Good morning,
Belarus Interrogation
It’s outrageous and offensive. Belarus State TV has now broadcast “an interview” with Roman Protasevich, who was arrested after his plane was forced to land in Minsk. The young journalist had marks of torture on his wrists, and bruises on his face, and broke down in tears at the end. He has been held for 10 days now.
It doesn’t matter what he said because this is a hostage video, and the hostage taker is Belarus President Lukashenko who has behaved like dictator Saddam Hussein who paraded Western hostages on TV prior to the liberation of Kuwait.
Lukashenko has thumbed his nose at the West, and his only friend is fellow dictator Russian President Putin. Belarus needs to be isolated and choked with sanctions, and Lukashenko forced from the Presidency after he highjacked elections in August, and has since jailed and tortured many peaceful opposition protesters.
How does this end? It won’t end well. And at a minimum Protasevich must be released after his illegal arrest which included the highjacking of a plane bound between two EU Countries, indeed two NATO Countries.
This is not a test for Europe and America, it’s a redline that was crossed.
Facebook Rule Change
Facebook will announce today it is going to permanently change its rules in the wake of the ban of President Trump on its platform. Previously politicians including Trump were given special exemption from content because their content, however offensive was deemed to be “newsworthy”. Facebook will lift that rule today and politicians will be treated like anyone else.
Facebook has been incredibly slow to impose content restrictions on offensive content and has faced huge criticism even from people who worked in Facebook.
But imagine having to take action to ban a former President from your media site? The discussion begins with censorship questions, but circles around the disturbing fact Trumps messages were a call to violence and interpreted by his followers as messages of insurrection against the State. Facebook had no reasonable alternative and has to police its social media site. And there is much left to do on social media which long ago should have begun to police bizarre and radical content much more effectively.
UK Border - Covid
The UK started to lift rules allowing British residents to travel this summer for vacation and then did an abrupt 180 degree turn. Yesterday Portugal which had been placed on a ‘green list’ of countries deemed to be safe for vacation, was suddenly placed on the ‘yellow tier’ which effectively discourages travel from Britain because of rising rates of Covid. Many British holiday goers are already there and will have to return to face quarantines of 10 days.
Variants and New Concerns
The UK Government has announced what scientists have suspected for weeks, that the India variant is not just becoming the new dominant variant spreading incredibly fast, but that is also causes increased illness, and is spreading in schools.
On Back Story with Dana Lewis podcast, we feature epidemiologists Eric Feigl-Ding and Deepti Gurdasani who note the spread in children in school is concerning and the correlation with increases illness in 30 to 40 year olds, their parents.
The podcast is a good reality check at a time we are hearing many confusing messages from Government, and we need to stay vigilante to protect our health.
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Other News
-Later this month, U.S. intelligence agencies will present to Congress a highly-anticipated unclassified report about what they know about UFOs, or as the Pentagon now calls them, Unexplained Aerial Phenomena (UAPs).
-the US plans to share 80m Covid-19 vaccine doses with other countries, saying the first 25m doses will be disbursed across Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia and Africa.
-Hong Kong police make arrests and block any commemorations of the Tiananmen anniversary
-Israels P.M. Netanyahu appears to be in his last gasps to save his political career taking to Twitter to ask Israelis to oppose a leftist coalition that will form a new Government. The parties involved are dramatically different in philosophy but united in ousting Netanyahu.
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Have a good weekend everyone. I will take my family to the Van Gogh alive exhibit. We need some culture and a semblance of freedom through art! But we will wear masks and hope you will too.
Dana
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/06/03/belarus-tv-broadcasts-interview-with-jailed-activist-a74105
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/03/technology/facebook-politicians-posts.html
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/03/concern-over-delta-covid-variant-tightens-borders-of-uk