Society's ChildS


Handcuffs

Former Ukrainian lawmaker under house arrest on suspicion of murder

Accused lawmaker Tеtyana Chornovol
Accused lawmaker Tеtyana Chornovol
A court in Kyiv has placed former lawmaker Tetyana Chornovol under house arrest on suspicion of murder during deadly antigovernment protests known as Euromaidan in February 2014.

The Pechera district court ruled late on April 16 that Chornovol, a member of the European Solidarity party led by former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, will stay under house arrest until June 8.

Police searched Chornovol's home in Kyiv on April 10, and later she was officially informed that she was a suspect in the murder of an employee of the office of the pro-Russia Party of Regions.

The man died after the party's office in downtown Kyiv was set on fire. Investigators say Chornovol led a group of people who set the building on fire, which the former lawmaker rejects.

Bad Guys

Hypocrisy: British govt sought out 'BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES' in China's wet markets as public health body warned Brits to stay away

wet market in Shanghai
© AFP / NOEL CELIS 90
The Covid-19 crisis has triggered Western calls to ban Chinese wet markets, one of which is thought to be the source of the virus - but where was the anger when the UK was promoting "business opportunities" in these very markets?

Former Beatle and animal rights activist Paul McCartney is one of the latest high-profile British figures to call for the closure of the "medieval" wet markets, where live and dead animals are sold and many of which have been criticized for lax health and safety standards - not to mention the animal cruelty.

Indeed, some scientists believe the novel coronavirus may have originated in bats at a live animal and seafood market in Wuhan, with pangolins (or possibly stray dogs) acting as a potential intermediary host before the virus spread to humans - though the evidence here is not conclusive. The 2002 outbreak of the SARS virus is also believed to have originated at a Chinese wet market.

Snakes in Suits

The real black box: American Airlines share buybacks are a scam to enrich execs - and the Covid-19 bailouts will fuel more of them

plane
© Reuters / Joshua Roberts
To anyone doubting the Covid-19 bailouts will line executives' pockets, American Airlines CEO Doug Parker says he'll "find a way around" the rules against it. This after making $150 million while AAL's stock plummeted 70%.

Stock buybacks are the ultimate vehicle of self-enrichment. Consider the following as a 'case study' of Wall Street's legal fraud. Under CEO Doug Parker's leadership from 2013-2020, American Airlines (AAL) has seen its stock plummet 70%. When one looks at Parker's pay awarded vs the company's three-year average economic profits, his pay-for-performance metrics are abominable. The media worships Parker for his stewardship of AAL during this crisis and reports that, for the past three years, Parker's salary and bonus were zero.

However, they fail to mention that AAL's legal Ponzi stock-buyback scheme saw Parker's 2016-2018 take-home pay rocket to $70.2 million. (According to the Financial Times, Parker's total award from selling stock since 2013 is $150 million). It's not bad for Parker, but it's horrendous for AAL employees, shareholders and American taxpayers who will be stuffed with a $20 billion bailout. Fair? Not on your life.

Snakes in Suits

UK's callous disregard for care home residents - old, sick people acutely vulnerable to Covid-19 - has been a disgrace

Workers and residents of Beane River View Care Home
© Reuters / Andrew CouldridgeWorkers and residents of Beane River View Care Home applaud during the Clap for our Carers campaign on April 16, 2020.
As a GP, I regularly visit care homes. At one I go to, they recently lost eight residents in a week, probably from coronavirus. But there's no testing, the staff have no protective equipment, and ministers have no strategy.

When Covid struck, many things were not known, and could not possibly have been predicted. The transmission rate, the case fatality rate, the best way to treat those infected.

However, it was very clear, very early on, that Covid was killing the elderly in far greater numbers than anyone else. In Italy, the early figures released revealed that the average age of death was seventy-nine. The figures were slightly higher in Germany, and around eighty years old in pretty much every other country.

Equally, it was known that, amongst the elderly who were dying, almost all of them had other serious medical conditions. Heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, chronic pulmonary disease and suchlike. This is often known in my line of work as "multimorbidity."

In a world of uncertainty, one thing stood out. Which is that the unwell elderly were the ones who were most likely to die. Equally, they were the ones most likely to end up in hospital, potentially overwhelming the health services. As happened in Italy and Spain.

