March 25, 2018


News and Views


THIS IS A CASE OF TRUE HEROISM. I’VE SEEN IT IN OLD MOVIES, BUT NOT IN MODERN TIMES, OR IN REAL LIFE. MANY MODERN POLICE HAVE BEEN TRAINED TO SHOOT TO KILL IF THEY BELIEVE THE SUSPECT MAY POSSIBLY HAVE A WEAPON. TOO OFTEN IT IS ONLY A CELL PHONE.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/france-police-officer-arnaud-beltrame-who-swapped-himself-for-hostage-dies-of-his-injuries/
French police officer who swapped himself for hostage dies of his injuries
CBS/AP March 24, 2018, 7:38 AM

TREBES, France -- A French police officer who offered himself up to an Islamic extremist gunman in exchange for a hostage died of his injuries, raising the death toll in the attack to four. The officer was honored Saturday as a national hero of "exceptional courage and selflessness."

Col. Arnaud Beltrame, 44, was among the first officers to respond to the attack on the supermarket in the south of France on Friday.

Beltrame, who first took his place among the elite police special forces in 2003 and served in Iraq in 2005, had organized a training session in the Aude region in December for just such a hostage situation. At the time, he armed his officers with paintball guns, according to Depeche du Midi, the local newspaper.

"We want to be as close to real conditions as possible," he said then.

But when he went inside the supermarket on Friday, he had given up his own weapon and volunteered himself in exchange for a female hostage.

France Shooting
In this image dated March 2013 and provided by regional newspaper Ouest France, Arnaud Beltrame poses for a photo in Avranches, western France. OUEST FRANCE VIA AP

Unbeknownst to the Morocco-born captor, he left his cellphone on so police outside could hear what was happening in the store. They stormed the building when they heard gunshots, officials said. Beltrame was fatally wounded.

His death raises the toll to four. The gunman was also killed, and 15 people were injured in the attack.

Announcing the police officer's death on Twitter, Interior Minister Gérard Collomb said: "He died for his country."

"France will never forget his heroism, his bravery, his sacrifice," Collomb said, the BBC reports.

"Arnaud Beltrame died in the service of the nation to which he had already given so much," President Emmanuel Macron said in a statement. "In giving his life to end the deadly plan of a jihadi terrorist, he fell as a hero."

Beltrame graduated in 1999 from France's leading military academy in Saint Cyr, according to the BBC. He joined the elite police special forces in 2003 and deployed to Iraq in 2005, according to a statement. He served as a member of the presidential guard and in 2012 earned one of France's highest honors, the Order of Merit. He was married with no children.

Beltrame's brother, Cedric Beltrame, told RTL radio Saturday his sibling died "a hero." He added that his brother "was well aware he had almost no chance. He was very aware of what he was doing."

People were placing flowers in front of the Gendarmerie headquarters in Carcassone to pay tribute to Col. Beltrame.

Macron has said investigators will focus on establishing how the gunman, identified by prosecutors as Morocco-born Redouane Lakdim, got his weapon and how he became radicalized.

On Friday night, authorities searched a car and the apartment complex in central Carcassonne where Lakdim was believed to live.

Two people were detained over alleged links with a terrorist enterprise, one woman close to Lakdim and one friend of his, a 17-year-old male, Paris prosecutor office said.

Lakdim was known to police for petty crime and drug dealing. But he was also under surveillance and since 2014 was on the so-called Fiche S list, a government register of individuals suspected of being radicalized but who have yet to perform acts of terrorism.

Despite this, Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said there was "no warning sign" that Lakdim would carry out an attack.

The four-hour drama began at 10:13 a.m. when Lakdim hijacked a car near Carcassonne, killing one person in the car and wounding the other, the prosecutor said. Lakdim then fired six shots at police officers who were on their way back from jogging near Carcassonne, said Yves Lefebvre, secretary general of SGP Police-FO police union. The police were wearing athletic clothes with police insignia. One officer was hit in the shoulder, but the injury wasn't serious, Lefebvre said.

Lakdim then went to a Super U supermarket in nearby Trebes, 60 miles -- 100 kilometers -- southeast of Toulouse, shooting and killing two people in the market and taking an unknown number of hostages. Special police units converged on the scene while authorities blocked roads and urged residents to stay away.

He shouted "Allahu akbar!" -- the Arabic phrase for God is great -- and said he was a "soldier of the Islamic State" as he entered the Super U, where about 50 people were inside, Molins said.

"We heard an explosion -- well, several explosions," shopper Christian Guibbert told reporters. "I went to see what was happening and I saw a man lying on the floor and another person, very agitated, who had a gun in one hand and a knife in the other."

The manager of the supermarket said she felt "helpless." The woman, who would identify herself only by her first name, Samia, said that she was in her office when she heard the shots.

"How am I? I am devastated," she said "What we went through yesterday was a tragedy. What else would you have me say? You feel utterly helpless ."

She said she helped evacuate as many people as possible.

"It was terrifying," she said.

During the standoff, Lakdim requested the release of Salah Abdeslam, the sole surviving assailant of the Nov. 13, 2015, attacks in Paris that left 130 people dead. The interior minister suggested, however, that Abdeslam's release wasn't a key motive for the attack.

The ISIS-linked Aamaq news agency said the attacker was responding to the group's calls to target countries in the U.S.-led coalition carrying out airstrikes against ISIS militants in Syria and Iraq since 2014. France has been repeatedly targeted because of its participation.

France has been on high alert since a series of extremist attacks in 2015 and 2016 that killed more than 200 people. One of those attacks, against a kosher supermarket in Paris, seemed to foreshadow this week's deadly assault in the south.

© 2018 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.



EACH OF THESE PARENTS IS BEING HELD UNDER 12 MILLION DOLLARS BOND. I WONDER IF THEY WILL GET THE DEATH PENALTY. CRUELTY AND TORTURE ARE WORSE THAN MURDER. I WISH WE COULD DETECT THOUGHTS LIKE THIS BEFORE PEOPLE START TO KILL, AND PUT THEM IN A HOSPITAL FOR THE CRIMINALLY INSANE. OF COURSE, OUR LEGAL SYSTEM DOESN’T WORK THAT WAY. EVEN PSYCHOLOGISTS CAN’T DETERMINE TO A CERTAINTY WHO WILL BE VIOLENT AND WHO WON’T. TOO OFTEN THEY ARE CONSIDERED BY FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS TO BE NORMAL, AND ARE DETERMINED BY MENTAL HEALTH PROFESSIONALS TO BE UNLIKELY TO BE “A DANGER TO THEMSELVES OR OTHERS.” LUCKILY PEOPLE LIKE THIS ARE IN THE MINORITY.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/david-louise-turpin-parents-accused-of-shackling-torturing-their-children-appear-in-court/
CBS NEWS March 24, 2018, 8:37 AM
Parents accused of shackling, torturing their children appear in court

RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- A couple accused of shackling and torturing their 13 children in a so-called "house of horrors" in Southern California were in court briefly Friday as one of their family members looked on from the audience, CBS Los Angeles reports. David and Louise Turpin faced a judge, mostly as a procedural update of the case's status ahead of their preliminary hearing on May 14.

