Society's ChildS


Eye 2

Israel 'forcibly closing' bank accounts of Palestinian prisoners' relatives amid economic crisis and lockdown


HedgeAccordingly
Sat, 09 May 2020 05:19 UTC
israel palestine coronavirus
Palestinian officials said Friday that Israelis forcing banks in the occupied West Bank to close accounts held by the families of prisoners in Israeli jails to prevent the Palestinian Authority from providing stipends to them.

Israel has long objected to the Palestinian Authority's payments to the families of prisoners and those killed in the conflict, including militants, saying it rewards terrorism. The Palestinians view the payments as a social safety net for those living under decades of military occupation.

The apparent move to target banks comes as the Palestinians face a potentially severe economic crisis after weeks of lockdown to combat the coronavirus pandemic. It also comes as Israel vows to annex large parts of the West Bank in line with President Donald Trump's Middle East plan.

Protesters shattered the windows of several bank branches and set fires outside some of them late Thursday and early Friday as word of the new regulations spread.

Comment: The callousness of Israel towards the Palestinians knows no bounds.

Read More...
Handcuffs

California physician denounces 'tyrannical' lockdowns in impassioned speech


Conservative Fighters
Sat, 09 May 2020 00:01 UTC
Dr. Jeffrey Barke
A California physician is being hailed as a patriot after delivering an impassioned speech citing the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution in a sweeping condemnation of the coronavirus lockdowns imposed across America.

Dr. Jeffrey Barke stepped up to the microphone during a protest rally in Riverside County, addressing the crowd that had gathered to demonstrate against the economic shutdowns in his community and beyond.

Barke, a family physician and associate clinical professor at the University of California, Irvine School of Medicine, began by asking, "What if wearing a mask in public is not effective?"
Read More...
Brick Wall

Is the chilling truth that the decision to impose lockdown was based on crude mathematical guesswork?

Matt Ridley and David Davis
The Telegraph
Sun, 10 May 2020 07:00 UTC
Neil Ferguson
© Thomas Angus/Imperial College LondonPerhaps Professor Ferguson should have stepped back from Sage for reasons other than his lockdown-breaking tryst.
Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College "stepped back" from the Sage group advising ministers when his lockdown-busting romantic trysts were exposed. Perhaps he should have been dropped for a more consequential misstep. Details of the model his team built to predict the epidemic are emerging and they are not pretty. In the respective words of four experienced modellers, the code is "deeply riddled" with bugs, "a fairly arbitrary Heath Robinson machine", has "huge blocks of code - bad practice" and is "quite possibly the worst production code I have ever seen".

When ministers make statements about coronavirus policy they invariably say that they are "following the science". But cutting-edge science is messy and unclear, a contest of ideas arbitrated by facts, a process of conjecture and refutation. This is not new. Almost two centuries ago Thomas Huxley described the "great tragedy of science - the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact."

In this case, that phrase "the science" effectively means the Imperial College model, forecasting potentially hundreds of thousands of deaths, on the output of which the Government instituted the lockdown in March. Sage's advice has a huge impact on the lives of millions. Yet the committee meets in private, publishes no minutes, and until it was put under pressure did not even release the names of its members. We were making decisions based on the output of a black box, and a locked one at that.

Comment: The answer is yes. Or, at the very least, the crude mathematical guesswork is what was used to justify the lockdown to the populace. Orders for it probably came from much higher up by individuals with little care about deaths or mathematical models.

See also:

Read More...
Colosseum

In Italy, opponent of lockdown thrown into psychiatric hospital


Voltaire Network
Sat, 09 May 2020 09:27 UTC
Italie, Italia
In the Sicilian city of Ravanusa, 33-year-old Dario Musso drove down the street with a megaphone, wanting to wake up his fellow citizens to the cry of "The pandemic is not deadly! Come out, take off your masks! Open up the stores!"

All witnesses claim that he was perfectly sane, simply outraged.

He was arrested by the Carabinieri (one of Italy's main law enforcement agencies) and sent to a psychiatric hospital, where he was bound to a bed for 4 days, drip fed and sedated.

