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Airbnb Asked to Drop Olympic Ties Over China Rights Issues

Airbnb Inc. is being asked to drop its sponsorship connections to next year’s Beijing’s Winter Olympics by a coalition of 150 human-rights campaigners.

The coalition is headed by groups that oppose rights violations in China including the detention of Muslim Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region.

Airbnb is one of the International Olympic Committee’s leading 15 sponsors. Included in the group are companies like Coca-Cola, Samsung, Visa, Toyota, Alibaba, Panasonic, Intel, and Procter and Gamble.

Airbnb, the home-sharing business, is being targeted because of repeated claims about the “social responsibility” it practices in its business model.

The Associated Press received the open letter sent on Tuesday to Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky. The letter argues that Airbnb is trying to drive tourism in China at the expense of Uyghurs and Tibetans who cannot travel freely in the country.

“Airbnb is also glossing over China’s horrifying human rights record and normalizing to the public what is recognized under international law as a deeply restrictive environment,” the letter said. “Airbnb should not be encouraging a wider tourist industry to be supported and allowed to flourish at the expense of Uyghur and Tibetan rights.”

The top 15 sponsors paid the IOC about $1 billion in cash or services in the last complete, four-year Olympic cycle, to be associated with the games. Airbnb signed up in November of 2019.

Rights groups are trying to pressure IOC sponsors and are pushing for a diplomatic boycott of the games—or even a hard boycott—to call attention to alleged abuses against Uyghurs, Tibetans, and residents of Hong Kong.

The Beijing Winter Olympics opens on Feb. 4, 2022.

China says “political motives” underlie the boycott effort. The Chinese describe the detention camps in Xinjiang as vocational centers.

“China firmly rejects the politicization of sports and opposes using human rights issues to interfere in other countries’ internal affairs,” foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said earlier this month. He said an effort at a boycott “is doomed to failure.”

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Teachers Sue LA School District Over COVID Vaccine Mandate

Groups representing teachers, counselors and employees say the Los Angeles Unified School District’s vaccine mandate violates federal law and basic human rights.

Employees of the second-largest school district in the U.S. filed suit last week to prevent the district from mandating COVID-19 vaccines as a condition of employment.

California Educators for Medical Freedom, with assistance from the Health Freedom Defense Fund (HFDF), filed a federal lawsuit March 17 against the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD).

In a press release, HFDF said LAUSD’s vaccine mandate violates federal law and basic human rights by requiring employees to take an experimental vaccine in order to remain employed.

All COVID vaccines available in the U.S. — Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson — are approved under the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Emergency Use Authorization (EUA). By the FDA’s own definition, that makes the vaccines “experimental” until or unless the FDA licenses them.

School employees alleged in their complaint that the statute granting the FDA power to authorize a medical product for emergency use, 21 U.S.C. § Section 360bbb-3, requires that the person being administered the unapproved product be advised of the benefits and risks, and of his or her right to refuse the product.

The FDA issued a Fact Sheet for Health Care Providers and a Fact Sheet for Recipients and Caregivers for each of the three vaccines approved for emergency use. The fact sheets state, among other things, that a provider must communicate information to the recipient prior to administering the vaccine — including that the recipient has the option to accept or refuse the vaccine.

In their lawsuit, employees allege that Section 360bbb-3 recognizes the “well-settled doctrine” that medical experiments, or “clinical research,” may not be performed on human subjects without the express, informed consent of the individual receiving treatment.

According to HFDF, the fundamental right to avoid imposed human experimentation has its roots in the Nuremberg Code of 1947, which was later ratified by the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki, further codified in the United States Code of Federal Regulations and adopted by the California Legislature. It says that “no person subject to this state’s jurisdiction may be forced to undergo the administration of experimental medicine without that person’s informed consent.”

Since adoption of the Nuremberg Code, free nations have recognized that forced medical experimentation of any kind is both inhumane and unethical. “There is no “pandemic exception” to the law or the Constitution,” plaintiffs stated in their complaint.

“This is a very important case for educators all across America and is likely to set a precedent for all of us,” said Michael Kane, New York City teacher and founder of NY Teachers for Choice.

“Sometimes all you need is someone to stand up and say ‘No’ to remind everyone that we are completely within our rights to resist government overreach. And that is what this is — government overreach.”

Kane said the LAUSD teacher’s union “definitely plays a role in all of this” and that LA teachers need to lobby their union and threaten to pull their money from supporting the union if it doesn’t support their right to choice. “Rank-and-file union members must hold their union leadership accountable and force them to represent those who are pro-choice for all medical procedures,” Kane said.

The complaint states that employees of LAUSD last month began to receive communications from Superintendent Austin Beutner and other representatives of LAUSD instructing them to make appointments to get vaccinated.

