Neil Patrick Harris, Mila Kunis and other celebrities sign letter condemning boycott of Israeli film festival
BY MICHAEL ARRIA NOVEMBER 5, 2021

NEIL PATRICK HARRIS (FLICKR)
Over 200 people from the entertainment industry have signed a letter denouncing the Palestinian-led boycott of an LGBTQ film festival in Tel Aviv.
TLVFest is an annual event that launched in 2006 and is sponsored by the Israeli government. It’s been a consistent target of the BDS movement, which says that it “pinkwashes” Israel’s human rights record. Last year, in response to a call from Palestinian queer organizations, over 100 filmmakers signed a pledge to boycott the event. “As filmmakers, film artists and production companies committed to LGBTQIA+ liberation, we understand that our liberation is intimately connected to the liberation of all oppressed peoples and communities,” read their statement. “We stand in solidarity with the struggle of the Palestinian people for freedom, justice, and dignity. We shall do no harm to their liberation struggle.”

That call has been reiterated again for 2021 and, at this point, almost 200 people have refused to participate. While TLVFest takes place next week, Queer Cinema for Palestine (QCP) will hold the first-ever global queer film fest in solidarity with Palestine. QCP will hold over a dozen events across five continents and will feature many of the filmmakers who pulled out of TLVFest. QCP was created through a global coalition that came together during Israel’s deadly attacks on Gaza this past May.

The letter opposing the boycott was organized by a lobby organization called Creative Community For Peace (CCFP), which is directly connected to the pro-settler group StandWithUs. Both groups stem from a nonprofit called the Israel Emergency Alliance. In fact, the founders of the two groups are married. CCFP has repeatedly linked up with Christians United for Israel (CUFI), which is operated by the antisemitic, homophobic, Islamophobic, sexist pastor John Hagee.

A leaked report from 2017 revealed that CCFP identified solidarity between Palestinians and groups like Black Lives Matter as “a troubling and growing trend.”

“We stand united with all the participating filmmakers against the divisive rhetoric espoused by boycott activists who seek to misinform, bully and intimidate artists into removing their films from the festival or shame them for participating in the festival,” reads the CCFP letter. “We believe that anyone who works to subvert TLVFest merely adds yet another roadblock to freedom, justice, equality, and peace that we all desperately desire, especially for the LGBTQ community that is persecuted throughout the Middle East and around the world.”

Signatories include Mila Kunis, Neil Patrick Harris, Mayim Bialik, Billy Porter, Helen Mirren, Zachary Quinto, and Gene Simmons.  SEXIST HOMOPHOBIC RIGHT WINGER

You can read the full list at CCFP’s website.

“It’s rich of CCFP to describe appeals from Palestinian queers to international queer filmmakers not to participate in a complicit Israeli government-sponsored film festival as ‘bullying’,” the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) told Mondoweiss in an emailed statement. “But what can we expect from a propaganda group advocating for the continued violence of Israeli apartheid that considers intersectionality and solidarity between Palestinians and Black Americans ‘a troubling and growing trend’ to be countered.”

“The 50+ queer filmmakers who have withdrawn from TLVFest over the years and the nearly 200 who have pledged not to participate recognize the intimate connections between liberation struggles of all oppressed peoples and communities, and the need for effective solidarity. This true solidarity will be front and center at the Queer Cinema for Palestine film festival.”

CNN's milk report: Why right-wing misinformation will always get amplified by the mainstream media

Sophia Tesfaye, Salon
November 05, 2021

CNN/screen grab

12 gallons of milk was my last straw. CNN's widely mocked report may have broken me. It seemed like only minutes after the clip on a Texas family struggling with that impact of inflation went viral, it was blasted out by the House Republicans on Twitter:

The report suggests a 40% rise in milk prices over (presumably) the past year. Not only is that not true, but prices are down, in nominal terms from a high in 2007. To be fair, it's pretty clear some prices are going up. But so are wages. Overall household debts have fallen, as well. So I don't mock the family or their milk consumption. I mock CNN for holding up these outliers of cartoonish proportions as a typical, representative middle-class family. And I resent how infrequently they report on actually food-insecure families. CNN could have interviewed people going in and out of a Kroger about how they feel about the stimulus checks as they get their groceries. They could have stopped to talk to a clerk or bagger at the store. Instead, they pre-manufactured a shopping trip using a family whose situation wasn't at all representative.

CNN left out this critical information on the impact of the child tax credit and said nothing about progressive Democrats' fight to extend such benefits to help families. This is how the narratives that demand bad policies take hold — at the "raving lefty propaganda machines" the Republicans love to complain about.

In Virginia, for instance, days before Republican Glenn Youngkin won the governorship with a closing message to ban the teaching of critical race theory in public schools, The New York Times credulously profiled a supposed "Hillary-Biden voter" who planned to support the GOP. It turns out the guy is a frequent donor to the Republican Party who has authored several articles for his local chapter.

