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Fri, 05 Nov 2021
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US police officer blows whistle on Covid-19 tyranny, urges fellow law enforcement to resist illegal, unconstitutional orders

Covid Police state resistance, Officer Anderson

He warns of bloodshed in the streets, that the American people will fight on their own soil to resist tyranny, by any means necessary.
Officer Anderson sends an important message to other law enforcement officers - urging them not to follow the illegal, unconstitutional orders given by local and state officials surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic. He appeals both to their sense of justice, of morality, and reminds them that the excuse of 'just following orders' is neither lawful nor correct.

Officers are urged not to follow illegal orders. Moreover, he recounts his experience as part of the U.S government occupational forces in Iraq. He recounts how in this operation, which he infers was also illegal, he experienced how people react to tyranny and occupation. He says that he knows that the vast majority of American police officers are not prepared for this level of resistance.

To be clear, he warns of bloodshed in the streets, that the American people will fight on their own soil to resist tyranny, by any means necessary.

Comment:


R2-D2

Obey! Robot 'dog' fitted with cameras to patrol Singapore parks to broadcast 'safe distancing' messages

Spot robot patrol Singapore
© GIN TAY
The robot is fitted with safety sensors to detect objects and people within 1m to avoid collision.
A four-legged robot will be patrolling Bishan-Ang Mo Kio Park to remind people of safe distancing measures starting from Friday (May 8).

Called Spot, the robot will assist with safe distancing efforts at parks, gardens and nature reserves managed by National Parks Board (NParks) and at parks managed by town councils.

The pilot trial is jointly conducted by NParks, and the Smart Nation and Digital Government Group (SNDGG).

The Spot robot will broadcast a recorded message reminding park visitors to observe safe distancing measures.

It is fitted with cameras, enabled by GovTech-developed video analytics, to help it estimate the number of visitors in the parks.

Comment: And don't make the mistake of thinking any of these measures are temporary....


Sheriff

Alabama cop caught on video body-slamming maskless woman in Walmart

Cop body slams Walmart customer
© YouTube/AL.com
An off-duty Alabama police officer was caught on camera body-slamming a woman in Walmart in an altercation that cops say began because she wasn't wearing a face mask.

Wild video posted by AL.com from the Tuesday incident in the Birmingham big-box store shows the cop placing the woman in handcuffs as she begins to walk away from him. The officer then grabs the woman, lifts her up and drops her to the floor face-first.

The Birmingham Police Department said it is investigating the use of force by the officer, who was off-duty and working a side gig as a security guard for the store.

The woman has not been identified but faces charges for disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, third-degree criminal trespassing, possession of marijuana and unlawful possession of a controlled substance.


Dollar

Record 103,415,000 not in US labor force; participation rate sinks to 47-year low

The nation's labor force participation rate reached a 47-year low of 60.2 percent in April, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as the number of people not in the labor force jumped by 6,570,000 to a record 103,415,000.

The participation rate has now dropped 2.5 percentage points since March, and it is the lowest it has been since the 60.0 percent recorded in January 1973.

As expected, because of government-mandated business closings, there was more bad news:

A record 103,415,000 Americans, roughly one-third of the population, were counted as "not in the labor force" in April, a gain of 6,570,000 in just one month. The previous record high for this number, swelled in part by retiring baby boomers, was 96,845,000 in March. (The labor force is made up of the employed and the unemployed. The remainder, those who have no job and are not looking for one, are counted as not in the labor force.)
Labor Force Statistical Chart
© Bureau of Labor and Statistics

Ambulance

Prominent Houthi leader Mohammed al-Hamran killed amid clashes in Yemen

Houthi rebels, Yemen flag
© AP Photo / Hani Mohammed
In this Thursday, April 16, 2015 photo, the shadow of Shiite rebels, known as Houthis, are cast on a large representation of the Yemeni flag as they attend a demonstration against an arms embargo imposed by the U.N. Security Council on Houthi leaders, in Sanaa, Yemen.
Ansarallah, the rebel Houthi movement in Yemen, confirmed on Thursday the death of Mohamed Abdel Karim al-Hamran, a special forces commander. He was killed in battle west of the hotly contested city of Ma'rib.

Al-Hamran, who commanded Houthi special forces in the battlezones of Ma'rib and Bayda' governorates in central Yemen, was the highest-ranking rebel leader killed this year.
A journalist with the Syrian news outlet Al-Masdar News reported Al-Hamran was actually killed several days ago in the city of Sirwah, a hotly contested town west of Ma'rib.

Comment:


Heart - Black

Horrific murder of teenage girl again puts spotlight on Afghanistan's 'honor' killings

young woman killed

The shocking death of a young woman in Afghanistan is the latest example of a so-called "honor" killing. (illustrative photo)
Afghan girls and women who have relationships with men outside marriage are often the target of brutal punishments -- including public floggings, prison, and even death.

