Mediaboss Marketing

Good morning.

The FBI and Department of Homeland Security have warned that hackers linked to the Chinese government may target US firms and institutions conducting research into Covid-19, adding fuel to the tensions between Washington and Beijing. Chinas efforts to target these sectors pose a significant threat to our nations response to Covid-19, the US cybersecurity agency said on Wednesday, without citing any specific examples.

A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman dismissed the accusations as rumours and slanders, describing China as a staunch upholder of cyber security and saying the country was leading the world in Covid-19 treatment and vaccine research. While China has spoken of offering global leadership during the pandemic, writes Peter Frankopan, it is doing little to lead international collective action:

Nor, for that matter, is the US, the EU or anyone else. And in our me-first world, where states put their interests first, and find collaboration either increasingly difficult or unpalatable, this indeterminacy could have very significant consequences for global affairs.

The Wisconsin supreme court has struck down its stay-at-home order, overruling the Democratic governor Tony Evers and reopening the state for business. The 4-3 decision, written by the courts conservative justices, was made despite a poll suggesting almost 70% of Wisconsin residents supported Evers approach.

The ruling appears to follow Donald Trumps lead. On Wednesday, the president said repeated warnings from Dr Anthony Fauci, his administrations top infectious diseases expert, about the dangers of lifting lockdown restrictions too soon were not acceptable. Oliver Milman reports on how Trump has sidelined science and the CDC during the pandemic.

Elsewhere in the US

Oil companies are capitalising on the crisis, with new analysis showing that financially troubled fossil fuel firms have taken at least $50m in taxpayer-backed coronavirus loans intended for small businesses.

South Dakotas governor might sue the Sioux after two Native American tribes vowed to go on operating road checkpoints to protect their communities from coronavirus.

Another conspiracy theory is gaining traction after the spread of a viral video called Plandemic, in which disgraced scientist Dr Judy Mikovits blames Bill Gates, Fauci and others for the pandemic.

Mexicos border states are home to more than 6,000 maquiladoras largely foreign-owned factories that manufacture products for export. And despite official efforts to keep them closed during the pandemic, they are facing intense pressure from companies and the US government to keep running regardless of the risks. Mexico on Wednesday recorded its highest daily coronavirus death toll so far, adding to fears of a surge across Latin America.

Elsewhere in the world

As he tries to pivot away from the pandemic towards smearing his presumptive election rival, Trump has expanded his so-called Obamagate conspiracy theory to implicate Joe Biden. Ric Grenell, the presidents acting director of national intelligence, has handed Congress a list of top Obama administration officials whom he alleges were involved in the unmasking of retired general Michael Flynn, including Biden himself. Unmasking is a routine practice used to identify a person anonymously referred to in an intelligence document. It takes place hundreds of times a year, without controversy.

Trumps obsession with Obama is an effort to distract from his own failures, writes Richard Wolffe:

Trump has many good reasons to sail away to the land of smears. Theyre called the polls, and they are for the sociopath sitting in the White House even worse reading than the pandemic death tolls or the latest unemployment claims.

The Rocky Mountain GP who healed the US

After he was featured in a seminal Life magazine photo-essay in 1948, the Colorado physician Ernest Ceriani briefly became a national hero. That pictorial record of his tireless efforts to treat a rural population of 2,000 singlehandedly resonate more than ever, writes Sean OHagan.

The rise of mutual aid under coronavirus

The lockdown has been a struggle for almost everyone in society, but it has also inspired a remarkable amount of generosity, kindness and solidarity. Rebecca Solnit reports on the spontaneous rise of mutual aid.

I made Robert Pattinsons ungodly pasta recipe

In a recent interview, Robert Pattinson described his own recipe for piccolini cuscino, a pasta dish with fast-food credentials that you can hold in your hand. Max Benwell writes about his attempt to make it, and then eat it: Ive never taken so much pleasure in scraping something into the bin.

It didnt take long for the global pandemic to become another battleground in the US culture wars, says Arwa Mahdawi. Now even wearing a face mask is seen as a political statement.

Wearing one signals that you believe in science; that you believe in putting the greater good ahead of your individual comfort. To some people, they are a sign of solidarity; to others, they signify that you are a liberal snowflake.

