that on animals. If that works, they will then try to test this technology on people, in the hope of more effectively treating those whose novel coronavirus infections developed into the COVID-19 disease.

CRISPR technology was developed after scientists learned how bacteria and archaea (single-celled organisms that do not have a nucleus) use CRISPR-derived RNA and a variety of Cas proteins to demolish the DNA of viruses and other foreign invaders. In 2017, a team of scientists led by researchers at the University of Tokyo managed to show CRISPR in action for the first time. Yet knowledge of CRISPR was taken one step further when Charpentier was studying a deadly bacteria called Streptococcus pyogenes and discovered tracrRNA, a previously unknown molecule that the bacteria used to slice up DNA.



After publishing her discovery in 2011, Charpentier began working with Doudna to both recreate this genetic manipulation tool and simplify its molecular structure so that it can be more easily used by human beings. Finally they figured out how to use the genetic scissors to alter not just virus DNA, but DNA molecules from any predetermined site.
Advertisement:

Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health and one of the first people to decode the human genome, expressed great satisfaction at Charpentier's and Doudna's recognition.

"This technology has utterly transformed the way we do research in basic science," Collins told The New York Times. "I am thrilled to see Crispr-Cas getting the recognition we have all been waiting for, and seeing two women being recognized as Nobel Laureates."

Trump reportedly wanting Superman t-shirt for release decried
Donald Trump reportedly wanting to wear a Superman t-shirt for his release from the hospital after receiving treatment for Covid-19 is analyzed by former Republican National Committee Chairman, Michael Steele.Oct. 11, 2020  AM JOY

Trump Wanted to ‘Appear Frail’ Before Ripping Shirt to Reveal Superman Logo 
By Emily Bicks Oct 10, 2020 

Getty/AmazonTrump wanted to 'appear frail' before ripping open shirt to reveal the Superman logo while exiting Walter Reed.

President Donald Trump spoke publicly on October 10 for the first time since testing positive for the coronavirus. A mere five days since the president was discharged from Walter Reed Medical Center, Trump spoke from the Blue Room balcony to a crowd of his supporters on the South Lawn.

While an energetic, albeit “markedly brief” speech from The White House was sure to bring media attention, The New York Times reported on Saturday that Trump wanted to pull a huge “stunt” when he first left the hospital on Monday.

According to Maggie Haberman and Annie Karni, the president wanted to trick viewers, recreating a scene reminiscent of Gene Wilder’s infamous entrance as Willy Wonka in the original 1971 film. They wrote:

“In several phone calls last weekend from the presidential suite at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Mr. Trump shared an idea he was considering: When he left the hospital, he wanted to appear frail at first when people saw him, according to people with knowledge of the conversations. But underneath his button-down dress shirt, he would wear a Superman T-shirt, which he would reveal as a symbol of strength when he ripped open the top layer. He ultimately did not go ahead with the stunt.”

President Trump 'thinks he's Superman'Sky News host Peter Gleeson says Donald Trump "thinks he's Superman" and he wouldn't write the US president off ahead of the upcoming election in November. It comes as President Trump recently returned to the White House after just three days in the Walter Reed National Military Medical Centre following a positive coronavirus test. Mr…2020-10-06T05:29:36Z

Even though Trump did not rip off his shirt ala the fictional character Clark Kent in Superman, the 74-year-old president has been called out for trying to appear like Superman by Australia Sky News host Peter Gleeson. New York Times reporter Thomas L. Friedman wrote an op-ed entitled, “Trump’s not Superman. He’s Superspeader.”

The Hills’s op-ed writer Sharyl Attkinson published a very similar piece on October 7, “Trump: From ‘super spreader’ to Superman?” After The New York Times article was published on Saturday, “Willy Wonka” started trending nationally under the politics tab on Twitter.


you know I always imagined that if willy wonka was trending on twitter because of me it'd be for a completely different reason than this

— 🏳️‍⚧️ lady aHEXis 🏳️‍⚧️ (@StebMcDreb) October 10, 2020



Many of Trump’s supporters, however, do see the president’s quick return to The White House as being like Superman. There’s even a shirt of him appearing as Clark Kent available for sale on Amazon.
Trump’s Hoarse Voice ‘Gave Out’ During Call With Sean Hannity on October 8


Paging Dr. Conley, Trump is not asymptomatic.
His voice is extremely hoarse and crackles.#TrumpIsNotWell. #TrumpVirus https://t.co/uozKTmfEHM

— SisterhoodTribe555🌈⚖️ (@SisterhoodTribe) October 9, 2020



On October 5, Trump made his first call into Fox News since his hospitalization, and while speaking with Sean Hannity, he did not sound like a man with superhero powers. At one point in the conversation, his hoarse voice ‘gave out’ entirely, Vox journalist Aaron Rupar tweeted. Trump was talking about “oscillating” his mic during his debates with Hillary Clinton in 2016 when his voice grew increasingly raspy and he had to pause to clear his throat.


