Society's ChildS

Books

Lefty professors worry about new scrutiny as COVID-19 virus forces classes online

harvard dorms evacuated coronavirus
© Maddie Meyer/Getty ImagesStudents move out of dorm rooms on Harvard Yard on the campus of Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. on March 12, 2020. Due to the risk from the coronavirus, all classes will be moved online for the rest of the spring semester.
As the pandemic caused by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) forces college and university lectures online, left-wing academics in the United States are apparently nervous about the possibility that what they are teaching may be publicized by "right wing sites," Campus Reform reports.

Conservatives and others have long criticized the nation's institutions of higher learning for what they say is academia's radical bent and have tried to bring accountability to the field. But those efforts to make what professors say in the lecture halls public have been met with often fierce resistance by schools that invoke privacy rights and even copyright laws to keep lectures offline.

Left-wing academics have been sharply critical of websites such as Turning Point USA's Professor Watchlist, which aggregates media reports on individual professors, and Canary Mission, which tracks professors and students it deems anti-Semitic.

Comment: Turn about is fair play, isn't it? The Left has been very free in exposing and deplatforming views it finds offensive. It's about time they were subject to the same scrutiny.


Bullseye

Bombshell ruling in MH17 trial: Dutch prosecutors ordered to produce US satellite data allegedly showing BUK missile being fired

judge Hendrik Steenhuis mh17 trial
© Peter Dejong/The Associated PressPresiding judge Hendrik Steenhuis sits at the centre of a panel at the start of the trial of four men charged with murder over the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 on March 9, 2020, in Amsterdam.
The presiding judge in the trial of murder in the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 on July 17, 2014, has dropped a bombshell at the end of his 45-minute presentation in court in The Netherlands on Monday morning.

Reading from a prepared script, Judge Hendrik Steenhuis ordered the Dutch prosecutors and the Dutch-led Joint Investigation Team, which has provided the evidence for the murder charges, to report to the court whether US satellite data, allegedly showing the launch of a BUK missile to bring down the aircraft, have been provided to the investigation. The judge's order also requires the prosecutors to explain whether the American satellite evidence can now be released to the court and to the lawyers representing Oleg Pulatov, one of the four men accused in the firing of the missile.

Comment: Possible checkmate for the West?


Calculator

US unemployment may soar to 30% with 50% drop in GDP, Fed can provide 'unlimited support'

Flextronics
© Reuters / Tom BrennerFlextronics International Apple factory employees work on Apple Mac Pro computer assembly in Austin, TX, US
The United States is expected to see an unprecedented 50 percent drop in gross domestic product in the second quarter due to coronavirus outbreak, says Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard.

According to his projections, the US unemployment rate could hit 30 percent in Q2 as a result of massive shutdowns to combat the virus.

Bullard has called for a powerful fiscal response to replace the $2.5 trillion in lost income to assure a strong eventual US recovery. He said that the Fed should be poised to do more to ensure markets function during a period of high volatility.

"This is a planned, organized partial shutdown of the US economy in the second quarter," he told Bloomberg. "The overall goal is to keep everyone, households and businesses, whole" with government support. "It is a huge shock and we are trying to cope with it and keep it under control."

Comment: See also:


Syringe

Don't take the mark: Mandatory vaccines to be accompanied by invisible ink tattoos

Vaccine and tattoos
In an article published in Scientific America on December 18, 2019, titled Invisible Ink Could Reveal whether Kids Have Been Vaccinated, the author, Karen Weintraub, states that in the not too distant future vaccinations will be accompanied with an invisible ink tattoo:
Along with the vaccine, a child would be injected with a bit of dye that is invisible to the naked eye but easily seen with a special cell-phone filter, combined with an app that shines near-infrared light onto the skin.

The dye would be expected to last up to five years, according to tests on pig and rat skin and human skin in a dish. The system โ€” which has not yet been tested in children โ€” would provide quick and easy access to vaccination history, avoid the risk of clerical errors, and add little to the cost or risk of the procedure, according to the study."
Shockingly, in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak, Denmark have already introduced mandatory vaccinations, and the UK is considering following suit.

Laura Donnelly writes in the Telegraph:

Comment: See also:


Shopping Bag

No, you do not need face masks to prevent coronavirus - they might increase your infection risk

amy acton
© ASSOCIATED PRESS
Community transmission of COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, has officially begun in the U.S., with two cases in California and one in Oregon of unknown origin. The first COVID death was reported Saturday, Feb. 29, in Seattle. The natural human response to a strange, new disease making its way to a neighborhood near you is to feel anxiety and want to DO SOMETHING. That's why many people have been buying up and stockpiling masks. But even if you could buy any in the midst of global shortages, should you?

No.

And if you already have masks, should you wear them when you're out?

No.

Even if there are COVID cases in your community?

Even if there are cases next door, the answer is no, you do NOT need to get or wear any face masks โ€” surgical masks, "N95 masks," respirator masks, or anything else โ€” to protect yourself against the coronavirus. Not only do you not need them, you shouldn't wear them, according to infection prevention specialist Eli Perencevich, MD, a professor of medicine and epidemiology at the University of Iowa's College of Medicine.

"The average healthy person does not need to have a mask, and they shouldn't be wearing masks," Dr. Perencevich said. "There's no evidence that wearing masks on healthy people will protect them. They wear them incorrectly, and they can increase the risk of infection because they're touching their face more often."