For the first time since their arrests in January, the Turpins appeared in court without shackles on their hands or feet.

During the brief, five-minute hearing, the Riverside County Counsel, which represents the couple's 13 children, handed over two boxes of evidence that contain information about the seven adult children and six juveniles. The information was submitted under seal.

Louise Turpin's sister Liz Flores attended the hearing but refused to answer any questions from CBS Los Angeles.

The station has confirmed that the seven adult children have been released from the hospital and are living together under supervision. They are mostly confined to the property and must be accompanied if they leave the premises.

As for the six minors, sources not authorized to speak on the record told CBS Los Angeles they have also been released from the hospital and are living in two separate foster homes, seeing each other often.

In January, the couple's 17-year-old daughter escaped from the home, telling authorities about the conditions under which she and her 12 siblings were being held.

Investigators arrived at the home and discovered the couple's children had, in fact, been shackled to their beds with chains and padlocks.

The Turpin children, who range in age from 2 to 29, were so malnourished, police initially believed some adults were minors.

The parents have since been charged with more than 40 counts, including torture, false imprisonment, abuse of a dependent adult and child abuse. In February, they each faced three additional charges of child abuse. Louise was charge with another count of felony assault.

They have both pleaded not guilty to all the charges, including one count of lewd conduct with a minor against David.

Earlier this month, YouTube videos of the 17-year-old girl who escaped the home surfaced. In them, she performs made-up songs that include the lyrics "You blame me for eveything / I don't understand" in what appears to be the Perris house.

David and Louise Turpin are being held on $12 million each.

© 2018 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.


POOR MR. ZUCKERBERG – WHAT DID HE KNOW, AND WHEN DID HE KNOW IT? HE WON'T GET AWAY WITH NO LOSSES OVER THIS.

“THE SEARCH IS PART OF A WIDER INVESTIGATION INTO POLITICAL CAMPAIGNING.” THIS ENTICING BIT IS NOT A SEARCHABLE LINK, AND I WAS UNABLE TO FIND AN ARTICLE SPECIFICALLY ON ICO AND POLITICAL CAMPAIGNING, BUT I DID FIND AN EXCELLENT RESEARCH PAPER. THAT IS IN MY SECONDARY NEWS BLOG FOR TODAY, CALLED “ADVERTISING AND ELECTIONS.” SEE ALSO:

http://politics.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.001.0001/acrefore-9780190228637-e-217.
AND: https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/24/cambridge-analytica-raided-by-uk-data-watchdog/
AND: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/18/facebook-cambridge-analytica-joseph-chancellor-gsr
AND: http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-43514648, Elon Musk pulls brands from Facebook


CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICA ON THE DEFENSIVE

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-43522775
Cambridge Analytica offices searched over data storage
24 March 2018

Photograph -- ICO officials were seen searching the London headquarters of Cambridge Analytica

The London offices of Cambridge Analytica have been searched by enforcement officers from the UK's information commissioner.

The High Court granted the data watchdog a warrant amid claims the firm amassed information about millions of people without their consent, based on a 2014 quiz on Facebook.

The seven-hour search finished in the early hours of Saturday.

Both Cambridge Analytica and Facebook deny any wrongdoing.

A group of people, some wearing ICO enforcement jackets, entered the building housing Cambridge Analytica's London headquarters at 20:00 GMT on Friday - less than an hour after a High Court judge granted the warrant.

Several hours later members of the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) were seen leaving the offices and a van - thought to be carrying gathered evidence - was driven away from the rear of the building.

The ICO applied for the warrant to access the databases and servers of Cambridge Analytica.

Image copyrightAFP/GETTY IMAGES
Image caption
The search of the London building continued into the early hours of Saturday
The search is part of a wider investigation into political campaigning.

Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham has said she was looking at whether personal data was acquired in "an unauthorised way", whether there was sufficient consent to share the data, what was done to safeguard it and whether Facebook acted robustly when it found out about the loss of the data.

Cambridge Analytica's acting chief executive, Alexander Tayler, said the company has been in touch with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) since February 2017 and it remained committed to helping the investigation.

Cambridge Analytica: The story so far
The global reach of Cambridge Analytica
Elon Musk pulls brands from Facebook

In a statement, he said checks in 2015 showed all the Facebook data had been deleted but the company was now undertaking an independent third-party audit to verify none remained.

Cambridge Analytica chief executive Alexander Nix was suspended on Tuesday after footage broadcast on Channel 4 appeared to show him suggesting tactics his company could use to discredit politicians online.

Media captionCambridge Analytica: What we know so far

Claims over whether Cambridge Analytica used the personal data of millions of Facebook users to sway the outcome of the US 2016 presidential election and the UK Brexit referendum have also been raised.

The company denies any of the data harvested in the 2014 Facebook quiz created by an academic was used in its work for Donald Trump's campaign.

Meanwhile, the director of Vote Leave has denied allegations of links between his campaign and Cambridge Analytica. Dominic Cummings said claims by the Observer newspaper are "factually wrong, hopelessly confused, or nonsensical".

In a separate development, Brittany Kaiser, Cambridge Analytica's former business development director, has told the Guardian the firm carried out data analysis for Leave.EU, the rival Brexit campaign to Vote Leave that was fronted by Nigel Farage.

Cambridge Analytica said it did "no paid or unpaid work" for Leave.EU.



WHAT A SENSE OF HUMOR THESE CLEVER AND AMBITIOUS YOUNG MEN HAVE. THIS IS THE NAME OF THEIR APP – THISISYOURDIGITALLIFE -- WHICH WAS USED TO “CRAWL” THROUGH THE DATABASE EXTRACTING DETAILS ON EVERYONE’S FRIENDS AS WELL AS THE POOR INDIVIDUALS WHO TOOK THE PSYCHOMETRIC TEST. IT’S LIKE PEOPLE USED TO SAY ABOUT ARMY LIFE: “NEVER VOLUNTEER.”

