Society's ChildS


Book 2

We are all Robinson Crusoe now: How a 300-year-old book can help us survive the Covid-19 lockdown

Neil Clark
RT
Tue, 21 Apr 2020 17:24 UTC
ocean
© Getty Images / rohojamagic
Around half of the world's population are in some form of 'lockdown'. It's a tough time for many, but one classic novel, published over 300 years ago, offers hope, inspiration - and food for thought.

Daniel Defoe's 'The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Of York. Mariner', celebrated its tercentenary last year, but who could have predicted that the centuries-old book would become so relevant to our lives just one year later?

For in a sense, we're all Robinson Crusoe now. By and large we're in the same boat as he was.
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Handcuffs

Spain arrests British gangbanger on charges of being ISIS terrorist

Aritz Parra, Serge Cartwright
Stars and Stripes
Wed, 22 Apr 2020 17:05 UTC

Comment: Now that we've all seen how johnny-on-the-spot the authorities can be when it comes to arresting children in playgrounds, women out jogging and the elderly for 'breaking curfew', the ease with which terrorists funded their atrocities and travelled between countries for the last two decades is cast in a whole new light...


Egyptian extremists
© SPANISH NATIONAL POLICE VIA APPolice escort suspected Egyptian extremists detained in a Monday overnight raid, in Almeria, Spain, Tuesday April 21, 2020.
A former London rapper who stopped making music not long after his father's extradition to face terror charges in the bombings of two U.S. embassies was arrested Monday in southern Spain on suspicion of joining Islamic State fighters in Syria.

Two sources close to the investigation told The Associated Press that police arrested Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary and two other men at a rented apartment. Abdel Bary is the son of an Egyptian operative of al-Qaeda who was convicted for events related to the 1998 bombings at U.S. embassies in Africa that killed 224 people.

A media release from Spain's National Police didn't name Abdel Bary. It described him as an Egyptian national who left Europe to fight in Syria and Iraq.

The police statement also called him "one of the most sought terrorists in Europe, both because of his criminal trajectory in the ranks of Daesh (Islamic State) and because of the high danger that he represented."

Comment: It should come as no surprise that Abdel Bary and others in his circle have been well known to US and UK intelligence for quite some time, and have extensive connections to the Anglo-American establishments. See more about Adel Bary on SOTT.NET's Behind the Headlines show Who is 'Jihadi John'? Interview with Jon Ryman recorded back in 2015.

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Chess

Why does MSM believe bizarre rumors coming from the South about North Korea? The two countries are still technically AT WAR!

Helen Buyniski
RT
Tue, 21 Apr 2020 17:04 UTC
kim jong un
© Reuters / KCNA
The rash of stories claiming North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is on his deathbed - all sourced to a South Korean blog post - show Western media will run any horrific item on the Hermit Kingdom, confident they won't be contradicted.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is clinging to life by a thread after heart surgery went horribly, horribly wrong! Or at least, US intelligence is monitoring reports that Kim was "in grave danger" after botched surgery, as CNN reported on Monday. The source for Kim's health troubles was a single report from South Korean web outlet The Daily NK, itself citing a single source in the North.

While CNN acknowledged it "couldn't independently verify" the story (or anything else happening in North Korea), the outlet ran with it anyway, leading others to do the same. And while the Guardian eventually front-loaded its own article with official denials from China and South Korea as the story began to unravel, its Twitter account reveals the original title, "North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has heart surgery - report," a much more authoritative-sounding line than the lukewarm "South Korea and China play down Kim Jong-un health claims" it became.

Comment: Trump himself roasted CNN over the reports of the North Korean leader's demise:
"They came out with very, very serious medical reports, nobody's confirmed that. It was CNN. When CNN comes out with a report, I don't place too much credence in it."


