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Facebook removes hundreds of QAnon groups and pages

Chris Mills Rodrigo
The Hill
Wed, 19 Aug 2020 15:23 UTC
facebook google
© getty
Facebook on Wednesday banned roughly 900 groups and pages and 1,500 ads related to the QAnon conspiracy theory.

The removals were part of an expansion of the platform's policies on violent rhetoric, which also resulted in 10,000 Instagram pages and nearly 2,000 Facebook groups associated with QAnon having their reach limited.

The QAnon theory baselessly claims that President Trump and the military are working together to expose a shadowy cabal of figures in media, entertainment and politics that are trafficking children.

Comment: From RT:
Nearly 1,000 groups and pages and over 1,500 ads related to QAnon were removed in Wednesday's purge, while lesser restrictions were imposed on a whopping 10,000 Q-related Instagram accounts (along with almost 1,500 groups and pages on Facebook). The survivors were put on notice that Facebook would be monitoring them for "specific terminology and symbolism" being used to covertly discuss or plot violence.

In an unusual move, Facebook even went after liberal darling Antifa - though very gingerly, referring to "militia organizations and those encouraging riots, including some who may identify as Antifa" in its announcement that some 1,500 groups and pages in this category had gotten the ax.
...

However, as Facebook continues to exile ever-broader swathes of online conduct from its platforms, users must invariably ask what constitutes "celebrating violent acts" - a phrase that would seem to describe TV news reporters who wax poetic about "the beauty of our weaponry" as missiles rain down on Syria as much as it does Antifa kids cheering when one of their number lobs a Molotov cocktail into a police car.
...

The purge also fails to take into account the Streisand effect, in which attempting to suppress content backfires and ends up drawing even more attention to that content. Twitter announced a similar purge of QAnon-linked users last month, unleashing another round of pearl-clutching stories about the conspiracy theory and raising its national profile. Indeed, several candidates running for office in November are QAnon supporters - a notion which would have been unthinkable had the cult-like adherents of the phenomenon remained undisturbed on their platforms of choice. However, because a central tenet of QAnon is that the 'Deep State' shadow government doesn't want Americans researching its activities, social media's heavy-handed censorship plays right into their hands.

Facebook also recently expanded its already-sprawling list of banned "hate speech" to include blackface makeup and commenting on "Jewish people running the world or controlling major institutions such as media networks, the economy or the government," acquiescing to a lengthy list of demands from censorship advocates, the Anti-Defamation League, following a month-long advertiser boycott.
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Car Black

Suspect in Berlin highway attack moved to psychiatric jail

Kirsten Grieshaber
Yahoo
Wed, 19 Aug 2020 00:00 UTC
berlin motorway crash
© Paul Zinken/dpa via APInvestigators work on the scene following several accidents on the city motorway A100 in Berlin, Germany, Wednesday, Aug. 19, 2020. According to German news agency dpa, prosecutors say a series of crashes caused by a 30-year-old Iraqi man on the highway late Tuesday night was an Islamic extremist attack.
German authorities on Wednesday ordered a 30-year-old man accused of deliberately driving his car into other vehicles along a major Berlin highway and injuring six people moved to a psychiatric jail, as investigators continue to probe the man's motives.

Officials said the Iraq-born man appeared to have carried out a deliberate attack late Tuesday motivated by Islamist ideology, but noted that he had been suffering from psychological problems.

The suspect driving a black Opel Astra allegedly struck three motorcycles at different locations on the Bundesautobahn 100, Berlin prosecutors and police said in a joint statement. He then stopped on the highway and put an old ammunition box on the roof of his car, claiming it had explosives inside, the statement said.
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Padlock

The world's toughest lockdown has resulted in the world's highest COVID-19 death toll

Jordan Schachtel
The Mass Illusion
Tue, 18 Aug 2020 06:12 UTC
peru coronavirus
Once hailed as a COVID-19 "success story," Peru is now the COVID-19 case study that lockdown advocates no longer want to discuss. Lima is on pace to surpass Belgium (another strict lockdown country) sometime next week as having the world's highest COVID-19 deaths per million. So why is no one talking about it?

Pandemic panic promoters have been quick to criticize neighboring Brazil for its leadership's more relaxed policies towards the virus, but they've been noticeably absent in discussing Peru. That's because Peru implemented arguably the earliest (for their region) and strictest lockdowns in the entire world, along with several attempted suppression measures with the hopes to contain the virus, and none of it worked.

