13 September 2021 ⚡️ A week of reflection
Biden issues COVID-19 executive order; DOJ sues Texas over SB-1; judge rules Apple must allow developers to use alternate payment systems
The news this past week has focused on the 20th anniversary of 9-11.
One of the many Facebook memes asked this: “What were you doing on 9-11-2001?”
Mike came to my townhouse in Bellevue from Microsoft, where he had learned about the attacks, and waked me about 6:30 am.
My first thought was of my best friend from high school, who was a Wall Street lawyer. I called her dad; she was OK and made it home on a boat much later that day.
My second thought: will I still have surgery tomorrow?
I was preparing for a complete hysterectomy which followed a 10-day hospital stay for peritonitis in France in August, when I also had an ovary the size of a grapefruit.
Consequently, I missed the gnashing of teeth and perpetual “rewind” of television news. A friend brought me all the daily newspapers from the 12th; basically, I missed them, too.
Although I live in the Seattle area and the attacks physically occurred in New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania, they affected my life as well lives as around the globe.
Sept. 11 led directly to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, the passing of the Patriot Act, the Authorization for Use of Military Force, the use of warrantless surveillance programs, and special registration of immigrants and foreign students from Muslim countries. Outside the United States, the attacks served as justification for the 20-year war in Afghanistan; the invasion and occupation of Iraq; the indefinite detention of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay; the use of torture at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere; the killing of thousands of U.S. and foreign service members; the periodic bombing of Pakistan, Yemen, Syria and Somalia; the deaths of some 800,000 people, including 335,000 civilians; and the displacement of an estimated 38 million people.
I hold a minority view on part of Saturday’s activities. I think former President Bush should have stood shoulder-to-shoulder with former Presidents Clinton and Obama and current President Biden rather than lead a Republican commemoration (former Vice President Cheney attended as well as Vice President Harris) in Pennsylvania. I found the remarks like pablum and, contrary to headlines and pundits, Bush did not equate the January 6th insurrection with foreign-led terrorism. Readers or listeners could interpret his words in this manner, but that is not what he said.
9-11 essays you may have missed:
9/11 Made the Media Whitewash What Really Happened in Bush v. Gore. NY Magazine, Jonathan Chait, 09 September.
I Reported on 9/11. Conspiracy Theorists Distorted My Words. The Cut, as told to Alex Ronan, 10 September.
My mother died on 9/11. Every year, her absence feels larger. (Albany) Times Union, 10 September
The Real Meaning of ‘Never Forget’. NY Times, Laila Lalami, 10 September.
The week in quick review:
On Tuesday (14 September), the California recall on Gov. Gavin Newsom will end. Regardless of the outcome, voters will chose their picks for Governor again in June 2022 in an open primary. See False Election Claims in California Reveal a New Normal for G.O.P.
On Sunday, NBC amplified an August report from the “center left” group Third Way that concluded: “Contrary to the media narrative, overall crime decreased in 2020 compared to 2019.” Analysts examined data from 22 states and the District of Columbia that have “submitted and published full data.” USA Facts, a website launched by ex-Microsoft chief Steve Ballmer, made the same observation in July. The Third Way report found “no difference in crime trends between Republican-led and Democrat-led states.”
On Saturday, the US Capitol Police provided an update on its internal investigations into the January 6, 2021 insurrection. Investigators are recommending disciplinary action in six cases. Notably absent: any mention of senior management decisions that led to injury among officers.
Friday, “Apple's iPhone and App Store won a mixed victory in court,” in a lawsuit with Epic Games. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers of the US District Court for the Northern District of California said agreed that Epic violated its developer agreements. However, Rogers ruled that Apple’s prohibition against developers using other payment systems was anti-competitive and will allow app developers to do so.
The DOJ sued Texas over SB1 on Thursday.
On the last day of the Trump presidency, the Pentagon handed control of about six percent of a section of the Internet called IPv4 to Global Resource Systems, a company formed in September 2020 which had no other federal contracts. On Tuesday, the Pentagon announced “it was resuming control of the 175 million IP addresses and directing the traffic to its own servers.”
About that quote:
Author Theodora Goss has written a fabulous trilogy, beginning with the Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter (2017). Recommended for anyone who enjoys Sherlock Holmes and period fiction situated in Victorian England.
🤓 Recommended reading
A U.S. Marine, a curious Afghan boy, an unfathomable moment. AP, 08 September.
Apple mostly wins in Epic Games Fortnite trial, but must ease payment rules. cNet, 10 September 2021.
GOP ‘Moderate’ Blasted Capitol Riots — and Cozied Up to a Jan. 6 Bus Trip Organizer. Rolling Stone, 13 September.