Comment: See also:


Attention

Report: Italian adviser suggests that coronavirus death rates in Italy may be exaggerated

coronavirus italy
Much of the world is shocked at the coronavirus numbers coming out of Italy.

The country has one of the oldest populations in Europe and also has the largest Chinese diaspora in the EU today.

The Italian government also released the percentage of deaths by age group.

90+ years old: 6% of deaths
80 - 89 years old: 42% of deaths
70 - 79 years old: 35% of deaths
60 - 69 years old: 16% of deaths

On Saturday Professor Walter Ricciardi, scientific adviser to Italy's minister of health, told the Telegraph that the coronavirus mortality rate in Italy may be exaggerated due to the way the country records fatalities.

Comment: See also:


Vader

Best of the Web: I am an American constitutional lawyer - and I see our government using Covid-19 to take away our fundamental rights

police
© Reuters / Mike Segar
Do we really think "it can't happen here" in America? Could we quarantine the constitution? Are we doing it already?

Panics from pandemics unleash unchecked governmental power. The very premise of popular films like V for Vendetta reveal this: a group uses a virus to seize power and create a totalitarian society. Anyone could witness this from far-off lands, watching the news about China locking people up in their own homes and then removing them screaming from those homes whenever the state wanted. World War I and the Great Depression birthed virulent forms of governments with leaders like Hitler, Mao, Mussolini and Stalin.

Bullseye

Best of the Web: The luxury of apocalypticism: The elites want us to panic about Covid-19 - we must absolutely refuse to do so

coronavirus shop
The elites want us to panic about Covid-19 โ€“ we must absolutely refuse to do so.
People's refusal to panic has been a great source of frustration for the establishment in recent years. 'The planet is burning', they lie, in relation to climate change, and yet we do not weep or wail or even pay very much attention. 'I want you to panic', instructs the newest mouthpiece of green apocalypticism, Greta Thunberg, and yet most of us refuse to do so. A No Deal Brexit would unleash economic mayhem, racist pogroms and even a pandemic of super-gonorrhoea, they squealed, incessantly, like millenarian preachers balking at the imminent arrival of the lightning bolt of final judgement, and yet we didn't flinch. We went to work. We went home. We still supported Brexit.

Our skittish elites have been so baffled, infuriated in fact, by our calm response to their hysterical warnings that they have invented pathologies to explain our unacceptable behaviour. The therapeutic language of 'denialism' is used to explain the masses' refusal to fret over climate change. Environmentalists write articles on 'the psychology of climate-change denial', on 'the self-deception and mass denial' coursing through this society that refuses to flatter or engage with the hysteria of the eco-elites. Likewise, the refusal of voters to succumb to the dire, hollow warnings of the ferociously anti-Brexit wing of the establishment was interpreted by self-styled experts as a psychological disorder. '[This is] people taking action for essentially psychological reasons, irrespective of the economic cost', said one professor.


Comment: Earth Changes are very real but we could learn a lot about our planet by understanding what is really driving them - what we do know is that it's not CO2.


Comment: It's clear that some factions within the establishment are weaponizing terror of all kinds to implement agendas few in the public would otherwise willingly agree to, and it seems with the contrived Covid-19 crisis they've succeeded in inciting some citizens to beg for their freedoms to be taken away:


No Entry

Turkey, having triggered migrant crisis 2.0, closes European border...'because coronavirus'

Greece-Turk border
© Bulent Kilic/AFP via Getty ImagesGreece -Turkey border
Nearly a month after opening the gates to Europe, the Turkish government has closed the border due to the spread of the Wuhan coronavirus.

The Turkish authorities shut down the land border this week in the Evros region near the town of Kastanies but not before migrants along the border made one last attempt to storm their way into Greece and the European Union the night before.

The migrants, allegedly aided by Turkish forces firing tear gas towards Greece, were repelled in the early morning hours of Thursday by Greek border forces, according to a report from Greek newspaper Proto Thema.

The Turkish government's decision to close the border came at midnight on Wednesday and comes after German Chancellor Angela Merkel pledged millions of euros for Turkey to pay for migrants fleeing the conflict in the Idlib province of Syria earlier this week.

Comment: See also:


Bad Guys

When the Woke meet up with Darwin it isn't pretty

darwinism
Eventually, the Woke had to discover that Darwin is not a co-belligerent. We are told at Inside Higher Ed, "An assistant professor says he was fired because he dared to talk about human population variation and got slandered as a eugenicist:
[Bo] Winegard, who is in his second year at Marietta and is scheduled to leave at the end of the academic year, says the trouble started in October. That's when he was invited to address the University of Alabama's Evolution Working Group, which is affiliated with the university's evolution studies program. Both parties agreed that Winegard would talk about population variation, or, in his words, "the hypothesis that human biological differences are at least partially produced by different environments selecting for different physical and psychological traits in their populations over time."

The idea was to link the theory with natural selection, in line with a recent article Winegard co-wrote for Personality and Individual Differences. The article, called "Dodging Darwin: Race, Evolution and the Hereditarian Hypothesis," says, "Like most hereditarians (those who believe it likely that genes contribute to differences in psychological traits among human populations), we do not believe there is decisive evidence about the causes of differences in cognitive ability." Yet the "partial genetic hypothesis is most consistent with the Darwinian research tradition."

Colleen Flaherty, "Risky Research" at Inside Higher Ed