In the News: Week of July 12th
What happened in the world from July 12th to 18th
In the news this week
John Lewis, civil rights icon and congressman from Georgia, died at 80 on Friday. Lewis fought against racism and injustice most of his life. He helped organize the March on Washington in 1963, and led the “Bloody Sunday” march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965, where his skull was cracked by a trooper with a billy club. Lewis often faced abuse from white mobs and law enforcement while fighting for civil rights, and was arrested 40 times from 1960 to 1966. He had been a congressman since 1987, and announced late last year that he had stage 4 pancreatic cancer.
Trump’s “secret police” are snatching Portland protesters into unmarked vans. Officers from the U.S. Marshals Spec Ops Group and CBP’s Border Patrol Tactical Unit have been deployed to protect federal property in Portland from protesters. Officials are picking up protesters in unmarked minivans, whether they’re near federal property or not, and it’s not clear if all detained individuals were even involved in any criminal activity. Trump’s quote about Portland sounds like it could just as easily be attributed to a communist dictator: “Portland was totally out of control, and they went in, and I guess we have many people right now in jail. We very much quelled it, and if it starts again, we’ll quell it again very easily. It’s not hard to do, if you know what you’re doing.” Apparently all it takes to “quell” peaceful protestors is to tear gas them, shoot them in the face, and kidnap them in unmarked white vans. Who would’ve thought.
The Trump administration is considering blocking the 92 million members of China’s Communist Party from entering the country. The Communist Party has ruled China for the better part of the last century, and its members are often in positions of leadership or run businesses. They are also responsible for the mass detention and “re-education” of around a million ethnic minorities. The concentration camps are used to indoctrinate and punish mostly Muslim Uighurs. There have been reports from camps of organ harvesting, beatings, food deprivation, rape, medical experiments, and forced abortions.
Twitter scammers were sent about $118,000 in Bitcoin after the wildest attack in Twitter’s history. Some of the biggest Twitter accounts in the world posted about a Bitcoin scam on Wednesday afternoon, offering to send users money back if they first sent Bitcoin to them. Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and Kanye West were all among the accounts compromised. It doesn’t appear that individual accounts were compromised, but rather Twitter itself was hacked. Trump’s account was not among those breached, but what if it was? If hackers were to gain control of the account of someone like Trump, who communicates with the public mainly on Twitter, they could cause a great amount of harm in a very short amount of time.
Headline of the Week: Graffiti on monument commemorating Nazi SS division being investigated as a hate crime by police
Someone graffitied the words “Nazi war monument” on a Canadian monument honoring Nazis. Police said they were investigating the incident as a “hate-motivated” crime, but decided not to release images of the graffiti to stop “further spreading” of the message. I may be off my rocker, but I don’t think labeling a Nazi war monument qualifies as a hate crime. It’s not clear exactly why the police think Nazis could possibly be victims of a hate crime, but they said that “inciting hatred against any identifiable group could face imprisonment not exceeding two years.” I would argue that hating Nazis should probably not be a crime.
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