The Nana Otafrija dancing pallbearers of Accra, Ghana, gained prominence in 2017 after their signature coffin-based moves were featured in a documentary. Now, with the world holding far more funerals than usual, they have become a global meme and an example of how to mourn joyfully.

First Thing is delivered to thousands of inboxes every weekday. If youre not already signed up, subscribe now.

View post:
First Thing: the FBI thinks China could hack US vaccine research - The Guardian

The Rise of Skywalker was a crowd pleaser for the worst possible crowd.

Today is May 4th. Yep,that day. Star Wars day. May the 4th be with you, etc. The pun that, thanks to the internet, somehow transformed a regular day into a global holiday of Star Wars worship. But there's only one problem: I don't really want to worship at that altar any more.

And The Rise of Skywalker is to blame.

It's embarrassing, but there was a point during my first watch of The Rise of Skywalker where, in a packed theater, I audibly said "what the hell?"

I can't remember exactly which part. There were a few candidates.

Entertain your brain with the coolest news from space to superheroes, memes to robots.

It could have been right at the beginning, when Rose Tico (played by Kelly Marie Tran) was yanked from The Rise of Skywalker like Poochie from The Simpsons. It absolutely felt like a move designed to placate the racist trolls who'd bullied Tran off social media in 2018.

That sucked. Big time. Definitely worth a "what the hell?"

Could have been the moment they "unkilled" Chewbacca, rewinding perhaps the only challenging moment in a first act that felt like it was written and edited by a 5-year-old high on sherbet.

What the hell?

But if I had to place bets, I'd say my "what the hell" moment came during the big "Rey's origins" reveal.

Undoing one of The Last Jedi's most interesting choices, Kylo Ren tells Rey she wasn't the daughter of drunkards who sold her off for booze money. Nah, scratch that. In a desperate attempt to tie everything back to the original trilogy (making the Star Wars universe feel smaller than a snow globe), Rey was revealed to be the granddaughter of Emperor Palpatine: The big baddie who magically appeared in the third movie, minus any foreshadowing in the previous two movies.

"What the hell?"

Six months later, distanced from the warped bubble of Star Wars "discourse" -- and its place in the culture wars that consume all light and reason -- it's still difficult to explain why this choice annoyed me so much.

In hindsight Rey's reveal was the moment when Star Wars stopped existing as an object I could believe in and transformed into banal fan fiction catering to the worst type of fan. When Star Wars shrank into a story set in a Reddit thread far, far away. Designed to offend the least amount of people possible, built for people to sit in movie theatres and point: "LOOK, IT'S LANDO. LANDO'S HERE!"

I was pissed.

Pity my poor wife, eyes glazing over, who had to endure the train journey home. Me, arms waving like a madman, trying to explain why the passable sci-fi flick she'd just watched (and immediately began forgetting, like a normal adult) was a betrayal. That it deliberately and systematically unraveled every attempt made by The Last Jedi to reinvent Star Wars and have it successfully escape the dull nostalgia pit it's now fully descended into.

I stand by the assessment. The Last Jedi was a movie that demanded we "let the past die." It railed against casual nostalgia. Entire sections, like the casino scene on Canto Bight, were far from perfect, but The Last Jedi was bold and inventive. It never invited us to point, "LOOK, LANDO'S HERE!" Instead, it did a fantastic job of shredding all fan expectations. It murdered its main villain halfway through the run time; transformed Luke Skywalker from a dull do-the-right-thing hero-type into a vicious, bitter hermit tortured by his own failings.

It was a film that paid testament to the weird imagination of the original trilogy, but refused to pander to the most basic tenets of its mythology. A vocal minority hated it, but for my money it was one of the bravest blockbuster movies of the last decade. It made me care about Star Wars again.

But my biggest sin was caring in the first place.

In a post-Gamergate age, intense fandom has poisoned the well. The only response: Treat franchises like Star Wars and Marvel with indifference. If they rise above, like Into The Spider-Verse or Thor: Ragnarok? Great. If they don't? Ah well, it's just a movie. Taking it more seriously than that is a losing game.

