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Another genocide, another whitewash, this time at Winter Olympics

Jaden Amos   | Paste BN

We're leading the leading the newsletter with a column about the Winter Olympics. While the games are a real point of excitement and patriotism, it's difficult to ignore the looming political issues hanging over this year's events. Today's lead column is about Uyghurs in China and Olympic sponsorships. 

Another genocide, another whitewash, this time at Winter Olympics

By Rushan Abbas

The 2022 Beijing Olympics opened this week. For the past three years, I have fought alongside fellow activists to call attention to the fact that the International Olympic Committee inappropriately gave Beijing the prestigious privilege of hosting the Olympics, again. This is despicable. 

My people, the Uyghurs, an ethnic and predominantly Muslim minority, are victims of a genocide perpetrated by the Chinese regime for their cultural and ethnic identity. The IOC has decided to make themselves complicit in this genocide. They have condemned Uyghurs, Tibetans, Hong Kongers and more by refusing to respect basic human dignity. They put athletes at risk. They make it impossible to watch the Winter Games without engaging in complicity.

And we have seen that the sponsors of the Olympics have decided to press forward with their partnerships. These sponsors place profit over human lives. Broadcasters like NBC place profit over human lives. It is our duty now to make sure they feel the repercussions of their decisions by not watching these genocidal games.

I ask that you join me. 

Today's Editorial Cartoon

Schools don't need mask mandates to keep kids COVID safe

By Dr. Scott Balsitis, Dr. Lucy McBride, Dr. Kristen Walsh and Dr. Carol Vidal

As scientists and physicians, we are concerned that COVID-19 mitigation measures for children are doing more harm than good. Too many policymakers have viewed health as the mere absence of COVID-19, putting children into a loop of mitigation measures that are uncoupled from actual risk.

After two years of living with one disruption after another, the evidence is clear: The pandemic and the loss of normalcy are taking a tremendous toll on students, with the data on mental health being particularly alarming. 

The American Academy of Pediatrics has declared a mental health emergency in children. As the surgeon general recently highlighted, combined analyses of 80,000 children found that symptoms of depression and anxiety have doubled among young people during the pandemic, with 1 in 4 showing depressive symptoms and 1 in 5 showing anxiety.

Whoopi Goldberg gave a sincere apology. She deserves forgiveness.

By Jonathan A. Greenblatt

As the grandson of a Holocaust survivor who narrowly escaped Germany before the antisemitic Nuremberg racial laws were implemented, Goldberg’s comments caused me tremendous confusion and hurt.

It was racial laws that forced hundreds of thousands of Jews to wear yellow stars to identify them, racial laws that forced them out of their livelihoods, and racial laws that shunted them into crowded ghettos before they were liquidated and sent to their deaths in concentration camps scattered across Europe. And it was racial laws that targeted people who didn’t themselves identify as Jews or practice Judaism but had parents or grandparents who were Jewish.

And here was Whoopi – literally one of the most visible women in television, and one with a devoted following – insisting contrary to all historical evidence that the Holocaust wasn’t about race, that it wasn’t about the genocide of a people demonized as lesser and subordinate.

Other columns to read today

Columns on qualified immunity

Currently, we are doing a series examining the issue of qualified immunity. For more on the series read here. 

This newsletter was compiled by Jaden Amos.

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