RAFAL NEWS UPDATE, CORONAVIRUS EDITION TUE 7 APR 2020
RAFAL NEWS UPDATE, CORONAVIRUS EDITION TUE 7 APR 2020
AUSTRALIA:
5,881 cases, 45 deaths
Commercial regional media broadcasters are shutting down because of a downturn in advertising revenue, ask for government assistance.
>I don’t think they should be given help; any assistance provided should be given to community radio stations, who remain open despite the pandemic to help the community.
>Commercial media stays open as long as it has money, community media stays open as long as it has listeners.
>While commercial media is a servant to the economy, community media answers only to the people in that community.
>Not only does community media stay open during bushfires to broadcast emergency info, they’ve stayed open and are broadcasting remotely - mostly as volunteers - to continue serving the community they love.
>Let’s use this as an opportunity for community media to rise up.
Caltex closes one of four Australian oil refineries temporarily.
The Liberals are going to shut down parliament after they open it briefly to pass the jobkeeper laws.
THE SITUATION
>Basically parliament doesn’t actually meet all the time because the members have work to do in their own states and electorates.?>Because of the emergency they’re reopening so they can pass the laws that will let them do the jobkeeper payments, but the Liberal Party (the government) wants to close right after.
>The Labor party wants them to stay open indefinitely so they can deal with new issues as they arise.
LIBERALS SAY:
>The Attorney General (Liberals) said MPs “had better things to do” than sit in parliament
>which is kind of a rude thing to say about what is a main part of your job?>but what he meant to imply is that the members of government are busy working on other parts of the crisis response - this might be true
READING BETWEEN THE POLITICAL LINES:
>Liberals don’t want parliament to be sitting because they don’t want to be under severe scrutiny from Labor; especially not PUBLIC scrutiny.?>If parliament sits it may be a bad look for the Liberals, who want to seem like they’re totally large and in charge in the crisis, and take that image with them to the next election.
>Remember that although we temporarily basically agree on stuff because it’s an emergency, the Libs and Labor are ideologically opposed, meaning they usually disagree on things, and the Libs would want to protect their policy making from intervention as much as possible.
LABOR SAYS:
>They need to have parliament open so they can pass laws quickly if they need to
READING BETWEEN THE POLITICAL LINES:
>Labor wants to have as much involvement with the virus response as possible.
>They’re not currently the government and the Liberals/Scott Morrison are getting a lot of good press because of their response to the crisis, and Labor wants in.
>It’s much harder for them to take credit for ideas, like the wage subsidy which they did push for first, when their ideas are voiced behind closed doors or on Twitter.
>It would also give their ideas more weight in negotiations with the government because it’s in an official environment where MPs have power and the public can weigh in, rather than backdoor teleconference thing.
VICTORIA:
1,191 cases
Law Students are angry that the cartoon-villain-wearing-a-monocle-and-top-hat Monash Law Faculty is going ahead with an home exam with a strict 2.5 hour time limit, they want a 24 hour window instead. Students are like, how can we possibly adhere to that strict time limit when there are a bunch of people in the house, some of whom are elderly or children I have to take care of? The Monash Law Faculty cackled madly when hearing the complaints, expressing bureaucratic pablum about academic this and academic that, while drinking their afternoon swans blood.
A bunch of Aboriginal health groups have had to stop testing for COVID-19 because they don’t have personal protective equipment (masks, gloves, gowns etc).
>Some are making their own in the meantime.
>Like I’ve said before, although it’s terrible that our healthcare workers are running short of this equipment at all, Aboriginal health services are particularly important at the moment because Aboriginal people are more at risk for COVID-19;
>they have higher rates of chronic illness, respiratory illness, heart disease, diabetes and live in worse conditions because we invaded their country and forced many of them into poverty.
A 17 year old was fined $1652 for going on a Learners driving lesson too far from home. The Victorian Government does not apologise for this fine, doubles down on decision, but says it may be withdrawn.
NT:
28 cases
People in hotel quarantines are denied requests to leave their room for a smoke, told to “tough it out”.
NZ:
Health Minister is demoted after he visited a beach 20kms away despite lockdown measures, calls himself an “idiot”, can’t help but agree but maybe with a different word. He offered to resign; the PM said in normal circumstances she would fire him, but because of the crisis that’s not possible. Instead she took away part of his other political responsibilities and demoted him inside the cabinet. Political commentators in NZ think he’ll probably lose the title of Health Minister when the crisis is over.
WORLD:
1,347,676 cases, 74,744 deaths
SPAIN: 136,675 cases (#2) 13,341 deaths
ITALY: 132,547 cases (#3) 16,523 deaths
GERMANY: 103,375 cases (#4) 1,810 deaths
UK:
52,279 cases (#8) 5,385 deaths?Boris Johnson is moved to ICU (Intensive Care) after his office said he was hospitalised just a precaution; this suggests he has severe COVID-19. Even people who have severe COVID-19 recover, and hopefully he will make it through.
US:
368,196 cases (#1) 10,923 deaths
US blocks three million masks getting into Canada, really pisses everyone off. Canada says this is a real dick move; points out that although the mask factory is in the US, the materials to actually make the things come from Canada; they also point out that thousands of Canadian nurses work over the border in the US. Justin Trudeau the Canadian PM says the country won’t retaliate by also blocking those things coming into the US.
Vice reports that a prisoner in a federal prison used a cellphone to document inmates having coronavirus symptoms and being “left to die”.https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/z3b9qj/prisoner-uses-smuggled-cellphone-to-beg-for-help-with-coronavirus-on-facebook-live
PAKISTAN:
53 medical workers arrested after protesting lack of virus safety equipment.
BRAZIL:
The president, who is one of the only world leaders who refuses to lockdown the country over COVID-19, says China is using COVID-19 in their “plan for world domination”, using a racist tweet imitating a Chinese accent.
Obviously this guy is off the charts, but let’s talk about the idea behind this. I’ve heard a lot of these conspiracy theories in the last few weeks, and I would caution you from believing them. Like I’ve said to my friends, it’s not that I believe China is morally opposed to doing something like this, I can imagine it theoretically happening, but I also think people massively overestimate how competent and organised governments are, and doing something like this and covering it up to this massive extent would require perfect coordination across the entire Chinese government.
It’s just more likely that China had a virus crisis and they fucked up the response, causing an international crisis. They will certainly manipulate the response to the crisis and lie endlessly about all kinds of things, but the idea that they bred the virus in a lab and spread it around is not something I’m ready to believe. Not because I don’t think they’re willing, or capable, but because sitting in your apartment writing “what ifs” is not as good as thorough investigative journalism. If the seriously clever journalists at the New York Times, the Guardian, journalists all over the world who expose corruption and crime on a daily basis, if they can’t find evidence to suggest a conspiracy, I’m not ready to believe there is one. If there is any actual evidence, even a little bit, from reputable sources, then we should talk.
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Vegetables are your friend at a time like this!
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Love, the Rafal News Team xx