Society's ChildS


Stock Down

How Canada stupidly bet its border economy on ArriveCAN — a glitchy $25M app

Tristin Hopper
National Post
Wed, 03 Aug 2022 14:43 UTC
arriveCan border crossing
© John Richardson
Right now, nobody gets into Canada without first uploading a cornucopia of needlessly complex personal details to ArriveCAN, a federally mandated smartphone app (that has had an annoying penchant to routinely sentence innocent people to house arrest). There are estimates that ArriveCAN has singlehandedly kneecapped foreign tourism by as much as 50 per cent, it has somehow managed to destroy a 100-year-old golf club, and the federal government has never really adequately explained why we need it.

By the mid-summer of 2022, a lot of tourism businesses near the Canadian border started to notice something: Where is everybody?

Pandemic restrictions are lifted, but there aren't nearly as many Americans blowing money at Niagara Falls casinos. In May 2020, just before COVID started, almost a million people crossed the border near Buffalo, N.Y. In May 2022, it was about half a million.

If you ask basically any politician whose constituency is near the U.S./Canadian border, they know exactly what to blame for all this: The ArriveCAN app.
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Book 2

New book chronicles how America's opioid industry operated like a drug cartel

Terry Gross
NPR
Tue, 02 Aug 2022 12:37 UTC
bag o' opiods
© Patrick T. Falon/AFP via Getty ImagesA bag of assorted pills and prescription drugs is dropped off for disposal during the Drug Enforcement Administration's National Prescription Drug Take Back Day on April 24, 2021 in Los Angeles.
It's estimated that more than 107,000 people in the United States died due to opioid overdoses in 2021. Washington Post journalist Scott Higham notes it's "the equivalent of a 737 Boeing crashing and burning and killing everybody on board every single day."

In the new book, American Cartel, Higham and co-author Sari Horwitz make the case that the pharmaceutical industry operated like a drug cartel, with manufacturers at the top; wholesalers in the middle; and pharmacies at the level of "street dealers." What's more, Higham says, the companies collaborated with each other — and with lawyers and lobbyists — to create legislation that protected their industry, even as they competed for market share.

"Most people think it's the political parties that run the show or it's the White House that runs the show, but it really is the companies that run the show," Higham says. "People were dying by the thousands while these companies were lobbying members of Congress ... to pass legislation and to lobby members of the Department of Justice and try to slow down the DEA enforcement efforts."

Comment: See also:

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Airplane

911 call reveals doomed North Carolina pilot jumped before emergency landing

Joshua Rhett Miller
New York Post
Wed, 03 Aug 2022 08:45 UTC
charles hew crooks
© Twitter/Simon PalmoreWake County Emergency Management officials told WRAL the initial 911 call was received at 2:30 p.m. Friday. The aircraft, a CASA 212-200, made an emergency landing about 18 minutes later, WRAL reported.
A 911 call released Tuesday revealed that the co-pilot who mysteriously vanished midair in North Carolina had "jumped" out of the aircraft.

Two Federal Aviation Administration employees could be heard saying that Charles Hew Crooks' co-pilot reported that he leaped out of the damaged plane before it made an emergency landing at Raleigh Durham International Airport on Friday, WRAL reported.

"This is from Raleigh Airport," an FAA air traffic controller said on the recording. "We have a pilot who was inbound to the field. His co-pilot jumped out of the aircraft. He made impact to the ground and here are the coordinates."
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NPC

The 'Great Awokening' of British media

Matt Goodwin
mattgoodwin.substack.com
Tue, 02 Aug 2022 00:00 UTC
woke
A few years ago, a new study caught my eye. After crunching data on 27 million articles in 47 media outlets in America, a young academic named David Rozado uncovered some truly astonishing trends. He found the number of words to describe prejudice, discrimination, and social justice or 'woke' ideology had exploded.

References to words such as 'sexist' had rocketed 130%. 'Racist' by 249%. 'Patriarchy' by 340%. 'White supremacy' by more than 2000%. And 'transphobia' by more than 2300%. Suddenly, seemingly without warning, American journalists were talking a LOT about different forms of discrimination, as well as highly contested woke ideas such as 'unconscious bias', 'white privilege, and 'whiteness'.