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/18/facebook-cambridge-analytica-joseph-chancellor-gsr
Cambridge Analytica The Cambridge Analytica Files
Facebook employs psychologist whose firm sold data to Cambridge Analytica
Paul Lewis and Julia Carrie Wong in San Francisco
Sun 18 Mar 2018 17.06 EDT Last modified on Wed 21 Mar 2018 16.11 EDT

RELATED: ‘I made Steve Bannon’s psychological warfare tool’: meet the data war whistleblower -- Read more
Joseph Chancellor was co-director of GSR with Aleksandr Kogan
Data harvesting scheme called ‘scam’ and ‘fraud’ by Facebook
Data scandal is huge blow for Facebook – and efforts to study its impact on society

Photograph -- Facebook’s campus on the edge of the San Francisco Bay in Menlo Park, California, where Joseph Chancellor currently works as a researcher. Photograph: Noah Berger/Reuter

The co-director of a company that harvested data from tens of millions of Facebook users before selling it to the controversial data analytics firms [sic] Cambridge Analytica is currently working for the tech giant as an in-house psychologist.

Joseph Chancellor was one of two founding directors of Global Science Research (GSR), the company that harvested Facebook data using a personality app under the guise of academic research and later shared the data with Cambridge Analytica.

He was hired to work at Facebook as a quantitative social psychologist around November 2015, roughly two months after leaving GSR, which had by then acquired data on millions of Facebook users.

Chancellor is still working as a researcher at Facebook’s Menlo Park headquarters in California, where psychologists frequently conduct research and experiments using the company’s vast trove of data on more than 2 billion users.

It is not known how much Chancellor knew of the operation to harvest the data of more than 50 million Facebook users and pass their information on to the company that went on to run data analytics for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

Chancellor was a director of GSR along with Aleksandr Kogan, a more senior Cambridge University psychologist who is said to have devised the scheme to harvest Facebook data from people who used a personality app that was ostensibly acquiring data for academic research.

On Friday, Facebook announced it had suspended both Kogan and Cambridge Analytica from using the platform, pending an investigation.

Facebook said in a statement Kogan “gained access to this information in a legitimate way and through the proper channels” but “did not subsequently abide by our rules” because he passed the information on to third parties. Kogan maintains that he did nothing illegal and had a “close working relationship” with Facebook.

Facebook appears to have taken no action against Chancellor – Kogan’s business partner at the time their company acquired the data, using an app called thisisyourdigitallife.

MARK ZUCKERBERG APOLOGISES FOR FACEBOOK'S 'MISTAKES' over Cambridge Analytica
Read more

Cambridge Analytica – a company owned by the hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer, and headed at the time by Trump’s key adviser Steve Bannon – used the data to build sophisticated psychological profiles of US voters.

Facebook’s deputy general counsel has described the data harvesting scheme as “a scam” and “a fraud”. He singled out Kogan, an assistant professor at Cambridge University, as having “lied to us and violated our platform policies” by passing the data on to Cambridge Analytica.

Facebook’s public statements have omitted any reference to GSR, the company Kogan incorporated in May 2014 with Chancellor, who at the time was a postdoctoral research assistant.

The Guardian asked Facebook several questions about its recruitment of Chancellor and any action it had taken in light of the data harvesting scam conducted by GSR. Facebook initially promised to respond to a set of questions by Sunday, but then said it had nothing to say on the matter. Chancellor did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

The psychologist, who is 38, is understood to have been a junior partner to Kogan, who oversaw GSR’s business dealings and then elicited the help of several of his students. One source with some knowledge of Chancellor’s role at the company described him as “just the data guy”.

However, both Kogan and Chancellor were listed as directors of GSR when it was founded and provided a “service address” in Harley Street, London.

The property – 29 Harley Street – reportedly operates as “as a large, ornate and prestigiously located postbox and answerphone” for some 2,159 companies that are registered from the address but locate their operations elsewhere. Though potentially secretive, there is nothing unlawful about this process.

In the months that followed the creation of GSR, the company worked in collaboration with Cambridge Analytica to pay hundreds of thousands of users to take the test as part of an agreement in which they agreed for their data to be collected for academic use.

However, the app also collected the information of the test-takers’ Facebook friends, leading to the accumulation of a data pool tens of millions strong. That data sold to Cambridge Analytica as part of a commercial agreement. Facebook’s “platform policy” allowed only collection of friends’ data to improve user experience in the app and barred it being sold on or used for advertising.

Chancellor resigned his directorship of GSR in September 2015, according to company records. He joined Facebook around November 2015, according to his LinkedIn profile.

The following month, the Guardian published the first story detailing how Kogan and Chancellor’s company had unethically sourced data that was then passed to Cambridge Analytica, which at the time was working for the presidential campaign of Ted Cruz.

Facebook appears to have taken no action against Chancellor at that stage. His role at Facebook was mentioned in a story by the Intercept 12 months ago. At that time, Facebook said in a statement: “The work that he did previously has no bearing on the work that he does at Facebook.”

Chancellor, who was conducting postdoctoral research at Cambridge University when GSR was set up, is understood to have been one of several students who Kogan involved in his project.

Since joining Facebook, some of Chancellor’s academic research has been published in peer-reviewed journals. However, the precise nature of his work for Facebook is unclear. The company employs many in-house social scientists to conduct research on the psychology of its users.

In 2014, Facebook was revealed to have conducted a vast experiment on users, without their consent, which entailed tweaking the amount of positive and negative content appearing on their feeds to see if the tech giant could manipulate some kind of “emotional contagion*”.

Last year, leaked documents revealed how Facebook had told advertisers they had the capacity to monitor posts in real time and identify when teenage users were feeling “insecure”, “worthless” and “need a confidence boost”.

That kind of finite information is invaluable to advertisers – whether selling products or political candidates – as it helps them more effectively tailor and target their message to individual users on the platform.

Facebook’s ability to create granular profiles of its users has been at the very core of its business model, transforming the social media platform into one of the most profitable companies on the planet.


Emotional contagion*

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-r-hamilton-phd/emotional-contagion_b_863197.html
THE BLOG 05/19/2011 05:46 am ET Updated Jul 19, 2011
Emotional Contagion: Are Your Feelings ‘Infecting’ Others?
By David R. Hamilton, Ph.D.

Ever noticed that you feel happy around happy people and sad around sad or depressed people, or even agitated around anxious people?

Research shows that if you spend enough time with people, their emotions will actually rub off on you.

This is known as “emotional contagion“ and is facilitated by an interconnected network of cells in the brain that make up the Mirror Neuron System (MNS).

The MNS is a bit like a high-definition camera that observes and records every detail of people’s facial expressions, body language, pupil movements and even vocal tones. So if you’re hanging out with someone who is happy, and their happiness is written all over their face, so to speak, your MNS will record their displays of happiness but it will also signal the same displays in you.

For instance, we know that happy people tend to smile a lot. In their presence, your MNS will record activity in the two major smile muscles: the ones that pull your lips upwards (zygomaticus major) and the ones that crease the sides of your eyes (orbicularis oculi). They will then signal your own smile muscles so that you will find yourself smiling more. But that’s not all that happens.

