The Post Office is Spying On Your Social Media, Biden Acknowledges WWI Genocide, Deceptive Reporting from...Nickalodean?!, Michigan Mandates Masks for Toddlers (The Five for 04/27/21)
Welcome to The Five.
Just a couple of notes before we begin.
If you missed Friday’s newsletter, I’ve tweaked the format a bit. On Tuesdays, the Five will publish a News Edition, and on Friday a Culture Edition.
There are several breaking stories about police actions happening right now…and this is not the medium to cover them in. As a 2x/weekly publication, The Five isn’t set up to cover breaking news that changes hourly. That kind of work is best left to other outlets.
With that being said, let’s get into the News Edition:
[one]
The policing arm of the U.S. Postal Service (uhh….didn’t’ know that’s a thing) has a program called iCop that’s spying on citizens’ social media posts, and then sharing the info with other government agencies.
“This seems a little bizarre,” agreed Rachel Levinson-Waldman, deputy director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s liberty and national security program. “Based on the very minimal information that’s available online, it appears that [iCOP] is meant to root out misuse of the postal system by online actors, which doesn’t seem to encompass what’s going on here. It’s not at all clear why their mandate would include monitoring of social media that’s unrelated to use of the postal system.”
Levinson-Waldman also questioned the legal authority of the Postal Service to monitor social media activity. “If the individuals they’re monitoring are carrying out or planning criminal activity, that should be the purview of the FBI,” she said. “If they’re simply engaging in lawfully protected speech, even if it’s odious or objectionable, then monitoring them on that basis raises serious constitutional concerns.”
“The U.S. Postal Inspection Service is the primary law enforcement, crime prevention, and security arm of the U.S. Postal Service,” the statement said. “As such, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service has federal law enforcement officers, Postal Inspectors, who enforce approximately 200 federal laws to achieve the agency’s mission: protect the U.S. Postal Service and its employees, infrastructure, and customers; enforce the laws that defend the nation's mail system from illegal or dangerous use; and ensure public trust in the mail.”
Observations:
This is one of those rare issues that everyone across the political spectrum should be able to agree on. The U.S. Postal Service should not be collecting social media data en masse.
The U.S. Postal Service should not be in the business of law enforcement. Tampering with mail is a federal offense under U.S. Code 18 Section 1708.
The United States has multiple federal law enforcement agencies. At first glance, the best thing here would probably be to let the FBI handle mail fraud crimes as the primary enforcement body of federal law.
I ordered a pair of sunglasses that shipped on Black Friday last year…and didn’t arrive until January 14. There was no stated delay and the package wasn’t lost, the USPS was just being really bad at it’s job. So, perhaps if the Post Office wasn’t spending resources on mass surveillance, packages would be delivered more quickly.
A quick note before we continue….roughly 25% of readers of The Five come in from social media links. Facebook and Twitter’s algorithms constantly change, so any day The Five could be gone from your feed. Subscribe for free to never miss an issue.
[two]
[During the genocide, many Armenians were simply marched into the desert at gunpoint by the Ottomans, then left to die of dehydration].
Because so much of the mainstream news is covering Presidential politics, that’s not something that comes up often in The Five…pick any political website, and you can get plenty of news and opinions on the current President, last President and even who’s likely to run in 2024, despite the fact that the current administration is just 100 days in.
However, since I learned of the Ottoman Empire’s genocide against Armenians in college, I’ve been horrified that the U.S. refused to recognize this tragedy. President Biden finally changed that.
Politico reports:
President Joe Biden on Saturday issued the document Armenian Americans have pursued for decades: a declaration that the Ottoman Empire’s slaughter of an estimated 1.5 million Armenian civilians was genocide.