None of the communications to employees included the information from the fact sheet required by the FDA to be given to vaccine recipients under EAU.

On March 4, guidance from LAUSD human resources was given to employees that stated: “The Moderna vaccine is currently being administered by Los Angeles Unified nurses and other licensed healthcare professionals to Los Angeles Unified employees. You will schedule your appointment […]. You will provide proof of vaccination via the DailyPass for time reporting purposes.”

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42% of religious Americans report attending in-person worship at least once in the past month: Pew

As the pandemic continues, 42% of U.S. adults who identify as religious said they’ve attended worship at least once in the past month, according to the Pew Research Center.

In a Pew report published Monday titled “Life in U.S. Religious Congregations Slowly Edges Back Toward Normal,” researchers found an increase in worship attendance compared to last year.

Among all U.S. adults, Pew found a slight increase of those who reported attending at least one service in the past month, from 13% in July 2020 to 17% in early March 2021.

A respondent was classified in the religious Americans category if they attended worship services at least once a month on a regular basis before the pandemic lockdowns last year.

Among religious Americans surveyed, 42% said they had attended at least one worship service in the past month, which was higher than the 33% who said the same in July 2020.

When analyzing the Christian subcategories, Pew found that evangelical respondents were the most likely to say they had attended in-person worship in the past month, at 53%.

Catholics were the next largest Christian group to report attending in the past month with 34%, followed by mainline Protestants at 34% and historically black Protestants at 21%.

There was also a racial gap in responses, as 50% of non-Hispanic whites reported attending worship in the past month while 34% of Hispanics and 25% of non-Hispanic blacks responded the same.

The Pew report drew from a nationally representative sample that was surveyed March 1-7 of 12,055 respondents with a margin of error of plus or minus 1.5 percentage points.

The report also found increased confidence in the safety of attending in-person worship during the pandemic among those who were classified as religious Americans in the study.

Seventy-six percent of religious Americans said they were “very” or “somewhat” confident that they could attend worship without getting COVID-19, an increase from 64% reported last July.

Further, between July 2020 and March 2021, the percentage of religious Americans who believed their congregation should be closed for in-person services declined from 28% to 15%, while those who believed they should be “open as normal” increased from 13% to 26%.

“As coronavirus cases, hospitalizations and deaths decline and vaccination rates rise across the United States, life in religious congregations is showing signs of slowly returning to normal,” stated Pew.

“Still, the situation in U.S. congregations remains far from ordinary, and this promises to be the second consecutive highly atypical Easter season for Christians.”

Earlier this month, LifeWay Research released a study which found that around one in four people who attended church before the pandemic plan to attend more frequently when it ends.

According to the LifeWay report on Protestant churchgoers, 91% said they plan to return to attending worship post-pandemic and 23% said they will attend worship more often.

LifeWay also found that churchgoers aged 18-29 were the most likely to report planning to attend more, with 43% saying they will go to church more after the pandemic.

Democrats’ Operative Got Secret Internet Connection at Wisconsin Election Center, Emails Show

(The Daily Signal) A veteran Democratic operative intricately involved in Green Bay’s November election was given access to “hidden” identifiers for the internet network at the hotel convention center where ballots were counted, according to emails obtained by Wisconsin Spotlight.

Green Bay city officials insist the presidential election was “administered exclusively by city staff.” But the emails show that Michael Spitzer-Rubenstein, Wisconsin state lead for the National Vote at Home Institute, had a troubling amount of contact with election administration Nov. 4.

“I’ll have my team create two separate SSID’s for you,” Trent Jameson, director of event technology at Green Bay’s Hyatt Regency and KI Convention Center, where the city’s Central Count was located on Election Day, wrote to Spitzer-Rubenstein.

SSID stands for Service Set Identifier. It’s an internet network’s name. Open up the list of Wi-Fi networks on your laptop or phone, and the list of SSIDs will pop up. Wireless router or access points broadcast SSIDs so nearby devices can find and display any available networks.

Hiding the identifier keeps the network name from being publicly broadcast. The identifier won’t immediately pop up in the display, although the network name remains available for use.

“One SSID will be hidden and it’s: 2020vote. There will be no password or splash page for this one and it should only be used for the sensitive machines that need to be connected to the internet,” Jameson wrote in his Oct. 27 email to Spitzer-Rubenstein.

Spitzer-Rubenstein in turn forwarded the email Oct. 30 to Celestine Jeffreys, Green Bay Mayor Eric Genrich’s chief of staff.

Also on the email were Amaad Rivera-Wagner, the mayor’s community liaison; Jaime Fuge, Green Bay’s chief election inspector at the time; Shelby Edlebeck, multimedia communications specialist; and Mike Hronek, the city’s information technology administrator.