The MNS also contains emotional areas of the brain. Some of these are signaled, too, helping to mirror, in you, the emotional state of the happy person.

What can we take from this? Well, if you want to be happier, you wouldn’t go far wrong by hanging out with happy people.

Depression is just as contagious as happiness. Should we then avoid people who are depressed? I don’t think so. We should help people who are depressed. Anyone who has ever been depressed, and I am a past member of that club, wants to feel loved and cared for, not avoided like they have the plague.

My personal experience is that there is little risk of “catching” depression if you are compassionate to their feelings and are aware of emotional contagion. The compassion allows you to sense how the person feels, to empathize and appreciate their pain, so that they feel listened to. Then, after a while, you can try to “infect” them with your positive mood.

You don’t need to try to feel positive. Just recognize that your body language and facial expressions reflect mood, so use these as tools to raise the mood of both of you. Lift your shoulders back, breathe deeply and easily and smile if you can. With any luck, their MNS will be able to mirror you and, at least a little, move them closer to your emotional state, offering them some momentary relief from the pain they feel.

Emotional contagion has been with the human species for a very long time. It helped our ancestors understand each other in a time before language, where they could recognize fear, for instance, by having the same feelings induced in them, thus helping them survive potential danger.

It is present in us from birth. One crying infant will set off a wave of crying in a hospital ward. Studies also show that infants and children mirror the facial expressions of the primary caregiver, suggesting that they feel the same emotions, too, or at least their nervous system is reacting to the emotions of the caregiver.

So the answer to the question, “Are your emotions contagious?” is almost certainly yes. Spend time with happy people if you want to feel happier, and help to raise the spirits of people who feel sad. And if you do feel happy, spread some good cheer around you.

That’s how I see we can apply this new knowledge.

Endnotes:

For general information on mirror neurons, see: M. Iacobani, ‘Mirroring People,’ Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, New York, 2008

For general information on emotional contagion, see: E. Hatfield, J. T. Cacioppo, and R. L. Rapson, ‘Emotional Contagion,’ Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1994

For more info on emotional contagion and the relative contagiousness of happiness and depression, see David R. Hamilton PhD, ‘The Contagious Power of Thinking,’ Hay House, London, 2011

Follow David R. Hamilton, Ph.D. on Twitter: www.twitter.com/DrDrHamilton



MADDOW TODAY

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 3/22/18
Trump chaos takes out McMaster, alarms with appointment of Bolton
Mark Landler, White House correspondent for the New York Times, talks with Rachel Maddow about Donald Trump firing his second national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, and replacing him with extreme hawk John Bolton. Duration: 22:17


HELP THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 3/22/18
McFaul on Trump pick Bolton: What he believes in is very scary
Michael McFaul, former U.S. Ambassador to Russia, talks with Rachel Maddow about his concerns about Donald Trump's choice of John Bolton as H.R. McMaster's replacement as national security adviser. Duration: 6:26


THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 3/22/18
As legal team withers, Trump adds cable news legal pundits
As Donald Trump loses his lead Russia lawyer and adds more TV lawyers to his legal team, Rachel Maddow wonders if Trump is preparing a legal defense or a cable news PR campaign. Duration: 14:06


THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 3/22/18
Schiff: Bolton likely to exaggerate Trump's dangerous impulses
Rep. Adam Schiff, top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, offers his reaction to the news that Donald Trump intends to make John Bolton his new national security adviser. Duration: 3:53


THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 3/21/18
Mueller following the money on Trump Middle East policy
Mark Mazzetti, investigative correspondent for The New York Times, talks with Rachel Maddow about Robert Mueller's consideration of undue influence on Donald Trump's Middle East policies on behalf of Saudi Arabia and UAE. Duration: 22:30


THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 3/21/18
No mention of Russia hacks of US power plants in Trump Putin chat
Rachel Maddow shares some of NBC News' exclusive interview by Pete Williams of FBI Director Chris Wray and notes that not only did Donald Trump not mention the UK poisonings when he called Vladimir Putin, but he also didn't mention Russia hacking U.S. power plants and energy infrastructure. Duration: 6:51



https://www.cbsnews.com/news/joseph-digenova-victoria-toensing-not-joining-trumps-russia-legal-team/
CBS NEWS March 25, 2018, 11:05 AM
Lawyers Joseph diGenova, Victoria Toensing not joining Trump's Russia legal team

Photograph -- Joseph DiGenova C-SPAN

Joseph diGenova, a former U.S. attorney, and Victoria Toensing, his wife and law partner, will not be joining the legal team representing President Trump in the Russia probe led by special counsel Robert Mueller.

Mr. Trump's attorney Jay Sekulow said Sunday morning that "conflicts" prevented the pair from formally joining the legal team, but said they would assist in other areas.

"The President is disappointed that conflicts prevent Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing from joining the President's Special Counsel legal team. However, those conflicts do not prevent them from assisting the President in other legal matters. The President looks forward to working with them," said Sekulow.

Sekulow had announced diGenova's addition to the legal team last week, saying in a statement that he had "full confidence that he will be a great asset in our representation of the President."

Mr. Trump denied Sunday morning that he was having trouble finding lawyers to represent him in the Russia probe:


Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
Many lawyers and top law firms want to represent me in the Russia case...don’t believe the Fake News narrative that it is hard to find a lawyer who wants to take this on. Fame & fortune will NEVER be turned down by a lawyer, though some are conflicted. Problem is that a new......

7:40 AM - Mar 25, 2018
31.4K
23.9K people are talking about this


Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
....lawyer or law firm will take months to get up to speed (if for no other reason than they can bill more), which is unfair to our great country - and I am very happy with my existing team. Besides, there was NO COLLUSION with Russia, except by Crooked Hillary and the Dems!

7:49 AM - Mar 25, 2018


TEN OR TWENTY THOUSAND YEARS AGO, PEOPLE WORSHIPPED MOTHER EARTH. NOW THEY DON’T, BUT SOMETIMES SHE SHOWS WHO’S BOSS. SEE THESE VIDEOS AND EXPLANATORY MATERIALS.

http://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-africa-43501954/huge-crack-opens-in-kenya-s-rift-valley
Huge crack opens in Rift Valley
A crack stretching several kilometres has opened in south-western Kenya.
23 March 2018

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNwS8__Dzu4
Huge crack opens in Kenya’s Rift Valley, Volcano’s and MAGNETIC ANOMALIES
Excellent video/audio by Mary Greeley
March 23, 2018

Hundreds of travelers were stranded for hours on the Narok – Mai Mahiu road at Karima in Kenya on Tuesday 13th March 2018, after a section of the road collapsed.

