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Iranian supreme leader's advisory council member dies of coronavirus, Italian Lombardy govt to be screened, first case pops up in Russia


RT
Mon, 02 Mar 2020 17:23 UTC
Seyyed Mohammad Mirmohammadi
© Wikimedia Commons
Seyyed Mohammad Mirmohammadi, a long-standing member of the Islamic Republic of Iran's Expediency Discernment Council, has reportedly died from a novel coronavirus infection.

He was being treated at the Masih Daneshvari Hospital in Tehran when he succumbed to the Covid-19 infection at the age of 71. Mirmohammadi's mother, sister of senior cleric Ayatollah Shobeiri Zanjani, also died from a coronavirus infection on Monday.

Mirmohammadi was a member of the sixth and seventh Iranian parliaments and was appointed by Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei as a member of the Expediency Discernment Council in August 2017.

Iran's former ambassador to the Vatican, Hadi Khosroshahi, died of Covid-19 last week, while the country's Deputy Health Minister Iraj Harirchi placed himself in isolation after appearing to sweat profusely and seeming ill while giving a press conference to assuage fears over the outbreak. He later confirmed that he had been infected with the virus.

Iran is battling shortages of medical supplies - exacerbated by US sanctions - but authorities have allocated a number of military hospitals to treat the general public and help stem the tide of infection. Meanwhile, schools, universities and sports centers have been closed and the parliament has been shut down.

Comment: After a regional councilor tested positive in Lombardy, Italy, the entire local government in the region will now be screened for the virus:
Lombardy's regional governor, Attilio Fontana, has reportedly quarantined himself after his government councilor for economic development was found to be carrying the virus. All members of the local government will now be required to be tested for the illness. Necessary procedures keeping with established protocols will be activated, depending on the results, the regional government said in a statement.

Italy is among several European states struggling to contain the virus. As of Monday, the country has confirmed 1,694 cases, with the death toll at 34, according to reports. An estimated 90 percent of the 1,694 cases in Italy are concentrated in the northern regions of Lombardy, Veneto, and Emilia Romagna.
Russia also saw its first coronavirus case on home soil, from a Russian who caught it in Italy:
The case concerns a young Russian citizen who fell sick on vacation in Italy. He flew back to Russia on February 23, and a few days later went to a clinic in Moscow Region with symptoms of an acute respiratory viral infection, which was initially believed to be SARS. Subsequently, he was hospitalized in an infectious diseases hospital. His situation is currently described as stable.

The man is the fourth known Russian national to be infected, but the first inside the country. Two Chinese citizens diagnosed in Siberia in February have since recovered and been discharged. Three Russians fell ill with Covid-19 on the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Japan, and were later evacuated. Also on Monday, it was reported that a foreign citizen who transited through a Moscow airport from Iran to China, on an Aeroflot flight, had been found to have the disease.
In response, Russian medical authorities have hospitalized and quarantined several people who have been in contact with the man:
Within 24 hours of the first signs on Friday that the man might be infected, a full list of his recent contacts was established, including relatives, friends, acquaintances and the passengers who were on the same flight from Italy as him, Sobyanin said in a statement. "Six relatives and five acquaintances of the patient were hospitalized. From the passengers of the flight [from Italy], 13 people were hospitalized, 83 people were quarantined."


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Attention

Fierce clashes, tear gas at border as Greece vows to 'turn back' flow of migrants from Turkey


RT
Sun, 01 Mar 2020 22:05 UTC
Migrant
© Reuters / Alexandros Avramidis
A hooded migrant prepares to throw a stone at a Greek riot police officer, in Kastanies, Greece on March 1, 2020.
Athens vowed to turn back migrants coming in droves from Turkey, announcing maximum "deterrence" at the border. Thousands are trying get into the EU after Ankara declared its border "open," but were met with tear gas.

For the second day in a row, the Greek border is being besieged by thousands of migrants trying to get into the EU. While some braved the waters in small dinghies to land on Greek islands, large crowds gathered at land border crossings only to be turned away.

"When I heard that the borders opened, I have come from Afghanistan to Turkey. Turkey border is open but Greece borders are closed," one migrant told RT's Ruptly video agency.

Some migrants attempted to sneak in, cutting through the border fence erected by Greece after the 2015 migrant crisis, while others tried to force their way in. Footage from the scene shows migrants trying to break through the border crossings, pelting Greek police with stones and setting objects on fire. Police responded with tear gas.
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NPC

Soft totalitarianism: College professor reflects on childhood in Soviet Union as she observes effects of identity politics in US academia

Victor
The Duran
Sun, 01 Mar 2020 00:00 UTC
Russian girl
I'm in the editing and rewriting stage of Live Not By Lies now, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to talk yesterday with a woman I'll call "Clarissa," whose stories were so good that I'm weaving them into the book's narrative. Clarissa is a college professor who emigrated to the US from Russia as a young woman, a few years after the fall of the Soviet Union.