“The other SSID will be: gbvote and that one can be seen in the settings app of your phone or laptop under ‘networks’ and should be used for the poll workers who need internet,” Jameson wrote in the email to Spitzer-Rubenstein.

Jameson told Spitzer-Rubenstein there would be a third identifier, which was to be used by media or other guests “not part of your team.”

Why would a guy who has been described as a consultant or adviser to the city need to have hidden SSIDs? Why would the city want him to have knowledge of Service Set Identifers for “sensitive machines”?

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Restaurant Owner Challenging Lockdown Order Gets Big Legal Win

A restaurant in Fredericksburg, Virginia, will not be forced to close after it broke state coronavirus guidelines, which is a major victory for the small business.

A judge denied the state’s request that an injunction be issued against Gourmeltz 90’s Music Bar & Draft House, after the restaurant went against the state’s restrictions on dining, WUSA-TV reported.

Despite his food and liquor licenses being revoked by the state for not complying with Democratic Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam’s COVID-19 orders for dining (like wearing masks), restaurant owner Matt Strickland and his team are still serving customers.

“I’m not afraid of the state, I’m not afraid of the federal government,” Strickland told WUSA-TV.

“I spent most of my adult life fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. I have no problem coming home and fighting here in Virginia.”

His lawyer argued that the restaurant has yet to have a case of coronavirus traced back to it, and Gourmeltz has raised over $13,000 in funds to assist with legal efforts.

“The state, the government, the president … They will never scare me into backing down. I will never kneel down and kiss that ring. I will fight as long as I’ve got to fight. I will fight as hard as I have to fight,” Strickland added.

State guidelines mandate that employees wear masks at all times, and customers must wear a mask inside a restaurant, except when eating or drinking.

The restaurant industry has taken a significant hit since the beginning of the pandemic, so it is no surprise that places like Gourmeltz would not comply.

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Trump Congratulates Project Veritas Over Legal Victory Against Fake News NYT

Comes after NY Supreme Court ruled that defamation lawsuit against The Times can go forward

President Trump congratulated Project Veritas and its founder James O’Keefe on Tuesday following a successful defamation lawsuit against the New York Times.

O’Keefe joined Trump at Mar-a-Lago where the 45th president lauded the undercover media organization’s major win against the fake news outlet after the New York State Supreme Court ruled that O’Keefe’s lawsuit could go forward.

“I want to congratulate Project Veritas on their big win on the New York Times,” Trump said, with O’Keefe beside him.

“Now the suit will continue, and whatever you can do for their legal defense fund, we’re with them all the way. They do incredible work. They find things that nobody would even believe possible. So James, congratulations.”

This comes after Judge Charles Wood ruled in favor of Veritas, stating that they had presented sufficient evidence that The Times may have been motivated by “actual malice” when it ran several hit pieces against the watchdog organization.

“[I]f a writer interjects an opinion in a news article (and will seek to claim legal protections as opinion) it stands to reason that the writer should have an obligation to alert the reader, including a court that may need to determine whether it is factor opinion, that it is opinion,” Wood said in his ruling last week.

Veritas noted on its website that this was the first case The Times lost on a Motion to Dismiss without appeal since 1965.

“This appears to be the first case where the New York Times lost on Motion to Dismiss without appeal, since 1965. AND the FIRST CASE EVER where NYT lost under New York’s new anti-SLAPP laws enacted last year.”

UPDATE: GraceLife’s Pastor James Coates Fined $1,500 and Released From Jail

(ChristianLeader) Update (3-23-2021) After spending almost five weeks behind the bars of the Edmonton Remand Centre for violating public health mandates, Pastor James Coates was released yesterday (March 22, 2021). Coates was jailed because he preached at his GraceLife Church‘s worship gatherings and refused to place capacity and social distancing restrictions upon the congregants.

Appearing virtually before Stony Plain court’s Provincial Judge Jeffrey Champion while dressed in an orange and black jumpsuit, Pastor Coates was fined $1,500 and received a stern reprimand from the judge: “Your decision could have been of danger to the health and safety of those in the community.”

Pastor Coates’ lawyers proposed a lesser fine. But according to the Edmonton Journal, Judge Champion voiced his concern with the message the court could be sending to others who might be looking to disobey public health orders if a lesser fine would have been accepted.

The husband to wife Erin and father to their two sons told the court on Monday that he was not making a statement by remaining in jail despite having the option to be freed earlier if he would have chosen to adhere to the government’s COVID-19 health mandates.

His wife Erin shared recently in an interview, “I do want to make it clear, he’s not in jail because he didn’t obey the restrictions. He’s in jail because he obeyed the Lord Jesus Christ and His headship over the church and did not restrict the gathering to anybody.”