The giant earth crack responsible is estimated to be 3 kilometers long and at least 6 meters deep and was initially blamed solely on flood waters caused by torrential rains that have left at least nine people dead across the country.
http://marygreeley.com/?p=67273

Mary Greeley
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SEE: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/23/abortion-poland-mass-protests-against-tightening-of-law.
Poland
Mass protests in Poland against tightening of abortion law
Thousands join demonstrations against government’s new effort to restrict access
Staff and agencies in Warsaw
Fri 23 Mar 2018 13.24 EDT

Photograph -- Women demanding reproductive freedoms at a protest in Warsaw on Friday. Photograph: Marcin Obara/EPA

Thousands of people have joined protests in Warsaw and other Polish cities against the latest attempt by the conservative government to restrict access to abortion.

In Warsaw on Friday, people held banners that read “Free choice” and “A woman is a human being”, and chanted slogans demanding reproductive freedom.

Poland has one of the strictest abortion laws in Europe. The procedure is allowed only if the life of the foetus is at risk, there is a grave threat to the health of the mother or the pregnancy was the result of rape or incest.

How Poland’s far-right government is pushing abortion underground
Read more

An attempt to ban all abortions in 2016 sparked mass nationwide protests by women dressed in black, forcing the government to abandon the plan.

The latest proposed legislation would allow procedures in cases where the mother’s life was at risk or the pregnancy resulted from a crime, but would ban abortions of foetuses with congenital disorders, including Down’s syndrome.

In Warsaw, protesters gathered at the seat of the influential Roman Catholic bishops, who are urging the further tightening of the law. They marched to the parliament building and later moved on to the headquarters of the ruling Law and Justice party.

A protest of hundreds of people in Wrocław included a sign that said “I will not give birth to a dead baby”.

Małgorzata, 58, a psychologist, told Reuters: “I am against treating woman as an inferior type of human being. I support women’s rights to decide about their bodies and their lives.”

The Council of Europe’s commissioner for human rights, Nils Muižnieks warned on Friday that the new measure ran counter to Warsaw’s human rights commitments.

“If adopted, the draft law would remove the possibility of terminating the pregnancy in case of severe foetal impairment, including in cases where such impairment is fatal,” Muižnieks wrote. “This step would be at variance with Poland’s obligations under international human rights law.”


https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/30/how-polands-far-right-government-is-pushing-abortion-underground
A year ago, mass protests in Poland defeated a new abortion ban. But the ruling party, supported by the church, continues to cut reproductive rights – leaving people at the mercy of the black market. By Alex Cocotas
Thu 30 Nov 2017 01.00 EST

Barbara Nowacka first had an inkling that something exceptional was happening on the morning of the protests. It was October 2016, and a journalist she knew, a conservative, called to ask how it was looking. She told him she had no idea what was going to happen. The journalist told her that his two daughters had gone to school that morning dressed in black. Perhaps, Nowacka thought, this could be big.

A ban on abortion in Poland had been put forward in parliament six months earlier, and Nowacka, a leftwing politician and long-time social activist, was a leading figure in the movement to oppose it. Nationwide protests had been scheduled for 3 October, but like most people, she had little hope that they would succeed. Perhaps they would get a nice crowd, a little media coverage; but it would ultimately be a gesture. The law would pass.

The consequences of this new law would be grim: an end to all forms of abortion in Poland, prison sentences for women who have illegal abortions, criminal investigations into “suspicious” miscarriages, and restricted access to antenatal testing, since doctors would be wary of unintentionally inducing miscarriage. Similar proposals had been made over the past decade, but in the previous 12 months, the political atmosphere had changed. In October 2015, the far-right Law and Justice party, closely allied with the conservative wing of the country’s powerful Catholic church, became the first Polish political party to gain an outright majority in parliament since 1989.

Sensing their opportunity, a network of anti-abortion groups, Stop Abortion, announced a few months after the election that they were going to try to introduce a ban. To table a debate in parliament, they needed a minimum of 100,000 signatures. With the tacit support of the Catholic church, Stop Abortion were able to collect almost half a million. On 31 March 2016, Jarosław Kaczyński, the leader of the Law and Justice party, declared that he would support the proposal. He added that he wasn’t going to force his party to vote for a ban, but predicted that most of them would support it.

The announcement set off a flurry of activity that extended far beyond the country’s small feminist circles. The proposal had aroused a deep anger, shared by many Polish women, over the church’s increasing influence on their lives. In the following days, new groups sprang up around the country as women made contact on social media to organise marches and gatherings. The largest group, Dziewuchy Dziewuchom (Gals for Gals), began as a Facebook group and quickly gained 100,000 members.

“I couldn’t stand the arrogance of people in government against women,” said Ewa Kacak-Niemczuk, who was new to activism. She joined Dziewuchy and attended her first protest on 3 October. Nowacka and fellow activists decided to counter with their own proposal for a new law, Save Women, which would liberalise the country’s abortion laws. They knew it had little chance of passing, but parliamentary rules stipulated that proposals on the same topic must be debated together; they would, at least, get a hearing. Volunteers began collecting signatures on the streets in May, and eventually amassed almost a quarter of a million.

On 23 September, both proposals came before parliament in a debate that was widely covered by the media. Three days earlier, the leftwing Razem party had called for Polish women to wear black to signal their opposition to the proposed law. (Polish women had worn black in the 19th century to mourn the country’s partition and loss of sovereignty. Many of the protesters’ slogans and visual motifs subverted nationalist imagery.) A hashtag – #czarnyprotest – began to circulate on social media, raising awareness of the ban’s consequences.

As expected, the Polish parliament dropped Save Women and decided to send Stop Abortion’s proposal to the committee stage for a further reading. In response to this first defeat, activists proposed a national strike, using social media to call for women to skip work on Monday 3 October if they could, or to wear black if they couldn’t, in protest against the impending ban. The protest would become known internationally as Black Monday. There was an outpouring of passion and support – “We want to love, not die!” was one slogan – but this did not guarantee a turnout. The Saturday before the protests, organisers in Warsaw were afraid there wouldn’t be a crowd. They called Nowacka to make sure she was coming.

A ‘Women’s Strike’ banner at a protest in Rzeszów, south-eastern Poland, in October 2017. Photograph: Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images

No one was expecting what happened next. In a society mired in political apathy, around 100,000 people took part in 143 protests in cities, towns and villages across Poland. Many thousands more wore black to work or school. The protests were remarkable for both their spontaneity – they had come together in less than two weeks – and their local character. There was no central organiser, no unified plan of action; across the country, women took the initiative and came up with their own ideas about how to protest.

In Warsaw alone, there were more than 60 events throughout the day. Two women with no previous involvement in politics organised a protest outside Kaczyński’s office and 1,000 people came; others organised readings and discussions of feminist texts; men handed out sandwiches to participants and the day culminated in a 30,000-strong demonstration in the centre of the city.