I made the crucial mistake that renders all fandom toxic: I was too invested. As a teenager I devoured the Star Wars expanded universe. The good, the bad and The Courtship of Princess Leia. I was painfully in love with Star Wars as both a series and an idea. As an adult I had a huge amount of respect for the universe and the incredible movies it helped produce but now, post-Rise of Skywalker, I reckon I need a break from Star Wars. A long, long break.

May the Fourth be with you. I just want to ignore it. It's a hashtag I'll be muting into oblivion. Because in a day that's supposed to be a celebration, there's not much to celebrate.

That's enough Star Wars for me, thanks.

Now playing: Watch this: Disney Plus recognizes Star Wars Day, big tech companies...

1:30

Read more from the original source:
Star Wars lost its mystique, and The Rise of Skywalker is to blame - CNET

The police in Holly are trying to identify and locate the man who wiped his nose and face on a store clerk's shirt when asked to wear a mask.

The incident occurred at about 1:30 p.m. Saturday, May 2, at the Dollar Tree store on North Saginaw Street.

"The clerk advised the man that all in-store customers must wear a mask to enter the store as stated on the signs posted on the entry doors," Holly Police Chief Jerry Narsh said in a statement.

That apparently set the man off.

Police say this man wiped his nose and face on a store clerk's shirt, apparently angry at being asked to wear a mask.

"The man walked over to the clerk and wiped his nose and face on her shirt telling her, 'Here, I will use this as a mask,'" Narsh said. "The man continued to be loud and disruptive inside the store before leaving."

In a surveillance video released by the police, the clerk is wearing a facemark in the back of the store, and the man walks by. He paused as she said something, and then he walked back and grabbed her shirt sleeve and he bent over and wiped his face with it. He then walked away, gesturing as he did so.

It is believed the man had driven away in this type of van.

It is believed the man drove away in a white van with windows, possibly a Ford.

Narsh asked that anyone who recognizes the man to call Holly police at 248.634.8221. You can reference case number 20-2977.

In Michigan, people are required to wear face masks when out, especially within stores.

"Everyone that is able should wear a face covering when outside of their home and it is not possible to maintain at least 6 feet of distance between others," the state says in a FAQ about COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. "Social distancing is still necessary, even when using a face covering."

The New York Times reports that the face mask has become "a flash point in the virus culture wars," highlighting what's happening around the country, some angry at having to wear them and others shocked when groups gather without them on.

The idea of the mask is both to reduce the chance of coming in contact with the coronavirus and, more importantly, if one is sick, then there's less chance of passing it one if they are wearing a mask.The consensus from experts is that sick people, if wearing a mask, will not spread as many germs and thus overall spread of the coronavirus is slowed.

Near Holly, in Flint, according to multiple reports, including by NBC News, a security guard was shot and killed in what could possibly be a dispute over wearing a face mask. This incident occurred Friday night at the Family Dollar on 5th Avenue in Flint, in which Calvin Munerlyn, a father of eight.

Also on Saturday, in South Carolina, a 38-year-old woman was arrested Saturday after surveillance footage showed her licking her hands and touching food items and surfaces at a store and an eatery, according to Fox5NY.com.

And the American people returned to the American streets, bit by bit, place by place. And in the spaces they shared, they found a world that a

Oakland County will open its third coronavirus drive-thru testing site on Friday in Novi.

Both directions of Big Beaver Road under I-75 will be closed to set bridge beams from 10 a.m. Monday, May 4, until 7 p.m. Tuesday, May 5.

A Ferndale woman shot multiple times as she lay in bed is no longer in intensive care, police said as they continue their search to identify a suspect.

One man is arrested and another suffered serious injuries after an early morning crash on I-94 in Taylor, the Michigan State Police announced.

Its been 46 years since security guard James C. Browning was murdered at the former Northland Shopping Center in Southfield. Now, thanks to t

One local college student is publishing positive messages from others in hope to provide some good news during these unprecedented difficult t

Organizers anticipate another brisk week of activity for Forgotten Harvest's food distribution program in and around Macomb County.

When Ken Casida isnt selling real estate or working part-time in law enforcement in Oakland County, he takes some time to indulge in one of h

See the rest here:
Face mask rage? Man wipes nose and face on store clerk who asked he wear one - The Oakland Press

In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, European governments are being forced to take extreme measures to contain the spread of the virus and limit its impact on the economy. The measures taken are largely unprecedented country-wide lockdowns and curfews reinforced with extended powers of the executive on the one hand, and economic stimulus packages on the other. In Hungary and Poland, the illiberal democratic governments are seizing this opportunity to continue their special way of hollowing out democracy.