Here’s What the Next Six Months of the Pandemic Will Bring. Bloomberg, 13 September.
How the rise of Politico shifted political journalism off course. Washington Post, Perry Bacon, Jr., 07 September.
New Orleans gets some Ida relief, but rural pain will linger. AP, 10 September
Pa. Republicans started their ‘forensic investigation’ of the 2020 election. It’s still unclear what that means. Philadelphia Inquirer, 09 September.
Spanish-language Covid disinformation is aimed at Latinos as delta surges. NBC News, 06 September.
Texas is pushing the most anti-trans bills in the country. Advocates fear deadly consequences. The 19th, 13 September.
The Other Afghan Women. In the countryside, the endless killing of civilians turned women against the occupiers who claimed to be helping them. New Yorker, 06 September.
The Plan to Stop Every Respiratory Virus at Once. The Atlantic, 07 September.
The Question Michael K. Williams Asked Me Before Every Season of ‘The Wire’. NY Times, 12 September.
The top 1 percent are evading $163 billion a year in taxes, the Treasury finds. NY Times, 08 September.
These doctors and nurses share COVID-19 falsehoods. They can become misinformation super-spreaders. Philadelphia Inquirer, 12 September.
Unearthed videos show pattern of violence by Louisiana state police. The Guardian, 09 September.
Want to cut your risk of serious COVID-19? New data shows vaccines are hitting the mark. CBC, 11 September.
Wildly reinvented wind turbine generates five times more energy than its competitors. Fast Company, 03 September.
💉 COVID-19 week in review
The race between the waves of transmission that lead to new variants and the battle to get the globe inoculated won’t be over until the coronavirus has touched all of us… “this is a coronavirus forest fire that will not stop until it finds all the human wood that it can burn,” Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.
The biggest COVID-19 story of the week is President Biden’s executive order mandating vaccinations for about two-thirds of the country’s private and public labor force, as many as 100 million Americans.
The expansive rules mandate that all employers with more than 100 workers require them to be vaccinated or test for the virus weekly, affecting about 80 million Americans. And the roughly 17 million workers at health facilities that receive federal Medicare or Medicaid also will have to be fully vaccinated.
Important: only half of us support vaccine mandates for everyone, although slightly more support mandates for specific groups, such as students in face-to-face classes and those attending sporting events or concerts (55%).
About schools and coronavirus: In mid-August, Mkayla Robinson, a eighth-grade Mississippi student, died from COVID-19 shortly after school started. Hours earlier, Republican Gov. Tate Reeves had declined to mandate masks in schools like had had done in 2020; he also claimed the virus only caused “sniffles” in those younger than 12.
As of Friday in Mississippi, at least 18,825 students had tested positive for COVID-19 and more than 15,000 had to quarantine just last week, after one month of school.
In contrast, see California. San Francisco schools have had no COVID-19 outbreaks since school began on 16 August 2021. In Los Angeles, school officials have ordered a vaccine requirement for all students 12 and older, the first by a major district.
Schools opened in New York City today; teachers must be vaccinated and students must wear masks. City employees returned to work in-person and must be vaccinated or tested weekly. Wanna go indoors at NYC restaurants, museums, gyms and entertainment venues? Show proof of vaccination.
Only 46% of Mississippians 12 and older are fully vaccinated, which is one of the lowest vaccination rates in the country.
Several Mississippi teachers told Insider that they want Reeves to issue a mask mandate for public schools, saying they see no other way to avoid disruptions in the learning process and ensure schools can stay open. So far, Reeves has resisted.
🏥 Hospitalizations: on Saturday 11 September, US hospitals were treating 91,441 coronavirus patients, down from 99,109 on 31 August.
Twenty-one states have hospitalization rates greater than the national average (30/100,000, 13 September): AL (59), GA (59), FL (58), KY (58), SC (50), TX (49), WV (49), TN (48), MS (45), WY (40), AR (39), OK (39), IN (37), NV (37), ID (35), LA (34), MT (34), NC (34), MO (33), HI (31) and OH (31).
🪦 Deaths per day (seven-day average) reached 1,626 on Saturday (11 Sept 2021), which is almost a three-fold increase in a month (601 on 11 Aug 2021). It has been since 07 March that the reported death rate has been this great.
In California, Daniel (39) and Davy (37) Macias have died from Covid, leaving five children as orphans. She died after giving birth in August; he died this week.
In August, a Texas couple, Lawrence (49) and Lydia (42) Rodriquez, also died from Covid, leaving four children as orphans.
📷 Photo of the week
Lighthouse, Canadian waters, Alaska-Washington ferry, 05 September 2015.
CC license; attribution to this post, no commercial use, no mods.
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