The hospital refuses to give out any information.
Read More...
Megaphone

Former President of the Czech Republic, Václav Klaus: "The people should say NO to all of it"

Claudio Grass
claudiograss.ch
Mon, 04 May 2020 06:38 UTC
Václav Klaus
As we get deeper into this crisis and we get used to our "new normal", it's easy to focus on the daily corona-horror stories in the media or the latest shocking unemployment numbers, and lose track of the bigger picture and of what is really, fundamentally important. Even as the lockdown measures begin to get phased out, the scale of the economic damage is unimaginable and the idea of returning to "business as usual" is no longer tenable. The last couple of months have had a severe impact not just on the economy, but on our societies and geopolitical reality too. These changes are most likely irreversible and we as citizens and as investors will have to be prepared to deal with this massive shift and all that it entails for a long time.

Amid the panic, the distractions and the hyperbole that are prevalent these days, my own daily task has been an effort to separate the signals from the noise. In order to do so, I've also reached out to the few people whose views and insights I have long found invaluable and who have prioritized critical thought and kept their principles intact throughout this crisis. Straight talk and direct answers are very hard to come by these days from most Western leaders and institutional figures, this is why I turned to Former President of the Czech Republic, Prof. Ing. Václav Klaus, who has long been a voice of reason and whose unique perspective is even more important now. In the interview that follows, he shares his views on the current crisis and on what's to come, in a succinct and resolute way and with a directness that is as rare and as it is essential in times like these.
Read More...
Attention

Best of the Web: Former Supreme Court judge Lord Sumption: Locking up the population until coronavirus is defeated is a cruel mockery of basic human values

Jonathan Sumption
Daily Mail
Sun, 03 May 2020 13:46 UTC
Leeds
Deserted Leeds city centre
COVID-19 is not the greatest crisis in our history. It is not even the greatest public health crisis in our history. But the lockdown is without doubt the greatest interference with personal liberty in our history.

It is normal at this point to add 'in peacetime'. But we can forget that. Even in wartime, we never confined the entire population to their homes, 24/7, if they did not have some excuse acceptable to a Minister.

States have always tried to confine people known to be carrying dangerous infections. But we live in a new world in which, if we are ill, the State will try to cure us. From this, it is said to follow that the State can take control of our lives against our will even if we are healthy, lest we fall ill and need its services too much.

Suddenly, it is our duty to save the NHS, not the other way round.

It is now pointless to object to the imposition of the lockdown in the first place. It has happened. The question is how we get out of it.

It is a pity that the Government did not ask itself that question when, in the blind panic following the delivery of Imperial College London's Professor Neil Ferguson's statistical projections, it legislated the lockdown on the hoof in a late-night press conference.

They now find themselves trapped by their own decisions.

Comment: See also: Ethics and Fundamental Values in Times of Corona

Read More...
Cardboard Box

UN rapporteur on torture 'scared to find out more about our democracies' after delving into Assange case


RT
Sun, 10 May 2020 02:33 UTC
Free Assange
Discovering that the cruelty visited on Julian Assange by Western democracies had been premeditated has heightened the fear of learning more about how those democracies operate, the UN's rapporteur on torture has admitted.

For years Nils Melzer has been researching on behalf of the UN just how vile and degrading the mistreatment of prisoners can become. But learning that states that are supposed to be champions of human rights can be as brutal as any other with people who cross them was quite a shock. The case that made Melzer reassess his beliefs is that of Julian Assange, who, he says, had signs of "prolonged psychological torture" while in the UK.

"First I was shocked that mature democracies could produce such an accident. Then I found out it was no accident. Now, I am scared to find out about our democracies..." the UN official tweeted on Sunday, marking a year since his visit to check on Assange at the UK's Belmarsh top security prison.

