Facebook is censoring Americans at the behest of President Joe Biden’s administration in violation of the First Amendment, a new lawsuit alleges.
As evidence of the collusion, the class-action complaint quotes White House press secretary Jen Psaki’s recent admission that the administration is “flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation.”
“When she said that they were working with Big Tech then it changes everything because then it’s the government censoring, so that obviously can’t stand,” Richard Rogalinski, the plaintiff, told The Epoch Times.
Rogalinski made several posts about COVID-19 this year, including on April 6 remarking how he has seen data showing masks do not prevent the spread of the virus that causes the disease.
He has seen those posts appended with statements directing people to articles by so-called fact-checkers.
In one instance last month, Rogalinski posted an image of a tweet by Dr. David Samadi positing that “hydroxychloroquine worked this whole time.”
Hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial drug that has been around for decades, has shown some success against COVID-19 as both a treatment and prophylactic.
But Facebook hid the post from public view and deemed it “false information,” citing a USA Today article from July 2020 that claimed hydroxychloroquine is not effective in treating COVID-19.
“They’re fact checking me with articles that are a year before that aren’t even relevant,” Rogalinski said.
The USA Today article included studies that indicated hydroxychloroquine isn’t effective and others that suggest it does help in some scenarios, but focused on how the latter ones attracted criticism and downplayed them. Experts have told The Epoch Times that many of the studies were flawed.
More recent studies have also indicated that hydroxychloroquine can be effective, but only in some instances.
Facebook, under pressure last year, “formed a dogmatic narrative about COVID-19,” even as it became “the last bastions of public forum” amid widespread lockdowns, the suit charges.
“A small group of people, with absolutely crazy ideas and policies, is forcing these changes to destroy our culture and heritage. At some point, the people will not take it anymore!”
On Friday, the Cleveland Indians baseball organization announced that it has changed its name to the Guardians in an effort to be more respectful to indigenous people. Former President Donald Trump released a statement slamming the decision shortly thereafter, writing, “A small group of people, with absolutely crazy ideas and policies, is forcing these changes to destroy our culture and heritage.”
“Can anybody believe that the Cleveland Indians, a storied and cherished baseball franchise since taking the name in 1915, are changing their name to the Guardians?” Trump asked. “Such a disgrace, and I guarantee that the people who are most angry about it are the many Indians of our Country. Wouldn’t it be an honor to have a team named the Cleveland Indians, and wouldn’t it be disrespectful to rip that name and logo off of those jerseys?”
“The people of Cleveland cannot be thrilled and I, as a FORMER baseball fan, cannot believe things such as this are happening,” the statement continued. “A small group of people, with absolutely crazy ideas and policies, is forcing these changes to destroy our culture and heritage. At some point, the people will not take it anymore!”
NEW!
President Trump: "Can anybody believe that the Cleveland Indians, a storied and cherished baseball franchise since taking the name in 1915, are changing their name to the Guardians?
(NewsWars) Two-thirds of Indian population have Covid antibodies, despite only 6 to 18 percent fully vaccinated.
A recent survey which found 68 percent of India’s scarcely-vaccinated population have Covid-19 antibodies blows holes in the pro-vaccination narrative being pushed around the globe.
On Wednesday, The Guardiancovered the results of the Indian Council of Medical Research’s national seroprevalence survey:
India’s fourth national sero-survey, which examines the prevalence of Covid-19 antibodies either through infection or vaccination, found that 67.6% of the population of more than 1.3 billion has coronavirus antibodies.
The Guardian noted that “Of those surveyed, 62.2% had not been vaccinated, 24.8% had taken one dose and 13% were fully vaccinated.”
According to Google stats, last updated Tuesday, only 6.4% of the country’s been fully vaccinated.
The Economic Times of India noted the survey included children six years of age and up.
The survey’s findings prompted social media speculation that India has reached herd immunity, even as 87 to 93 percent have not been fully vaccinated.