Two days later, the proposed ban was withdrawn. It was the Law and Justice party’s first defeat since assuming power. Jarosław Gowin, the minister of science and higher education, said the protests “caused us to think and taught us humility”.

The Polish women’s activism struck a chord. They became a symbol of resistance against a rising tide of rightwing populism. Before the vote, Polish expats had staged protests in Berlin, London, Brussels and beyond. In the following weeks, women staged strikes in defence of women’s rights and freedoms in Korea and Argentina, and the Polish strike was cited as inspiration for the International Women’s Strike on 8 March this year, in the US. Barbara Nowacka and fellow politician-activist Agnieszka Dziemianowicz-Bąk were named leading global thinkers by Foreign Policy magazine “for humbling Warsaw”. New York magazine invited Polish women to advise their American counterparts how best to defend their reproductive rights. With the protests, the author of the New York article wrote, Polish “women had won some of their rights back.”

But the protests, while impressive, merely prevented a bad situation from getting worse. Few countries have experienced such a steady erosion of reproductive rights as Poland in recent decades. While no one in Poland goes to jail for having an abortion, there has, effectively, been a ban since 1993. Social pressure from church groups and an opaque approval process are threatening existing rights. Oral contraceptives are difficult to obtain, while emergency contraceptives now require a prescription, after legislation that came into effect in July.

There is, nonetheless, one assured method for Polish women to assert their reproductive rights. The best way to defend your reproductive rights in Poland is to buy them.

Abortion lies at the intersection of the two major trends that emerged in Polish society after the fall of communism in 1989. The first of those trends is social conservatism, which flows from the reinvigorated Catholic church. The second is the enthusiastic embrace of economic liberalism that began in late 1989, when Poland became one of few countries to voluntarily submit to the IMF’s “shock therapy”. The church’s drive to ban abortion was matched by neoliberals’ desire to remove the state from economic life. Abortion ceased to be a medical procedure and became a moral issue; it ceased to be a medical right and became a commodity.

The push to ban abortion, which had been legal in Poland since 1956, began immediately after the fall of communism. The second bill introduced in 1989 was a total ban on abortion (it failed after widespread protests). Banning abortion was understood as a concession to the church – a reward for its role in fostering opposition to communism. After direct intervention by Pope John Paul II, the current abortion law came into effect in 1993, despite surveys showing that more than 60% of Poles opposed it.

Under the law, abortion is permitted in exceptional circumstances: if the mother’s life or health is endangered; if the foetus has a severe congenital disorder; or if the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest. Women who have an abortion are not considered to have committed a crime. However, anyone who provides or helps a woman to get an abortion outside these grounds, is liable to prosecution and the penalty is imprisonment.

In practice, it is very difficult to get a legal abortion even if you meet one of these criteria. Since the law was implemented, there have been, officially, no more than 1,000 abortions a year, in a country of nearly 40 million people. Before 1989, there were upwards of 500,000 abortions a year in Poland, and more than 97% of the women said they were doing it for socio-economic reasons.

A black market for surgical abortions quickly emerged to meet demand, operating at first out of many gynaecologists’ private offices. The law was never seriously enforced. Pursuing doctors with criminal prosecution would have risked social problems, while the black market conveniently solved the contradiction between Polish society’s external show of Catholic morality and the existing social reality.

Underground abortion providers have never been particularly difficult to find. After the law’s introduction, adverts began to appear in newspapers: “Gynaecologist: Intervention”, “Retrieve the Menstrual Cycle”, or “Full Gynaecological Services”, along with a number to call.

The ban on abortion became a financial boon for doctors prepared to carry out procedures illegally. Prices for an illegal termination are high, roughly equivalent to a Pole’s average monthly earnings (currently 4,256 złoty, or around £895). Illicit abortions in Poland are generally safe, provided by working gynaecologists, and deaths are rare, but having the procedure is all the more unpleasant and upsetting in an unregulated and harried environment.

Protesters in Warsaw on 3 October 2016.
The women’s strike in Warsaw on 3 October 2016. Photograph: Janek Skarżyński/AFP/Getty Images
Agnieszka, who I met last summer in Berlin, was 19 when she discovered she was pregnant, in 1994. She found the clinic in Łódź through word of mouth. She couldn’t afford the operation, so her boyfriend paid for it. The doctor was “pretty scary. Everything was horrific.” After the procedure she bled for three weeks, becoming so weak she could barely walk. In the end she had to return to the clinic so the same doctor could repair the damage.

“Doctors who take a lot of money for [performing abortions],” she reflected. “There are two sides to it: they are doing something good, because every woman has a right to decide, but on the other hand … ”

The Federation for Women and Family Planning (Federa), Poland’s oldest reproductive rights organisation, estimates that, contrary to the 1,000 terminations a year cited by official statistics, the figure is more like 150,000. The anthropologist Agata Chełstowska estimated in 2011 that illegal abortions were generating as much as US$95m a year for medical practitioners.

“Once abortion leaves the public sphere, it enters the grey zone of the private: private arrangements, private health care and – the most private aspect – private worries,” Chełstowska writes. “In the private sector, illegal abortion must be cautiously arranged, and paid for out of pocket. When a woman enters that sphere, her sin turns into gold. Her private worries become somebody else’s private gain.”

Wanda Nowicka, the founder of Federa, told Chełstowska: “We are talking about a vast, untaxed source of income. That is why the medical profession is not interested in changing the abortion law.”

Elżbieta Korolczuk, a sociologist and longtime activist, met young women at last year’s protests who, because they have the means to pay for it, previously didn’t know that abortion was illegal in Poland. “Many women have access to abortion, so they think: what’s the problem?” Korolczuk says.

Doctors successfully prosecuted under the law typically receive suspended sentences and do not go to jail or lose their medical licence. In tolerating the black market, the government effectively outsourced abortion to an unregulated industry.

Around 2011, activists operating Federa’s telephone hotline noticed that more and more women were asking about clinics abroad. Women searching for cheaper alternatives also asked them about ordering pills online to induce miscarriage.

In 2012, Ewelina was in her early 20s, and seeing a man she did not intend to stay with, when she found out she was six weeks pregnant. “There was no maternal feeling,” she says. “It felt like a sickness I wanted to get rid of.” She turned to various Polish internet forums on abortion access, and the Polish-language pages of two Netherlands-based websites, Women on Waves and Women on Web, in order to find out more about her options. She learned about a drug used to treat osteoarthritis that can induce miscarriage as a side-effect.

Ewelina was able to obtain the drug through a connection who was authorised to write prescriptions. She told him it was for her grandmother. “The only fear I had before taking the medication was that it may not work,” Ewelina says. She went to a friend’s apartment near a hospital and took three pills at two-hour intervals, nine pills in total. Five hours after the last dose, she began to feel cramping, and she had some bleeding. The next morning she went to the hospital and was given an ultrasound. Medical staff told her there was no heartbeat. She began to cry; the doctor mistook her tears of relief for sorrow.

