Body of Tortured Ukrainian Mayor Found?, Elon Musk Buys Twitter Because of the Babylon Bee?, CA City Pays Residents for Being Transgender/Non-Binary (The Five for 04/05/22)
Hey, welcome to The Five.
Let’s get into…a rather strange day of news.
[one]
The bodies of the family of a Ukranian Mayor were discovered today.
The Washington Examiner reports:
The corpses of a missing Ukrainian mayor, her husband, and her child were recovered in a shallow grave, according to recently released images and Ukrainian officials.
Olga Sukhenko, mayor of the suburb of Motyzhyn outside of Kyiv, was initially kidnapped by Russian forces alongside her husband and son on March 23, Ukrainian officials said.
The Russians "tortured and murdered the whole family of the village head," said Anton Herashchenko, an adviser to the Ukrainian interior ministry.
"The occupiers suspected they were collaborating with our military, giving us locations of where to target our artillery," Herashchenko said. "These scum tortured, slaughtered, and killed the whole family."
The bodies of Sukhenko, her husband, Ihor Sukhenko, and her son, Oleksandr, were uncovered by a reporter on a farm outside of Motyzhyn, according to a report.
One body had its head taped, the report noted, and a fourth body was found tied up.
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk verified Sukhenko's murder and said at least 11 community officials are being held captive by the Russians across the nation.
Satellite images of mass graves, including a 45-foot trench seen Monday, have been released to the public throughout the past month, leading to strong condemnation by foreign leaders.
Following the news, a meme started circulating with Fox News host Tucker Carlson calling the events into question, including a Facebook share from popular left-wing meme page The Other 98% and was shared (and deleted) by Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger, according to The Meme Policeman.
The only problem?
The news broke this morning and Tucker’s show airs at night, which means the cable host haven’t even been on-air since the bodies were discovered.
This is a classic case of “a lie getting halfway around the world before the truth gets it’s pants on,” to quote Winston Churchill.
What happened to the mayor’s family should (and will be) investigated…and it’s that report, not memes, we should be looking to for an accurate report on how these executions occurred.
[two]
In one of the most surprising stories of the year, Tesla/Space X CEO Elon Musk was named to the board of Twitter after buying 9.2% of the company’s shares.
Stranger still is the fact that Musk’s (at least partial) takeover of the social networking giant was inspired by satirical website The Babylon Bee being suspended from the platform over an April Fools joke.
The joke post named Biden Administration Rachel Levine, who is trans, Babylon Bee’s “man of the year.”
The Bee was informed their account would be restored as soon as the offending tweet was deleted, but CEO Seth Dillon refused, seemingly meaning the popular website would be permanently banned from Twitter.
This incident appears to have inspired Musk, the world’s richest man, to buy millions of shares of Twitter to change policies that limit free speech.
[three]
A women’s college rugby team is under investigation after allegedly…branding a teammate while the athlete was intoxicated.
A women’s rugby team at a Vermont university is being investigated for hazing after a player on the squad was allegedly branded and waterboarded last month, authorities said.
Police learned of the alleged behavior after responding to Norwich University, a private military school in Northfield, on March 20 for a report of someone being held at knifepoint, according to an affidavit obtained by the Barre Montpelier Times Argus.
Officers discovered an intoxicated member of the women’s rugby team who was wielding a knife. Two days later, the woman spoke to police and shared disturbing allegations of hazing.
She told police she had been “branded” using pliers and a lighter by other members of the rugby team while she was intoxicated.
Hazing for military members may be a necessary evil, but incidents like this in college athletics (and fraternities/sororities) are more common than they should be, and produce no positive effects.
[four]
A program designed by Amazon as an internal social network, allowing employees to “shout out” one another…may now be used (possibly illegally) to prevent unions from forming.
Amazon will block and flag employee posts on a planned internal messaging app that contain keywords pertaining to labor unions, according to internal company documents reviewed by The Intercept. An automatic word monitor would also block a variety of terms that could represent potential critiques of Amazon’s working conditions, like “slave labor,” “prison,” and “plantation,” as well as “restrooms” — presumably related to reports of Amazon employees relieving themselves in bottles to meet punishing quotas.
“Our teams are always thinking about new ways to help employees engage with each other,” said Amazon spokesperson Barbara M. Agrait. “This particular program has not been approved yet and may change significantly or even never launch at all.”
In November 2021, Amazon convened a high-level meeting in which top executives discussed plans to create an internal social media program that would let employees recognize co-workers’ performance with posts called “Shout-Outs,” according to a source with direct knowledge.
On Saturday, Amazon workers in Staten Island, NY became the first group of workers to vote in favor of unionizing, and the movement may continue to spread.
[five]
A city in California is paying residents who claim to be transgender or nonbinary.
Transgender residents in Palm Springs, California are eligible to receive a UBI of up to $900 per month solely for identifying as transgender or nonbinary — no strings attached.
The new pilot program will have $200,000 set aside for allocation after a unanimous vote by the Palm Springs City Council last week.
Former San Diego City Councilman Carl DeMaio, a Republican who served as the first openly gay member of the city council, called the program "outrageous and discriminatory."
"We're completely opposed to guaranteed or universal basic income programs, because they ultimately cause inflation and raise the cost of living on everyone — they don't work," DeMaio said in a statement.
"But at least some of them have minimum income requirements to qualify, whereas this one is no-strings-attached 'woke' virtue signaling to the LGBT community in a way that is not only offensive but discriminatory," he continued.
Twenty transgender and nonbinary Palm Springs residents will receive the free money funded by the taxpayers for 18 months, with advocacy-based health center DAP Health and LGBT advocacy group Queer Works managing the program.
Palm Springs, CA has an 18% poverty rate, with one in five residents living in poverty, meaning more than 8,000 poor residents who don’t identify as transgender or nonbinary are ineligible for the direct payments.
Until the next one,
-sth