The media's ongoing credulity is why a right-wing operative was able to weaponize bad faith and ignorance into a nonsensical bogeyman.

The outrage that propelled Youngkin to victory was based on a lie. While the Republican promised to dictate what is and isn't taught in Virginia schools, Youngkin didn't win because he ran on banning Toni Morrison. Rather, the biggest story that motivated Republican voters in Virginia involved a sexual assault that was first reported, and distorted, by Ben Shapiro's Daily Wire in a right-wing attack on gender-neutral bathrooms. The basic premise was later proved to be a lie, but by then everyone from Loudoun County to Los Angeles had seen the story as part of the right's push to create a trans panic.

It's hard for the mainstream media to admit Republicans are almost always lying, from the leader of the party to the man on the street. That's fine. But the GOP hasn't done a substantively good thing in 30 years. The press could at least reflect on why they are still salient in spite of that. Virginia Republicans rigged their primary, forcing the leading Trump-style contender to drop out. When pundits fail to mention the likelihood that, given the choice, Republican primary voters would have chosen the more overtly Trumpian candidate, undoubtedly leading to general election defeat, they allow Republicans to hide the GOP's growing anti-democratic streak.

The pandemic proved that the GOP is as close to a death cult as a major political party can get. Republicans are now fighting to pretend slavery had no long-lasting effects while simultaneously suppressing Black voters and fighting against the Justice in Policing act. Republicans are trying to gerrymander Ohio, where Trump got 53% of the vote, to hold 86% of the seats in the legislature. In Wisconsin, where Trump only got 49% of the vote, they are attempting to take 75% of the seats, and up to 78% of the seats in North Carolina, a state Trump won by less than 50% of the vote. In response, Democrats plan to carve out one more district to which they are proportionally entitled in Illinois. It's hardball now, baby!

Meanwhile, moderates are busy pointing fingers at the Democratic base.

"We don't have the numbers that FDR had or that Lyndon Baines Johnson had in order to get some major, major legislation done," West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin said on Thursday, echoing sentiments shared by conservative Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger of Virginia, who blasted Biden after Democrats lost the governorship: "Nobody elected him to be F.D.R." Curiously absent from their post-election comments was any mention on how centrists pushing President Joe Biden's agenda to the right in an ugly sausage-making battle is probably bad politics. (Watching Manchin drive his Maserati truck into a crowd of protesters demanding his support for four weeks of paid leave is certainly a sight to behold.)

One reason voters could be skeptical about Biden's Build Back Better bill while supporting specific policies contained in the package could be because moderate Democrats themselves publicly attack them while offering no compelling alternatives. Sure, there is political polarization at play, and the fact that asking people to pay for social spending usually results in some backlash, but a very undercounted factor is that so many people are in support of those programs and also think that certain people don't deserve them. Oftentimes that distinction is drawn on racial lines.

Democrats sent everyone checks this year, distributed miracle vaccines quickly to all who want them, and, in Virginia in particular, passed and signed into law legislation making Virginia the first southern state to legalize marijuana. Policy barely matters in elections. Everybody wants these things until Election Day, at which point many people decide that these things are evil communism from hell. Propaganda is tough to fight with nuance and facts, especially when it is legitimized by the mainstream media.

Despite the exhaustive reports on the complete radicalization of the Republican Party, often by their own reporters, the editorial pages at the nation's leading newspapers too often proclaim the real problem plaguing this country is what goes on at some college lecture or tech seminar, not the movement to supplant election officials across the country with loyalists to Donald Trump or ban books that dare to teach about the experiences of Black children. So the fact that the press is giddy to spread bad news about Democrats is no surprise. It remains no less infuriating, though, that the press remains generally uninterested in why exactly corporate Democrats who take in big bucks from industry would work so hard to quash legislation championed by their party's leader — legislation meant to make the cost of living (not just milk!) more affordable for more people.

The only path Democrats have for a counternarrative is to fully embrace class warfare and explicitly call out the messaging and narrative of racism at the root of the GOP–corporate media coalition. Instead of giving up on identity politics, they need to craft a winning identity: Be pro-worker. Fight for justice. Hold Trump accountable.

The Christian right is behind the GOP's new attack on public education

Amanda Marcotte, Salon

November 05, 2021

A resident participates in an Effingham County High School Board meeting (WTOC)

After Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin won Virginia's gubernatorial race Tuesday, the GOP appears eager to take his bigotry-infused "education" strategy nationwide. "The Republican swings in Virginia and New Jersey show the efficacy of a new model of conservative politics: appealing to suburban voters by promising greater parental control of schools," the Washington Post reports Thursday morning. It's a clever strategy.

If the public knew what the GOP demands actually were — banning classic books like Toni Morrison's "Beloved" or "The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood — most parents would not be on board. Few people want to be a Nazi book burner! But the GOP is repackaging this deeply fascist love of censorship in a friendlier frame of "parental rights." They got lucky that the Democratic candidate, Terry McAuliffe, blundered in the campaign's closing weeks when he said, "I don't think parents should be telling schools what they should teach," instead of mounting a robust defense of free speech and teaching the truth about slavery and segregation in history classes.