If the new finding is right that 67.6% Indians surveyed have Covid antibodies, India may be close to herd immunity. Why vaccinate those previously infected? An Israeli study shows immunity via natural infection is a bit stronger than vaccinated immunity. https://t.co/QxV9BLxpWY
Graphs charting new Indian Covid-19 cases into July 2021 show a sharp decline in cases in recent weeks even as the Delta variant looms and vaccination rates remain low.
India was a house on fire in May. Now, the curve is almost all the way down (Farr's law). How did this happen? Was it vaccines? Well, since only around 5% of the country's population is vaccinated, the answer, in this case, is 'nahin na.'
The costs have only gotten higher for Japan as it settles in for a spectator-free Olympics like none other in the event’s history.
Tokyo’s bid to host the 2020 Summer Olympics (now being held in 2021) was a long time coming. After being awarded the games in 2013, Tokyo pegged the cost of the 2020 Olympics at $7.5 billion. Since then, that number has ballooned in size, with projections of a $15.4 billion cost forecast in December.
Over the past several years, the country worked hard to invest money in building and improving stadiums and readying its infrastructure for the hundreds of thousands of visitors that were expected to flock to Japan to watch their country compete. And then along came the COVID-19 pandemic.
In March of last year, the International Olympic Committee and the Tokyo Organizing Committee announced that the event was being postponed until July 2021. The setback didn’t come cheap. In December, organizers said that the price of delaying it a year was $2.8 billion, which has now grown to a hefty $3 billion, according to Reuters.
Japan saw an enormous spike of new COVID-19 infections in April and May, and polls at the time showed that nearly 60% of the Japanese people wanted the games canceled or postponed. A more recent poll found that nearly 80% of people in Japan don’t want it to go forward.
Tokyo stood strong amid the pressure, but in early July, Olympic organizers banned all spectators from attending the games after a state of emergency was declared. Prior to that, international spectators had already been banned, and domestic crowd caps had been set at 50% capacity.
The loss in revenue from ticket sales is stark. In December, estimates were that the sales would provide some $800 million in revenue to the Tokyo Organizing Committee, with domestic ticket sales accounting for 70%-80% of the total sales in past games. The double blow of having not only no international spectators but also no local fans further piled onto the two-week competition’s high cost.
The loss of spectators will not only be felt in ticket sales but will also decrease knock-on spending. Hotels, restaurants, and entertainment venues are all big losers in the decision to not have spectators. Prior to the pandemic, Japan had anticipated that the Olympic Games would boost its tourism industry and result in some 40 million foreign travelers in 2020.
Organizers had forecast that, combined with ticket sales, some $2 billion would be spent on hotels, dining, merchandise sales, and tourism travel while the guests were visiting the Land of the Rising Sun.
China’s foreign ministry announced new sanctions on seven Americans on Friday, including former U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, in retaliation for U.S. sanctions on seven Chinese officials last week.
Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian confirmed the sanctions against Ross along with US-China Economic and Security Review Committee (USCC) chairman Carolyn Bartholomew, Congressional-Executive China Committee (CECC) former director Jonathan Stivers, National Democratic Institute’s Hyungmo Kim, International Republican Institute’s Adam King, Human Rights Watch’s China Department director Sophie Richardson, and Hong Kong’s Democracy Council.
Zhao said the sanctions come in retaliation for U.S. sanctions against Chinese officials in Hong Kong. He called the U.S. sanctions “illegal” and a serious violation of international law and norms.
“Hong Kong is China’s Special Administrative Region and its affairs are an integral part of China’s internal affairs. Any attempt by external forces to interfere in Hong Kong’s affairs would be as futile as an ant trying to shake a big tree,” Zhao added.
The U.S. issued the sanctions last Friday against seven Chinese officials who were deemed behind Hong Kong’s eroding rule of law.
The sanctions targeted Chen Dong, Yang Jianping, Qiu Hong, Lu Xinning, Tan Tieniu, He Jing, and Yin Zonghua, who were described as “Deputy Directors of the Liaison Office of the Central People’s Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (LOCPG).”
“In the face of Beijing’s decisions over the past year that have stifled the democratic aspirations of people in Hong Kong, we are taking action. Today we send a clear message that the United States resolutely stands with Hong Kongers,” the U.S. State Department said during a June 16 statement announcing the sanctions.
