Society's ChildS

Tornado1

Worldwide cognitive dissonance: Black Lives Matter 'more important' than coronavirus as protests erupt in UK, Australia and Germany

BLM protests London June 2020
© Reuters / Henry NichollsDemonstrators wearing protective masks during a Black Lives Matter protest in Parliament Square, London, June 6, 2020
Thousands have descended on central London to protest the death of George Floyd. Defying the government's lockdown rules, the demonstrators marched on Parliament Square.

Nearly two weeks after Floyd died under the boot of police officer Derek Chauvin in Minneapolis, protests against police brutality have spread across the world. Far away from the riots and arson engulfing the US, crowds of demonstrators packed the rainy streets of London on Saturday to show solidarity with the 'Black Lives Matter' movement in the US.

Comment: So much for anti-social distancing! Similar rallies have taken place in Sydney and Melbourne:
In Sydney, footage shows a massive crowd assembled outside the city's town hall. The gathering was ruled lawful by the New South Wales appeals court at the last minute, despite restrictions on assembly due to the coronavirus pandemic.


And things have predictably turned ugly:


In Germany, protestors have turned out in Cologne and Berlin, although many are still wearing masks:




See also: Breaking news: Coronavirus only dangerous if you're not a leftist protesting racism


Attention

Bolsonaro threatens WHO exit over warning about lifting lockdown as millions more descend into poverty and hunger

Bolsonaro, Covid-19 Brazil
© REUTERS / Adriano MachadoBrazil's President Jair Bolsonaro is seen before the inauguration ceremony of a temporary field hospital, amid COVID-19 outbreak, in Aguas Lindas de Goias, Brazil
President Jair Bolsonaro threatened on Friday to pull Brazil out of the World Health Organization after the U.N. agency warned Latin American governments about the risk of lifting lockdowns before slowing the spread of the novel coronavirus throughout the region.

A new Brazilian record for daily COVID-19 fatalities pushed the county's death toll past that of Italy late on Thursday, but Bolsonaro continues to argue for quickly lifting state isolation orders, arguing that the economic costs outweigh public health risks.

Latin America's most populous nations, Brazil and Mexico, are seeing the highest rates of new infections, though the pandemic is also gathering pace in countries such as Peru, Colombia, Chile and Bolivia.

Comment: Considering the global manipulation of Covid-19 infection and mortality rates, one might question the claims that millions are dying from the virus. Brazil's population has been hard hit by poverty and hunger which has only been exacerbated by the lockdown. It may be for this reason that people are succumbing to diseases which could be from a multitude of factors having little to do with Covid-19.


Chess

Buffalo police officers arrested after shoving 75-year-old protester

buffalo cops
© Mike Desmond/WBFO via AP
Two Buffalo police officers were arraigned on Saturday on felony assault charges after a viral video showed them shoving an elderly protestor who remains critically injured after falling at a march against racism.

Officers Aaron Torgalski, 39, and Robert McCabe, 32, were part of a unit in tactical gear enforcing an 8 p.m. curfew on Thursday during the protest involving long-time community activist Martin Gugino, 75, Erie County District Attorney John Flynn said in a statement.

"The two defendants, who are Buffalo Police officers, pushed a protestor outside of City Hall, causing him to fall and hit his head on the sidewalk," Flynn said.

Comment: Previously: Entire Buffalo police tactical unit quit to back officers who were reprimanded for shoving man


NPC

Empty virtue signalling: JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon kneels in front of giant vault

jamie dimon kneeling
© Twitter / @Hugh_Son
The growing trend of kneeling to show solidarity with the 'Black Lives Matter' movement has apparently been adopted by banker Jamie Dimon, triggering an avalanche of disbelief and mockery on social media.

The CEO of JPMorgan Chase was photographed taking a knee in front of a large bank vault on Friday, sparking speculation that he was expressing support for anti-racism protests that have spread across the United States.

His bank declined to confirm whether there was a deeper meaning behind the photograph, but Dimon had previously voiced sympathy for the demonstrations, stating that Chase was "committed to fighting against racism and discrimination wherever and however it exists."


Comment: This is simply boilerplate morality: all appearance, no substance. Virtue isn't virtue if you parade it around like some trendy new haircut. If you want to be a conformist, mindless automaton, by all means, join the latest virtue signalling fad. Just know it's meaningless, and tools like Jamie Dimon and Justin Trudeau aren't demonstrating a shred of actual character: they're just copying other people who are copying other people to show they're all on the ideologically correct side of the fence. The fact that such blatant mindlessness and conformity is mistaken as an expression of some kind of heightened moral development says a lot. This is the lowest form of virtue possible.