For months on end, Peruvians were largely forbidden from leaving their homes. The country began its lockdown like many others, by cutting itself off from the rest of the world, closing its borders to outsiders, and shutting down the nation's economy and society. Similar to policies seen in U.S. lockdown states and Europe, only "essential" businesses were allowed to be open. Peru then took the shutdown a step further. The military has enforced a nationwide mandatory 10pm-4am curfew (some cities have lengthened the curfew to 8pm-5am), most "essential" stores are only open for a handful of hours a day (most grocery stores close at 3pm), and citizens face extreme penalties and legal consequences for failing to abide by the rigid restrictions.

Comment: While the US economy and its healthcare system are not as behind as in Peru, it's unlikely to recover anytime soon.

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Bullseye

If you are reading this, you might be a conspiracy theorist

John Steppling
OffGuardian
Wed, 19 Aug 2020 05:36 UTC
conspiracy theory
"...a permanent modern scenario: apocalypse looms...and it doesn't occur."

-Susan Sontag, AIDs and its Metaphors
"I should not misuse this opportunity to give you a lecture about, say, logic. I call this a misuse, for to explain a scientific matter to you it would need a course of lectures and not an hour's paper. Another alternative would have been to give you what's called a popular scientific lecture, that is a lecture intended to make you believe that you understand a thing which actually you don't understand, and to gratify what I believe to be one of the lowest desires of modern people, namely the superficial curiosity about the latest discoveries of science. I rejected these alternatives."

-Ludwig Wittgenstein, A Lecture on Ethics
If you're reading this, then you've probably been called a conspiracy theorist. Also you've been derided and shamed for questioning the "science" of the Covid debacle.

The idea of science is now a badly corrupted idea. In a nation, today, (the USA) which in educational terms ranks 25th globally in science skills and reading, and well below that in math; all one hears is a clarion call to science. In reading skills the US placed below Malta, Portugal, and right about the same as Kazakhstan.

But in a nation that no longer reads, and *can* no longer read, it is not surprising that knowledge is absorbed via the new hieroglyphics of gifs (interestingly the creator of gifs wanted it pronounced with a soft g the more to sound like a peanut butter brand) and memes.
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Attention

Panicked MSNBC: 'Trump is being directed by authoritarian leaders to steal the election'

Curtis Houck
NewsBusters
Mon, 17 Aug 2020 22:24 UTC
Joy Reid
Joy Reid - 'Woke' spokesperson and 'Orange Man Bad' propagator
Hours before the start of the virtual Democratic National Convention, Monday's ReidOut featured more dangerously irresponsible rhetoric and conspiracy theories from MSNBC guests; suggesting that President Trump was destroying the Postal Service to rig the 2020 election, declare himself the winner, and has been taking calls and directives from authoritarian world leaders.

Worst yet, Russiagate conspiracy theorist Malcolm Nance and frequent cable news guest Neera Tanden of the Center for American Progress suggested that, if worse comes to worse, Americans will have to take to the streets like in Belarus and try to remove Trump from office.

Host Joy Reid led the way with this mouthful near the top of her show, spinning a tale meant to cripple viewers into fearing that America was already in a casket and being lowered into the ground:
This year, however, Democrats are staging their convention against a candidate who better resembles an autocrat, an incumbent who has made clear he'll try to win by any means necessary. Donald Trump and his Republican enablers are leading an unprecedented assault on the pillars of our democracy. Whether rigging the U.S. Census, destroying the Postal Service or colluding with a third-party candidate, Trump is dismantling our democratic process before our very eyes.
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Eye 2

UK's elderly patients with coronavirus were knowingly sent back into care homes

Rob Lyons
RT
Wed, 19 Aug 2020 07:00 UTC
coronavirus elderly
© PA Images via Getty Images/Jane BarlowEdinburgh, Scotland
Health authorities have finally admitted that they transferred patients back to nursing homes after they were found to have the virus. This almost certainly caused the deaths of others and manslaughter charges should follow.

We've known for some time now that the failure to protect residents in care homes for the elderly has been a major factor in coronavirus death tolls in many parts of the world. But a recent newspaper report has added a new dimension to the scandal.

Here in Scotland, as in other parts of the UK, there has been outrage that elderly people in hospital were discharged into care homes without being tested for Covid-19 in a desperate rush to clear hospital beds. That seems incredibly negligent. But now we have confirmation that patients were sent to care homes after testing positive for Covid-19. That seems downright criminal.

Comment: Notably the same 'gross breach' also happened in New York: Sent to die: 4,300 Covid-19 patients sent to New York's vulnerable nursing homes under Cuomo directive

And yet SOTT warned about this kind of scenario back in March: First, Do No Harm: If Primary Healthcare Remains Shut Down, Toll on Elderly Will be Worse Than COVID-19

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Fire

Portland police declare riot again after county headquarters set on fire

Brianna Lyman
The Daily Caller
Wed, 19 Aug 2020 20:14 UTC
portland riots antifa BLM multnomah building
© KPTVA person was seen on a livestream heaving a large pile of burning material onto a desk inside the Multnomah Building.
Portland police declared a riot after the Multnomah County headquarters building was set on fire Tuesday night.