Yikes. Trump's voice is extremely hoarse and at one point gave out. pic.twitter.com/kf0gwNyPCI

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 9, 2020



During the conversation, Trump refused to answer when he last tested positive for COVID-19 but said he planned on attending his scheduled rally in Florida on Saturday night, along with Sunday night’s rally in Pennsylvania. “I feel so good,” Trump told Hannity. But he again struggled not to cough while discussing absentee ballots.

On Thursday, the president’s physician Sean P. Conley put out a statement that Trump “has completed his course of therapy for COVID-19,” and that he will be able to “return to public engagements” on Saturday.


In an interview when he repeatedly paused to cough or catch his breath, Trump says he wants to resume campaign travel in days and won’t say when he’s been tested. Trump has not been seen independently in person since returning from the hospital on Monday night.

— Kevin Liptak (@Kevinliptakcnn) October 9, 2020



The CDC states that people infected with COVID-19 need to wait 10 days after their symptoms first appeared, be fever-free for 24 hours with no medication and show improvement in symptoms before safely being around other people.

MSNBC anchor Chris Hayes remains wary of Conley’s reports. After hearing Trump’s call with Hannity, he tweeted, “I don’t think at this point there is any reason to give face value credence to the White House or president’s doctors’ pronouncements about either the timeline of his illness or his current status.”
Trump Appeared to Have Trouble Breathing Outside the White House, Causing Speculation About the President’s Health


Coronavirus in Chief, Trump takes off mask as he returns to WH. pic.twitter.com/ukCyhU1Nv0

— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) October 5, 2020


Trump was discharged from the hospital on Monday. He tweeted, “I will be leaving the great Walter Reed Medical Center today at 6:30 P.M. Feeling really good! Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life. … I feel better than I did 20 years ago!”

The president also said his illness would not derail his campaign efforts. He tweeted, “Will be back on the Campaign Trail soon!!! The Fake News only shows the Fake Polls.”


This is quite the interesting question. After a slew of Tweets this morning…he hasn't been seen since he could barely breathe on the balcony of the #WhiteHouse. So… #WhereIsTrump ? https://t.co/AG376fSAMn

— Blue Wave Commentary #Resist #VoteBlue (@charleyw) October 7, 2020



Aside from concern for the safety and wellbeing of White House staffers with Trump’s return, Twitter users commented on how Trump appeared to have trouble breathing after removing his mask. One person tweeted, “Closeup video of trump on the balcony clearly shows that he is still having difficulty breathing.”


Did anyone else take note that @realDonaldTrump was struggling to breath when he got to the top of the @WH stairs? That’s why he stood there for so long. He was struggling.

— Cathy Rosen (@rockinrosen) October 5, 2020



Numerous people on Twitter commented on Trump’s breathing after he walked up the White House steps. One person tweeted, “I know what it’s like not to be able to breath. More asthma attacks than I can count. When I watch the tape of Trump getting back to the White House…I am willing to bet he is still having breathing issues & will be back at Walter Reed shortly. Can’t believe a word he says.”

Trump claims in COVID interview he’s taking ‘strong look’ at existence of UFOs

Published on October 11, 2020 By David Edwards

Donald and Melania Trump observe an eclipse (screen grab)

A Fox News interview with President Donald Trump ended on an odd noted on Sunday after the host asked if the president was aware of unidentified flying objects (UFOs).

The interview, which had largely focused on Trump’s COVID-19 diagnosis, took a strange turn with just seconds to go.

“I’ve got to ask you this final question,” Fox News host Maria Bartiromo announced. “Can you explain why the Department of Defense has set up a UFO task force?”

“Mr. President, as we wrap up here, are there UFOs?” she wondered.

“Well, I’m going to have to check on that,” Trump replied. “I mean, I’ve heard that. I heard that two days ago. So I’ll check on that. I’ll take a good strong look at that.”

Earlier in the interview, Trump claimed that he is “immune” from COVID-19 for an unknown amount of time.

Watch the video below from Fox News.