Another example:


This idiocy is going on everywhere, like any strong social contagion:









This guy knows what's going on. If you don't watch anything else, watch this heartfelt message from man who seems to have real character:





Cloud Lightning

Symbolic? Huge lightning bolt strikes Washington Monument

lightning striking the Washington Monument
Lightning struck the Washington Monument Thursday night, igniting and lighting up the sky in the D.C. area, a new viral video clip shows.

What happened:

WUSA 9's Sky Cam captured video footage of lightning striking the Washington Monument with a bolt of lightning. Other flashes of light occur nearby in the moments right after.

This is somewhat normal. According to Atlas Obscura, lightning often strikes the 555-foot monument. In fact, the solid aluminum capstone melted about half of a year after it was installed in December 1884.

More lightning strikes
  • Two National Guard members deployed to Washington, D.C., were hospitalized Thursday after lightning struck the area where they were posted, according to NBC News. The location wasn't too far removed from the White House.

Bullseye

Breaking news: Coronavirus only dangerous if you're not a leftist protesting racism

protest
You must stay home to save lives. You must socially distance and lock down.

Unless you're protesting racism and police brutality.

This appears to be the message from some government and health officials, who for months enforced a rigorous and unprecedented economic shutdown in the name of stemming the spread of the coronavirus pandemic โ€” resulting in millions losing their jobs and students being sent home from schools across the country.

But as states just now begin to emerge from those lockdowns, some have argued in favor of an exception to those guidelines for those protesting the death of George Floyd โ€” suggesting the gains from seeking police reforms outweigh the risks of a new surge in virus cases.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, whose state had some of the harshest lockdown measures in the country, was pictured shoulder-to-shoulder protesting with other officials and demonstrators. Her office told the Detroit News that Whitmer wore a mask and denied she violated her executive order.

Heart - Black

LAPD focused on peaceful protesters while ignoring looting, business owners say

looters
© Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times
Aaron Landy watched for hours on Saturday night as people on foot and then in cars moved up and down Melrose Avenue looting stores and setting them on fire, doing wheelies in the street and tagging walls with graffiti.

All the while, not a single police cruiser rolled by, Landy said, even though officers were staged in huge numbers not far away, squaring off with protesters.

Landy's longtime Fairfax neighborhood, it seemed to him, had been completely abandoned to lawlessness.

"Where are the police? They're nowhere. There's not a policeman in sight. It's just like a free-for-all," Landy remembered thinking. "It was just shocking. I was outraged."

Red Pill

Best of the Web: US corporate media act as 'mouthpieces of intelligence services' on foreign policy & national security - ex-WSJ journalist to RT

ny times building
© Reuters / Brendan McDermid
American private media often "launder" misinformation fed by the secret services, while politicians pressure Facebook to act as its proxy against foreign outlets, author and former Wall Street Journal reporter Joe Lauria told RT.

"Private corporate media, on their foreign policy and national security reporting, are virtually mouthpieces of the intelligence services," Lauria told RT.
They launder misinformation and disinformation from the intelligence services in the US, which gains credibility if you read it in the New York Times and not directly from the CIA. They have a state function as well even if they're corporate-owned. So this is clearly an anti-Russian, anti-Chinese, anti-Iranian thing.

Red Flag

Avalanche of bankruptcies threatens to PERMANENTLY wipe out more US jobs - ex-Fed insider tells Boom Bust

now hiring sign
© Reuters / Marco Bello
While the US unemployment rate slightly dropped from April's high, it might be too early to pop the champagne as the rise in businesses bankruptcies still threatens to shake the labor market, RT's Boom Bust has learned.

Figures released on Friday showed that the US regained around 2.5 million jobs, surprising analysts who expected another dramatic plunge. The jobs numbers have sent US stocks higher, with the Dow Jones closing over 800 points up.

Despite the positive development that comes amid easing coronavirus restrictions, the number of companies going bust is still rising and could hit a new record this year. It will be a huge blow for the entire US economy, as many permanent jobs could vanish, Federal Reserve insider Danielle DiMartino Boot believes.

"As you start to see bankruptcies, they will flow through not to temporary job losses, but to permanent job losses," she told RT's Boom Bust. "That's going to be the long lasting damage that we see come out from this crisis."


Footprints

Not woke enough? Mark Zuckerberg defends why Trump message on Facebook wasn't censored after employee backlash

Zuckerberg Trump
Mark Zuckerberg and Donald Trump
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Friday evening addressed the social networking company's decision not to censor a recent post by President Trump that seemed to suggest that looters should be shot amid protests last week that sparked after the death of George Floyd.

"As we continue to process this difficult moment, I want to acknowledge the real pain expressed by members of our community," Zuckerberg wrote in his open letter. "I also want to acknowledge that the decision I made last week has left many of you angry, disappointed and hurt."

He said that while the company will continue to stand for free speech - even when he disagrees with what's being said - he is also "committed to making sure we also fight for voter engagement and racial justice too."