Rioters vandalized the Multnomah Building, the seat of government for Multnomah County, with graffiti before a group started a "large" dumpster fire, according to a statement from Portland police.

Another fire was started in a different dumpster which was then allegedly rolled toward the Multnomah Building. Rioters then began throwing ignited paper inside the building to start a fire after having cracked the glass windows with rocks, police said. However, the ignited paper did not work and rioters began spraying lighter fluid inside the building which sparked a fire, according to the police report.

Comment: The feckless Portland mayor Ted Wheeler continues to tacitly support the destruction of his city with these lame statements, though he had the grace to note the "protesters" had damaged a building housing services for the area's most vulnerable populations. But hey, all lives matter!



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Syringe

Anti-vaccination group, Children's Health Defense, sues Facebook over 'censoring' posts

J. Edward Moreno
The Hill
Tue, 18 Aug 2020 19:21 UTC
children's health defense kennedy
A prominent anti-vaccination group filed a lawsuit against Facebook and its fact-checkers for rejecting their ads and "censoring" their posts that carried debunked misinformation on vaccines and 5G networks.

Children's Health Defense (CHD), a group founded by anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., claimed in a San Francisco federal court that Facebook, its CEO Mark Zuckerberg, PolitiFact, Science Feedback and the Poynter Institute have "privatized" the First Amendment by putting warning labels on its page and disabling the organization's ability to fundraise on the platform.

Comment: Amazing how Big Pharma's campaign contributions can adjust an attitude. Meanwhile in the real world:

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Mail

No, the US Postal Service isn't stealing the election!


National Review
Tue, 18 Aug 2020 21:03 UTC

Comment: The MSM is spouting conspiracy theories again...


Logo/Postal worker
© Reuters/Mario Anzuoni, Evan Vucci/AP
The latest five-alarm fire in Washington is over a supposed plot to disfranchise voters centered on the United States Postal Service.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi states flatly that President Trump is waging a "campaign to sabotage the election by manipulating the Postal Service to disenfranchise voters." She calls Trump's appointee, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy "a complicit crony," and says that his changes, according to the postal service itself, "threaten to deny the ability of eligible Americans to cast their votes through the mail in the upcoming elections in a timely fashion."

Two Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee are calling for a criminal probe of DeJoy, and progressive Twitter is out in force highlighting any mailbox put out of commission as a sign of looming totalitarianism. DeJoy has agreed to testify before a House committee next week, an opportunity to tamp down the maelstrom.

As usual in such controversies, the president has said stupid and alarming things that stoke a hysteria that is immune to fact or reason.

Comment: Trump is stealing mailboxes? See what 'Voice of Reason' Tucker Carlson has to say:


Here are a few interesting statements to add to the election confusion:
A Wall Street Journal/ NBC poll released on Monday found that nearly half of Biden supporters plan to vote by mail in November, while just 11% of Trump supporters plan to do so.
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Brad Crone, a Democratic strategist in North Carolina,"It's alarming," Crone said. "Americans are witnessing major system breakdowns, whether it's the postal system, COVID testing or their local schools. The average voter is seeing this and is just floored."
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Rob Daniel, chairman of the Charleston County Democratic Party in South Carolina, said there is just one election drop box in the county of roughly 400,0000 people. He said some voters must drive 45 minutes to reach it because of the county's odd shape.
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Fire

'Peaceful riots'? Journalism bows to the woke mob

Mark Hemingway
RealClear Politics
Fri, 31 Jul 2020 00:00 UTC
protesters
© AP/Marcio Jose Sanchez
Just a few weeks ago the idea of "peaceful riots" would have seemed absurd, but the American media is nothing if not inventive these days. Earlier this week, ABC News reported, "Protesters in California set fire to a courthouse, damaged a police station and assaulted officers after a peaceful demonstration intensified." Legal scholar Eugene Volokh wonders how this terminology would work in the real world: "You are being charged with an intensified peaceful demonstration, in the second degree. How do you plead?"

Indeed, the media's commitment to tempering their descriptions of violent riots sweeping the nation as "mostly peaceful" is relentless - that particular phrase has become a media cliché practically overnight. Of course, America's police officers could also be accurately described as "mostly peaceful," but any journalist who dared to give cops the same generous benefit of the doubt would likely cause a riot in their own newsroom.
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