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Sweden records highest death tally in 150 years in first six months of 2020 - put in perspective

Cold Sweden
Sweden, which has stood out among European countries for its low-key approach to fighting the coronavirus pandemic, recorded its highest tally of deaths in the first half of 2020 for 150 years, the Statistics Office said on Wednesday.

COVID-19 claimed about 4,500 lives in the period to the end of June - a number which has now risen to 5,800 - a much higher percentage of the population than in other Nordic nations, though lower than in some others including Britain and Spain.


Comment: Which had severe lockdowns. There's one thing we can conclude for sure about the lockdowns: they had no effect on slowing the spread of Covid. In fact, it looks like they mostly had the effect of making things worse. Just look at Peru.


In total, 51,405 Swedes died in the January to June period, a higher number than any year since 1869 when 55,431 died, partly as a result of a famine. The population of Sweden was around 4.1 million then, compared to 10.3 million now.


Comment: In other words, put in perspective, the famine was much worse, resulting in the deaths of 1.4% of the population, compared to 0.5% of the population in 2020.


COVID-19 meant that deaths were some 10 percent higher than the average for the period over the last five years, the Statistics Office said. In April the number of deaths was almost 40% higher than average due to a surge in COVID-related fatalities.


Comment: In other words, 10% higher than your average flu season. Nothing to freak out over.


Sweden has taken a different approach to most European countries in dealing with the pandemic, relying to a greater extent on voluntary measures focused on social distancing and opting against a strict lockdown.

Bizarro Earth

Huge protests swamp Belarus' capital demanding Lukashenko step down

Belarus
© GettyAn aerial view of protesters during a demonstration on August 16, 2020 in Minsk, Belarus.
Vast crowds of protesters flooded Belarus' capital of Minsk on Sunday in the largest political demonstration in the country's history, demanding that its authoritarian leader, Alexander Lukashenko, step down.

Demonstrators in the capital were estimated to number well over 100,000.

Thousands more protested in towns and cities across Belarus, building on the movement that has been growing since last weekend's contested election and posing a colossal challenge to Lukashenko, known as "Europe's last dictator," who has ruled the former Soviet country for 26 years.

Comment: For insight into the real machinations driving the situation in Belarus, see: Belarus 'revolution' is imperialists running the same tired old script, day after day


Stormtrooper

Video shows BLM mob beating white man unconscious after making him crash truck UPDATE: Manhunt underway for suspect

portland man unconscious
© Kalen D'Almeida / ScriberrThe man who was kicked in the head and reportedly knocked unconscious in Portland, Oregon, lies in the street.
A mob of Portland Black Lives Matter protesters forced a white man to crash his truck, then punched and kicked him unconscious, disturbing footage shows.

A series of clips on social media shows the victim being surrounded in his white Ford truck at 10.30 p.m. Sunday as others attacked a woman he was with, who was punched and even tackled to the ground during the violent melee.

"He didn't do nothing!" someone could be heard calling as others punched the driver as he sat in his truck, which was also repeatedly kicked.

The unidentified driver eventually sped off, with the mob chasing him โ€” with some heard loudly laughing when he crashed into a tree and then a building, according to the clips.

Comment: Update: A suspect has been identified and is currently being sought by Portland police.
Manhunt underway for attacker in Portland truck assault: police
Stephanie Pagones, Louis Casiano | Fox News
August 19


Portland police on Tuesday identified a suspect in Sunday night's attack on a truck driver who was seen on video being pulled from the vehicle and violently beaten.

The Portland Police Bureau is on the hunt for Marquise Love, who also goes by the name "Keese Love," for his alleged involvement in the vicious assault that was caught on video and circulated on social media.

Maquise Love portland attack suspect
© Portland Police BureauMarquise Love
Officials said in a press release they have made several attempts to find 25-year-old Love, but have so far been unsuccessful. They have said they have probable cause for his arrest.

"The Portland Police Bureau is taking this assault and other incidents of violence extremely seriously," said Chief Chuck Lovell in a statement provided with the press release. "Our Detectives continue to investigate this assault as well as other acts of violence directed toward protestors, but we need more than just videos from social media. In order to hold individuals responsible for criminal acts, we need the public to provide information and refrain from tampering with evidence."

Shortly before 10:30 p.m. on Sunday, police responded to a 911 call from someone who reported that protesters "chased a white Ford" four-by-four truck, which then crashed in the downtown area, according to a department press release. Protesters then dragged the driver out of the vehicle, one caller stated. Another told police an estimated nine to 10 people began "beating the guy," the caller stated.

When police arrived, they discovered the man unconscious and transported him to a local hospital. Another woman appeared to have also been assaulted in the video that circulated on social media.

"Investigators learned that the victim may have been trying to help a transgender female who had some of her things stolen in the area of Southwest Taylor and Fourth Ave., the location where this incident began," police said late Monday.

Investigators said they are hoping to speak with the woman.

The victim has since been released and is home recovering.

After the attack, several media outlets incorrectly identified Love as an employee of the Star Protection Agency, a security firm with an office in Portland, said company COO Bryan Kettler. He told Fox News Love was briefly employed with the firm from January through March as an unarmed security guard.

