“We’ve been Zucked!”

Post for Wednesday May 6  references The Donald’s reactions to The Lincoln Project’s latest ad, Mourning in America.
The saga heats up…

News blues…

The Lincoln Project recent email to subscribers:

…we've been Zucked: Facebook is now censoring the ad that made Trump lose his mind.
You're not going to believe this — not much shocks me these days, but even I had to see it with my own eyes.
But now, less than 24 hours later — as if on cue — Facebook has slapped a "false" warning label on our video, telling its users to beware…
it's no secret that Facebook has stood by and done little to nothing as lie after lie — from the Liar-In-Chief himself — runs wild on their platform.
(Oh, and let's also not forget the conspiracy theories, foreign disinformation campaigns and negligence that got Mark Zuckerberg questioned by the United States Congress. )
But, this? This is an entirely different and dangerous kind of collusion.

But, is it an entirely different and dangerous kind of collusion?
We are talking here about Trump administration that has, over just three years, epitomize a “different and dangerous kind of collusion”.

Mark Zuckerberg’s trend toward colluding with Trump only increases over time.

“…Mark Zuckerberg and Donald Trump appear to have struck a “mutual assistance arrangement” that will help the US president “get re-elected”, referencing Facebook’s willingness to continue publishing political adverts. 

Unfortunately, words, any words, uttered by George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist, are attacked, reviled, and undermined – increasingly successfully – by US hard right, nationalists, fear mongers, and the gullible. Soros is the hard right’s bogeyman.

Trump/Zuckerberg “mutual assistance arrangement”

• January 2020: President Trump says Mark Zuckerberg running for president 'wouldn't be too frightening
• December 2019: Mark Zuckerberg says there was nothing shady about secret meeting with Trump 
• November 2019: Trump hosted Mark Zuckerberg for private White House dinner
• April 2019: Mark Zuckerberg says he's 'confident' about 2020 election

***

On a different note, one of humane public service, I highly recommend Daily Maverick’s free webinar “The Dual Epidemics: Looking at the overlapping and interweaving of HIV and Covid-19”, hosted by Mark Heywood.
Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, discusses the lessons from the HIV pandemic that are applicable to Covid-19, whether Covid-19 presents a threat to people living with HIV-AIDS, how the spread of Covid-19 will impact Africa, how a vaccine, once created, will reach everyone who needs it, and the lessons from HIV that are applicable to the response to Covid-19.

***

A combination of events had police tightening lockdown in the KZN city of Pietermaritzburg.
Today was the deadline for a six-day long once-off allowance for interprovincial travel. Judging by the crowds, too many people left that to the last minute.

According the provincial police commissioner, since 27 March, at least 18,000 people have been arrested for violating Covid-19 lockdown regulations.

Street scene from Pietermartizburg,
May 7 2020
Click to enlarge.

Roadblocks manned by the army and the Road Traffic Inspectorate are responding to a high volume of complaints about non-compliance.

I suspect Pensioners’ Day swelled the crowds, too. Every Tuesday and Thursday people over 60 years old get 5 percent discount off purchases.
Who wouldn’t risk Covid-19 for such a deal?

***

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

I took a breath of freedom "outside the wire"* with a plan that was (I hope) lockdown compliant: seeking giblets for my mother’s dogs at the recommended butcher in “Little Lagos.”
Alas, dense crowds lined the street - no one could maintain social distance – and bringing home giblets to overfed dogs might be worth the risk of infection to some.
To me?
Not so much.

Back home, I noticed the dogs didn’t seem to mind I was giblet-free.
My mother explained their point of view: “They like Pet Mince now.”
What a relief! No dog would starve due to my selfish desire for safety!

While Pet Mince fills the dogs’ culinary breach for now, it does not mean I’m off the hook for locating a source of giblets.
Rather, it means I visit Little Lagos on non-Pensioners’ Day: Monday, Wednesday, or Friday.

(*The phrase "outside the wire" originated with US military troops locked down on military bases in Iraq during that disasterous invasion. Heavily armored troops went off base only to patrol local towns and villages. Their routes, the same day-after-day, made them frequent targets of attack.)

***

Yesterday I described an upcoming SAA repatriation flight to Dulles International in Washington, D.C. Today, I received an update from the US Consulate in South Africa:

Event:  The South African Ministry of Health confirmed 7,808 cases of COVID-19 within its borders.
South African Airways Flight
It was announced that South African Airways will be required to cease all operations on May 8. Unfortunately, due to that timeline, SAA informed us that they had to move their planned flight to the U.S. to repatriate South Africans to early this morning, making it impossible for us to put U.S. citizens on the outbound leg. We know this will be very disappointing news to many of you who had hoped to participate in this flight, as it is for all of us working to make it happen.
While we will continue to inform citizens of opportunities as they arise, we have no information on any other potential repatriation flights at this time.
 
We have no information on when commercial flights will resume.

This means that every repatriation flight mentioned in the last month by the US Consulate in South Africa has been cancelled.
A news snippet, however, might shed light.

The government [and public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan] is unhappy that SAA business rescue practitioners (BRPs) spent between R30m and R35m on American consultants, while it has not yet seen any plan to save the national carrier from total collapse.
Gordhan said the government also wanted the BRPs to reverse their decision to put a complete halt to all SAA flights on Friday, including planes that may be required to urgently repatriate South Africans stuck in foreign countries as the world battles the Covid-19 pandemic.
"What we've had in recent days is the announcement by the practitioners that all flights, repatriation or otherwise, will stop on May 8. … the department has had a discussion with the BRPs and there's now some indication of maybe some flexibility in this regard.

This is almost like the States. There, our fearless leader and his crew put out what appear to be definitive statements one day, contradict those statements the next day, then repeat the original statement on the third day.

To paraphrase the SAA flight captain, “Welcome to your flight. Nothing can go wrong… go wrong … go wrong….”


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