So what, exactly, are kids learning?

Republicans use scare terms like "critical race theory," and liberals try to draw attention to the lists of books Republicans are trying to ban, mainly for suggesting racism is bad or that LGBTQ people exist. It's extremely important for the left to focus on how this supposed fight over "education" is really a proxy fight over the right's rejection of equality for LGBTQ people and people of color.

But there's another aspect to this fight that has been less discussed: How the GOP war on schools is instigated, organized, and funded by right-wing religious groups whose true agenda is opposing the rights of children.

Conservatives, especially the Christian right, have long taken a dim view of raising kids who can think for themselves. Their view is children should be "trained" to be obedient and submissive. Under the guise of "parents' rights," the Christian right is mainstreaming their hostility to the very idea that children have a right to an education. In this case, the right of a child to have a proper education that teaches critical thinking and intellectual curiosity.

As journalist Talia Lavin writes in her recent deep dive into the history of corporal punishment in evangelical circles, the movement of "biblical parenting" started in 1970, when Christian right activist James Dobson published his book "Dare to Discipline," which advanced a belief in "the enforced submission of children to absolute authority." Soon there was a cottage industry of similar books, all of which promoted "the complete subjection of the child's will," usually through relentlessly beating kids (which is minimized through the cutesy word "spanking"). Children, in the Christian right view, are not to be educated — they are to be "trained." This philosophy of child-rearing was accompanied by a movement to impose their anti-child ideology on society and government. Unfortunately, this particular political goal of the Christian right gets far less coverage than their war on reproductive rights, their anti-LGBTQ activism, or their white supremacy. This lack of attention may, in fact, be a reason they've been wildly successful. As Lavin notes, hitting children "is outlawed completely in 63 countries," but "legal in all fifty states." Laws allowing parents to take kids out of school to be "home schooled" are notoriously lax, and there's been a great deal of headway in redirecting kids out of schools and into religious "charter schools" that embrace the training-not-education approach. Donald Trump's Education Secretary was Betsy DeVos, a far-right fundamentalist who has spent decades trying to destroy the public education system. It's why the U.S. is the only country in the world that hasn't ratified the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child.

It should be unsurprising, then, that the religious right groups who have long opposed children's rights are behind this newly sprung nationwide attack on public schools.

Religious right stalwarts like the Family Research Council and the Heritage Foundation have been central to planning and unhatching this scheme to use the scare term "critical race theory" to stir up outrage at schools for teaching the truth about racism in history and literature classes. Also central to the effort, as reported by NBC News, is the International Organization for the Family, which has, like the Family Research Council, been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Under its original name, the World Congress of Families, the International Organization for the Family promoted not just a deeply authoritarian and patriarchal view of the family, but also white nationalism. As explained at the Southern Poverty Law Center:
Through its ideology of the so-called "natural family," WCF promotes a strict view of family, one based exclusively on the marriage of one heterosexual man to one heterosexual woman and their biological children, to the exclusion of many different types of families. Closely tied to this ideology is an adherence to strict binary gender roles, in which men serve as the heads of households and women as their helpmates and the bearer of children. Only this type of family, they contend, can quell the "demographic winter," the idea that European populations, especially, are in decline because of homosexuality, abortion, feminism, women in the workplace, and a variety of other things that deviate from the "natural family."

There's no way to really untangle all these different far-right views from each other. Forcing children into submission and preventing them from developing critical thinking skills is seen as crucial for raising them to be compliant adults who will unquestioningly adopt this patriarchal and racist view of family formation and purpose. One can see why schools teaching the book "Beloved" was flagged by far-right activists as a threat. Not only does the book humanize the victims of white supremacy, it also raises important questions about the rights of children and the meaning of self-determination. Indeed, even the concept of "raising questions" alarms the Christian right. In their view, children are not to think for themselves but to passively accept the instructions of elders.

Unfortunately, one reason the Christian right has a lot of success smuggling their radical views into mainstream politics is they, as happened in Virginia, often reframe it as a matter of "parental rights."

Most parents reject the religious right's extremist views on extinguishing a child's autonomy, to be clear. But most parents believe that they should have some control over their child's life, including over their education, health care, and disciplinary matters. They aren't even really wrong about this. Children's rights are always in contention with the need to keep children safe and to socialize them properly. Knowing the exact right mix of autonomy and discipline is a nuanced and tough question. The problem, however, is the reframing this as a matter of "parents' rights" distracts from the real issue, which is the war being waged on children's rights.