University of California San Francisco’s COVID response director fears strict protocols in reopened schools will continue mental health problems in children.
COVID-19 policies had disastrous results on children, especially in California, according to medical researchers at the University of California San Francisco.
Jeanne Noble, director of COVID response in the UCSF emergency department, is finishing an academic manuscript on the mental health toll on kids from lockdown policies. She shared a presentation on its major points with Just the News.
Suicides in the Golden State last year jumped by 24% for Californians under 18 but fell by 11% for adults, showing how children were uniquely affected by “profound social isolation and loss of essential social supports traditionally provided by in-person school,” the presentation says.
Children requiring emergency mental health services jumped last year in Children’s Hospital of Oakland, and children’s hospitalizations for eating disorders more than doubled at UCSF Children’s Hospital. In January, the latter’s emergency department (ED) at Mission Bay hit a record for “highest proportion of suicidal children in ER” at 21%.
Noble and her manuscript coauthors previewed their findings and conclusions in a Wall Street Journal op-ed last month. They accused the CDC of burying the harms to teen mental health from lockdown while cherry-picking data to cast teen COVID hospitalizations “in the worst possible light.”
The “lessons are national” from California’s lockdown policies, which resulted in the longest school closures and highest number of kids out of school, Noble said in a phone interview. “There’s evidence of similar trends elsewhere,” such as Colorado.
Noble shared an email from the director of a Texas summer camp who predicted a “perfect storm … of anger and frustration” headed for schools this fall, based on the experience of the camp this summer.
The kids’ interpersonal skills have “atrophied” over 18 months in “cloistered” communities. “The shy children are more shy, the anxious kids more anxious, the angry ones are more angry,” the director wrote. “Children that tend to miss social cues are missing more of them.”
At camps across the country, directors are observing “more mental health struggles than we would expect in 5-10 summers” among the counselors — college students who were also deprived of social interactions and limited to virtual classrooms. Both new staff and “stalwarts” are quitting due to mental health problems, according to the director.
‘Worse for kids than the numbers themselves’
Noble’s presentation also highlights lesser known CDC data on national trends. ED mental health visits jumped 24% for children 5-11 and 31% for those 12-17 in the first nine months of 2020 compared to the same period in 2019.
The change is even more starkly illustrated when contrasting insurance claims for mental health versus all medical claims for children 13-18: The former jumped more than the latter fell in 2020 compared to 2019, particularly early in the pandemic.
Girls have suffered more than boys. ED visits for suspected suicide attempts jumped a whopping 51% among 12-17 year old girls in February and March 2021 compared to the same period in 2019.
Noble said girls even pre-COVID were more active on social media and more likely to suffer from suicidality. They are also slightly younger when they start having mental health problems. She wants to see more research on whether differences in extracurriculars between the sexes plays a role.
Researchers expected to see a drop in emergency visits for mental health in 2020 due to fear of COVID infection and fewer child interactions outside the house, according to Noble. “Things have been even worse for kids than the numbers themselves describe,” she said.
The researcher theorizes that interaction through screens is “more foreign and likely unfulfilling from a socialization standpoint” for kids, especially K-3, because most of their waking hours were spent at school. Some who were actively engaged in the classroom “just stopped completely” on Zoom, Noble said, citing her own 12-year-old’s difficulties.
Given that the quantitative burden of the pandemic largely fell on adults, who got sick, lost jobs and suffered financially, researchers expected their mental health problems would have “dwarfed” those of kids, who feel these challenges “in an attenuated form,” Noble said. Instead it was the opposite, and Noble thinks “prolonged social lockdown” is the likeliest factor.
“Sacrificing the development and well being of our children for enhanced infection control was scientifically unnecessary and ethically unsound,” the presentation concludes.
Last week, marketing research firm, Zeta Global, polled Americans about the Olympics and discovered the majority aren’t excited to watch the games this year.
“More than 60% of Americans were unable to express excitement or interest in the summer games, and at least 45% of Americans confirmed they are NOT looking forward to the games in any capacity,” the company found. This led it to predict this year’s Olympics will be the lowest-watched of the 21st century.