These developments have largely been covered by the international media, albeit in a simplified way. For instance, contrary to the dramatic headlines, the Enabling Act adopted in Hungary, albeit already abused by the government indeed, did not add much to what the executive can already do, given the government coalitions two-thirds majority in Parliament and party loyalists in all institutions, from the Constitutional Court to the Prosecutors Office. In Poland, meanwhile, the government is fighting to maintain its ability to pass legislation weakening the rule of law as smoothly as possible by retaining its own candidate in the presidential palace, including by pushing for a national ballot in the midst of a pandemic.

In both countries, this business as usual is intensified on the front of the culture war. Thats worrying in light of what is materially at stake in the pandemic. The two governments are stirring up the well-known polarising fault lines that have served them well in the past: between government and opposition, and between the majority and any minorities (or common sense vs out-of-touch liberals). These are the developments that cause the most widespread reactions internationally, while a blind eye is turned to the fact that the socio-economic policies being introduced in the two countries are set to cause a wide-scale social catastrophe, far beyond what the crisis makes inevitable.

On 15 April, in the midst of the coronavirus crisis, the Polish Parliament decided to debate two legislative proposals one on limiting legal access to abortion, the other on criminalising sexuality education. These proposals, which had already made an appearance in the previous parliamentary term, were the subject of widespread popular protests, making the topics inconvenient to the government. As a result, the legislative proposals had become permanently stuck at committee level.

Reactivating the proceedings at a time when all public gatherings are banned, making protesting in the streets nearly impossible, is a particularly cynical move on behalf of the Parliaments majority PiS party. That the two bills were finally sent back to committee for an indefinite period on 16 April seems to have less to do with the creative ways the opposition and grassroots groups found to protest despite the restrictions, than with the fact that the frantic debate they generated had served its purpose.

All the while, legislation on issues of material importance to millions of citizens seems to pass by unnoticed by international public opinion.

Before the reactivation of parliamentary work on these bills, the main topic of discussion had been Polands presidential election, set to be held on 10 May. Despite the spreading pandemic, the government had held on steadily to its commitment to hold the election on the scheduled date unsurprisingly, as opposition candidates inability to campaign further skews the odds in favour of the incumbent, backed by PiS.

Opposition candidates were rightly raising questions about not only the fairness of the competition in these circumstances, but whether holding a public ballot would even be safe. The diversion of attention towards the issue of reproductive rights has bought the government time to further entrench its election plans. The government is now preparing to organise the election through a postal ballot, despite the legally dubious nature of this proposal, which has been found unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

Certainly, the PiS government is not simply opportunistic but is actively pushing its long-term conservative agenda: it is an openly Christian conservative party and sympathetic to the claims of the even more right-wing groups, which support them in return for the possibility to push through restrictions on issues such as these. However, it seems PiS has become accustomed to using the issue of reproductive rights for its own political advantage as a weapon against the opposition to force it to become distracted.

In Hungary, meanwhile, the government seems to be using the exceptional situation to further polarise opposing positions on tired but well-serving fault lines. They put up an omnibus bill that among many outrageous proposals contains an amendment that seeks to introduce the termSex at birthdefined asthe biological sex determined by primary sexual characteristics and chromosomesto the Civil Registry Act.

Sex at birthwould replace sexin the civil registryand, after the bill passes, altering this entry would be forbidden, making it impossible to legally change ones sex in Hungary. In Hungarian there is one word for sex and gender (nem), the difference between sex and gender is expressed by adding an adjective biological or social sex. This fact contributes to even more misunderstandings and ideological misrepresentations, on both left and right, around the already polysemic terms, e.g. in the recent weeks the term gender was used in liberal media and in politics both to mean gender identity (the persons felt identification) and sex.

The goal of putting this item into the omnibus package seems if not for catering to the obsessions of the smaller coalition party, the Christian Democrats less to legislate on the obvious (i.e. one cannot change the sex one had at birth), but to use it later against the opposition as the final proof that they are for gender ideology. This move reproduces a culturalist fault line: framed from the liberal side one is for or against trans rights, and from the conservative side one is for or against gender ideology.