Children have a right to learn the truth about American history and to learn critical thinking skills. Children have a right to be exposed to great works of literature and art, and to expand their horizons. Children have a right to a robust health education, which includes information about sexuality and sexual orientation so that they can grow into healthy adults, instead of being hobbled with shame for having normal human impulses. All this chitter-chatter about "parents' rights" — by design — is hiding the fact that many of these rights of children are under very real threat right now

Failure to understand the deeply radical nature of the Christian right ideology fueling this school board movement leaves Democrats unequipped to fight back. We saw this with the McAuliffe campaign, which fumbled early on with the "parents' rights" framing, and only too late in the campaign realized they could reframe the matter — correctly, mind you — as a deeply racist attempt to censor books. Democrats need to highlight how profoundly anti-child the GOP attack on school boards is and defend both the right of children to learn and the right of educators to teach.

Most people don't want kids to grow up without learning to think for themselves. Democrats can win this fight — but first, they must understand what they're truly up against.

RIPS OFF HOLY BLOOD HOLY GRAIL

QAnon cultists drawn to Dallas by hideously antisemitic conspiracist who thinks Jesus had four children

Travis Gettys
November 05, 2021

Michael Brian Protzman. (Telegram)

The QAnon influencer who drew right-wing conspiracists to Dallas to await John F. Kennedy's Jr.'s reappearance has effectively built a cult around himself.

Conspiracists converged from across the county on the grassy knoll in Dealey Plaza, where the 35th president was assassinated while riding in a car with his wife -- and where the QAnon influencer Michael Brian Protzman, known as Negative48, promised a supernatural spectacle that would return Donald Trump to the White House as the "king of kings," reported Vice.

"His rise to notoriety and fame within the QAnon world has been rapid," the website reported. "Back in March, his Negative48 Telegram channel had around 1,700 members; today, it has over 105,000 members. But aside from the number of followers Protzman has, what makes him stand out from other QAnon influencers is the loyalty and worship he has instilled in those people."

The 58-year-old Protzman, who ran a demolition company in Washington state until beginning his new online career, pushes deeply antisemitic content, questionable financial advice and a fake version of gematria -- a Hebrew system of assigning numerical values to letters, words and phrases.

"The stuff that I have seen has shaken me to my core," said one extremism researcher, who asked for anonymity to protect himself from Protzman and his followers. "They are brainwashing people with English gematria."

Protzman applies this bogus system to passages in the Bible and QAnon slogans, which he uses to spin complex conspiracies linking Christianity, QAnon and the Kennedy family.

"In Protzman's telling, Jesus Christ married Mary Magdalene and had four children with her," Vice reported. "This gave rise to a bloodline that went on to create many famous people today, notably the Kennedys. He also claims that blood type O is a marker for the Christ bloodline and that the 'New World Order' is trying to hunt down that bloodline by DNA testing COVID-19 PCR swabs."

But most of all, Protzman repackages old antisemitic conspiracies for a new audience to claim the Holocaust never happened, and he has promoted the hideously antisemitic 10-part film "Europa: The Last Battle 2017," which claims Jews created communism and purposefully started both world wars in a plot to establish Israel, and the film "Adolf Hitler: The Greatest Story Ever Told."

"There are no Jews, period, anywhere -- period," Protzman said in one audio chat. "There is no Jewish race, and the Jewish leadership are basically the British empire, the Roman empire, it's just the criminals."

 

US Economy Adds 531,000 Jobs In October Unemployment Falls To 4.6 Percent – Analysis

 November 6, 2021 

By Dean Baker

The economy added 531,000 jobs in October, as the unemployment rate fell to 4.6 percent, a level not reached following the Great Recession until February 2017. The jobs numbers for the prior two months were also revised upward by 235,000 to bring the three-month average to 442,000.

It’s also worth noting that private sector employment grew even more rapidly, adding 604,000 jobs. The hours-worked index, which only measures private sector employment, has risen by 1.2 percent in the last three months, which would translate into 498,000 private sector jobs per month if there were no change in hours. Many employers who are unable to hire are likely increasing the hours for the workforce they have.

Unemployment Falls for Most Groups

The drop in the unemployment rate was much larger than most analysts had expected, especially after a 0.4 percentage point decline in September. It has fallen by 1.3 percentage points since June. The least educated saw the largest drop in unemployment with the rate falling by 0.5 percentage points for those without a high school degree to 7.4 percent, and 0.4 percentage points for those with just a high school degree to 5.4 percent. The unemployment rate for college grads edged down 0.1 percentage points to 2.4 percent, which is 0.3 percentage points above its pre-pandemic average.

The unemployment rate for Blacks and Asian Americans was unchanged at 7.9 percent and 4.2 percent, respectively. It fell 0.4 percentage points to 5.9 percent for Hispanics.

Wage Growth Remains Strong

We continue to see strong wage growth, especially for low-paid workers. The average hourly wage for production and nonsupervisory workers has risen 5.8 percent year-over-year. In the low-paid leisure and hospitality sector, it has risen 12.4 percent. However, wage growth is slowing somewhat in the leisure and hospitality sector. The annual rate for the last three months (August, September, October) compared with the prior three months (May, June, July) was 9.7 percent; although it accelerated slightly for production workers overall to 6.6 percent.