Ergo, you would think that someone, somewhere in the UK government, would have asked the obvious questions. Where do we have the greatest concentrations of elderly, frail, people with multimorbidity? Could it possibly be that they are being looked after in care homes around the country?

Comment:


Arrow Down

Global insanity: Farmers destroy crops as number of people using food banks quadruple

DENS charity food bank i Hemel Hempstead Britain
© Reuters / Paul ChildsA man works at The DENS charity food bank in Hemel Hempstead, Britain
The coronavirus lockdown has seen the number of hungry people using food banks quadruple, and the looming economic slump will make things even worse. We're going to have to change how we operate.

You would think that in these unprecedented times of crisis, where it seems that communities, businesses, and politicians are speaking unprecedentedly with one voice, "stay at home," "stay safe," "look after each other," "be good neighbours" and "Save the NHS" - we might think that there is a new-found compassion, fairness and a genuine empathy for each other.

And, more importantly, a growing recognition that our society had been lacking in support and care for certain sections of it. On the face of it, it seems that a virus has achieved in just a few weeks what many of us that have been marching, campaigning, arguing and fighting over for years: a fairer society, where everyone is important and no one should be left behind or worse: purposefully excluded.

Then I watched a video of a farmer destroying his food crops because he can't sell them. Just as the Covid-19 lockdown sends the number of hungry people being forced to rely on food banks soaring. And I realise we still live in a crazy, irrational world, where money comes first, people a distant second, and working-class communities last.

Comment: COVID-19 lockdown = Auto-genocide? Food shortages likely as US farmers dump MOUNTAINS and LAKES of food
The amount of waste is staggering. The nation's largest dairy cooperative, Dairy Farmers of America, estimates that farmers are dumping as many as 3.7 million gallons of milk each day. A single chicken processor is smashing 750,000 unhatched eggs every week.

Many farmers say they have donated part of the surplus to food banks and Meals on Wheels programs, which have been overwhelmed with demand. But there is only so much perishable food that charities with limited numbers of refrigerators and volunteers can absorb.

And the costs of harvesting, processing and then transporting produce and milk to food banks or other areas of need would put further financial strain on farms that have seen half their paying customers disappear. Exporting much of the excess food is not feasible either, farmers say, because many international customers are also struggling through the pandemic and recent currency fluctuations make exports unprofitable.

"It's heartbreaking," said Paul Allen, co-owner of R.C. Hatton, who has had to destroy millions of pounds of beans and cabbage at his farms in South Florida and Georgia.



Arrow Down

Alabama family denied entrance to storm shelter during tornado outbreak because they lacked masks

Tornado shelter
A family in Alabama said they were denied entry to a storm shelter on Easter Sunday during a severe storm because they didn't have enough face masks during the coronavirus pandemic.

More than 30 people were killed in a two-day period as severe storms tore across the South, leaving 1 million homes without power.

The family from Crossville, Ala., a town of about 1,800 located about 80 miles northeast of Birmingham, said they were not allowed into their community storm shelter on Sunday due to not having enough face masks amid COVID-19 pandemic.

"The guy actually opened the door, he motioned, 'do you have a mask?' I held up one mask. I said, 'I have one mask, I can put it on the child.' He motioned 'no' and shut the door," a woman who wished to remain anonymous told WHNT.

Comment: One should take note of those who have already succumbed to the authoritarian mind virus - you are well advised to steer clear of such individuals:


Heart - Black

Authorities investigate highly illicit Amish wedding after someone calls in complaint to police

Mesopotamia
© Jack Pearce via Flickr, CC By-SA 2.0The center of Mesopotamia, better known as The Commons, is surrounded by 28 buildings, 21 of them built before the Civil War and included on the National Register of Historic Places
In the sleepy town of Mesopotamia, Ohio, population 3,220, health inspectors got wind of an illicit wedding attended by members of the local Amish community and filed a "notice of violation" against the revelers, according to local news reports.

Vindy.com:
[Kristofer J. Wilster, director of environmental health in Trumbull County], said his report will be turned over to Trumbull County authorities. The Trumbull County Sheriff's Office and the county health department investigated the report of a possible wedding celebration involving 300 people, according to a sheriff's report.
Oh, the humanity.

