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Gates unhinged: Dystopian vision for the future of food

Colin Todhunter
OffGuardian
Mon, 19 Apr 2021 07:40 UTC
bill gates farmland
We are currently seeing an acceleration of the corporate consolidation of the entire global agrifood chain. The high-tech/data conglomerates, including Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook and Google, have joined traditional agribusiness giants, such as Corteva, Bayer, Cargill and Syngenta, in a quest to impose a certain type of agriculture and food production on the world.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is also involved (documented in the recent report 'Gates to a Global Empire' by Navdanya International), whether through buying up huge tracts of farmland, promoting a much-heralded (but failed) 'green revolution' for Africa, pushing biosynthetic food and new genetic engineering technologies or more generally facilitating the aims of the mega agrifood corporations.

Of course, those involved in this portray what they are doing as some kind of humanitarian endeavour - saving the planet with 'climate-friendly solutions', helping farmers or feeding the world. This is how many of them probably do genuinely regard their role inside their corporate echo chamber. But what they are really doing is repackaging the dispossessive strategies of imperialism as 'feeding the world'.
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Light Saber

Ontario walks back new pandemic police powers following widespread backlash

Colin Perkel
CTV News
Sat, 17 Apr 2021 14:25 UTC
toronto police
Ontario reversed course on sweeping new police powers Saturday, just one day after Premier Doug Ford announced the measures that triggered a swift and furious backlash.

Officers will no longer have the right to stop any pedestrian or driver to ask why they're out or request their home address, Solicitor General Sylvia Jones said in a written statement on Saturday evening.

Instead, she said, police will only be able to stop people who they have reason to believe are participating in an "organized public event or social gathering."

As the number of people infected with COVID-19 in hospital reached record levels, Ford tweeted that another of the measures would also be reversed.

"Ontario's enhanced restrictions were always intended to stop large gatherings where spread can happen," Ford said. "Our regulations will be amended to allow playgrounds, but gatherings outside will still be enforced."

Comment: See also:

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Pistol

Daunte Wright had a warrant out for his arrest when he was killed

Martin Gould and Ruth Styles
The Daily Mail
Tue, 13 Apr 2021 21:32 UTC
Daunte Wright

Daunte Wright had been arrested on attempted aggravated robbery charges after allegedly holding a woman at gunpoint for $820 in December 2019
Daunte Wright choked a woman and threatened to shoot her if she did not hand over $820 she had stuffed in her bra, court papers obtained by DailyMail.com allege.

Wright was shot and killed by police officer Kimberly Potter in Minnesota on Sunday, leading to days of unrest.

Court records also show that a warrant was out for Wright's arrest after he missed a court appearance on separate firearms charges at the time he was killed.

And online speculation that he did not know there was a warrant out for his arrest is false, DailyMail.com has learned. A letter returned to the court for having a wrong address was giving notice of a court date in August and had nothing to do with the warrant.

Wright, 20, was shot dead in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota on Sunday by Potter, 48, a 26-year veteran in the Brooklyn Center Police Department.

Comment: National guard deployed to Minneapolis suburb to quell riots following police shooting UPDATE

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Black Magic

Scottish police recording male rape suspects as female if they say they're female, FOIA reveals


RT
Sun, 18 Apr 2021 13:37 UTC
Everard protest london
© REUTERS / Henry Nicholls
FILE PHOTO. Protest in the aftermath of the kidnap and murder of Sarah Everard in London.
Transgender women suspected of sexual crimes are recorded as female by Police Scotland, even if they didn't legally change their sex. Critics say the practice deceives the public about crime prevalence.

As the Scottish government is considering ways to make it easier than ever for people to change their legal sex, skeptics say the drive to embrace trans rights is often going in the wrong direction. One latest example is the way Police Scotland records suspects' self-identified gender rather than biological sex, even when the alleged crime in question is rape.

UK law defines rape as penetration of the vagina, anus or month with a penis without the victim's consent. When such an act is committed or attempted by "a male who self-identifies as a woman," Police Scotland would register this as a rape or attempted rape, but the alleged perpetrator would be "recorded as a female on relevant police systems." The law enforcement agency said this in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. "Male" in this case means "a person who does not have a gender recognition certificate and has not changed their legal sex," as per the request.


Comment: If the police are so proud of their 'progressive' behaviour, why did it take a FOIA to find this out?


Comment: See also:

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Broom

Unused Covid vaccines piling up across US as those rejecting offer increase - Bloomberg


Bloomberg Law
Thu, 15 Apr 2021 17:59 UTC
vaccine US
© Photo Illustration: Jonathan Hurtarte/Bloomberg Law; Photos: Getty Images
Many U.S. states and cities have a growing surplus of Covid-19 vaccines, a sign that in some places demand is slowing before a large percentage of the population has been inoculated, according to an analysis by Bloomberg News.

The data indicate as many as one in three doses are unused in some states. Appointments for shots often go untaken, with few people signing up.

Bloomberg analyzed state and U.S. data from Monday, providing a snapshot of vaccine use before Johnson & Johnson shelved millions of shots pending federal health officials' investigation into rare cases of blood clots. That pause will likely cause the number of unused shots to fluctuate, but will little change the comparisons of states.


Comment: The EU's AstraZeneca vaccine was also suspended in numerous countries after causing life-threatening bloodclots.