Manufacturing and Construction Have Strong Growth, Again

The manufacturing sector added 60,000 jobs, following a gain of 31,000 in September. Construction added 44,000 jobs after adding 30,000 in September. The sectors are now down 2.1 percent and 2.0 percent, respectively, from their pre-pandemic levels. This compares to a falloff of 2.5 percent for the private sector as a whole. That reverses the normal pattern where these sectors are hit hardest in a recession.

Most of the hardest hit industries showed good job growth in October. Air transportation added 9,200 jobs, but is still down 9.7 percent from its pre-pandemic level. The motion picture industry added 11,300 jobs and is now down 20.9 percent. The temp sector added 41,100, while arts and entertainment added 20,900 jobs. They are now down 5.9 percent and 11.4 percent, respectively, from pre-pandemic levels. Hotels added 23,200 jobs, while restaurants added 119,400, leaving them 14.9 percent and 6.4 percent lower than their pre-pandemic levels, respectively.

Nursing homes added 11,800 jobs, but employment is still 14.2 percent below pre-pandemic levels. Child care facilities added just 700 jobs in October, leaving employment 10.1 percent below pre-pandemic levels. This presumably corresponds to a roughly 10 percent drop in child slots, which means many parents of young children face even greater than normal difficulties finding care if they want to work.

State and Local Education Shed 65,000 Jobs

This sector continues to lose jobs even with children back in school pretty much everywhere. This could reflect difficulty in hiring, as governments often can’t raise wages as rapidly as in the private sector. Employment in the sectors are now down 7.9 percent and 4.6 percent, respectively, from pre-pandemic levels.

The Number of Unincorporated Self-Employed Edged up by 24,000

The October figure is 643,000 (7.3 percent) above the 2019 average. This presumably reflects people taking advantage of the pandemic to change career paths.

Share of Long-Term Unemployed Falls

The share of long-term unemployed (more than 26 weeks) fell sharply in September to 31.6 percent. However, it is still well above normal levels, which would be under 20 percent.

October Report is Solidly Positive

There is much to like in this report. The overall picture in both surveys is overwhelmingly positive. If we can keep up this pace of growth we will get back the jobs lost in the pandemic by next summer. The unemployment rate is already below many economists’ estimates of Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment (NAIRU). And workers have more freedom to change jobs than at any point in the last half century.

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Dean Baker

Dean Baker is the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). 

He is the author of Plunder and Blunder: The Rise and Fall of the Bubble Economy.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

Boeing board agrees to $237.5 million settlement of 737 MAX shareholder lawsuit

Boeing CEO David Calhoun. A shareholder lawsuit against Boeing’s board, settled Friday with no admission of wrongdoing, included allegations that Calhoun made misleading statements to the press 

Nov. 5, 2021 
Dominic Gates
Seattle Times aerospace reporter

Boeing’s board on Friday settled a lawsuit brought by major institutional shareholders that alleged the directors and top executives, including CEO Dave Calhoun, failed to adequately monitor the safety of the 737 MAX before the first fatal crash in 2018 and in the months leading up to the second crash in 2019.

Since the shareholders filed suit on behalf of the company, the insurers of the board and top executives will pay the settlement amount of $237.5 million, less the attorneys’ fees and expenses, to Boeing.

As part of the settlement, Boeing has agreed to enhance its corporate oversight in various ways. It will create an ombudsperson program to handle internal complaints by the engineers who work at Boeing on behalf of the FAA. And within one year it will appoint a new board member with experience in aviation safety.

Lawyers for the lead plaintiffs representing Boeing stockholders — New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, as trustee of New York State’s pension fund, and the Fire and Police Pension Association of Colorado — reviewed more than 44,000 internal documents turned over by Boeing.

“We sued Boeing’s board because they failed in their fiduciary responsibility to monitor safety and protect the company,” Di Napoli said in a statement. “It is our hope, moving forward, that the reforms agreed to in this settlement will help safeguard Boeing and the flying public against future tragedy.”

Boeing in a statement said the proposed settlement builds on actions it has already taken since the crashes and offers “additional oversight and governance reforms that will further advance safety.”

The settlement comes after presiding Judge Morgan Zurn, vice chancellor of the Delaware Court of Chancery, in September criticized the board’s handling of the two fatal accidents in unusually sharp language.

Zurn ruled then that the case could proceed, based on allegations that the directors’ failed “to establish a reporting system for airplane safety” and turned “a blind eye to a red flag representing airplane safety problems.”

Her ruling also bluntly asserted that “to preserve its image … The Board publicly lied about if and how it monitored the 737 MAX’s safety.”

Zurn cited a series of interviews Calhoun gave to The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Financial Times after the crashes that contained, as itemized in the shareholder suit, a series of misleading statements about how active the board had been.

In a motion responding to that ruling, Boeing’s lawyers asked the judge to clarify the accusation of lying and claimed the suit had misrepresented Calhoun’s comments to the press.