Women on Web was set up in 2006 to send women the medicines, Misoprostol and Mifepristone, so they can safely terminate a pregnancy at home. Women are asked to donate €70-€90, if they can afford it, to cover the cost of the pills, which usually take a week to arrive from the manufacturer in India. A few thousand Polish women order pills from Women on Web annually, according to founder Rebecca Gomperts. (Another organisation, Women Help Women, provides a similar service.) However, there’s not much postal traffic between India and Poland, and customs officials in several regions of Poland started intercepting and confiscating the packages.

Polish internet forums about abortion access began to appear in the early 2000s, encouraging women to induce termination using pills, rather than a surgical procedure. Although moderators discourage the practice, these forums, set up to help women, can serve as a marketplace where buyers and black-market sellers of abortion-inducing pills can connect.

Women at a rally in Lublin last month, marking the first anniversary of the 2016 women’s strike. Photograph: Jakub Orzechowski/Agencja Gazeta via Reuters

After learning that she was six weeks pregnant, Basia came to the decision that she would terminate the pregnancy. Through an online forum her partner found another couple living in Warsaw who would sell them abortifacient (abortion-inducing) pills for 500 złoty (about £105).

Basia does not know what the pills were, but she took two, or maybe three. After a few hours, she began to feel very painful cramps. “During the heaviest cramps, I was scared,” she said. The worst passed, but Basia bled for three weeks, until she went to a hospital to be given a D&C (dilation and curettage, the usual treatment to clear the womb after a miscarriage). It is not clear why she had an extreme reaction, but since she bought the drugs on the black market, she will never know.

Abortifacient pills such as Misoprostol and Mifepristone have a major advantage for Polish women: they are cheaper. As demand for these pills has grown, however, so too has the opportunity for profit and fraud. Black-market providers of surgical abortions have also started selling pills. With the help of a translator, I was able to reach two sellers. One offered abortifacients for between 400 and 600 złoty (£84-£126), or a surgical operation for 4,000 złoty. The second offered pills for 1,300 złoty.

Since Women on Web is unavailable in some regions, and because women believe they don’t have time to wait, many turn to the local black market – sellers with no medical training and no quality control.

Dr Janusz Rudziński, a Polish gynaecologist who settled in Germany decades ago, estimates that 75% of his Polish patients have gone through a failed abortion with black-market pills. More than 1,300 Polish women cross the border every year to have an abortion at Rudziński’s practice in Prenzlau, about 100km north of Berlin, near the Polish border. He receives between 100 and 150 calls from Poland every day. His patients come from all over the country. Most find his number online.

Rudziński left Poland before abortion became a moral issue, and is unimpressed by the harsh rhetoric it has since attracted. “It used to be normal,” he told me. “Nobody talked about it. If someone came to the clinic and wanted [an abortion], they had an abortion.”

Prices for surgical abortion are falling as clinics in neighbouring countries become available to Polish women. A clinic in Vienna keeps a Polish translator on staff. Many women reportedly travel to the Czech Republic, despite a law passed by the Czech government intended to prevent them from coming. The most common destination is Slovakia, as it is cheapest and most efficient; some clinics reportedly have two-week-long waiting lists. These clinics charge less than the cost of an illegal termination in Poland: €500-550 in Germany, or €370-390 in Slovakia. And here, women are not made to feel like criminals.

Markets are discriminatory; those who lack money or information are excluded. As long as there is a ban on abortion, or even severe restrictions, there will invariably be women desperate for a solution, and the black market will thrive. Any attempts to liberalise Poland’s abortion law, however, must contend with the entrenched power of the country’s Catholic church.

Liberalising access to abortion, which no major party in Poland currently supports, will require a political party willing to broach a different taboo in Polish society: the church’s political power. As the Polish state retreated during its economic “shock therapy”, the church expanded its role in society and became an alternate centre of political power.

Separation of church and state is a “communist-inspired” system, said Józef Glemp, then the country’s Roman Catholic Primate, in 1991. At that time, a majority of the population attended mass every week, and church leaders urged parishioners to support “only those political groups that favour protection of life from the moment of conception”.

John Paul II, the first Polish pope and an immensely popular figure in his homeland, envisioned Poland as a bastion of Christian values and a beacon of moral renewal in Europe. As unemployment rose to 16.4% and earnings deflated following the IMF’s economic measures, the population became less enamoured of moral renewal, and more worried about feeding their families. In 1991, a poll found that overwhelming majorities of Poles opposed church dominion over policy towards, among other issues, contraceptives (81%) and abortion (71%). Still, the church’s prestige and command of public attention was difficult for politicians to ignore.

Under church pressure, the government first removed subsidies for birth control pills in 1991, tripling their price. The cost of birth control today is not, in theory, prohibitive, at about 40 złoty a month. However, some doctors refuse to prescribe contraceptives, some pharmacists refuse to sell them, and they are difficult to obtain in public hospitals.

The Polish healthcare system is split between a low-cost public sector plagued by long wait times and poor-quality care, and a more expensive private sector with better and more readily available care. One activist I spoke with, Karolina Brzycka, said that in her local public hospital, in the late 90s, only one of the four gynecologists would prescribe hormonal contraceptives. Women started lining up at 4am for an appointment.

According to a 2015 UN report, Poland has among the lowest access to contraceptives in Europe, with less than half of women using a modern method of contraception. If a woman wants birth control without a long wait, she must pay for an appointment at a private clinic. The appointment costs as much as 400 złoty plus 120 złoty for a three-month supply of pills. The prescription must be renewed four times a year, at a cost equivalent to 13% of average earnings.

The new law that went into effect in July this year will further restrict access. The emergency contraceptive pill ellaOne – the most popular morning-after pill in Poland, and the only one previously available over-the-counter – now requires a prescription. (Viagra, however, was recently made available without a prescription.)

The new law doesn’t technically amount to a ban. Some women, particularly in big cities, will be able to obtain a prescription on short notice in an emergency, or if they can afford to pay for it. But most people cannot afford it. If you don’t have money, if you’re on the losing side of Poland’s economic transformation, you’re stuck with the religious dogma.

Jarosław Kaczyński, leader of Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party. Photograph: Jakub Porzycki/Agencja Gazeta via Reuters

Despite broad public support, the church has stymied all attempts to introduce sex education in schools. In a 2014 pastoral letter, Polish bishops warned that sex education leads students to “become regular customers of pharmaceutical, erotic, pornographic, paedophile and abortion enterprises”. Several activists I spoke with recalled being shown, instead, the notorious anti-abortion film The Silent Scream. Another, Barbara Baran, remembered being forced to sing an anti-abortion song, sung from the perspective of an aborted foetus.

