Friday, September 16, 2022

And another day of appeals, Reverse Freedom Rides, Trump embracing and amplifying QAnon conspiracies, Ukrainian torture victims, Iranian morality police and a dead woman, birth certificates with two mothers, and ‘sharenting’ comes to a close:

“It’s absolutely amazing how public DeSantis and Abbott are about their racism.” — Thom Hartmann

"This idea of a country for the people by the people — it's really a country for a particular people by a particular people." — Andrew Whitehead

Deaths

US: 1,078,457 (+439)

World: 6,529,144 (+3750)

Cases

US: 97,481,146 (+50,735)

World: 616,537,103 (+556,710)

US asks appeals court to lift judge’s Mar-a-Lago probe hold. The Justice Department asked a federal appeals court Friday to lift a judge’s order that temporarily barred it from reviewing a batch of classified documents seized during an FBI search of former President Donald Trump’s Florida home last month.

The Martha's Vineyard migrant flight has echoes of a dark past: Reverse Freedom Rides. Fuming over the civil rights movement, Southern segregationists had concocted a way to retaliate against Northern liberals. In 1962, they tricked about 200 people from the South into moving north. The idea was simple: When large numbers of Black people showed up on Northern doorsteps, Northerners would not be able to accommodate them. They would not want them, and their hypocrisy would be exposed. The Reverse Freedom Rides have largely disappeared from the country's collective memory. The scheme almost never appears in history books and is little-known even in Hyannis, the primary target of the ploy. But for the families who came to the North 60 years ago, based on a lie, the journey has cast an enduring shadow on their lives. And the Reverse Freedom Rides have dark echoes in the campaign this summer by Republican governors to send migrants north to cities like Washington, D.C., New York, and Chicago to make a political point. This week, it was Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida who paid to send 50 migrants by plane to Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. This followed earlier efforts by Governors Greg Abbott of Texas and Doug Ducey of Arizona that have sent thousands of migrants north by the busload. Many of them, like the families 60 years ago, said they had traveled on false promises of help finding jobs and housing. — Read it all. The whole scheme. Everything Republicans do is based, in some fashion, on racism. Republicans are inhumane.

Trump openly embraces, amplifies QAnon conspiracy theories. After winking at QAnon for years, Donald Trump is overtly embracing the baseless conspiracy theory, even as the number of frightening real-world events linked to it grows.

Ukrainian president: Burial site contains torture victims. Investigators searching through a mass burial site in Ukraine have found evidence that some of the dead were tortured, including bodies with broken limbs and ropes around their necks, Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskyy said Friday. The site near the northeastern city of Izium, recently recaptured from Russian forces, appears to be one of the largest discovered in Ukraine. Zelenskyy spoke in a video he rushed out just hours after the exhumations began, apparently to underscore the gravity of the discovery. He said more than 440 graves have been found at the site but that the number of victims was not yet known.

Iranian woman dies after being arrested by morality police, sparking protests. A young Iranian woman has died after falling into a coma following her detention by morality police enforcing Iran’s strict hijab rules, sparking protests by Iranians on social media and on the streets on Friday. In the past few months, Iranian rights activists have urged women to publicly remove their veils, a gesture that would risk their arrest for defying the Islamic dress code as the country’s hardline rulers crack down harder on “immoral behavior.” Videos posted on social media have shown cases of what appeared to be heavy-handed action by morality police units against women who had removed their hijab.

Nebraska judge: Birth certificates can’t name 2 mothers. A Nebraska judge has rejected a lawsuit filed by two Omaha women who sought to have both their names listed as parents on their children’s birth certificates, saying the request conflicts with state law.

Why ‘sharenting’ is sparking real fears about children’s privacy. “Sharenting,” or parents sharing their child’s likeness or personal information on the internet, has grown in popularity alongside the advent of smartphones and social media. And this practice shines a light on the murky realm of children’s consent, digital data collection, targeted advertising, and real-world dangers resulting from parents’ online activities…In an interview with Changing America, Cook stressed the intention of her work is not to shame parents about their online behaviors, but to better inform them of what the true online landscape is. “It’s a lot more nefarious than I think [parents] realize and they are putting out this information that I would encourage them to consider to keep more private,” she said.

Life’s short. Live, love, create, and help others.

Until next time, my friends. Stay safe and stay sane. Good night.