It’s a deceptively simple action, carrying no force of law. Yet it’s a bold move for Biden, who has gone beyond what any American president has ever been willing to do. Until now, presidents have declined to formally apply the term “genocide” for fear of sparking a backlash from Turkey, which vigorously denies it. According to the Turkish account, World War I-era violence between Muslim Ottomans and Christian Armenians led to large casualties on both sides. According to most historians, however, the evidence is clear the Turks engaged in a years-long ethnic cleansing campaign that included forced death marches and mass starvation.
For a quick recap of what happened, I highly recommend this YouTube video.
In addition to 1.5 million Armenians killed by the Turks, 450,000 Greeks were wiped out as well. Biden’s declaration made no mention of Greek persecution, nor the 300,000 Assyrians who died at the hands of the Ottomans.
[three]
San Francisco has been one of the leading cities in America on reforms to the justice system. This week, the city came under nationwide criticism for releasing 26 year old Joseph Williams on multiple occasions after domestic battery incidents. Had Williams beens serving time for past violent crimes, he would have not been free to allegedly beat a seven month old baby to death.
A San Francisco man was charged with murder Monday in the death of a 7-month-old boy who had been left in his care and died of traumatic head injuries, prosecutors announced Monday.
San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin said that he has filed murder charges against Joseph Williams in the April 20th death of the little boy identified only as Baby S.
Williams — who is not related to the little boy — was caring for the child when he brought the the injured boy into the hospital. The child was declared dead a short time later.
“The death of Baby S is a tragedy,” Boudin said in a news release. “We are so deeply sorry for the family, whose enormous grief we can only imagine.”
“My office has filed murder charges and we will put every resource at our disposal into prosecuting this case,” he added. “We know nothing can make the family whole again, but we will work our hardest to make sure there is justice. Please know that our office is mourning with and for you.”
I’m guessing that the Twitter Blue Checks hadn’t taken situations like this into consideration when writing opinion pieces like “Yes, We Literally Mean Abolish the Police” for the New York Times. Recently, NPR also featured a story on abolishing all prisons, which leaves a pretty big question left unanswered when it comes to those who commit crimes like the one Mr. Williams is accused of.
[four]
Well, I’m gonna have to go and destroy the errant reporting of [checks notes] Nickelodeon?!
Until this tweet went viral, I had no idea children’s channel Nickalodean covered news. (As the parent of a toddler in the cord cutting era, I can, however, discuss the finer points of Paw Patrol, Peppa Pig and Clifford the Big Red Dog.)
Exerpts from the “News Report” in which hog farming was labeled “Environmental Racism” on Nickalodean:
Narrator: “In Duplin, North Carolina, believe it or not, the number of hogs, outnumber the number of residents.”
Narrator: ”When we reached out to residents of Duplin County, they were too scared to go on camera.”Former Resident Fiana. “It’s a small town and there’s a farm on almost every corner….growing up, sometimes we had to play in the house, and that was due to the hog farms spraying feces in the fields.”
Narrator: “There are two million hogs for a county of 60,000. Many people work in the hog farms, which is dangerous to their health and to the environment.”
Observations:
Nearly every agricultural county in America has more livestock than people. My aunt and uncle have run 500+ cows themselves, with the part time help of a couple of adult sons and the occasional hired man. Cattle, hogs, sheep and chickens aren’t cats and dogs…they don’t live in the house and modern tech (such as automated feed and watering machines) mean they can be cared for by less people.
“Spray feces on the fields.” Yes, livestock manure is the oldest fertilizer, completely natural and one of the most effective. People have been doing this for thousands of years. Would Fiana rather the farmers spray Diacamba, a chemical that kills neighboring farmers crops and resulted in a dispute between two farmers in Arkansas that resulted in a murder? Oh, and it’s been partially banned since 2020, and is correlated with increased cancer rates? Which one, Nickalodean/Fiana?
This is yet another example of the modern trend to serve as a voice to tear everything down without bothering to suggest what society should build back.
There’s certainly an outcry against meat (from a very small minority of voices), but now we’re seeing attacks on crop farming as well? So…what are we to eat?