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Biohazard

'Can Japan sue for US dropping nukes?' Missouri decision to sue China over pandemic unleashes flood of awkward questions


RT
Wed, 22 Apr 2020 16:43 UTC
Missouri protester, nuclear bomb Nagasaki
© AP Photo/Jeff Roberson (left) Wikipedia (right)Missouri has seen protests over stay-at-home orders put into place due to the Covid-19 outbreak (left). The bombing of Nagasaki (right).
News that the state of Missouri is suing China and a number of its state agencies for damage caused by the coronavirus has been met with derision online, with many citing other potentially litigious historical precedents.

Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt filed suit on Tuesday against the Communist Party of China, as well as governments at local and provincial level, along with a number of smaller government agencies and research institutes upon which he laid the blame for "causing a global pandemic that was unnecessary and preventable."

Comment: These corona-crazies should be careful of the precedents that they set, because as the Twitter users point out this could come back to bite them in the rear in a real bad way.

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NPC

Not now, Greta: Child climate activist calls on world to fight climate change and coronavirus at the same time


RT
Wed, 22 Apr 2020 16:16 UTC
Greta Thunberg, burning house
© Greta Thunberg: REUTERS/Johanna Geron/File Photo and Burning house: Fridays For Future / FF Los Angeles/Handout
Swedish teen activist Greta Thunberg has reemerged once again to lecture the world's governments about how to do their jobs, arguing that they must continue to fight climate change while facing down a global pandemic.

Thunberg told an Earth Day livestream event on Wednesday that she wants the world to fight the twin crises of climate change and the global coronavirus pandemic simultaneously.

"Today is Earth Day and that reminds us that climate and the environmental emergency is still ongoing and we need to tackle both the corona pandemic ... at the same time as we tackle [the] climate and environmental emergency, because we need to tackle two crises at once," Thunberg said.

Her appearance at the Earth Day event coincided with the release of a new video by the Fridays for Future organization, depicting a family going about their normal daily lives while their house burns down around them.
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Corona

It's game over and the Swedish-Belarusian herd immunity model has won

Ulrika Engström
Anti-Empire
Wed, 22 Apr 2020 15:59 UTC
people in park
One third of Stockholmers have already had Covid-19, shook it off, and are now immune.

Great comment on the story by Jon Hellevig:
Game over. The Swedish-Belarussian model has won. Herd immunity is the way to go. Study and random testing shows that 600,000 or one-third of Stockholm county's population have had the corona infection.

They had no symptoms or so little they did not even know they had it. Some 1,500 died, mortality 0.25%. In tough competition, the seasonal flu is still leading. 0.25% is share of those infected, the mortality to the whole population would be 0.015%, which would make the seasonal flu win hands down.

Hope when Putin hears about this today he orders Mayor Sobyanin to tear down his cybergulag, as fun as he might have in experimenting in hype technology and people's lives.
Today, the Public Health Authority presented a new study that estimates that one third of everyone in Stockholm County will be infected with sars-cov-2 on May 1st this year. There will be about 600,000 people.

Comment: See also:

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Health

Best of the Web: Fake pandemic: Army field hospital for Covid-19 surge leaves Seattle after 9 days. It never saw a patient

Liz Brazile
kuow.org
Wed, 08 Apr 2020 13:05 UTC
seattle field hospital empty
© KUOW Photo/Megan FarmerU.S. Army soldiers set up a military field hospital inside CenturyLink Field Event Center on Sunday, April 5, 2020, in Seattle. The 250-bed hospital for non COVID-19 patients was deployed by soldiers from the 627th Army Hospital from Fort Carson, Colorado, as well as soldiers from Joint Base Lewis-McChord.
Gov. Jay Inslee's office on Wednesday announced that the state will be returning a field hospital deployed to CenturyLink Field Event Center to the U.S. Department of Defense.

The 250-bed facility, for which setup began on March 30, was intended to help Washington state's health care system tend to non Covid-19 patients in the event of a hospital surge.

But just three days after announcing the facility was ready to receive patients, officials say they're returning the hospital to the federal government.

