World News

>Once he fled, Bolivia’s first-ever president from the country’s Indigenous population was replaced by a little-known, white, far-right senator, Jeanine Áñez, from the country’s minority European-descendent, Christian, wealthy region. Her new, unelected government promptly massacred dozens of Indigenous protesters and then vested the responsible soldiers with immunity. Seven months later, Áñez predictably continues to rule Bolivia as “interim president” despite never having run for president, let alone having been democratically elected.

>The central tool used by both the Bolivian right and their U.S. government allies to justify the invalidation of Morales’s 10-point election victory were two election audits by the regional group Organization of American States — one a preliminary report issued on November 10, the day before Morales was forced from the country, and then its final report issued the next month — which asserted widespread, deliberate election fraud.

>But on Sunday, the New York Times published an article strongly suggesting that it was the OAS audit, not the Bolivian election, that was “marred by grave irregularities,” making it “impossible to guarantee the integrity of the data and certify the accuracy of the” OAS claims. The paper of record summarized its reporting this way: “A close look at Bolivian election data suggests an initial analysis by the OAS that raised questions of vote-rigging — and helped force out a president — was flawed.”

>That study documented that the key “irregularity” cited by OAS “was actually an artifact of the analysts’ error.” It further explained that with regard to “the patterns that the observers deemed ‘inexplicable,’” the new data analysis shows that “we can explain them without invoking fraud.”

>It is virtually impossible to overstate the importance of the OAS accusations in driving Morales from his own country and, with no democratic mandate, shifting power in lithium-rich Bolivia to the white, Christian, U.S.-subservient right. While critics had also accused Morales of improperly seeking a fourth term despite constitutional term limits, Bolivia’s duly constituted court had invalidated those term limits (much the way that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg induced the City Council to overturn a term limit referendum so he could seek a third term), leaving anti-Morales outside agitators, such as the OAS and U.S. officials, to rely instead on claims of election fraud.

>U.S. media outlets and foreign policy commentators dutifully echoed the U.S. State Department’s line, as they typically do, by depicting the violent military coup as an advancement of freedom and democracy for the Bolivian people (the same Bolivian people who had just voted for Morales to be their president). As a Washington Post op-ed in February by two MIT scholars noted: “The media has largely reported the allegations of fraud [from the OAS] as fact.”

>The New York Times similarly and repeatedly hyped the OAS report as proof that Morales’s victory was illegitimate and the coup therefore democratic. “An independent international audit of Bolivia’s disputed election concluded that former President Evo Morales’s officials resorted to lies, manipulation and forgery to ensure his victory,” its news article claimed, without a syllable of critical pushback until the penultimate paragraph, where it noted that “some economists and statisticians in the United States” had pointed to flaws in the OAS’s data analysis.

>As U.S. media coverage of last year’s coup in Bolivia demonstrates, little has changed since the Cold War when it comes to media fealty to the State Department and the CIA. Because the U.S. government preferred the right-wing coup-plotters to the left-wing Morales, the U.S. media deliberately inverted the entire narrative to describe the elected leader (Morales) as the tyrant and the violent military coup leaders as the saviors of democracy. And they peddled this false narrative only by relying heavily on an OAS report that even the NYT is now forced to admit was, at best, deeply flawed.

>Fox News' depiction of the demonstration mirrors much of right-wing media's attempt to portray it as menacing.

>"It's not an armed takeover," Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan said on CNN Thursday night. "It's not a military junta."

>Fauci: L-looks like' US deaths will be lower than original projection, heh heh. Good news, right guys? Sorry about all the hysteria I instigated, it was totally an accident.

>Why do people still even listen in incompetent retards like Fauci? His initial predictions were wildly off the mark, so why does that lead anyone to believe that his next predictions are going to be anything but stupid?

>Both sides insist no bullet has been fired in four decades, and the Indian army said on Tuesday that "no shots were fired" in this latest skirmish.

>How a clash that did not involve an exchange of fire could prove so lethal is unclear. There are reports that it was fought with rocks and clubs

>Local media outlets reported that the Indian soldiers had been "beaten to death".

>Minneapolis police officers dressed in riot gear fired rubber bullets, tear gas, and stun grenades into crowds of protesters that gathered late Tuesday to demand justice for the killing of George Floyd after video footage showed a cop kneeling on the back of the man's neck as he cried out, "I cannot breathe!"

>Videos and photos posted to social media show people pouring milk into the eyes of demonstrators affected by tear gas as the chemical substance clouds the air, enveloping the thousands of protesters marching in the streets near the site of Floyd's killing.