Trump uses Columbus Day proclamation to attack ‘radical activists’ for trying to destroy his legacy


Published on October 11, 2020 By Sarah K. Burris

Donald Trump during CNN debate (Photo: Screen capture via video)


President Donald Trump issued a proclamation for “Columbus Day,” an antiquated holiday that still remains among some states in the U.S. that unaware of history.

“Sadly, in recent years, radical activists have sought to undermine Christopher Columbus’s legacy. These extremists seek to replace discussion of his vast contributions with talk of failings, his discoveries with atrocities, and his achievements with transgressions,” the proclamation says.

Trump used the proclamation to attack people he claims are trying to destroy the legacy of the man who never actually “discovered” the Americas to begin with.

Since archeology has advanced and experts studied the landing sites in the Americas and global texts that were written, it was found that the true credit goes to millions of native people who crossed over the Bering Land Bridge between what is now Russia and Alaska 13,000 or more years ago. Over thousands of years, those people ultimately populated the Americas.

Hundreds of years prior to Columbus, a Norse explorer from Iceland known as Leif Erikson is thought to have first set foot on the Americas in AD 1000. He called it Vinland, and the tales were written about in The Saga of Erik the Red and the Saga of the Greenlanders in 1200, centuries before Columbus was even born.

Columbus also wasn’t the first European to “discover” the Americas. Merchant Bjarni Herjólfsson claimed to have sighted the land west of Greenland in 986.

Trump’s White House has a horrendous record when it comes to science, however. In the past year, they’ve opted to trust ill-equipped doctors and X-ray experts on the coronavirus instead of virologists like Dr. Anthony Fauci. Ignoring the discoveries made by archaeologists over the past 100 years

Trump’s proclamation seems to want to replace the Americas’ actual history with the white-washed version and attack anyone who seeks to teach the failings, atrocities, and transgressions of the Columbus voyage noted reporter Jennifer Bendery. She tweeted Sunday that the failings, atrocities and transgressions are part of America’s history too, despite being ignored by Trump.

Here's a snippet from Trump's Proclamation for Columbus Day 2020. He says "radical activists" are trying to ruin Columbus' legacy by talking about his atrocities and that we must not "consent to such a bleak view of our history."
Except… Columbus' atrocities are our history? pic.twitter.com/QAOcS6UtiK
— Jennifer Bendery (@jbendery) October 12, 2020

Columbus, who was Italian, is still heralded by Italians, but it wasn’t Italy that funded his mission to the Americas. It was the Catholic Monarchs and ultimately King Ferdinand and Isabella who ultimately made the mission happen.

There are hundreds of other Italian Americans who have made outstanding contributions to American culture over the past 200 years, which could be held up as a link between the two countries.

Proclamation on Columbus Day, 2020
Issued on: October 9, 2020

More than 500 years ago, Christopher Columbus’s intrepid voyage to the New World ushered in a new era of exploration and discovery. His travels led to European contact with the Americas and, a century later, the first settlements on the shores of the modern day United States. Today, we celebrate Columbus Day to commemorate the great Italian who opened a new chapter in world history and to appreciate his enduring significance to the Western Hemisphere.

When Christopher Columbus and his crew sailed across the Atlantic Ocean on the Niña, Pinta, and Santa María it marked the beginning of a new era in human history. For Italian Americans, Christopher Columbus represents one of the first of many immeasurable contributions of Italy to American history. As a native of Genoa, Columbus inspired early immigrants to carry forth their rich Italian heritage to the New World. Today, the United States benefits from the warmth and generosity of nearly 17 million Italian Americans, whose love of family and country strengthen the fabric of our Nation. For our beautiful Italian American communities — and Americans of every background –Columbus remains a legendary figure.

Sadly, in recent years, radical activists have sought to undermine Christopher Columbus’s legacy. These extremists seek to replace discussion of his vast contributions with talk of failings, his discoveries with atrocities, and his achievements with transgressions. Rather than learn from our history, this radical ideology and its adherents seek to revise it, deprive it of any splendor, and mark it as inherently sinister. They seek to squash any dissent from their orthodoxy. We must not give in to these tactics or consent to such a bleak view of our history. We must teach future generations about our storied heritage, starting with the protection of monuments to our intrepid heroes like Columbus. This June, I signed an Executive Order to ensure that any person or group destroying or vandalizing a Federal monument, memorial, or statue is prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

I have also taken steps to ensure that we preserve our Nation’s history and promote patriotic education. In July, I signed another Executive Order to build and rebuild monuments to iconic American figures in a National Garden of American Heroes. In September, I announced the creation of the 1776 Commission, which will encourage our educators to teach our children about the miracle of American history and honor our founding. In addition, last month I signed an Executive Order to root out the teaching of racially divisive concepts from the Federal workplace, many of which are grounded in the same type of revisionist history that is trying to erase Christopher Columbus from our national heritage. Together, we must safeguard our history and stop this new wave of iconoclasm by standing against those who spread hate and division.