All the equipment issued to Love while he was a security guard had been accounted for, Kettler said. The attacker authorities believe to be Love was spotted wearing a tactical vest with security patches, which are not part of any uniform issued by Star Protection, Kettler said.

"We decry violence in all forms, and our hearts go out to anyone that has been injured. We hope for their speedy recovery and will fully cooperate with any law enforcement investigation to ensure justice is done," he said. "Any use of Star Protection imaging or logos in connection with this individual is unfortunate and unauthorized."

Anyone with information is asked to call Det. Brent Christensen at 503-823-2087 or at Brent.Christensen@portlandoregon.gov.



No Entry

Facebook removes hundreds of QAnon groups and pages

facebook google
© getty
Facebook on Wednesday banned roughly 900 groups and pages and 1,500 ads related to the QAnon conspiracy theory.

The removals were part of an expansion of the platform's policies on violent rhetoric, which also resulted in 10,000 Instagram pages and nearly 2,000 Facebook groups associated with QAnon having their reach limited.

The QAnon theory baselessly claims that President Trump and the military are working together to expose a shadowy cabal of figures in media, entertainment and politics that are trafficking children.

Comment: From RT:
Nearly 1,000 groups and pages and over 1,500 ads related to QAnon were removed in Wednesday's purge, while lesser restrictions were imposed on a whopping 10,000 Q-related Instagram accounts (along with almost 1,500 groups and pages on Facebook). The survivors were put on notice that Facebook would be monitoring them for "specific terminology and symbolism" being used to covertly discuss or plot violence.

In an unusual move, Facebook even went after liberal darling Antifa - though very gingerly, referring to "militia organizations and those encouraging riots, including some who may identify as Antifa" in its announcement that some 1,500 groups and pages in this category had gotten the ax.
...

However, as Facebook continues to exile ever-broader swathes of online conduct from its platforms, users must invariably ask what constitutes "celebrating violent acts" - a phrase that would seem to describe TV news reporters who wax poetic about "the beauty of our weaponry" as missiles rain down on Syria as much as it does Antifa kids cheering when one of their number lobs a Molotov cocktail into a police car.
...

The purge also fails to take into account the Streisand effect, in which attempting to suppress content backfires and ends up drawing even more attention to that content. Twitter announced a similar purge of QAnon-linked users last month, unleashing another round of pearl-clutching stories about the conspiracy theory and raising its national profile. Indeed, several candidates running for office in November are QAnon supporters - a notion which would have been unthinkable had the cult-like adherents of the phenomenon remained undisturbed on their platforms of choice. However, because a central tenet of QAnon is that the 'Deep State' shadow government doesn't want Americans researching its activities, social media's heavy-handed censorship plays right into their hands.

Facebook also recently expanded its already-sprawling list of banned "hate speech" to include blackface makeup and commenting on "Jewish people running the world or controlling major institutions such as media networks, the economy or the government," acquiescing to a lengthy list of demands from censorship advocates, the Anti-Defamation League, following a month-long advertiser boycott.
See also:


Car Black

Suspect in Berlin highway attack moved to psychiatric jail

berlin motorway crash
© Paul Zinken/dpa via APInvestigators work on the scene following several accidents on the city motorway A100 in Berlin, Germany, Wednesday, Aug. 19, 2020. According to German news agency dpa, prosecutors say a series of crashes caused by a 30-year-old Iraqi man on the highway late Tuesday night was an Islamic extremist attack.
German authorities on Wednesday ordered a 30-year-old man accused of deliberately driving his car into other vehicles along a major Berlin highway and injuring six people moved to a psychiatric jail, as investigators continue to probe the man's motives.

Officials said the Iraq-born man appeared to have carried out a deliberate attack late Tuesday motivated by Islamist ideology, but noted that he had been suffering from psychological problems.

The suspect driving a black Opel Astra allegedly struck three motorcycles at different locations on the Bundesautobahn 100, Berlin prosecutors and police said in a joint statement. He then stopped on the highway and put an old ammunition box on the roof of his car, claiming it had explosives inside, the statement said.

Padlock

The world's toughest lockdown has resulted in the world's highest COVID-19 death toll

peru coronavirus
Once hailed as a COVID-19 "success story," Peru is now the COVID-19 case study that lockdown advocates no longer want to discuss. Lima is on pace to surpass Belgium (another strict lockdown country) sometime next week as having the world's highest COVID-19 deaths per million. So why is no one talking about it?

Pandemic panic promoters have been quick to criticize neighboring Brazil for its leadership's more relaxed policies towards the virus, but they've been noticeably absent in discussing Peru. That's because Peru implemented arguably the earliest (for their region) and strictest lockdowns in the entire world, along with several attempted suppression measures with the hopes to contain the virus, and none of it worked.

For months on end, Peruvians were largely forbidden from leaving their homes. The country began its lockdown like many others, by cutting itself off from the rest of the world, closing its borders to outsiders, and shutting down the nation's economy and society. Similar to policies seen in U.S. lockdown states and Europe, only "essential" businesses were allowed to be open. Peru then took the shutdown a step further. The military has enforced a nationwide mandatory 10pm-4am curfew (some cities have lengthened the curfew to 8pm-5am), most "essential" stores are only open for a handful of hours a day (most grocery stores close at 3pm), and citizens face extreme penalties and legal consequences for failing to abide by the rigid restrictions.