Meanwhile, another research group, Ipsos, conducted polling on Olympics enthusiasm by party affiliation and discovered that only 29% of Republicans are interested in watching the games, compared to 39% of Democrats. It also found that fewer than a third of Americans (32%) believe that Olympic athletes should be allowed to engage in political protests, including kneeling or wearing messages on their uniforms. Finally, Ipsos’ survey showed a majority of those polled feel that a positive performance from U.S. athletes generally makes them proud to be American.
So what happens when the athletes indicate that they aren’t proud to be Americans, and defy their fellow citizens’ wishes for a politics-free international sporting event, as the U.S. Women’s Soccer team did when they knelt in support of Black Lives Matter? Or as hammer-thrower Gwen Berry did when she turned her back on the American flag during the anthem?
Zeta’s prediction of a ratings free-fall comes true.
As the games open Friday, Olympics ratings coverage isn’t focusing on whether viewership numbers will be bad but, rather, just how bad.
The New York Post reports some experts believe it could drop to just 17 million — a disastrous figure compared to the 2012 London Olympics that averaged 30 million viewers and the poorly-rated 2016 Rio games that attracted 27 million.
The Hollywood Reporter asked in a headline, “Tokyo Olympics: How Far Will NBC’s TV Ratings Fall?”
Red-hot demandfor houses sounds like great news for homebuilders. But builders aren’t as thrilled as you might expect, and one builder is actually turning down orders.
Why it matters: Home prices have surged as low mortgage rates and the pandemic-era demand for more space sent buyers flooding a market that had limited supply.
In June, existing-home sales rose in all major U.S. regions. The median price of a home sold was a record-high $363,300.
Driving the news: U.S. homebuilding giant D.R. Horton announced on Thursday that its quarterly revenue and earnings growth beat expectations thanks to demand.
But new orders unexpectedly tumbled 17% to 17,952 homes from 21,519 a year ago. Analysts surveyed by Bloomberg were expecting an increase to 22,385.
“[W]e have slowed our home sales pace to more closely align to our current production levels,” company chairman Donald Horton said.
A California city has ordered its employees to wear a sticker identifying their fully vaccinated status if they choose to come to work without a mask, amid a growing global trend of distinguishing the vaxxed from the uninjected.
The city of Montclair, located in California’s Pomona Valley, has decreed that starting next week, employees who want to work without a mask will have to wear a sticker showing they’ve had a Covid shot.
According to City Manager Edward Starr, the policy is designed to ensure that Montclair is in compliance with a June directive issued by California’s workplace safety board, which instructs all vaccinated workers in the state to submit evidence or sign a pledge they have been vaccinated if they choose to abstain from wearing a face mask.
In response to recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, California issued new guidance in April stating that fully vaccinated individuals could forgo masks in most settings.
The city official claimed that California’s Department of Public Health was encouraging the use of stickers on employee ID badges “to demonstrate they have been fully vaccinated.” He dismissed the notion that the labels could be seen as potentially problematic, and stressed that the policy would help the city to fulfill state and federal guidelines.
Starr also pointed to the fact that the CDC offers a selection of printable stickers that workplaces can provide to employees who get vaccinated. However, it doesn’t appear that the public health authority has issued guidance recommending stickers be used as forms of identification.
But the reasons given for the new measure didn’t persuade city councilman Ben Lopez, who argued the policy was a violation of employee privacy and warned it could result in Montclair getting dragged to court.
“This policy is being rushed through and rammed down the throats of our employees with no legal counsel being sought and no discussion from our City Council,” Lopez said during a council meeting earlier this week. “I think we are on shaky legal ground.”
The councilman expressed concern that the stickers could make employees “uncomfortable” around one another and that they may even create a “level of ostracism” in the workplace.
Starr pushed back against the criticism by claiming that a “number of complaints” about the city’s approach to certifying vaccination status had already been filed with state authorities. But Lopez openly challenged this allegation, noting that he hadn’t heard of a single case in which a city employee had objected to how Montclair deals with such matters.