On this Columbus Day, we embrace the same optimism that led Christopher Columbus to discover the New World. We inherit that optimism, along with the legacy of American heroes who blazed the trails, settled a continent, tamed the wilderness, and built the single-greatest nation the world has ever seen.

In commemoration of Christopher Columbus’s historic voyage, the Congress, by joint resolution of April 30, 1934, modified in 1968 (36 U.S.C. 107), has requested the President proclaim the second Monday of October of each year as “Columbus Day.”

NOW, THEREFORE, I, DONALD J. TRUMP, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim October 12, 2020, as Columbus Day. I call upon the people of the United States to observe this day with appropriate ceremonies and activities. I also direct that the flag of the United States be displayed on all public buildings on the appointed day in honor of our diverse history and all who have contributed to shaping this Nation.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this ninth day of October, in the year of our Lord two thousand twenty, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and forty-fifth.

DONALD J. TRUMP

Wonder Woman's Gal Gadot and Patty Jenkins Will Reteam for Cleopatra Biopic

"Cleopatra is a story I wanted to tell for a very long time," Gal Gadot said

By Eric Todisco October 11, 2020 

Patty Jenkins and Gal Gadot
BIRDIE THOMPSON/ADMEDIA/ZUMA


Gal Gadot is reteaming with Wonder Woman director, Patty Jenkins, for Paramount Picture's upcoming biopic about Cleopatra.


The Jenkins-directed film, starring Gadot, 35, as the Queen of Egypt, will be produced by Atlas Entertainment’s Charles Roven. Gadot will also serve as a producer of the film under Pilot Wave Motion Pictures, according to Deadline, who first reported the news.


"I love embarking on new journeys, I love the excitement of new projects, the thrill of bringing new stories to life," Gadot tweeted on Sunday. "Cleopatra is a story I wanted to tell for a very long time. Can’t be more grateful about this A team!! @PattyJenks @ParamountPics#AtlasEntertainment #LaetaKalogridis."



RELATED: Wonder Woman 1984 Delays Release Again to Christmas Day




I love embarking on new journeys,I love the excitement of new projects, the thrill of bringing new stories to life.Cleopatra is a story I wanted to tell for a very long time.Can’t be more grateful about this A team!! @PattyJenks @ParamountPics #AtlasEntertainment #LaetaKalogridis https://t.co/qLH7vfCaUo— Gal Gadot (@GalGadot) October 11, 2020


The legendary Egyptian queen was most recently played by Elizabeth Taylor in 1963's Cleopatra, which cost 20th Century Fox $31 million and nearly bankrupted the studio. The film went on to win four Academy Awards.


According to Entertainment Weekly, another Cleopatra film, with Angelina Jolie as the titular character, was announced in 2011 and in development at Sony Pictures but never materialized.

Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra
EVERETT


Gadot and Jenkins' highly-anticipated Wonder Woman 1984, a sequel to their hit 2017 film about the DC Comics superhero, is currently set to hit theaters on Christmas Day after most recently being pushed back from its expected Oct. 2 release date.



The shift marked the most recent delay the film has faced since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. It was originally scheduled to hit theaters in early June and then mid-August before it got bumped to October.


"First and foremost let me say how much Gal [Gadot] and I love all our devoted Wonder Woman fans around the world, and your excitement for WW84 couldn't make us happier or more eager for you to see the movie," Jenkins, 49, said of the change in a statement obtained by The Hollywood Reporter.

Gal Gadot in Wonder Woman 1984
CLAY ENOS/ ™ & © DC COMICS


RELATED: Wonder Woman 1984 Director Says Trump Is 'One' of the Influences for Pedro Pascal’s Villain


Jenkins continued, "Because I know how important it is to bring this movie to you on a big screen when all of us can share the experience together, I'm hopeful you won't mind waiting just a little bit longer. With the new date on Christmas Day, we can't wait to spend the holidays with you!"


Wonder Woman 1984 stars Gadot, Chris Pine, Kristen Wiig, Pedro Pascal, Robin Wright and Connie Nielsen.

#QUACKS

These Scientists Have A Controversial Plan For “Herd Immunity” — And The White House Is Listening

For months, a small group of scientists has pushed policies that mainstream health experts say would cause many more COVID-19 deaths. They just got their biggest audience yet.

Stephanie M. LeeBuzzFeed News Reporter
Last updated on October 9, 2020

BuzzFeed News; Drew Angerer / Getty Images

On Monday, as President Donald Trump was urging the world not to fear the virus he was newly infected with, top health officials of his were meeting with a trio of scientists pushing the same belief.

Their highly controversial recommendation to Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and coronavirus task force adviser Scott Atlas: Only “vulnerable” people should be protected from the virus. It should be allowed to spread among everyone else until they achieve “herd” immunity, a tipping point at which the virus fizzles out because enough people are immune.

According to many health experts who weren’t in the room, this is a dangerous proposal to unleash on a population that, by and large, is still susceptible to infection. Aiming for herd immunity would needlessly sicken and kill countless people on top of the more than 210,000 Americans who have already died. It’s also impractical: Many scientists agree that it would be enormously difficult to reach herd immunity without an effective and widely used vaccine.

Nevertheless, the three epidemiologists — Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford University, Martin Kulldorff of Harvard University, and Sunetra Gupta of Oxford University — have been broadcasting their ideas far and wide. Now they’re finding a warm reception at the highest levels of decision-making in the US.


The same day as their meeting with Azar and Atlas, they laid out their argument for what they dubbed “focused protection” in an open letter on a website newly registered to a libertarian think tank, the American Institute for Economic Research. And they touted the plan on Laura Ingraham’s Fox News show.

“Those who are not vulnerable should immediately be allowed to resume life as normal,” read the letter, called the Great Barrington Declaration, which by Friday had been signed by an additional 5,900-plus self-identified “medical and public health scientists,” though at least dozens of those names appear to be fake. The letter called for bringing back in-person teaching, reopening restaurants and businesses, and resuming large gatherings like concerts and sport events, citing “grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of the prevailing COVID-19 policies.”

For months, some of the letter’s authors and a small contingent of other scientists, who also believe that the coronavirus is not deadly enough to justify lockdowns, have been writing op-eds and talking to policymakers across the country. As early as March, a group of them, including Bhattacharya, tried to meet with Trump to warn him against lockdown policies that had not yet even started in most of the US.

At this week’s meeting in Washington, DC, Azar appeared to like what he had heard, as first reported by the Hill. “We heard strong reinforcement of the Trump Administration’s strategy of aggressively protecting the vulnerable while opening schools and the workplace,” he wrote on Twitter.


Also there was Atlas, a Stanford neuroradiologist whose speciality is not infectious diseases or epidemiology. He was the scientists’ “point of contact” for the meeting, according to Politico.

“I do not advocate any ‘strategy’ of achieving herd immunity and have never advised the president to pursue that,” Atlas told BuzzFeed News by email. “To say that was a strategy even suggested at our meeting would be a gross misinterpretation.” He has repeatedly advocated for allowing the virus to spread among healthy people in order to achieve widespread immunity.

“All of my policy recommendations are directly backed by the science, and they are in line with what many of the world's top infectious disease scientists advise,” he wrote, referencing a group of scientists that included Bhattacharya, Kulldorff, and Gupta.

But Gregg Gonsalves, an epidemiologist who specializes in infectious diseases at Yale School of Public Health, said the scientists’ proposal is not out of place with what Trump and his administration are already doing to undermine government scientists, cast doubt on masks and other public health interventions, and generally fail to control a pandemic that has infected more than 7 million Americans.

“It isn’t that they’re reorienting their strategy toward herd immunity — it’s been that all along,” Gonsalves told BuzzFeed News, calling the Great Barrington Declaration “slightly grotesque” and “shocking.” “It goes really, really far in terms of reopening all the institutions that we’ve been trying to manage outbreaks in,” he said. “They go way out on a limb.”


"This claim is quite honestly a fantasy."


Kulldorff said they discussed their proposal with Azar and Atlas for under an hour. But he insisted that he and his colleagues were not pushing a herd immunity “strategy.”

“No matter what strategy is used, we will reach herd immunity sooner or later, just as an airplane will reach the ground one way or another,” Kulldorff said by email. “The key is to minimize the number of death[s] until we reach herd immunity, and that is what the Great Barrington Declaration is about.”

Ravina Kullar, an infectious disease epidemiologist and a spokesperson for the Infectious Diseases Society of America, vehemently disagreed with the scientists’ vision.