Given the exceptional situation of the pandemic and the range of measures in the omnibus bill, the opposition despite the fact that many of them hold more nuanced views on the issue than the culture war framing suggests (one can grant trans people rights without questioning basic biological facts) was put into a situation where it has no choice but to vote down the whole bill in the week of 4 May. For the government, this will be the proof they wanted: the opposition is for gender ideology and in the midst of a pandemic is acting hysterically about an issue that affects very few people.

All the while, legislation on issues of material importance to millions of citizens seems to pass by unnoticed by international public opinion. In response to the crippling effects of the pandemic on the global, European and national economies, the Polish government introduced an anti-crisis shield: a package of measures designed to soften that impact. Nevertheless, the package completely fails to address the needs of those most affected the precarious workers on zero-hours or casual contracts who are not paid unless they do work, and temporary and service industry workers. They are expected to receive a paltry one-off payment of 500 from the state. Those who are unemployed and qualify for benefits (only around 17 per cent of the unemployed, according to trade unions) continue to receive the pre-crisis rates of around 185 a month.

Meanwhile, the new measures allow employers to implement pay cuts as well as decrease the amount of rest between shifts and trade unions already report that some enterprises are applying these measures even if their business has not been impacted. The new legislation also allows the employer to determine where that rest takes place and can therefore instruct nursing home or medical staff to sleep at their workplace between shifts, rather than going home.

East-West inequalities have become clearly visible in the corona-related breakdowns of supply chains for care work and agricultural harvests.

There have further been media reports of projected staff reductions and pay cuts in the government administration, including a 20 per cent staff reduction in the Ministry of Health. Most of the governments extra spending in the anti-crisis shield, meanwhile, is set to support the financial sector. The just-announced additional anti-crisis measures promise some further subsidies for workers salaries, but only for employees in the largest companies; at the same time the new provisions are set to make it easier to terminate employment contracts and lower wages.

In Hungary, the government continues to deepen its social-Darwinist approach. While it expects hundreds of thousands of people to lose their jobs, it does not plan to extend the duration of unemployment benefits up to approximately 180 for three months, the shortest period in the EU. More than half of Hungarian households have savings for a maximum of two to three months. In the current circumstances, for the government to hold on to its ideology of the work-based society and prime minister Viktor Orbn to state that there is no free money in other words, if one does not perform on the labour market, one should not get state help is therefore particularly cynical.

In a decree issued on 10 April, the government modified the overtime bill without prior consultation, and made it possible for employers to unilaterally apply an even more flexible working timeframe than granted them in the infamous slave law. Also, while opposition parties and local governments are expected to contribute to pandemic mitigation funds, the Fidesz-loyal oligarchs are exempt from sharing the burden.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the developments relating to the ruthless economic measures in Hungary and Poland do not receive the same amount of attention as the culture wars waged by their governments. While the proposals to restrict reproductive rights in Poland and the new trans regulation in Hungary met with widespread opposition from EU policymakers MEPs wrote to the Polish parliament and the Hungarian government to protest the developments there was no similar reaction to the economic measures.

Indeed, it would appear that the social catastrophe orchestrated by Poland and Hungary is not out of line with the European values. The lack of provisions for the lower classes of these countries is in fact beneficial for the core EU countries who continue profiting from their cheap labour force which, now more than ever, is clearly essential to the functioning of their own economies.

East-West inequalities have become clearly visible in the corona-related breakdowns of supply chains for care work and agricultural harvests. What merits the outrage of the EU and Western elite in Poland and Hungary, and what does not, is another tell-tale sign of the hypocrisy behind the terms solidarity and European values. If these words are to mean anything, the socio-economic catastrophe in the making in those countries should be urgently addressed too.

See the original post here:
How Fidesz and PiS exploit the culture war - IPS Journal

The scene was the most unnerving of any in my political adulthood at least since the assassinations of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Sen. Robert Kennedy, and this scene also involved guns: Dozens of protesters armed with automatic weapons stormed the state capitol in Lansing, Michigan, demanding an end to enforced social distancing requirements made necessary by the coronavirus. Unnerving, but not entirely surprising.

