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from Axios
LEFT-CENTER BIAS, HIGH, news website
Global freedom continues steady decline: report
Freedom in the World index, 2021
The global erosion of democracy has continued for a 15th consecutive year, according to an annual report from Freedom House. The report calls particular attention to India, which slipped from “free” to “partly free” due to the government's “scapegoating of Muslims” and “crackdown on critics.” Prime Minister Narendra Modi is, according to the report, “driving India itself toward authoritarianism.” Governments in several countries used the cover of the pandemic to consolidate control.
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from BBC News (UK)
A "secret" medieval tunnel system has been discovered by electrical technicians in south Wales. A team working for Western Power Distribution made the discovery while moving an electrical pole near Tintern, in the Wye Valley, Monmouthshire. Western Power said the tunnels, near to 12th Century Tintern Abbey, were not shown on any Ordnance Survey map.
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from CNN
Back in 2019, Californian company the Gateway Foundation released plans for a cruise ship-style hotel that could one day float above the Earth's atmosphere. Then called the Von Braun Station, this futuristic concept -- comprised of 24 modules connected by elevator shafts that make up a rotating wheel orbiting the Earth -- was scheduled to be fully operational by 2027. Fast forward a couple years and the hotel has a new name -- Voyager Station -- and it's set to be built by Orbital Assembly Corporation, a new construction company run by former pilot John Blincow, who also heads up the Gateway Foundation.
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from Daily Kos
In [a] segment from CNN Alyson Camerota interviews three former Qanon cult members and three people with relatives still in the cult. What they say they believe is totally bonkers.
Jacob Chansley, who has the gall to call himself the QAnon Shaman, wants you to know that he was only doing his civic duty during the insurrection of Jan. 6. In fact, he was there to stop a more serious crime from happening: wanton theft of baked goods. More specifically, the howling, shirtless conspiracy theorist with the horns and face paint claims he protected muffins from his fellow violent insurrectionists.
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from HumanProgress.org
Education Website
Our twenty-third Center of Progress is London during the late 18th and early 19th century, when the city played host to debates on the nature of human rights that would change the world. Today, we take the norm that no person can buy or sell another human being for granted, but it took humanity a long time to arrive at that norm. Slavery was accepted and rarely questioned for millennia throughout the world, but today slavery is illegal in all countries. Legal battles fought in London and legislative actions taken in London helped to end the global slave trade and bring about the dramatic change in attitudes about slavery—an invaluable victory for human freedom.
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from Rolling Stone
One party is racing to fix an ailing electoral system. The other is doing everything in its power to shut voters out of it
In the coming weeks, the battle over democracy’s future in America will hit a boil. On one side is a group that looks at the last election and sees a resilient but damaged system. A system that withstood — sometimes only barely — a raging pandemic, a conspiracy-theory-peddling president, a major political party all too eager to amplify that president’s lies, a wave of hail-mary lawsuits intended to overthrow the election result, and a violent insurrection in the halls of the U.S. Capitol. The other side of this battle sees that rickety system and wants to break it so badly the voters can never get in their way again.
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from The Spokesman-Review
Newspaper in Spokane, Washington
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On Monday in Minneapolis, a trial starts. Barbed wire and barriers have gone up around the courthouse. Officer Derek Chauvin is charged with second-degree murder and manslaughter in the death of George Floyd last May. We are in a season of difficult conversations about race reminiscent of the 1960s, but the dominant cultural worldview has changed. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. along with other civil rights leaders knew their worth came from God not man. Rev. King walked peacefully in places where he was a target of hate, and survived with dignity because he knew his worth came from the God who created him. Critical race theory starts from the assumption that everyone belongs to a racial category, and your identity is your race. Judgment is based on the color of your skin and not the content of your character.
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