Comment: While the US economy and its healthcare system are not as behind as in Peru, it's unlikely to recover anytime soon.


Bullseye

If you are reading this, you might be a conspiracy theorist

conspiracy theory
"...a permanent modern scenario: apocalypse looms...and it doesn't occur."

-Susan Sontag, AIDs and its Metaphors
"I should not misuse this opportunity to give you a lecture about, say, logic. I call this a misuse, for to explain a scientific matter to you it would need a course of lectures and not an hour's paper. Another alternative would have been to give you what's called a popular scientific lecture, that is a lecture intended to make you believe that you understand a thing which actually you don't understand, and to gratify what I believe to be one of the lowest desires of modern people, namely the superficial curiosity about the latest discoveries of science. I rejected these alternatives."

-Ludwig Wittgenstein, A Lecture on Ethics
If you're reading this, then you've probably been called a conspiracy theorist. Also you've been derided and shamed for questioning the "science" of the Covid debacle.

The idea of science is now a badly corrupted idea. In a nation, today, (the USA) which in educational terms ranks 25th globally in science skills and reading, and well below that in math; all one hears is a clarion call to science. In reading skills the US placed below Malta, Portugal, and right about the same as Kazakhstan.

But in a nation that no longer reads, and *can* no longer read, it is not surprising that knowledge is absorbed via the new hieroglyphics of gifs (interestingly the creator of gifs wanted it pronounced with a soft g the more to sound like a peanut butter brand) and memes.

Attention

Panicked MSNBC: 'Trump is being directed by authoritarian leaders to steal the election'

Joy Reid
Joy Reid - 'Woke' spokesperson and 'Orange Man Bad' propagator
Hours before the start of the virtual Democratic National Convention, Monday's ReidOut featured more dangerously irresponsible rhetoric and conspiracy theories from MSNBC guests; suggesting that President Trump was destroying the Postal Service to rig the 2020 election, declare himself the winner, and has been taking calls and directives from authoritarian world leaders.

Worst yet, Russiagate conspiracy theorist Malcolm Nance and frequent cable news guest Neera Tanden of the Center for American Progress suggested that, if worse comes to worse, Americans will have to take to the streets like in Belarus and try to remove Trump from office.

Host Joy Reid led the way with this mouthful near the top of her show, spinning a tale meant to cripple viewers into fearing that America was already in a casket and being lowered into the ground:
This year, however, Democrats are staging their convention against a candidate who better resembles an autocrat, an incumbent who has made clear he'll try to win by any means necessary. Donald Trump and his Republican enablers are leading an unprecedented assault on the pillars of our democracy. Whether rigging the U.S. Census, destroying the Postal Service or colluding with a third-party candidate, Trump is dismantling our democratic process before our very eyes.

Eye 2

UK's elderly patients with coronavirus were knowingly sent back into care homes

coronavirus elderly
© PA Images via Getty Images/Jane BarlowEdinburgh, Scotland
Health authorities have finally admitted that they transferred patients back to nursing homes after they were found to have the virus. This almost certainly caused the deaths of others and manslaughter charges should follow.

We've known for some time now that the failure to protect residents in care homes for the elderly has been a major factor in coronavirus death tolls in many parts of the world. But a recent newspaper report has added a new dimension to the scandal.

Here in Scotland, as in other parts of the UK, there has been outrage that elderly people in hospital were discharged into care homes without being tested for Covid-19 in a desperate rush to clear hospital beds. That seems incredibly negligent. But now we have confirmation that patients were sent to care homes after testing positive for Covid-19. That seems downright criminal.

Comment: Notably the same 'gross breach' also happened in New York: Sent to die: 4,300 Covid-19 patients sent to New York's vulnerable nursing homes under Cuomo directive

And yet SOTT warned about this kind of scenario back in March: First, Do No Harm: If Primary Healthcare Remains Shut Down, Toll on Elderly Will be Worse Than COVID-19


Fire

Portland police declare riot again after county headquarters set on fire

portland riots antifa BLM multnomah building
© KPTVA person was seen on a livestream heaving a large pile of burning material onto a desk inside the Multnomah Building.
Portland police declared a riot after the Multnomah County headquarters building was set on fire Tuesday night.

Rioters vandalized the Multnomah Building, the seat of government for Multnomah County, with graffiti before a group started a "large" dumpster fire, according to a statement from Portland police.

Another fire was started in a different dumpster which was then allegedly rolled toward the Multnomah Building. Rioters then began throwing ignited paper inside the building to start a fire after having cracked the glass windows with rocks, police said. However, the ignited paper did not work and rioters began spraying lighter fluid inside the building which sparked a fire, according to the police report.

Comment: The feckless Portland mayor Ted Wheeler continues to tacitly support the destruction of his city with these lame statements, though he had the grace to note the "protesters" had damaged a building housing services for the area's most vulnerable populations. But hey, all lives matter!