One teenage girl who is believed to have broken that social norm paid the ultimate price this week when her brother killed her after she ran away from home with her boyfriend.

The shocking incident was just the latest case in Afghanistan of so-called "honor" killings: the murder of women for allegedly dishonoring the family, such as eloping with men or committing adultery.

Comment: There is no honor in killing a woman for such 'moral crimes' as these. The 'moral criminals' then are the ones carrying out these murders and abuses.


Clipboard

More than 100,000 people were wrongly told they were 'extremely vulnerable' to coronavirus and needed to self-isolate until the end of June

disturbing letter

More than 100,000 people have been wrongly told that they were 'extremely vulnerable' to coronavirus and needed to self-isolate until 30 June.
More than 100,000 people were wrongly told that they were 'extremely vulnerable' to coronavirus and needed to self-isolate until 30 June, it has been revealed.

The NHS and GPs were told by the Government in March to quickly highlight those deemed most at risk of becoming seriously ill from COVID-19.

Letters were sent to 2.16million people advising them to 'shield' themselves by not leaving their homes and minimising all face-to-face contact - even more stringently than the measures applied to everyone else.

Comment: Just another example of how the administration has cocked everything up from the get-go. Considering the entire justification for the lockdown has been shown to be a complete disaster, no one should have received these letters.


Laptop

Bad coding: Code review of Neil Ferguson's model

Neil Ferguson
© Wikipedia/Marshaj2020 102
"Professor Lockdown" Neil Ferguson
Imperial finally released a derivative of Ferguson's code. I figured I'd do a review of it and send you some of the things I noticed. I don't know your background so apologies if some of this is pitched at the wrong level.

My background
I wrote software for 30 years. I worked at Google between 2006 and 2014, where I was a senior software engineer working on Maps, Gmail and account security. I spent the last five years at a US/UK firm where I designed the company's database product, amongst other jobs and projects. I was also an independent consultant for a couple of years. Obviously I'm giving only my own professional opinion and not speaking for my current employer.

The code
It isn't the code Ferguson ran to produce his famous Report 9. What's been released on GitHub is a heavily modified derivative of it, after having been upgraded for over a month by a team from Microsoft and others. This revised codebase is split into multiple files for legibility and written in C++, whereas the original program was "a single 15,000 line file that had been worked on for a decade" (this is considered extremely poor practice). A request for the original code was made 8 days ago but ignored, and it will probably take some kind of legal compulsion to make them release it. Clearly, Imperial are too embarrassed by the state of it ever to release it of their own free will, which is unacceptable given that it was paid for by the taxpayer and belongs to them.

Comment: So the computer code that generated the model used to justify the lockdown is so flawed it's beyond salvageable. Let that sink in. One wonders if Ferguson's ousting, blamed on his breaking quarantine for a tryst, is actually due to the fact that his incompetence is coming to light. This has the potential to make a lot of people in the general public very angry.

See also:


Bug

Peer Review Vs Trial By Twitter

Trail By Twitter
© Unknown
This past week has seen some unedifying academic-on-academic hostility on Twitter, with a storm of haughty criticism being whipped up in response to publication in the journal Alternatives of a paper by Dr David A. Hughes. Perhaps because I know first hand what it feels like to be publicly smeared for touching on inconvenient questions, I have felt impelled to speak out against this intimidatory conduct.

Hughes' paper tackles a taboo subject, one which has been at the centre of a great deal of conspiracy theorizing, much of it preposterous. What he nevertheless aims to show is that there are also reasonable questions to be asked about the subject; and he wants to understand why these have been lumped together with the foolish ones in a blanket dismissal by other scholars in the field of International Relations (IR).

Comment: WTC 7 NOT destroyed by fire on 9/11, concludes final University of Alaska Fairbanks report, formal "request for correction" will be made of Gov't


Attention

COVID19: Are ventilators killing people?

doctor with ventilator
Since the coronavirus first jumped so dramatically from China to Italy, most of the talk in the Western world has been about whether or not our healthcare services will be able to cope with the predicted tidal wave of patients.

A tsunami of human suffering was predicted which, weeks later, is yet to materialise. The NHS built a new 4000-bed emergency hospital, the Nightingale Centre...which was barely used and is now being shut down. In the US field hospitals were erected, left standing empty for a few days, and then taken down.

Most specifically, in the early days, almost all the talk was about ventilators. Did we have enough? Could we get more? Should we 3D print our own? Do we need car companies and arms dealers re-tool their factories to make more?

This media narrative never fit with the real science of the situation.

Many doctors have since come forward to say that mechanical ventilation is not only inappropriate for those with respiratory infections, but that it is being seriously over-used for Covid patients, and that it may be doing more harm than good.

Comment: See also: