Today's News (2020/6/17): Everything Else edition

[solarbird]

Not much in this folder today. Still, a few articles.

1. It was Trump's failure to attack Iran - not the litany of other instances of disturbing behavior, corruption, and impeachable offenses - that per Bolton was the real "turning point" for him.
2. Zoom admits to shutting down activist accounts at the request of the Chinese government
3. 12 false claims Trump has made about Obama since last month

----- 1 -----
Kingston Reif
twitter.com/KingstonAReif
17 June 2020

https://twitter.com/KingstonAReif/status/1273347274677063686

This pretty much tells you all you need to know. It was Trump's failure to attack Iran - not the litany of other instances of disturbing behavior, corruption, and impeachable offenses - that per Bolton was the real "turning point" for him. https://nytimes.com/2020/06/17/books/review-room-where-it-happened-john-bolton-memoir.html

[EMBEDDED IMAGES OF QUOTES FROM BOOKS]


----- 2 -----
Zoom admits to shutting down activist accounts at the request of the Chinese government
Jonathan Shieber@jshieber / 4:28 pm PDT
June 11, 2020

https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/11/zoom-admits-to-shutting-down-activist-accounts-at-the-request-of-the-chinese-government/

Zoom, the wildly successful video chat service that has been a ubiquitous feature of life during the COVID-19 pandemic, said that it shut down three accounts at the request of the Chinese government for holding memorials for the victims of China’s violent suppression of peaceful protests at Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989.

As Axios first reported, the accounts of Lee Cheuk-Yan, Wang Dan and Zhou Fengsuo were closed down by the video communication service for planning and holding vigils and events to commemorate the Tiananmen Square Massacre.

According to Zoom’s own timeline, the company was notified by the Chinese government about four large, June 4th commemoration meetings that were being publicized on social media. The Chinese government demanded that Zoom terminate the meetings and host accounts. Responding to the Chinese government’s request Zoom determined that three of the four events included participants from mainland China and were distributing information or discussing events that were illegal under Chinese law.

Zoom shut down those meetings.

The company also suspended the host accounts, which were located in Hong Kong and the U.S.

In its statement, Zoom blamed the decision on the company’s inability to block participants by country. “We could have anticipated this need,” the company acknowledged.


----- 3 -----
12 false claims Trump has made about Obama since last month
By Daniel Dale
Updated 8:47 AM ET, Wed June 17, 2020

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/17/politics/fact-check-trump-obama-lies-policing-justice/index.html

Washington (CNN)President Donald Trump keeps taking shots at former President Barack Obama.

A lot of them are lies.

Trump has long been fixated on his predecessor. Since May 1, as his presidential campaign against former Vice President Joe Biden has heated up, Trump has made at least 12 separate false claims about Obama and his record in office.

Trump added a new one Tuesday in a speech about police reform, declaring that Obama and Biden "never even tried" to fix problems in policing. That's not even close to true.

Comments

[dewline]

1. Not going to buy that book of Bolton's. I'll let my public library take care of that chore so that I can read it at need. Let the libraries of the world enrich him to the minimum degree possible and needed to more properly document his and Trump's crimes together.

2. I've been asking around for good alternatives to Zoom, in anticipation of this sort of Problem.

[solarbird]

I don't know about video, but I use Signal for text messaging on my phone.