>"This is a disgusting display," said Jeremiah Ellison, a city council member representing Minneapolis Ward 5. "I'm here on the southside, helping people as I can with milk, water, and towels. So far, I have been unable to prevent the police from firing indiscriminately into the crowd. Moments ago, I held a towel to a teenage girl's head as blood poured from it."

>Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) tweeted that "shooting rubber bullets and tear gas at unarmed protesters when there are children present should never be tolerated. Ever."

>"What is happening tonight in our city is shameful," Omar added. "Police need to exercise restraint, and our community needs space to heal."

>The massive protests erupted in the wake of video footage showing a Minneapolis police officer kneeling on Floyd's neck as he lay handcuffed and face-first on the asphalt.

>Floyd and onlookers repeatedly pleaded with the officer to take his knee off Floyd's neck, but he refused to do so until an ambulance arrived. By that point, Floyd had been unconscious for minutes. In a statement following the Monday night incident, the Minneapolis Police Department said they were responding to "a report of a forgery in progress" and claimed Floyd's death was caused by an unspecified "medical incident."

>City Officials Charged with Accepting Bribes from Drug Pushers

>In the face of protests composed largely of young people, the presence of America’s military on the streets of major cities has been a controversial development. But this isn’t the first time that Generation Z — those born after 1996 — has popped up on the Pentagon’s radar.

>Documents obtained by The Intercept via the Freedom of Information Act reveal that a Pentagon war game, called the 2018 Joint Land, Air and Sea Strategic Special Program, or JLASS, offered a scenario in which members of Generation Z, driven by malaise and discontent, launch a “Zbellion” in America in the mid-2020s.

>According to the scenario, many members of Gen Z — psychologically scarred in their youth by 9/11 and the Great Recession, crushed by college debt, and disenchanted with their employment options — have given up on their hopes for a good life and believe the system is rigged against them.

>In early 2025, a cadre of these disaffected Zoomers launch a protest movement. Beginning in “parks, rallies, protests, and coffee shops” — first in Seattle; then New York City; Washington, D.C.; Los Angeles; Las Vegas; and Austin — a group known as Zbellion begins a “global cyber campaign to expose injustice and corruption and to support causes it deem beneficial.”

>The JLASS war game emerges in the context of the Pentagon playing a controversial and visible role in the unfolding domestic protests against racism and police brutality in the U.S. National Guard units have been deployed in various locations already, and some active-duty military forces were sent by the Trump administration to the Washington D.C. area.

>..Er ist Mitglied des "kleinen Corona-Kabinetts", das Deutschland derzeit durch die Krise steuert. Im unendlichen Podcast berichtet Außenminister Heiko Maas, wie sich der Alltag eines Politikers verändert hat, dessen Arbeitsbasis vorher das persönliche Gespräch war und dessen Arbeitsbilanz auch in Flugmeilen gemessen wurde. Heute ruft ihn der kanadische Außenminister schon mal an Ostern direkt auf dem Handy an, wenn in Kanada die Wattestäbchen für Corona-Tests ausgehen – unter Umgehung des Protokolls, das in der Diplomatie sonst alles beherrscht.

>..Drei Stunden und 26 Minuten sprach Heiko Maas mit ZEITmagazin-Chefredakteur Christoph Amend und ZEIT-ONLINE-Chefredakteur Jochen Wegner für den potenziell unendlichen Podcast Alles gesagt?, den nur der Gast selbst beenden kann. Das Gespräch fand nicht, wie sonst üblich, am Wohnzimmertisch von Produzentin Maria Lorenz statt – sondern per Video. Trotzdem gab es für alle österreichisches Essen und Bier. (Die Weißweinflasche hat das Auswärtige Amt im Cateringpaket an Maas entfernt.)

>Move over, George Soros: There’s a new nefarious mastermind behind the ongoing political turmoil in the United States. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke with U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday and, according the state-run Anadolu Agency, told him,“Those behind the recent violence and looting during protests in the U.S. are working with the YPG/PKK, a terrorist group operating in northern Syria.”
>The Turkish government has spent the past few days blaming the YPG for instigating violence during the massive protests against police brutality in the U.S. Last week, Matthew Petti of the National Interest reported on a graphic released by the Turkey Directorate of Communications, tying antifa—the loose movement of militant activists that Trump has threatened to designate as a terrorist organization—to the Kurdish YPG rebels