Comment: It would appear that much of the planet are rejecting the experimental vaccines:

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Propaganda

CBS News slammed for cropping bodycam footage to hide Adam Toledo holding gun before fatal shooting

Joseph Wulfsohn
Fox News
Fri, 16 Apr 2021 19:38 UTC
adam toledo body cam gun
© Chicago Police Department
CBS is accused of intentionally editing out the part of the bodycam footage that shows a gun in Toledo’s hand
CBS News is facing heat over a video the network shared on Twitter Thursday that critics say crops out a critical part of body camera footage showing the police chase that led to 13-year-old Adam Toledo's death in Chicago last month.

Extremely graphic footage shows a Chicago police officer pulling up to a location on the city's West Side on March 29 and immediately encountering two people, one of whom appears to be Toledo, running away from the area.

Toledo stops for a moment before he turns toward the officer, at which point the cop tells him to, "Show me your f------ hands."

Toledo appears to have his hands up when he is shot once in the chest. He ultimately died from his injuries.

Also shown in the footage is a brief glimpse of Toledo holding a gun, which he apparently discarded an instant before the fatal shot was fired.

Comment: From RT on the protests the shooting ignited:
Although the protest appeared to be mostly peaceful, independent videographer Brendan Gutenschwager captured scuffles between protesters and Chicago PD at Logan Square Park, shortly after 10pm local time.


Hundreds of protesters marched through Chicago on Thursday, chanting "Say his name, Adam Toledo!" and "CPD, KKK, how many kids did you kill today?"


Also among the chants were "Hands up, don't shoot!" and "Fire fire, gentrifier. Black people used to live here!" Marching through the neighborhood where the mayor lives, the demonstrators changed "Hey hey, ho ho, Lori Lightfoot's got to go!"

Friday's demonstrations follow the release of body camera footage on Thursday, showing a Chicago PD officer fatally shooting the teen on March 29. Toledo had just dropped a handgun behind a fence, after being pursued by officers.

"We understand that the release of this video will be incredibly painful and elicit an emotional response to all who view it, and we ask that people express themselves peacefully," Lightfoot said in a joint statement with the lawyers for Toledo's family.


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Pistol

The US has reported at least 45 mass shootings in the last month

Madeline Holcombe
CNN
Fri, 16 Apr 2021 18:13 UTC
Virginia Beach police work the scene of a shooting.

Virginia Beach police work the scene of a shooting.
When eight people died in a mass shooting at an Indianapolis FedEx facility Thursday night, the news was compounded by a string of similar incidents that preceded it.

Starting on March 16, when eight people were killed at three Atlanta-area spas, the US has had at least 45 mass shootings, according to CNN reporting and an analysis of data from the Gun Violence Archive (GVA), local media, and police reports.

The US has seen at least 147 mass shootings in 2021, according to data from the GVA, a non-profit based in Washington.

CNN considers an incident to be a mass shooting if four or more people are shot, wounded, or killed, excluding the gunman; so does the GVA.

Here are the 45 incidents reported since March 16.
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Quenelle

Bill Maher hits Democrats for anti-science COVID-19 beliefs, gets audience to applaud Ron DeSantis

Eric Quintanar
The Daily Wire
Sat, 17 Apr 2021 00:00 UTC
Bill Maher
© Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images
Bill Maher
HBO's Real Time host Bill Maher called out the media, health officials, and the government in his closing monologue late Friday, accusing them of taking a "scared straight" approach to informing Americans about COVID-19 instead of simply giving "it to me straight."

The liberal Real Time host cited a Dartmouth University study, showing that major media networks in the United States reported nearly 90% bad news. Maher said that, as a result of spin from the media, politicians, and health officials, many Americans have been drastically misinformed about the pandemic and the risks associated with it.

After taking a shot at Republicans — saying that one-third of Republicans in a recent poll didn't know that people can spread COVID-19 while asymptomatic — Maher took aim at liberals, whom he referred to jokingly as the "high-information, by-the-science people."


Comment: Some folks are so enamored with their belief systems even an informed celebrity can't 'Maher' the view.

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Pistol

The United States is at risk of an armed anti-police insurgency

Temitope Oriola
The Conversation
Thu, 15 Apr 2021 05:51 UTC
LA Floyd riot
© Wire/AP
Los Angeles: National Guard called to quell violence in protest of death of George Floyd.
The killings of African Americans at the hands of police officers has continued unabated in the United States. In the past year, the deaths of Breonna Taylor in her bed and George Floyd by public asphyxiation are two of the most egregious.

As the officer who knelt on Floyd's neck was being tried for the killing in court, another officer shot and killed Daunte Wright.

Scholarly research has begun to document the traumatic consequences of police killings on African Americans. One study finds the effects on Black males meet the "criteria for trauma exposure," based on the latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, used for psychiatric diagnoses.

Besides police use of force in North America, one of the trajectories of my research focuses on armed insurgency in sub-Saharan Africa. I am beginning to observe in the U.S. some of the social conditions necessary for the maturation and rise of an armed insurgency. The U.S. is at risk of armed insurgencies within the next five years if the current wave of killings of unarmed Black people continues.

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Ambulance

51 killed in Taiwan's deadliest rail disaster


Express & Star
Fri, 02 Apr 2021 18:04 UTC
train
The crash occurred near the Toroko Gorge scenic area on the first day of a long holiday weekend.

A train collided with an unmanned vehicle that had rolled down a hill on Friday in eastern Taiwan, leaving at least 51 people dead and dozens injured in the island's deadliest rail disaster.

Some survivors were forced to climb out of windows and walk along the train's roof to safety.

The crash occurred near the Toroko Gorge scenic area on the first day of a long holiday weekend when many people were using trains on Taiwan's extensive rail system. The train had been carrying more than 400 people.

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