“Based on simple math and past experiences and outbreaks, and emerging evidence from this ongoing pandemic, this claim is quite honestly a fantasy,” she said.


Fox News / Via youtube.com
Left to right: Jay Bhattacharya, Sunetra Gupta, and Martin Kulldorff appear on Laura Ingraham’s show on Monday, Oct. 5.

These scientists, and Bhattacharya in particular, have repeatedly claimed that their proposals are driven by science, not politics.

“It’s something to be regretted that attempts at scientific knowledge, acquiring that knowledge, would become politicized,” the Stanford professor of medicine said in a video interview with the site UnHerd about the group’s petition.

Nevertheless, from the start of the pandemic, he and others have sought to convince politicians to adopt strategies that run counter to those promoted by mainstream infectious disease and public health experts.

In late March, days after the first states began adopting stay-at-home policies, a group of scientists, including Bhattacharya, sent the White House a request to meet with Trump to warn him about the dangers of lockdowns, as BuzzFeed News reported. That effort, which did not result in a meeting, was led by Bhattacharya’s Stanford colleague, epidemiologist John Ioannidis.

In mid-April, Bhattacharya, Ioannidis, and other Stanford faculty members released a study of the coronavirus’s prevalence in Santa Clara County, California. Their non-peer-reviewed preprint reported that the virus was more widespread than previously thought, which would make the fatality rate very low. But the study’s statistical reasoning and other problems were torn apart by outside researchers.

Still, the authors promoted the message that the virus was not that deadly — that it was even, according to some of them, on par with the flu. In one of several Fox News appearances, Bhattacharya spoke alongside the founder of JetBlue, David Neeleman, a vocal lockdown opponent who did not disclose that he was also helping fund the Stanford study.

In May, a whistleblower complaint filed to Stanford alleged that Neeleman had interfered with aspects of the study. Neeleman denied that he influenced the science in any way.


The university launched an investigation, telling BuzzFeed News at the time that “the integrity of Stanford Medicine’s research is core to our mission” and that it took the concerns “extremely seriously.” Nearly five months later, Stanford spokesperson Julie Greicius declined to give any update on its findings.

Based on dozens of studies from around the world, other scientists have calculated that the virus is significantly deadlier than the flu. Meanwhile, the original paper remains unpublished.

Nevertheless, Bhattacharya and others have continued to drive home a message to politicians: that the pandemic is not that big a threat for most people, and shutdowns — whether school closures, business closures, or stay-at-home policies — do more harm than good.

In May, Ioannidis testified in favor of lifting lockdowns in a Senate committee hearing. And Bhattacharya told Sen. Pat Toomey, a Pennsylvania Republican, that it was safe to reopen youth baseball and softball leagues.

That same month, Bhattacharya and a group of colleagues argued in front of the Arizona House of Representatives’ health committee that the virus was not that deadly and that lockdowns were too harsh.

In July, a San Diego County supervisor interviewed the Stanford scientist in a talk described as “why Dr. Bhattacharya thinks COVID-19 will be over sooner rather than later.”


This summer, Florida teachers sued Gov. Ron DeSantis over his plan to resume in-person schooling in the state, where the death count was setting records throughout August. Bhattacharya testified in the lawsuit on behalf of his plan.

And in the first week of September, Trump declared at a press conference: “Under Operation Warp Speed, we’ve pioneered groundbreaking therapies, reducing the fatality rate 85% since April.” The claim was misleading, according to PolitiFact: One reason the fatality rate was much higher in April was that testing then was focused on those who were more severely ill and therefore more likely to die.

The source of the 85% figure? A chart drawn up by Bhattacharya.


Evan Vucci / AP
White House coronavirus adviser Scott Atlas speaks during a news conference at the White House on Sept. 16, 2020.


As the battle over school reopenings reached a fever pitch, Trump appointed a new adviser to his coronavirus task force: Scott Atlas.

Atlas is a senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank, where Bhattacharya was also formerly a research fellow. Atlas has asserted, against the preponderance of scientific evidence, that masks do not help curb the spread of the coronavirus (they do), that children “almost never” transmit it (studies indicate that they likely do, and this risk increases with age), and that “T cell immunity” from past infections offers protection against it (a claim disputed by scientists who research the topic).

In his new job, he helped push the CDC to narrow its guidance for who should get tested, according to the New York Times. His actions have reportedly angered others in the administration. “Everything he says is false,” CDC Director Robert Redfield recently said in an overheard call.