And if you want to know what happens if we tear down the farms without putting anything back…ask a Ukranian between 1922-1933, when the farms sat empty after a Soviet purge and five million people starved to death.
On what criteria did Nickalodean decide the residents were “scared” to talk to them? Isn’t a second possibility that in an era where wealth is consolidating in continually greater amounts in a few cities…that people in rural America are grateful to have stable employment?
I’ll close with this. My views on hog confinement farming is…mixed at best, and the variety of farms under that umbrella term range from pretty ethical to downright disturbing.
To agree on one point, I do wonder about the long term health effects of workers who breathe hog excrement and dust for 8-12 hours per day.
But either we’re going to have standards in journalism…or we’re not. Especially because this is meant for kids, the report’s blatant mischaracterization of how farming works is troubling. The network is feeding easily debunkable misinformation to young minds who are not old enough to research counterpoints.
[five]
Preschoolers age 2-4 are now legally required to wear masks in public in the state of Michigan.
Beginning Monday, April 26, Michigan’s face mask mandate will also apply to children between the ages of two and four. That means they are now required to wear a mask in all public places, including schools, childcare centers and camps.
Earlier this month the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services extended the existing COVID-19 health order and added the new requirement.
Meanwhile, cases in Texas and Florida, two “fully open” states without statewide mask mandates, COVID cases continue to remain much lower in the locked down Michigan.
Yesterday (04/26), Michigan reported 7,225 new cases compared to 4,413 in Texas and 3,513 in Florida. Combined, Texas and Florida have 50 million residents, compared to nine million in Michigan. If you’re wondering if the difference is the vaccine rollout, Michigan (41-46%) leads Florida and Texas (both 26-36%) in the percentage of adults with at least one shot.
For a visual example, we can look at the opening day stadiums for Michigan (Tigers) and Texas (Rangers). Despite strong evidence that Michigan’s (very extended) lockdown is not working, the state has doubled down and placed restrictions on toddlers in public.
One researcher, writing anonymously on Medium, has a different idea of what’s going on. (Note: this is often required for academics and scientists to maintain their day jobs…I’m including this in a source because it’s an analysis of publicly available data).
According to the Medium article, Michigan’s “spike” is from counting “COVID like illness” cases in the totals:
if one then looks at the data from the michigan ER admits, a very different pattern emerges. all ER’s now track admission for covid like illness (CLI). they also track covid diagnoses. this can be expressed as a percentage of all ER admissions. (raw data HERE)
in the past, we saw more alignment between CLI symptoms and covid diagnosis, but this really blew out starting in october, then dropped back down some, then really blew out again.
this is not typical of any respiratory disease i have ever heard of. even a 2:1 ratio of diagnosis to symptoms is enough to make you wonder about over-testing and false positives, but 7:1 is simply beyond the pale.
this means 1000 people walk in, 15 claim to have CLI symptoms, and 105 get a covid diagnosis.
this does not sound like an epidemic of a dangerous disease, it seems like some sort of really problematic measurement modality. this is, of course, precisely what testing asymptomatic people with high Ct PCR based genetic tests for covid has always been.
On a personal note, there’s no chance my wife and I visit friends in Michigan until this mandate has lifted. Our 2.5 year old daughter is highly intimidated by people in masks, and I’d rather delay travel than put her through that…to “protect” her from a disease that they won’t even test for in young children.
Update: In related news, the young wearing masks is taking a toll on high school track, where reports are coming in from across the country of runners collapsing from competing while wearing masks. In Oregon, high school sprinter Maggie Williams broke the school record for the 800 meter while wearing a mask, and then was injured from collapsing on the track. She was so oxygen deprived her hearing temporarily went out.
[epilogue]
A map of Australia laid over Europe, to contextualize it’s size.
Only 23 million people live in Australia (mostly in a few costal cities), compared to 746 million people in Europe.
The vast majority of the subcontinent has no people living on it.
Until the next one,
-sth