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See Coronavirus Restrictions and Mask Mandates for All 50 States

A year after much of the country entered strict lockdowns designed to contain the coronavirus, it remains largely up to state and local officials to determine what restrictions, if any, to impose to slow new infections.

A nationwide patchwork of rules for businesses and residents has resulted from months of trial and error, as governors have reopened some sectors only to later re-close and reopen them again as infection rates rose and fell.

Many states are moving closer to lifting all restrictions now that the vaccine rollout is underway. Others are still mandating the use of masks in public and keeping other limits in place.

Coronavirus restrictions by state

The New York Times is tracking coronavirus restrictions at the state level, including what businesses are open or closed — and whether officials require masks or recommend or order staying at home. Stricter local orders may also be in place, and local conditions may not always reflect state requirements.

Many states offer exceptions to broader rules, for example allowing bars to operate if they also serve food. Nearly all states limit capacity or require social distancing measures for businesses that are allowed to open.

This page will be updated regularly.

See Data

2021 could see strong economy coupled with emergency monetary and fiscal policies

The United States could look like a booming economy by the end of the year but with emergency monetary and fiscal policies.

The Federal Reserve said this week that it anticipates 6.5% gross domestic product growth for the year, which would be the strongest annual growth since the Reagan years. It also sees unemployment falling to 4.5% before the year ends.

Chief financial officers of some of the country’s biggest organizations are optimistic. While only 29% of CFOs said that North America’s economy is currently good, an overwhelming 73% expect it to improve throughout 2021, according to a survey released this week by Deloitte.

The jobs report for February was also better than anticipated and found that the economy added 379,000 jobs, well above economic forecasts that pegged the number at fewer than 200,000 new jobs.

Consumer confidence, which dropped profoundly during 2020 as a result of the economic slowdown, is also on the rise this year. Customer sentiment jumped to 83 in early March, up from 76.8 in February, an 8.1-point gain, but that figure is still down from a year ago when it sat at 89.1, according to an index by the University of Michigan. Consumer expectations on the same index rose by nearly 10 points from February to early March, and it’s likely those figures will continue to grow as the number of COVID-19 vaccines increases and business restrictions are eased.

At the same time the economy will be returning to health, the accompanying federal policy is projected to be extreme by historical standards.

Fed Chairman Jerome Powell has said that the Fed doesn’t expect a rate hike from near zero in the next three years. He has said officials intend to keep short-term rates near zero until there is 2% sustained inflation and maximum employment.

The Fed also announced Wednesday that it will be buying $120 billion in government bonds per month until its goals are met.

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Supreme Court Rejects Facebook Appeal in $15 Billion Lawsuit

The Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal from Facebook that requested the court intervene in a $15 billion class-action lawsuit alleging the firm illegally tracked the online activities of its users when they are not on the platform, thereby violating the federal Wiretap Act law.

“Facebook’s user profiles would allegedly reveal an individual’s likes, dislikes, interests, and habits over a significant amount of time, without affording users a meaningful opportunity to control or prevent the unauthorized exploration of their private lives,” the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in a ruling (pdf) last year, saying that Facebook users suffered a clear invasion of privacy.

The “Plaintiffs have sufficiently alleged a clear invasion of the historically recognized right to privacy,” the court ruled at the time. “Therefore, Plaintiffs have standing to pursue their privacy claims under the Wiretap Act, [the Stored Communications Act], and [the Children’s Internet Protection Act], as well as their claims for breach of contract and breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing.”

On Monday, the Supreme Court denied Facebook’s appeal, meaning the suit can go forward.

The lawsuit alleged that the Menlo Park, California-based tech giant had secretly tracked users’ visits to websites that use Facebook’s features such as the “like” or “share” buttons, even if the users did not click on either of the two buttons.

The litigation also accuses the company of violating the privacy rights of its users under California law, but Facebook’s appeal to the Supreme Court involved only the Wiretap Act. The 1968 law has also been invoked in lawsuits against Google and Microsoft.

Four individuals filed the proposed lawsuit in California federal court seeking $15 billion in damages for Facebook’s actions between April 2010 and September 2011. The company stopped its nonconsensual tracking after it was exposed by a researcher in 2011, court papers said. They further argued that Facebook unjustly collected the data and sold it to advertisers for a profit.

Facebook, in response, said it maintained privacy standards and should not be penalized for communications that users partake in, saying that the data was collected to show users better content and more targeted ads on its platform. It has further said the data was not collected in an unfair manner.

“Facebook was not an uninvited interloper to a communication between two separate parties; it was a direct participant,” the company said in a legal filing.

Facebook now discloses that it collects data when people visit websites with the firm’s plug-ins. It reached a settlement over its practices with the Federal Trade Commission about a decade ago.

The case is Facebook v. Davis, 20-727.

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