More than 100 medical and health experts at Stanford signed a letter condemning their colleague’s “falsehoods and misrepresentations,” saying they “undermine public-health authorities and the credible science that guides effective public health policy.” Atlas threatened to sue the Stanford faculty members, but has yet to do so.

Shortly after Atlas joined the task force in mid-August, the Washington Post reported that he was urging the White House to embrace a herd immunity strategy. Atlas denied the report.

But in public, he has consistently argued for letting the virus spread unchecked in healthy people — even if he hasn’t always used the term “herd immunity.”


“Those who are not at risk to die or have a serious hospital-requiring illness, we should be fine with letting them get infected, generating immunity on their own — and the more immunity in the community, the better we can eradicate the threat of the virus,” he said on a conservative talk show in April. “That’s what herd immunity is.”

He made a similar argument in a Fox News radio interview in July. “When you isolate everyone, including all the healthy people, you’re prolonging the problem because you’re preventing population immunity,” he said.

In drafting the Great Barrington Declaration, Bhattacharya teamed up with Sunetra Gupta, a theoretical epidemiologist whom the Wall Street Journal nicknamed “Britain’s ‘Professor Reopen.’” In a highly controversial modeling study in March, she and colleagues suggested that half of the United Kingdom may have already had the virus.

The third author, Martin Kulldorff, is a Harvard biostatistician who specializes in disease surveillance modeling. He favors testing older people for the coronavirus, but not young and healthy people because it would lead to “needless school closures,” as he and Bhattacharya explained in a Wall Street Journal op-ed last month.

Together, the trio say that their new proposal would isolate older people from younger ones, as opposed to the Trump administration’s approach to date, which Bhattacharya said was an attempt at a “more or less complete lockdown.”


“Young low-risk adults should work normally, rather than from home. Restaurants and other businesses should open. Arts, music, sport and other cultural activities should resume,” the scientists wrote in their letter. “People who are more at risk may participate if they wish, while society as a whole enjoys the protection conferred upon the vulnerable by those who have built up herd immunity.”

The scientists’ letter is named after the Massachusetts town where the authors met to write it last weekend, and where the American Institute for Economic Research, which hosted the gathering, is headquartered. A complaint submitted to Stanford, and shared with BuzzFeed News, raised the concern that Bhattacharya may have violated the campus’s safety protocols by attending the indoors event. A university spokesperson declined to comment on the complaint. Bhattacharya did not return multiple requests for comment.

Atlas told BuzzFeed News on Wednesday that he supported many of the views in the Great Barrington letter, though he did not sign it. “I believe that to solely focus on ‘stopping Covid-19 at all costs’ is reckless and unconscionable,” he said by email. He cited indications that during the pandemic, people are putting off getting screened for cancer and treated for strokes, fewer child abuse cases are being reported with children out of school, and more adults have issues related to mental health and substance abuse.

It’s not surprising that a seemingly science-backed way for many to return to “normal” would hold wide appeal after months of lost jobs, stress, deaths, and restrictions, said Gregg Gonsalves of Yale.


“That’s not to say at all that there hasn’t been pain and suffering about this,” he said. “But their foil is that, ‘Do you want these horrible lockdowns to go on forever? Or do you want to go back to work? Do you want to go back to the movies? Do you want to go back to see your favorite sports teams? Do you want to go out to dinner again?’ They’re setting up a false dichotomy.”

“What’s very attractive about what Dr. Kulldorff, Dr. Gupta, and Scott Atlas and others have proposed is it’s an easy out,” he added.

“What’s very attractive about what Dr. Kulldorff, Dr. Gupta, and Scott Atlas and others have proposed is it’s an easy out.”


The letter calls for nursing homes to have frequent testing and staffers with “acquired immunity,” and for retirees living at home to have supplies delivered. But it is light on specifics, saying that “a comprehensive and detailed list of measures, including approaches to multi-generational households, can be implemented, and is well within the scope and capability of public health professionals.”

This language doesn’t come anywhere near acknowledging how challenging it would be to implement such a plan, outside experts say.

Isolating people who have preexisting conditions that make them especially susceptible to the virus would mean isolating nearly half the adult population. Isolating older Americans, who have the relatively highest risk of death, would mean isolating an overlapping group of tens of millions. Only about 13% of Americans over the age of 64 were in a nursing home or other senior living setting in 2015, meaning the vast majority are embedded in communities. About 64 million Americans lived in multigenerational households as of 2016.