Even so, Poland has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world, by some accounts the lowest in Europe. The Polish Health Ministry recently released a video suggesting rabbits as a healthy model for mating habits. While the church’s influence has failed to multiply its flock, it has succeeded in creating a taboo around abortion. Church groups harass patients arriving at doctors’ offices with gruesome placards. Between a quarter and a third of Polish women have had an abortion, but nobody talks about it. One activist told me that only after last year’s protests did she learn that three of her friends had had abortions.

The church’s influence is not necessarily indicative of popular will. Weekly mass attendance has fallen from more than 60% in the 90s to about 40% today; the drop is especially sharp among young women. Since 2005, Polish politics, like a broken metronome, has swung between the right (under the Civic Platform party) and the far-right (under the Law and Justice party), both of which eagerly court the church for patronage, securing the church’s political power even as its popular support ebbs.

Any “humility” the government learned from last year’s protests appears to have been short-lived. There are currently several proposals circulating to further tighten the existing abortion law, by removing the right for a termination in cases in which the foetus has a congenital disorder. The church and leaders of the Law and Justice party have signalled their support. Save Women is again countering with a proposal to liberalise access to abortion.

SEE TOMORROW'S BLOG: The conspiracy theorists who have taken over Poland

On 10 November, a legal opinion was leaked suggesting that anyone providing information about how to use pills or clinics abroad should be prosecuted for abetting abortion. The document was written by Ordo Iuris, a group of ultra-Catholic lawyers with connections to the Law and Justice party. For now, prosecutors are not acting on its recommendations but it seems designed to increase pressure on activists providing information to women.

It was around the same time that Polish customs began seizing shipments of pills from Women on Web and Women Help Women. The push to further restrict the current abortion law, the threats against those providing information, and the ongoing seizure of pills illustrate the limitations of eluding legal restrictions on abortion. You can only do so much without political power.

Support for this article was provided by a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting


MANY OF YOU WILL REMEMBER THIS

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/almanac-john-lennon-yoko-ono-bed-in-for-peace/
CBS NEWS March 25, 2018, 9:24 AM
Almanac: John and Yoko's "Bed-In for Peace"

And now a page from our "Sunday Morning" Almanac: March 25th, 1969, 49 years ago today … the start of a now-legendary bedtime story.

For that was the day Beatle John Lennon and his new bride, Yoko Ono, began their self-styled "Bed-In For Peace" in Amsterdam.

Married just five days before in Gibraltar, and frequently attacked for both their beliefs AND their appearance, the honeymooning couple bedded down in the Amsterdam Hilton as a public protest against the Vietnam War -- and invited the whole world to watch:

"We're going to stay in bed for seven days, instead of having a private honeymoon," Lennon said. "It's a private protest ..."

"For the violence that's going in the world," said Ono. "Instead of making war, let's stay in bed."

"And grow your hair!" added Lennon. "Let it grow until peace comes!"

Needless to say, their Bed-In didn't end the war.

And as for the personal criticism, John later answered it with a song called "The Ballad of John and Yoko":


The Beatles - The Ballad Of John And Yoko by TheBeatlesVEVO on YouTube
One year after the Bed-In, The Beatles split up.

John and Yoko eventually moved from Britain to New York, where he was shot and killed in December of 1980 at the ago of 40.

Yoko Ono, now 85, still lives in New York.

And in long-overdue recognition, just last year she received official co-writer credit with John for their 1971 song, "Imagine."

See also:

Remembering 1968: The revolutionary "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band" ("Sunday Morning," 02/25/18)
Lyrics from our favorite John Lennon songs (CBS News, 12/08/15)
Yoko Ono on keeping John Lennon's memory alive (CBS News, 12/08/10)


FACEBOOK CLOSES PALESTINIAN ACCOUNT

http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Facebook-disables-Palestinian-news-sites-account-for-incitement-547065
Jerusalem Post Arab-Israeli Conflict
FACEBOOK DISABLES PALESTINIAN NEWS SITE’S ACCOUNT FOR INCITEMENT
“We were totally surprised,” the social media manager said.
BY ADAM RASGON MARCH 25, 2018

A man is silhouetted against a video screen with a Twitter and a Facebook logo. (photo credit: DADO RUVIC/REUTERS)

Facebook disabled the account of Safa, a Gaza-based Palestinian news site, over the weekend, which had just under 1.3 million followers.

Safa is widely seen as sympathetic with Hamas, but an employee at the news site said in a phone call that the media outlet is “independent” and “has no relationship with Hamas.”

Facebook disabled Safa’s account and 10 Safa editors’ accounts just after 5PM on Saturday without issuing a warning or providing an explanation, a manager of Safa’s social media team told The Jerusalem Post.

“We were totally surprised,” the social media manager, who asked not to be named, said. “We are now working to restore the account because 60% of the website’s traffic comes through Facebook.”

A Facebook spokesperson declined to comment on the disabling of Safa’s account.
00:04 / 00:57


However, in the past 18 months, Facebook has disabled several Palestinian news sites and leaders’ accounts for allegedly inciting violence against Israelis.

The social media manager said that Safa “has not incited violence and has followed all of Facebook’s guidelines for making posts.”

“We are merely writing and sharing the news,” the social media manager said.

In contrast to the social media manager’s remarks, some of Safa’s posts on Instagram and Youtube appear to glorify individuals suspected of carrying out violent acts.

For example, on February 6, Safa posted a photo on its Instagram page of Ahmad Jarrar, who Israel and Hamas’s armed wing said was the ringleader behind the murder of 32-year-old Rabbi Raziel Shevach.

Embedded in the photo of Jarrar is the caption, “The Martyr Ahmad Jarrar, A Hero from Palestine.”

On the same day in February, Safa also posted a video on its YouTube page which stated that Jarrar’s “personality had transformed into an example for the resisting generation in the West Bank.”

Just last week, Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked praised Facebook for its actions against Palestinian accounts.

“Terror organizations have moved on to operating on Twitter instead of Facebook,” Shaked said at a conference in Jerusalem. “The reason is because of the fruitful cooperation between Israel and Facebook and the lack of cooperation between Israel and Twitter.”

According to Shaked, the Justice Ministry has asked Facebook to disable some 12,351 Palestinian accounts for their alleged involvement in terror activity and incitement to violence.

Iyad Rifai, the coordinator of Sada Social, a non-governmental organization that documents Facebook’s actions against Palestinian accounts, said that Facebook has dealt with Palestinian content on its platform differently than that of Israeli content.

“While Facebook is taking action against Palestinian content, it is not even paying attention to inciting posts by Israelis,” Rifai said in a comment on March 3 published on Sada Social’s website.

The Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media found in a study it published earlier this month that some 50,000 Israeli social media users wrote at least one inciting post against Palestinians.
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