It became known as "The Great Awokening" — part of a rapid and dramatic change in the beliefs of mainly white, university-educated liberals on race, sex, and gender. Many of the people who work in media, politics, the universities, the institutions, and who regularly consume content produced by the likes of the New York Times or the Washington Post, have simply become far more liberal than everybody else.
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Megaphone

Media claiming Ukraine war has disrupted '77 years of almost uninterrupted peace' conveniently forgets war on Yugoslavia


RT
Wed, 03 Aug 2022 14:15 UTC
Sarajevo
FILE PHOTO. The siege of Sarajevo, capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina,
Europe had "77 years of almost uninterrupted peace" until Russia chose to end it by "invading" Ukraine, according to a peculiar "analysis" published by the Associated Press (AP) over the weekend. Having thus erased Yugoslavia's bloody destruction in the 1990s, the author contradicts himself just two paragraphs later.

In a surreal opener, AP's John Leicester argues that the conflict in Ukraine is the kind of world-changing event on the same level as the first nuclear bomb test in 1945 or the 1969 moon landing. Except the moon landing didn't really change the world - the Apollo program arguably was NASA's high water mark - so it's puzzling why it would even get a mention. Perhaps to emotionally prime the reader for the following whopper, which is that on February 24 this year,. Russian President Vladimir Putin "chews up the world order and 77 years of almost uninterrupted peace in Europe by invading Ukraine."

Comment: It is true, though, that the West's proxy war on Russia is different, because this time the US is willing to implode Europe in its failing attempts to destroy Russia, and Europe, for the most part, is a willing victim.

See also: The Weight of Chains: US/NATO Destruction of Yugoslavia (Documentary)

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Family

UK-funded prisons in Syria under scrutiny for disappearance of young children


The Cradle
Wed, 03 Aug 2022 18:56 UTC
Al-Hawl refugee camp Syria
© Associated PressChildren living in Al-Hawl refugee camp, north-east Syria.
The UN has accused the United Kingdom of violating the law by funding Kurdish-run prisons in Syria, where hundreds of minors affiliated with ISIS families are unaccounted for.

According to The Daily Telegraph newspaper, at least one hundred children are missing from prisons run by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

The SDF is a non-state Kurdish ally to the US-led coalition, Combined Joint Task Force - Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTF-OIR), created to fight ISIS in Syria and Iraq in October 2011.

The newspaper estimates that 750 boys of Arab and western descent, and as young as nine years old, are languishing indefinitely in a UK-funded prison in north-east Syria.

At least one British minor is among the children.

Comment:

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Binoculars

French volunteer Boke spoke about the killing of the Russian army and the staging in Bucha


News Unrolled
Wed, 03 Aug 2022 18:52 UTC
azov battalion bucha
Visiting Ukraine, French volunteer and writer, former soldier Adrian Boke told RIA Novosti that he had witnessed a preparation for a provocation in the Kiev suburb of Bucha.

In April, Boke visited Ukraine twice to deliver humanitarian aid, medical equipment and medicines. He visited both the Polish-Ukrainian border and Bucha and saw how Russian prisoners of war were tortured and killed, as well as how Ukrainian militants were involved in a gradual massacre of civilians.

"Speaking of murders and torture, I'm talking about the killing and torture of the Russian army. First of all, the officers were executed. I heard screams when the people of Azov asked who the officer was, man. <...> Worst of all, I didn't see any human interaction, there was no emotion, because people were executed right before my eyes, people were injured, people were shot, they were shot in the limbs, in the head," he said.

Therefore, according to him, he witnessed the torture and murder of Russian prisoners of war in a hangar north of Bucha. It was early April, meaning the Ukrainian army had regained control of the city for several days.

Boke noted that he often spoke with the fighters of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and the Azov people, who impressed him with their inhumane treatment of Russians, Jews and people of other races.
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Arrow Down

Court documents reveal Canada's travel ban had no scientific basis

Rupa Subramanya
Common Sense
Tue, 02 Aug 2022 00:00 UTC
JustinT
© Cole Burston/Getty ImagesCanadian PM Justin Trudeau
In the days leading up to the mandate, transportation officials were frantically looking for a rationale for it. They came up short.

On August 13, 2021, the Canadian government announced that anyone who hadn't been vaccinated against Covid would soon be barred from planes and trains. In many cases, The Backward could no longer travel between provinces or leave the country. If you lived in Winnipeg and wanted to visit your mother on her deathbed in London or Hong Kong or, perhaps, Quebec City, you'd better get jabbed — or resign yourself to never seeing your mother again.

Jennifer Little, the director-general of COVID Recovery, the secretive government panel that crafted the mandate, called it "one of the strongest vaccination mandates for travelers in the world."

It was draconian and sweeping, and it fit neatly with the public persona that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had cultivated — that of the sleek, progressive, forward-looking technocrat guided by fact and reason. The Canadian Medical Association Journal, in a June 2022 article, observed that "Canada had among the most sustained stringent policies regarding restrictions on internal movement."

But recently released court documents — which capture the decision-making behind the travel mandate — indicate that, far from following the science, the prime minister and his Cabinet were focused on politics. (Canadians are hardly alone. As Common Sense recently reported, American public-health agencies have also been politicized.)
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Bizarro Earth

3 dead in kindergarten stabbing in China, suspect still at large


Jerusalem Post
Wed, 03 Aug 2022 11:08 UTC
china kindergarten stabbing 2022
Screenshot
Three people were killed and six wounded on Wednesday in a stabbing at a kindergarten in the Chinese province of Jianxi, the AFP news agency reported, citing police.

A "gangster wearing a cap and mask" stormed the private kindergarten, the news agency said on Twitter, adding that the 48-year-old suspect was at large.

The news agency did not give any more details on the victims.

Comment: Footage from the incident has emerged on Twitter:



As noted in the article, attacks like these do appear to have been on the increase in recent years, but, what with Pelosi's whirlwind visit to Taiwan, the timing of this tragedy is also notable:

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Eye 2

Hundreds of Ukrainian 'petal' mines litter streets of Donetsk


Morning Star
Sun, 31 Jul 2022 12:00 UTC
petal mines
© REUTERS/Alexander ErmochenkoMine work: deadly "Petals" are neutralized in Donetsk
UKRAINIAN forces were accused of shelling residential areas of the eastern city of Donetsk on Saturday night with hundreds of so-called petal mines littering the streets in the aftermath.

The tiny bombs, which are shaped like small flowers, were found in the centre of Donetsk, areas close to the city's university, recreational areas and others.

Journalist Eva Bartlett, based in Ukraine, heard the shelling start on Saturday night.

"This morning I saw these mines in a heavily populated western Donetsk district," she said. "They tear off limbs but don't necessarily kill. Nasty war crimes to add to the list of Ukraine's manifold war crimes."

Comment: Investigative reporter Eva K Bartlett reports on the story in the videos below.

Warning:Video features gruesome imagery of the injuries recently inflicted by the mines and so viewer discretion is advised.
The use of PFM-1 'butterfly' mines against civilians is prohibited by the Geneva conventions - but this evidently isn't stopping Ukraine Saturday night, just after 9 pm, thunderous explosions rocked central Donetsk. Shortly after, there were announcements that air defense had shot down Ukrainian-fired missiles containing "Butterfly" (or "Petal") mines. Given that over 300 of these mines are packed into each of the Ukrainian-fired rockets, central Donetsk would literally be a minefield. While Ukraine has been using these mines on the Donbass for many months, in recent days they have intensely bombarded Gorlovka and Donetsk neighbourhoods with them.

Initially targeted were the hard-hit districts of Kievskiy in the north, Kirovsky in the southwest, and Kuibyshevkiy in the west. But as of Saturday night, Ukraine hammered central Donetsk with them. And now, walking in the city centre is a nightmare, one I had to endure to document how widespread these mines are here: in central streets and walkways, near apartments, in parks...
On July 30, in a densely inhabited working-class district of western Donetsk, in a field with garden plots for nearby apartment residents, I saw the nefarious "petal" or "butterfly" mines which Ukraine the following day dropped on the central of Donetsk. In the large courtyard of an apartment complex, I watched from a safe distance as Emergency Services timer-detonated eight mines they had found around the grounds. The day prior, they destroyed 26. Another 150 were located and destroyed using a radio-controlled minesweeper. But there remains much work to restore the streets and courtyards to safety. Some types of these anti-personnel mines have a self-destruct timer. Others, including the ones Ukraine is firing, have a years-long shelf life. They do pretty much no damage to military vehicles, and as such their use in Donbass is insidious - deliberately targeting civilians, to leave them maimed. Out of the 6 million such mines Ukraine initially declared in its possession, only 2 million have been reportedly destroyed as of 2018.



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