In the settlement, Boeing’s board admits no liability or wrongdoing.

For their part, the plaintiffs state that they “ continue to believe (their claims) have legal merit,” but decided to settle because there are “substantial risks to the successful resolution of any litigation.”

TOOK HORSE DEWORMER

Aaron Rodgers feared COVID-19 vaccine could make him infertile

HIS BALLS WOULD SHRIVEL TO PEANUTS 

HARD AS WALNUTS
Green Bay Packers star, a former Cal quarterback and Chico native engaged to Shailene Woodley, cited unsubstantiated concerns Friday that the COVID vaccine could prevent him from one day having children.

YOU CAN ADOPT 

Rick Scuteri/Associated Press Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers (12) during the first half of an NFL football game against the Arizona Cardinals, Thursday, Oct. 28, 2021, in Glendale, Ariz. (AP Photo/Rick Scuteri)

By MARTHA ROSS | Bay Area News Group

PUBLISHED: November 5, 2021 


During a lengthy screed Friday against the COVID-19 vaccine, the “woke mob” and the “witch hunt” against him, Aaron Rodgers said a primary reason for not “getting the jab” is that he feared it could make him infertile.

“The next great chapter of my life, I believe is being a father,” the Green Bay Packers quarterback said during his 46-minute appearance on “The Pat McAfee Show.”


Given that Rodgers, 37, is engaged to actor Shailene Woodley, the assumption is that he is looking forward to starting a family with her. But the NFL star said he was worried that his dream of fatherhood would be derailed if he got the COVID-19 vaccine, citing unsubstantiated theories that the vaccine could cause fertility problems.

“To my knowledge, there has been zero long-term studies around sterility or fertility issues around the vaccines,” Rodgers said. “That was definitely something I was worried about and that went through my mind.”

Shortly after the new celebrity super couple went public with their romance, Rodgers talked about his dream of becoming a father.

“I’m in that age group where a lot of my close friends from high school and college are fathers now and have families of their own,” Rodgers said in an interview, Us Weekly reported. “It’s maybe not in the immediate future but definitely something that I really look forward to. I’ve done a pretty good job at taking care of myself for the last 37 years and look forward to taking care of another life at some point too. I just think it’s going to be so fun.”

Woodley has not commented on her fiance’s COVID controversy, except possibly through a cryptic and since-deleted Instagram Story post Friday. According to Page Six, the post said, “Calm seas may bring you peace, but storms are where you’ll find your power.”

People on social media have wondered whether Rodgers’ vaccine resistance comes from Woodley. The “Big Little Lies” star previously talked in interviews about her preferences for herbal remedies, alternative medicine and even eating clay to eliminate “metals” from the body.

Rodgers and Woodley also are good friends with actor Miles Teller, who was at the center of controversy over the summer for reportedly causing a production shutdown on his new TV series because he refused to be vaccinated and tested positive for COVID.

Rodgers, a former Cal quarterback and Chico native, landed at the center of a national firestorm this week after testing positive for COVID-19. News of his positive test also came with revelations that he was unvaccinated and that he had apparently lied to the media and others when he said in August that he had been “immunized.” Rodgers faces additional scrutiny for attempting to push a homeopathic treatment as a substitute for a vaccine and for possibly violating NFL safety protocols for unvaccinated players.

Rodgers’ positive test means he will miss Sunday’s game against the Kansas City Chiefs and must isolate for 10 days, which is protocol for unvaccinated players.

On “The Pat McAfee Show,” Rodgers said he had experienced symptoms of COVID-19 and “didn’t feel great” earlier this week but was feeling better Friday. However, he showed he was not feeling good about his belief that he is the latest victim of “cancel culture.”

“I realize I’m in the crosshairs of the woke mob right now, so before my final nail gets put in my cancel culture casket, I think I’d like to set the record straight on some of the blatant lies that are out there about myself right now,” began Rodgers.

Such comments during the interview immediately gave rise to the view among Rodgers’ critics that he is an arrogant narcissist who is trying to martyr himself in order to deflect responsibility after being caught in a lie and violating NFL safety protocols. Rolling Stone also said that many of his health arguments come from talking points from the anti-vaccine movement.

One of those talking points appears to involve Rodgers’ fears about infertility. The Washington Post reported that false claims tying the COVID vaccine to infertility, have spread on Twitter and Facebook over the past year. The claims were echoed in September by rapper Nicki Minaj and have been flagged as misinformation by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CBS News reported.

“There are stories out there on the Internet about how vaccination can lead to infertility. There’s absolutely nothing to that,” Francis Collins, the former director of the National Institutes of Health, told the Washington Post.

Rodgers said his initial reason for not getting the Moderna or Pfizer vaccines is that he has an allergy to an ingredient in the mRNA vaccines made by those companies. He said he was simply following an advisory from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Rodgers did not identify the specific allergy.

But even if Rodgers had been able to take one of the mRNA vaccines, he said he would have been hesitant because of his desire to have children.

“We don’t know what the long-term effects of these (vaccines) are,” Rodgers said. “So when people say ‘Just get the jab, just get the jab,” well, everybody is different and there are lot of things we don’t know about this.”

The CDC has recommended that anyone 12 or older get the vaccine, including people who are hoping to get pregnant in the near or long term. The CDC also said there is no evidence to show that any vaccine, including the COVID-19 vaccines, cause fertility problems in women or men.

Similarly, the Society for Male Reproduction and Urology (SMRU) and the Society for the Study of Male Reproduction (SSMR) issued a joint statement earlier this year, saying there is no evidence that the COVID vaccines affect male fertility.

The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ACOG) also recommends that pregnant and lactating women be offered the COVID-19 vaccine, while the American Society for Reproductive Medicine says the vaccine should not be withheld from “from patients who are planning to conceive.” The ASRM furthermore emphasizes that “patients undergoing fertility treatment and pregnant patients should be encouraged to receive vaccination based on eligibility criteria.“

Rodgers said his only option was the vaccine created by Johnson & Johnson, but “had heard of multiple people who had had adverse events around getting the J&J.” He claimed that he “talked to a lot of medical individuals and professionals” about other options and “found an immunization protocol that he could go through to best protect myself.”

In a comment that is sure to raise eyebrows, Rodgers also said some of his expert advice came from “now good friend” Joe Rogan,” the podcaster who claimed he treated his own bout with coronavirus with ivermectin.

Rodgers said he had taken ivermectin, which can only be obtained with a prescription. The drug is given to both humans and horses to treat parasites, but the Food and Drug Administration has said it is not an effective treatment for coronavirus

SD Gov. Noem contradicts labor secretary on meeting with daughter


South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem speaks at a news conference in Sioux Falls, Idaho on Monday, Nov. 1, 2021 . Noem insisted that a meeting she held last year didn’t include any discussion of a path forward for her daughter after a state agency moved to deny her a real estate appraiser license.

 (AP Photo/Stephen Groves)
STEPHEN GROVES
Thu, November 4, 2021

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem contradicted her own labor secretary Thursday about a meeting last year in her office, saying it didn't include any discussion about how her daughter could still win a real estate appraiser license after a state agency moved to deny it.

The Republican governor answered questions from South Dakota reporters on the episode for the first time Thursday, more than a month after The Associated Press first reported on it. While a Republican-dominated legislative committee and state government ethics board have looked into the matter, she called AP's reporting on the meeting “twisted” and “manipulated.”

Noem's secretary of labor defended her department's actions to lawmakers last week by explaining that state regulators before the meeting had already reached an agreement to provide Noem's daughter, Kassidy Peters, with an opportunity to fix issues with her application. She said the meeting mostly consisted of potential fixes to a shortage of licensed appraisers.


However, Secretary of Labor Marcia Hultman told lawmakers it also included a “brief discussion at the end” of the meeting about a “possible plan forward” for Peters to obtain her license.

But when Noem was asked by the AP at a Thursday news conference if she was aware of that plan headed into the meeting, she responded by saying, “We didn't even talk about that” and insisted the meeting was not to discuss Peters' application.

“She gave her personal experiences through the program," Noem said. “Of course, she gave her perspective and how long it took to go through the program and how difficult it was.”

However, Sherry Bren, the longtime director of the Appraiser Certification Program, told the AP she was presented at the meeting with a letter from Peters' supervisor that slammed the agency's move to deny her the license.

Four months after the meeting, Peters received the license.

Noem once again insisted Peters “went through the exact same process that other appraisers did in the state of South Dakota. She at no time received special treatment.”

Noem has also defended her conduct in the episode by saying she was working to solve a shortage of appraisers in the state. However, she has faced backlash from the organization that represents appraisers after Hultman pressured Bren to retire late last year, shortly after Peters received her license. Bren filed an age discrimination complaint and received a $200,000 payment from the state to withdraw the complaint and leave her job.

“I came in to fix the program. And so we are fixing it,” she said. “But also we recognize that some people that have been involved in the industry for a long time don’t like that.”

The Legislature's Government Operations and Audit Committee, which is looking into the agency at the center of the episode, has requested copies of the agreements between Peters and the agency, but Noem said doing so would set a precedent of opening personnel files to the public.

“That’s why for consistency and to make sure that I’m being fair — because that’s exactly what I’m focused on — I would have to set that same precedent for everybody," she said.

When asked if she would allow the documents to be opened because the agreements themselves state they are open to public inspection, she said she would let her attorneys decide what should be deemed an open record.

Attorneys for the Department of Labor and Regulation have already denied a public records request from the AP for the records. An appeals office later ruled that the department was right to deny the records request.

While Bren declined an invitation from the Legislature to speak last week, she has said she is working with her lawyer to communicate with lawmakers and correct “any factual inaccuracies” from Hultman’s testimony.

Controversial French doctor Raoult in disciplinary hearing over notorious Covid-19 tips

Issued on: 05/11/2021 -

Didier Raoult controversially championed the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for Covid-19. © Thomas Coex, AFP

A prominent French infectious disease doctor on Friday faced a disciplinary hearing for his controversial recommendations on Covid-19 that won him global fame at the height of the pandemic.

Didier Raoult championed the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine as a coronavirus treatment at a time when the method was also being touted without evidence by former US Donald Trump and his Brazilian counterpart Jair Bolsonaro.

But while seen as a folk hero by some in the southern French city of Marseille, which prides itself on its independence from Parisian orthodoxy, he was also accused by peers of spreading false information about the benefits of the drug.

Studies have found that hydroxychloroquine does not work against the coronavirus.

Raoult, 69, was present as the hearing presided over by the order of doctors in the southwestern Nouvelle-Aquitaine region got underway at a courthouse in the city of Bordeaux.

He gave no comment on arrival, acknowledging some thirty demonstrators who had come to support and applaud him.

"Raoult, our beacon in the night", "Don't touch our Raoult" were among the slogans banners testifying to the popularity of a doctor who prides himself on confronting establishment orthodoxy.

He stands accused of several breaches of the medical code of ethics related to the promotion of hydroxychloroquine against Covid-19 as non-validated treatment.

The disciplinary chamber, chaired by a magistrate, can decide on sanctions against the doctor ranging from a simple warning to a temporary suspension. It must deliver its ruling between 15 days and eight weeks after the hearing.

A familiar figure on French TV with his shoulder-length blond hair and grey beard, Raoult was also visited for advice by French President Emmanuel Macron in April 2020 as the pandemic was in full swing in a meeting that stunned many observers.

Raoult and his Marseille infectious diseases institute are also facing accusations at of carrying out allegedly illegal "clinical trials" against tuberculosis since 2017, claims which they deny.

Raoult must leave his job at the end of June at the latest due to retirement rules.

(AFP)

Away from the world, the mangrove fishers of DR Congo







A clam fisher surfaces after diving without equipment to the bottom of the mangrove, several metres (around 10 feet) deep 

(AFP/ALEXIS HUGUET)

Alexis HUGUET
Fri, November 5, 2021

They break through the surface of the water, noisily expel their lingering breath, then take another gulp of air before descending to the depths of the mangroves.

Buried in mud several metres (around 10 feet) below the surface is their prize: Clams known as bibwati, which are both a delicacy and a lifeline.

The men and women divers are members of the Assolongo tribe -- the only community authorised to live in the Democratic Republic Congo's Mangroves National Park.


DR Congo is sub-Saharan Africa's biggest country, with an area the size of continental western Europe (AFP/STAFF)

The 768-square-kilometre (296-square-mile) park is a rare jewel of conservation in a world where mangroves are routinely destroyed for tourism or seafood farms.

It lies on the mouth of the mighty Congo, where unique species of trees and shellfish thrive in the confluence of fresh and salt water.

The village of Nteva is reached after a boat trip through a labyrinthine semi-submerged forest covering nearly 20,000 hectares (50,000 acres).

"We don't have electricity here, there's virtually no phone network, and no school either," village chief Mbulu Nzabi said.

The villagers hand-fish for bibwati and -- almost literally -- live on them.

The clams are boiled and their flesh taken for food. The shells are then thrown onto the river bank, joining a pile of remains that become the foundations for homes.

"Our grandparents built their huts several dozen metres (yards) from where we are today," said Nzabi.

"We are living on a huge pile of bibwati shells that is growing all the time."

Away from the world, the mangrove fishers of DR Congo

Night falls on Nteva village as a fisherman returns to his home 

(AFP/ALEXIS HUGUET)

The park and its precious ecosystem are overseen by the Congolese Institute for the Conservation of Nature (ICCN). It has an annual budget for the park of less than $100,000 (85,000 euros).

"Before there was the park, you could do anything you like," said Nzabi, a touch nostalgically.

"People could fish for manatees and sell their meat. You could cut down mangrove trees and make charcoal. Everything these days is regulated."

If the lifestyle in Nteva seems light-years from the rest of the world, daily reminders of the 21st century pass by every day.

Huge container ships, carrying Chinese products, frozen foods and many other goods, haul their way up the Congo to the ports of Matadi and Boma -- the trading gateway to the DRC's bustling capital, Kinshasa.

The shoreline of Nteva village is a beach of clam shells, which become the foundations for homes (AFP/ALEXIS HUGUET)

When night falls in Nteva, there is no television, nor is there the sound of rumba, the musical backdrop to life in the city.

Instead, the silence of the mangroves is broken by hymns sung in the Kissolongo language.

They are sung by a choir of women and girl choristers, gathered at a Catholic chapel made from raffia palms.

ah/bmb/at/ayv/ri/pbr

A clam fisher boils up his catch (AFP/ALEXIS HUGUET)