What the Great Barrington Declaration also does not acknowledge is that young, healthy adults who get infected can spread the virus to middle-aged and older Americans, which appears to have happened this summer. Young people themselves may die of COVID-19 at much lower rates than older people, but a not insignificant portion get sick enough to become hospitalized, straining the healthcare system that much more. And “long-haulers,” many of them young and formerly healthy, can for months experience debilitating effects that are not yet understood.

“They’re not going to be able to age-target,” Gonsalves said. “They’re not going to be able to protect these hundreds of millions of vulnerable people.”

Pursuing herd immunity without a vaccine is highly impractical for other reasons, too. For one, scientists are not sure how long immunity lasts, and there have been a handful of reported cases of reinfection. And the CDC director recently estimated that as many as 90% of Americans remain susceptible to the virus. Even in New York, one of the hardest-hit places in the country and therefore among the closest to herd immunity, the virus has infected only about 20% of the population.

Purposely letting the virus spread without a vaccine would likely kill millions. More would continue to get infected and die even once herd immunity was reached, scientists say.

“Depending on natural infections to control the outbreak could lead to months, if not years, of a cycle where cases subside and then they surge,” said Ravina Kullar of the Infectious Diseases Society of America. “That is not the solution to this pandemic.”

Asked about these and other criticisms, Kulldorff said he was open to a “proper scientific debate” with anyone who disagreed with him. Gupta did not return multiple requests for comment.

Spokespeople for Stanford and Oxford did not comment on the Great Barrington Declaration other than to say that the institutions supported their faculty members’ academic freedom. Harvard did not return a request for comment.







Via youtube.com Jay Bhattacharya participates in a virtual panel discussion about COVID-19 with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Sept. 24.

The US is caught in a “patchwork pandemic” — a whack-a-mole game where outbreaks have jumped from region to region where restrictions were either never put into place or were prematurely scaled back. The lack of national coordination of public health measures like masking, contact tracing, and comprehensive testing has fueled that cycle, Gonsalves said.

“We could be like countries in Asia and countries in Europe and other places that have buffered the effects of the pandemic while doing real frontline public health to keep rates down, and we haven’t done it,” he said. “And we made a national choice to do that.”

As the pandemic worsens and the election nears, the White House has increasingly peddled the idea that the virus can be vanquished through natural immunity. Or, as Trump put it during a televised town hall on Sept. 15, “herd mentality.”

At the event, he proclaimed that the US was “rounding the corner” on the pandemic. The interviewer pointed out that Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious diseases expert, disagreed. “Well, I mean, but a lot of people do agree with me,” the president replied. “You look at Scott Atlas, you look at some of the other doctors that are highly...from Stanford. Look at some of the other doctors.”


About a week later, a reporter asked Atlas about the CDC director’s recent assertion that most Americans are still susceptible to infections. Atlas said that the director had “misstated” the situation, and cited Kulldorff, Bhattacharya, Ioannidis, and Gupta. “These are people who know the latest data on the immunology and what’s happening, and I just recited it to you,” he said.

On Sept. 24, Bhattacharya and Kulldorff joined a livestreamed discussion with Florida’s governor. They — along with Michael Levitt of Stanford, a Nobel laureate who has incorrectly predicted that the virus was about to run its course in multiple countries — vouched for the governor’s efforts to reopen schools and the economy.

“At this point, we know that the benefits of a lockdown are small,” Bhattacharya said. “All they do is push cases off into the future; it doesn’t actually prevent the disease from happening. And the costs are absolutely catastrophic, enormous.”

The next day, at a time when cases were spiking on Florida college campuses, DeSantis announced that the state was lifting all restrictions on restaurants and businesses.


“Dr. Scott Atlas and Dr. Bhattacharya are truth tellers in a sea of government misinformation,” Sen. Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican, tweeted on Sept. 28.

Yet despite receiving national attention for his ideas, Bhattacharya has repeatedly claimed he is being silenced. “I’ve been really concerned about censorship in science around this epidemic,” he said on a podcast last month.

He doubled down in a more recent video. “I think that has been one of the things I’ve regretted throughout this entire crisis,” he said, “is this attempt to suppress scientific discussion because some ideas are too dangerous to even discuss.”

Who was suppressing him, he didn’t say. The video was posted Oct. 5, the day of his meeting with the Trump administration. ●

UPDATE
October 9, 2020, at 4:53 p.m.
This story has been updated to include additional information about the Great Barrington Declaration.

UPDATE
October 9, 2020, at 1:41 p.m.
This story has been updated to clarify Scott Atlas's comments on T-cell immunity.