Comment: That's some real cognitive dissonance right there. Framing this as the hospital not being needed because of the effectiveness of social distancing is confirmation bias at the extreme. Perhaps, just perhaps, the hospital would have never been needed, even if social distancing had not been instituted, because the virus is over-hyped and hospitals are not being overrun with sick patients.

See also:

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Megaphone

Coronavirus shutdown: What states have seen protests against stay-at-home orders

Stephen Sorace
Fox News
Tue, 21 Apr 2020 10:07 UTC
washington protest lockdown covid
© AP Photo/Elaine ThompsonDemonstrators gathered at a protest opposing Washington state's stay-home order to slow the coronavirus outbreak Sunday in Olympia.
Demonstrators rallied in states across the country this month to protest governor-imposed stay-at-home orders that have kept Americans out of work for weeks to prevent the spread of coronavirus, with many arguing that the strict measures attack their constitutional freedoms and liberties.

Governors in at least 43 states have instituted quarantine restrictions that temporarily banned large public gatherings, closed schools and shuttered most businesses, effectively pausing the economy and hurting the livelihoods of many Americans.

Unemployment skyrocketed as measures to protect against the pandemic squeezed the economy, with total claims over the four weeks ending on April 11 reaching nearly 22 million workers and an unemployment rate close to 13 percent.

Comment: The people are getting antsy!

See also:

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Laptop

CONFIRMED: Hackers strike and leak Bill Gates, WHO, and Wuhan lab emails

Joaquin Flores
Fort Russ
Wed, 22 Apr 2020 06:48 UTC
hacked who bill gates
FRN has confirmed reports that hackers have successfully hacked accounts belonging to Bill Gates, the WHO, and a lab in Wuhan believed to be the location researching coronavirus that received funding from Dr. Fauci.

The event appears to have taken place on or about April 20th.

Netizens have taken to activism and people are logging in via SSH and downloading the contents of these hacks. This means that many people will be combing through the hacked documents with a fine-toothed comb.

Hackers apparently looking for the truth behind the coronavirus outbreak have allegedly hacked the World Health Organization, the Wuhan biolab and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. A set of huge databases containing usernames and passwords has been leaked.

Comment: So if you are against the lockdowns and for freedom and liberty, you're a 'far-right extremist'? Guess that's better than being a 'terrorist'. At least they didn't jump on the 'Russia did it' bandwagon.... at least for now. Will be interesting to see if anything notable comes out of this.

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Health

Best of the Web: The Swedish experiment looks like it's paying off

Fredrik Erixon
The Spectator
Mon, 20 Apr 2020 20:37 UTC
Sweden covid-19
© Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP via Getty Images
Two weeks ago, I wrote about 'the Swedish experiment' in The Spectator. As the world went into lockdown, Sweden opted for a different approach to tackling coronavirus: cities, schools and restaurants have remained open. This was judged by critics to be utterly foolish: it would allow the virus to spread much faster than elsewhere, we were told, leading to tens of thousands of deaths. Hospitals would become like warzones. As Sweden was two weeks behind the UK on the epidemic curve, most British experts said we'd pay the price for our approach when we were at the peak. Come back in two weeks, I was told. Let's see what you're saying then. So here I am.

I'm happy to say that those fears haven't materialised. But the pressure on Sweden to change tack hasn't gone away. We haven't u-turned. We're careful, staying inside a lot more. But schools and shops remain open. Unlike some countries on the continent, no one is asking for 'our papers' when we move around in cities. The police don't stop us and ask why we are spending so much time outdoors: authorities rather encourage it. No one is prying in shopping baskets to make sure you only buy essentials.

The country's Public Health Agency and the 'state epidemiologist', Anders Tegnell, have kept their cool and still don't recommend a lockdown. They are getting criticised by scientific modellers but the agency is sticking to its own model of how the virus is expected to develop and what pressure hospitals will be under. The government still heeds the agency's advice; no party in the opposition argues for a lockdown. Rather, opinion polls show that Swedes remain strongly in favour of the country's liberal approach to the pandemic.

Comment: See also:

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