The protest had some of the symbolic trappings of the Tea Party movement, for example: the prominent display of both U.S. and Gadsden flags, the latter emblazoned with the group's motto, "Don't Tread on Me." This Revolutionary-era motto was a tad excessive then, but at least the marines who hoisted it really were fighting for the principle that free men should not be disenfranchised, as the colonists were.

The crowd in Lansing is surely free to vote for the political leaders they desire, to be taxed only by their freely chosen representatives, is not required to quarter troops from abroad in their homes, nor risk being sent to London if they commit a crime. The 6% sales tax Michiganders pay exempts groceries, so there is no tax on tea either.

The mood was dark, but not the skin color of the protesters: This was a mostly all-white affair, as these libertarian events usually are.

The racist roots of modern libertarianism were well documented in Nancy MacLean's book Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America, which I reviewed in two parts, here and here. The godfather of the movement, James Buchanan, was unapologetically committed to states rights and proudly fond of John C. Calhoun. Watching the protest in Lansing, I could not but recall that George Wallace won the Michigan primary in 1972.

There were the self-contradictory signs invoking freedom when the absence of violence and the peaceful transfer of power have long been distinguishing marks of Western democracy. Only a deeply inadequate political theory would not see that the defense of the freedom of speech and promotion of self-government are essential to the protection of freedom and that bringing a gun to the legislature inhibits free speech and threatens the functioning of democracy. The only freedom these libertarians are committed to is their own and, while we can perhaps comfort ourselves that the protesters in Lansing were fringe extremists, the highbrow libertarians at the Cato Institute also operate from an impoverished, in their case excessively formal, definition of freedom. For them, the rich man and the homeless man are both free to forage in the dumpster for their dinner.

There was a sense of grievance driving the emotion of the mob, a sense that was palpable at Tea Party rallies in 2010, long before any virus infected the land. To be clear, America's working class has good reason to feel aggrieved, but it is the economic structures that flow from this same libertarian attitude that have left them as so much collateral damage in the laissez-faire, globalized economy. Unwilling or unable to identify the true culprit, they are happy to find scapegoats: immigrants, union bosses, "welfare queens." This sense of grievance has been nurtured by Republicans since Reagan's time, but it has been stoked into fever pitch by President Donald Trump.

True, the political left has been afflicted by socio-cultural memes concocted in academic laboratories, all of which tend to invite Democratic politicians to traffic in condescension. Remember "deplorables?" Only an activist political left, focused on economic justice, will bring any help to those cast aside by the Reaganite-Thatcherite economic landscape of the last 40 years. How grimly ironic that such political promise may be destroyed by the penchant on both left and right for culture wars rather than for political solutions.

Five years ago, Alan Wolfe warned us of the totalitarian core of libertarian ideology in a brilliant essay in Commonweal. He followed it up with an extraordinarily well-done conference on the topic at Boston College's Boisi Center, which he then led. The fact that libertarianism is at odds with Catholicism has long been obvious, which is why the courting of libertarian guru and funder Charles Koch by the Catholic of University of America was so repulsive. With my great friend Stephen Schneck, I helped organize a series of conferences on the wrongheadedness of libertarianism that began with a speech by Cardinal scar Rodrguez Maradiaga. This video starts with the cardinal being introduced by Richard Trumka, the president of the AFL-CIO. I hasten to point out that the defeat of libertarianism in our polity and culture will begin here, in an alliance of labor and the Catholic Church.

Those "Erroneous Autonomy" conferences started in 2014, which seems like a lifetime ago. Dark as the threat of libertarianism appeared then, none of us foresaw what we witnessed last week, armed protesters storming a citadel of democracy. The rest was predictable: the abuse of symbols, the racism, the self-contradictions, the totalitarian itch. But the threat of violence, expressed so openly and in such a raw fashion, this is new. Let the condemnations be swift and loud, before it is too late.

[Michael Sean Winters covers the nexus of religion and politics for NCR.]

Editor's note:Don't miss out on Michael Sean Winters' latest.Sign upand we'll let you know when he publishes newDistinctly Catholiccolumns.

Read more:
Armed mobs: the grim apotheosis of libertarianism - National Catholic Reporter