Read More...
Jet3

Russian Su-57 stealth jets fly unseen over US bases in Iraq and Syria


Fort Russ
Sun, 10 May 2020 02:28 UTC
Su-57s MAKS-2019 Russian jet
© Sputnik / Vladimir AstapkovichA pair of Su-57s take off at Zhukovsky airfield
Russian Su-57 stealth jets flew 'unseen' over several U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria, the Russian publication Avia.Pro reported last Sunday.

"The Russian Su-57 fighter managed to pass unnoticed over American military airbases in northern Iraq. The incident occurred during the last appearance of a fifth-generation Russian fighter in Syria - according to a source, the Russian combat aircraft flew on its own, and was not transported aboard the An-124," the publication said.

According to Avia.Pro's sources, since Turkey does not allow Russian combat jets over its territory, the Su-57 could only get to Iraqi airspace from Syria by flying over U.S. military installations.

"Given the likely route of the Russian Su-57 fighter, a combat aircraft flew through the air corridor, flying over at least three U.S. military bases in Iraq and another three military bases in Syria," the publication stated.
Read More...
Sherlock

An in-depth look behind the scenes of SouthFront censorship


SouthFront
Wed, 06 May 2020 21:57 UTC
msm, Nato, propganda, misinformation
The situation surrounding the censorship of SouthFront on Facebook has turned into a display of the stereotypical Big-tech super villain. Facebook has published a report justifying its actions, which is an egregious, textbook example of fake news. The report contains only disjointed accusations under the cover of meaningless words, and without a single example being presented. Special attention should be paid to the fact that in the full 29-page report, there are no mentions of SouthFront itself, besides the baseless accusations at its outset.

Furthermore, in order to label SouthFront as allegedly official Russian propaganda, Facebook first identifies another media site with a similar name, and then proceeds to emphasize the similarity of the brands. The name of this organization is "News Front", which indeed shares the word "Front" in its name, yet the similarities end there. News Front is an official Russian organization that is located in Crimea and publicly pursues an acute pro-Russian patriotic informational agenda for a Russian speaking audience.
In the case of News Front, to assert that the site is engaged in pushing fake news or disinformation is also nonsense. There are no hidden "trolls" infecting the weak minds of the citizens of Russia or other countries of the post-Soviet space through devious attempts to manipulate and mold their innermost perception. This is a regular Russian patriotic media site with a declared pro-Russian bias. Having a declared and obvious bias is not a crime in a democratic world.
As for the wider, global, non-Russian-speaking audience, News Front has a minimal presence. So why it was necessary to censor this Russian organization? The answer is now obvious, as described above.

The comparison of the audience of southfront.org and news-front.info by Alexa:
Read More...
Bug

"Contact Tracer" and "Disease Investigator" jobs spring up across the country

Daisy Luther
The Organic Prepper
Sat, 09 May 2020 00:00 UTC
covid spying
For those who may have lost their jobs during the lockdown, it appears a whole new sector of jobs is opening up across the country. Cities and states are seeking "contact tracers" and "disease investigators" to track down anyone who may have COVID-19 or anyone who may have come in contact with people diagnosed with COVID-19.

There are multiple job postings on Indeed.com, an employment-related search engine for job listings. Job titles include contact tracer, contact tracing supervisor, COVID-19 case investigator, and communicable disease investigator.

While some people find these positions to be necessary to public health, others find them invasive and meddlesome. One of the most worrisome things about this is what kind of power is held by the tracers and investigators. If they feel someone isn't quarantining properly, and they report that person, what happens next? Ventura County, California officials claimed they would remove people suffering from COVID from their homes if there was only one bathroom, a claim they've since walked back after public outrage ensued.
Ventura County officials were forced Wednesday to apologize and clarify that those who could not isolate or quarantine themselves would never be forcibly removed from their homes as part of an effort to further contain the spread of the coronavirus.

Video circulated on social media showed Dr. Robert Levin, the director of Ventura County Public Health, speaking before the board of supervisors Tuesday about a plan to hire up to 50 new "contact tracing investigators" to "find people who have COVID-19 and immediately isolate them, find every one of their contacts, make sure they stay quarantined and check in with them every day." (source)

Comment: See also:

Read More...