Arrow Down

Amazon hits back at activists, fires three more employees who criticized working conditions

amazon staten island protests
© Spencer Platt/Getty ImagesChris Smalls holds a sign during a walkout at the Staten Island distribution facility on March 30.
Amazon.com Inc. is hitting back at activists within its own ranks, terminating three employees who had criticized working conditions in its warehouses.

The retailer confirmed on Tuesday that it had fired Emily Cunningham and Maren Costa for violating company policy. The two employees, who worked at Seattle headquarters, had taken to Twitter recently to voice concerns about the treatment of workers during the coronavirus pandemic; they've also long been involved in an employee campaign urging Amazon to do more to fight climate change. A third employee, Bashir Mohamed, who worked in a warehouse in Minnesota, was also fired. The Washington Post and BuzzFeed News reported earlier on the firings, which took place last week.

U.S. senators, labor leaders and some of Amazon's own workers have expressed concern that the company hasn't been doing enough to keep employees safe as Covid-19 cases pop up in dozens of facilities in the U.S. and Europe. Groups of workers have staged walkouts at Amazon warehouses in New York, Illinois and Michigan.

Comment: Fairly typical reaction from Bezos' et al. - must keep the serfs in their places:


Chalkboard

SOTT Focus: 8 MORE Experts Questioning the Coronavirus Panic

eight more experts coronavirus
Our third batch of Medical experts dissenting from the media/political "consensus".

* * *

Dr John Lee is an English consultant histopathologist at Rotherham General Hospital and formerly clinical professor of pathology at Hull York Medical School. He is most notable to the wider public as co-presenter (with Gunther von Hagens) of Anatomy for Beginners (screened in the UK on Channel 4 in 2005), Autopsy: Life and Death (Channel 4, 2006) and Autopsy: Emergency Room (Channel 4, 2007).

What he says:
But there's another, potentially even more serious problem: the way that deaths are recorded. If someone dies of a respiratory infection in the UK, the specific cause of the infection is not usually recorded, unless the illness is a rare 'notifiable disease'.

So the vast majority of respiratory deaths in the UK are recorded as bronchopneumonia, pneumonia, old age or a similar designation. We don't really test for flu, or other seasonal infections. If the patient has, say, cancer, motor neurone disease or another serious disease, this will be recorded as the cause of death, even if the final illness was a respiratory infection. This means UK certifications normally under-record deaths due to respiratory infections.

Now look at what has happened since the emergence of Covid-19. The list of notifiable diseases has been updated. This list — as well as containing smallpox (which has been extinct for many years) and conditions such as anthrax, brucellosis, plague and rabies (which most UK doctors will never see in their entire careers) — has now been amended to include Covid-19. But not flu. That means every positive test for Covid-19 must be notified, in a way that it just would not be for flu or most other infections.

- How deadly is the coronavirus? It's still far from clear, The Specator, 28th March 2020

Comment: See also:


Control Panel

Permanent crisis: New York divides scientific opinion with decision to add 3,700 'presumed' Covid-19 dead to official tally

A woman wearing a mask crosses 34th street on April 6, 2020 in New York City
© Getty Images via AFP / Kena BetancurA woman wearing a mask crosses 34th street on April 6, 2020 in New York City
New York City has increased its officially recorded number of Covid-19 victims by more than 40 percent, after making the presumption that people found dead in their homes who had never tested positive for the virus had died of it.

New York City has fallen prey to the coronavirus pandemic and the lockdowns it brings with it. It is currently one of the worst-hit places in the world, with stories of mass graves being dug and refrigerated trucks parked on streets full of bodies, all painting a morbid picture. On a per-capita basis it has had more deaths than Italy - at least, according to its somewhat dodgy official record-keeping - and its streets are all but deserted.

And now, the city's Health Department has revealed that they have been recording "probable" coronavirus deaths separately since the outbreak began. Until now, only those confirmed via laboratory test have been included in the official tallies. According to officials, 2,192 New Yorkers have died in their homes in the past two weeks, more than four times as many as did last year. And so, with one stroke of a pen, the total number of coronavirus deaths in the US has shot up by 17 percent.

Comment: See also: