Society's ChildS


Syringe

Djokovic willing to sacrifice titles instead of getting Covid jab

novak djokovic
© Srdjan Stevanovic / Getty ImagesNovak Djokovic doubled down on his vaccine stance.
Novak Djokovic says he is not anti-vaccine but is willing to forego future titles rather than be forced into taking the Covid jab in order to compete.

Djokovic missed out on the chance of a record 21st Grand Slam crown in Australia last month when he was deported from the country after officials claimed he could incite anti-vax sentiment among the population.

Speaking publicly for the first time to explain his vaccine stance since the debacle unfolded, Djokovic said he was willing to miss future events such as the French Open or Wimbledon, rather than be forced to take the vaccine to play.

Comment: Good for him!


Briefcase

Constitutional lawyers warn Ottawa Police to leave convoy protesters alone

Ottawa
© unknownProtesters in Ottawa
With video now showing Ottawa Police confiscating fuel and arresting truckers for carrying empty gas cans, constitutional lawyers on the ground in Ottawa are warning police that it is illegal for them to be intimidating or arresting people for these actions.

Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF) lawyer Nicholas Wansbutter in a press release stated:
"People who bring food, water, gasoline or other supplies to peacefully protesting truckers are not breaking any law. There is no basis for this police threat, that was issued by Twitter (Sunday) morning."
On Sunday, Ottawa Police had warned:
"anyone attempting to bring material supports (gas, etc.) to the demonstrators could be subject to arrest. Enforcement is underway."

Comment: See also:


NPC

MSM in lockstep: Sunday Times changes tune on Covid restrictions

covid hysteria
The Sunday Times has a long analytical piece today about how Britain beat Covid - a combination of vaccines, natural immunity and luck, apparently. The paper's Data Projects Editor, Tom Calver, says one contributory factor was the Government's decision to lift all restrictions on July 19th of last year, thereby ensuring that by the time we faced an Autumn wave many people who'd been infected and recovered over the summer had natural immunity:
About 22 million have caught it since July 19th, 2021 — England's 'freedom day', when many Covid restrictions were removed. Britain was one of the few countries to maintain relatively high infection rates throughout 2021, yet hospital admissions never breached unsafe levels.

There were other reasons for opening up when we did. A supporter at the time, Paul Hunter, professor in medicine at the University of East Anglia, said: "Leaving step four until the autumn carried a far greater risk. Delaying the opening of society would have pushed back more infections into the autumn, at a time when pressures on the health service may have been greater.

"There is a real case for the argument that opening society when we did and the resulting infection rates enabled us to avoid a big surge in hospitalisations and deaths this winter."

Comment: Indeed, they will have a lot to answer for IF they are ever taken to task.


Arrow Down

Rape victims face postcode lottery to achieve justice as analysis shows some courts are delaying sex offence trials

rape victim
© Shutterstock/ Tinnakorn jorruang
Rape victims face a postcode lottery where the chances of their case being shelved are almost twice as likely as the trial going ahead in some courts.

The backlog of trials has more than doubled in two years, with some victims left suicidal as they face waits of up to five years or more for justice.

Campaigners fear attackers are being left free to claim new victims as analysis by the Criminal Bar Association revealed some courts are delaying more sex offence trials than are going ahead.

Bell

CBC 'experts' warn against 'far-right' connotations of the word 'freedom'

protester love sign
Trudeau's state broadcaster, the CBC, said in an article released on Sunday that "freedom" has become a rallying cry used commonly among far-right groups.

The article states that freedom is, to many, a "malleable term" and a word that's "open to interpretation."

That's the excuse, anyway, used by Barbara Perry, who has an actual job as the director of the Centre on Hate, Bias and Extremism at the Oshawa-based Ontario Tech University.

Comment: The escalation of 'Newspeak' redefinitions of words is rather disturbing. Anyone demanding 'freedom' is now far-right.


TV

Corporate media is the misinformation problem

stephen hayes
The largest media outlets are platforming con artists, skewing the news, and immersing the country in a flood of lies.

"Misinformation" is all the rage these days — it's the topic du jour. Polls suggest we all agree that it's a problem, and lately liberals appear most mad at it — but seemingly only at certain kinds of misinformation that originate outside the corporate media sphere.

Notably, the ire is rarely directed at a corporate media machine that systematically rewards and praises the purveyors of misleading propaganda, and continues to flood the country with information sewage.

Comment: It's easy to fall for the 'middle ground fallacy' on this issue - it must be both sides that are peddling misinformation. But the likely reason Rogan and Carlson are so popular, drawing viewers from both camps, is because they're the closest to truth we're seeing in the mainstream at the moment.

See also:


Biohazard

Scabies outbreak reported in Leuven, Belgium

scabies
Following outbreaks in the Waasland District of East Flanders more and more cases of scabies are now being reported in the Leuven area. Chemists are getting more and more requests for medication. Scabies is a common contagious skin condition caused by the human itch mite.

Scabies spreads easily in places where people live cheek by jowl e.g. in care homes or student communities. It is pretty contagious and the mites that burrow into the top layer of the skin cause a persistent itch.

Chemist Anne Vanschoenwinkel: "A couple of years ago we saw hardly any cases of scabies. In recent months there's been a big increase. I believe the disease was able to develop here because of the open borders. People from everywhere come here. Not everybody lives in hygienic circumstances".


Comment: But borders have been open and migration has been ongoing for nearly a decade now, so it seems unlikely that this is the only factor. Note that for the elderly and vulnerable, lockdowns have meant that they've been essentially incarcerated in their homes for 20+ months.


"It's not a dangerous disease, but the itch is pretty annoying. The mites burrow into the skin and create little corridors. You will notice little red dots on your skin. You can easily get rid of it with the right treatment. Now scabies is getting more attention in the media people with skin conditions or an itch may worry. They are welcome to drop in at the pharmacist" says Vanschoenwinkel.

Comment: Outbreaks and unusual diseases have been on the rise for many years now, however since the beginning of the lockdowns and the roll out of the experimental jabs, there has been an explosion in diseases and illnesses, some of which were previously known to be rare:


Light Saber

Freedom convoy rolls quietly into Brussels

Freedom convoy Brussels
© Hatim Kaghat/BELGA MAG/AFP via Getty ImagesFreedom convoys” passed through Brussels as a protest against coronavirus measures
They came with grand plans to rattle the seat of the European Union, angry about COVID restrictions. But the "European freedom convoy" arrived in Brussels Monday scattered and confused, with occasional bark, yet little bite.

For the moment, the convoy had run low on gas.

On the main roads into Brussels, police diverted vans, campers, buses and cars to a sanctioned protest area — a 10,000-spot parking lot barely within the city limits. The scene was still and sparse, a far cry from the paralyzed bridges and police clashes that have metastasized across the globe in recent weeks as a trucker protest in Canada spread through the U.S., Australia and Europe.

Within the city, protesters on foot popped up in several places as conflicting messages swirled around social media over where to head. At the original protest spot, the Parc du Cinquantenaire just east of the EU institutions, fewer than 100 people had assembled by midday, chatting in small clusters. Elsewhere, helmeted police in riot gear occasionally outnumbered the protesters. In total, the police said, "several hundred demonstrators" showed up.

Still, there were the occasional flare-ups. Some tear gas was deployed in areas where protesters were blocked, and police said they made about 30 arrests for disturbing the peace or for carrying a prohibited weapon. Rumors also circulated late in the day of possible Brussels gatherings on Tuesday, with some people pledging to take advantage of a planned police strike that has since been delayed.

Comment: It's not a 'belief' that governments were (are) going totalitarian, just look around you. Similar protests are underway around the world.


People

You can stop the convoy's money, but not its momentum

canada trucker protest
About a month into the pandemic, Ontario Premier Doug Ford dismissed those protesting against lockdowns as just a "bunch of yahoos." The longer the restrictions have gone on and the more detached they've become from science and public tolerance, the larger - and more influential - that "bunch" has gotten.

Yesterday, Ford's government froze nearly $11 million of their money.

Today, Ford declared a state of emergency and said anyone blockading border crossings or Ottawa streets could be hit with a $100,000 fine or a year in jail.

People have been living with governments enacting a steady stream of unconstitutional edicts with no parliamentary oversight and little political opposition, so I'm not sure "state of emergency" feels like much of a departure from what's become the new normal.

It's this descent into the permanent emergency that has galvanized the trucker convoy in the first place.

It's noteworthy that these supposed yahoos, who Justin Trudeau more recently maligned as a mere "fringe minority," are evidently so powerful the government needs to bring out the big guns and try to cut off their cash flow.

NPC

Levi's brand president says she was forced out over anti-school closure views

Jennifer Sey
© Jennifer Sey
Levi's President Jennifer Sey says she was forced out of her job for speaking out publicly against California's COVID-19 school closures — and gave up $1 million for refusing to keep her mouth shut about it.

The mom of four and longtime Levi's employee wrote in Bari Weiss's "Common Sense" Substack newsletter Monday that she turned down Levi's offer of a $1 million severance package because she didn't want to sign a nondisclosure agreement "about why I'd been pushed out."

Sey, who had been working her way up at Levi's since 1999, said she was told late last year by CEO Charles Bergh that she was en route to becoming the next leader of the company — as long as she would "stop talking about the school thing."

Sey said the saga first erupted when employees started complaining that she was publicly questioning whether schools had to be shut down in San Francisco at the beginning of the pandemic.