She is yet another ex-Soviet bloc person who is extremely anxious about the emergence of soft totalitarianism here. Of course she can't use her real name, because she fears professional retaliation. It should tell us something that not a single academic from a former communist country that I interviewed for this book was willing to speak using their own name — this, in the Land of the Free. Why not? Because they were afraid of facing professional consequences for speaking out against identity politics and the "social justice" regime. Below, some quotes from our interview:

Comment: See also:

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Roses

Unfadable courage: Putin, Shoigu commemorate paratroopers who heroically died in battle against extremists in Chechnya two decades ago


RT
Sun, 01 Mar 2020 20:30 UTC
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Defense Minsiter Sergey Shoigu
© Sputnik / Aleksey Nikolskyi
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Defense Minsiter Sergey Shoigu lay flowers to the monument to Pskov paratroopers heroically died in Chechya in 2000, in Pskov, Russia, on March 1, 2020.
Twenty years after heroic but vastly outnumbered Russian paratroopers bravely battled jihadist forces in Chechnya, President Vladimir Putin and Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu have honored the fallen.

"Today... we commemorate the brave paratroopers, pay tribute to their courage and their heroic deed," Putin said as he reviewed the troops of the Pskov Airborne Division. He and Shoigu arrived in the northwestern Russian city of Pskov, the hometown of Russia's oldest and most elite airborne division, to lay flowers at a memorial for those who fell in Moscow's second anti-terrorism campaign in the early 2000s.
They stood in the way of hundreds of militants and entered their last battle as true heroes, staying true to the best traditions of their brothers-in-arms that are held dear by all generations of airborne troops.
The president also attended a memorial service in memory of the paratroopers at the local St. George's church and met with their relatives.



Comment: And who was largely responsible for trying to destabilize Russia via Chechen proxy terror forces? Why the US of course!

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Briefcase

Verizon warns shareholders AGAIN about personal injury and death lawsuits from wireless radiation health effects

BN Frank
Activist Post
Sat, 29 Feb 2020 00:00 UTC
Verizon 5g lawsuits
Straight from the horse's mouth! Thanks to 5G Crisis for including this information - as well as the link - on their website.

When the wireless companies themselves admit that their products could pose significant dangers to the public, you know we have a problem on our hands.
In its annual SEC 10-K filing published on February 21st, 2020, Verizon announced to its shareholders the following: "We are subject to a significant amount of litigation, which could require us to pay significant damages or settlements...In addition, our wireless business also faces personal injury and wrongful death lawsuits relating to alleged health effects of wireless phones or radio frequency transmitters. We may incur significant expenses in defending these lawsuits. In addition, we may be required to pay significant awards or settlements." Read the full report here. (See page 17)
The New York Patriots may be interested in this because in November Verizon turned on 5G in their football stadium and the team's captain reported that he had never seen so much illness among players. In fact, Verizon has turned 5G on all across the U.S. including at a Cleveland, Ohio school.

Comment: See: UN staffer warns that 5G is a 'war on humanity'

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Megaphone

Slovakia's center-right party ousts leftwing, a "victory of rightwing conservative populism" - analyst


The Guardian
Sun, 01 Mar 2020 15:31 UTC
slovakia Matovic
© David W Černý/Reuters
Igor Matovic claims victory after his exit polls showed his OLaNO party won 25.8% of the vote in Slovakia's general election.
A centre-right opposition party focused on rooting out corruption is on course to form Slovakia's next government after voters ousted the governing leftwing party in a general election marked by a backlash over the 2018 murder of a journalist investigating corruption in the eurozone state.

Vowing to push through anti-corruption measures in the judiciary and police, Igor Matovič, the leader of the winning OLaNO party, galvanised voter outrage over the murder of journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancee, and the high-level graft their deaths exposed.

The killings - allegedly a hit ordered by an executive with connections to politicians - triggered the largest anti-government protests since communist times and led to the toppling in 2108 of the powerful head of the populist-left Smer-Social Democracy (Smer-SD), Robert Fico, as prime minister.

Comment: Populist parties continue to make serious gains throughout Europe: And check out SOTT radio's: NewsReal: Populism Explained

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Bad Guys

3 Sputnik employees in Turkey detained - UPDATE: Journalists questioned & cleared by prosecutors, OSCE condemns incident


RT
Sat, 29 Feb 2020 01:08 UTC
Sputnik
© Sputnik / Alexandr Kryazhev
Groups of people descended on homes of three Russia's Sputnik agency staffers in Ankara, Turkey, chanting "Turkey for the Turks" and accusing journalists of treason for working for Moscow, RT Editor-in-Chief reported on Twitter.

What appears to be a coordinated attack on Sputnik employees in the Turkish capital was first reported by Margarita Simonyan, RT and Sputnik's Editor-in-Chief on Saturday, and later confirmed by the agency itself.

Simonyan tweeted that three separate groups, each numbering about 10 hooligans, swooped on the flats of three agency's employees, hurling threats and accusing them of betraying their homeland, Turkey, for doing journalistic work for the Russian outlet.

"They were shouting: 'Turkey for the Turks!' 'Traitors!' and 'Russian spies!'", Simonyan tweeted, comparing the raids to the pogroms against ethnic Armenians by Turks in the Ottoman Empire.

Comment: An update this morning from RT:
Three employees of the Turkish branch of Sputnik News, whose apartments were attacked by Turkish nationalists on Saturday night, have been missing since going to file complaints about the incident to Turkish police.

"We have not been able to contact our employees in Ankara for nine hours now," Margarita Simonyan, the editor-in-chief of RT and Sputnik, said in a tweet on Sunday morning.
Following denials by Turkish police of the whereabouts of these journalists, they were eventually found at Ankara's hall of justice where they were questioned by prosecutors and found to not be involved in any wrongdoing. Turkish media indicated that the reason behind the arrests was an article focused on the Turkish province of Hatay, which has long been disputed by Syria.

Questions arose as to just how these thugs knew of the names and home addresses of these journalists.

Moscow had this to say about the incident:
Moscow said the incident and the suspected detention of the victims by the police constitute a gross attack on the freedom of journalists. "We call on the Turkish authorities to intervene, provide safety to employees of the Russian media and ensure that all circumstances are clarified," the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
The OSCE condemned the harassment of Russian agency journalists in Turkey.
Sputnik parent organization Rossiya Segodnya appealed to the UN, OSCE, and UNESCO to draw their attention to the case.

Harlem Desir, the OSCE representative on freedom of the media, condemned the harassment and suspected detention. "I urge the authorities to ensure the safety of foreign correspondents," he tweeted.
RT provides more detail on the incident:
Shortly after their release, Mahir Boztepe, the head of Sputnik's Turkish branch, was freed from police custody as well. The journalist was briefly detained amid searches of Sputnik's Istanbul office.

The Sputnik employees were released shortly after Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had a phone call with his Turkish counterpart, Mevlut Cavusoglu. The top diplomat urged Ankara to "swiftly resolve" the situation with the journalists and called upon the authorities to ensure their safety.

The harassment of the Sputnik journalists has been condemned by seven Turkish journalist associations, as well as by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Harlem Desir, the OSCE representative on freedom of the media, urged Ankara to "ensure the safety of foreign correspondents," and raised concerns over reports linking the detention to a Sputnik article.


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People 2

Woman who claims she was rushed into taking 'experimental' puberty-blocking drugs at 16 wins right to take NHS gender clinic to court in landmark case

Sophie Law
Daily Mail
Sun, 01 Mar 2020 15:48 UTC
Keira Bell 1

Keira Bell, 23, (pictured outside the Royal Courts of Justice in January) started gender reassignment at the clinic when she was just 16 after she felt suicidal and asked to be called by a boy's name at school
A woman who claims she was given 'experimental' puberty-blocking drugs at 16 without being warned of the consequences is set to lead as a witness in a landmark case.

The Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust, which runs the UK's first gender clinic in London, is being sued over concerns it gave powerful drugs to children as young as 12 without proper consent.

Keira Bell, 23, started gender reassignment at the clinic when she was a teenager after she felt suicidal and asked to be called by a boy's name at school.

She was prescribed hormone blockers to halt the development of her female body after just three one-hour appointments.

But Ms Bell has now stopped transitioning and argues staff did not challenge her want to become a teenage boy.

Comment: See also:

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Stormtrooper

Chicago police shoot man at grand-state red line station after he was moving between cars


CBS
Sat, 29 Feb 2020 04:00 UTC
chicago police shooting
© Twitter
The officer with her back to the camera has just drawn her gun. Seconds later, a shot is fired and the suspect runs up the escalator.
Chicago police shot a man Friday afternoon during a struggle at the Grand station on the CTA Red Line, after the officers tried to stop the man from moving between train cars. Video of the incident was posted on social media.

Deputy Police Supt. Barb West on Friday night said the officers were assigned to the mass transit unit and observed the man improperly moving between train cars, which is against city ordinance. They engaged with the suspect on the platform when the struggle ensued. The shooting is being investigated by the Civilian Office of Police Accountability and the Cook County State's Attorney.

"Due to the criminal nature of this incident, we have asked the state's attorney to respond," West said.

The officers have been placed on administrative duties. Interim Supt. Charlie Beck has been briefed and was decribed as "extremely concerned" about the incident. "We are conducting concurrent administrative and criminal investigations," West said.

Comment: See also:

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Health

France's Louvre closed over coronavirus concerns, leaving blindsided visitors freezing outside


RT
Sun, 01 Mar 2020 23:46 UTC
louvre
© REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes
France's Louvre unexpectedly kept its doors shut on Sunday, saying management is discussing the Covid-19 situation. The Twitterati were amused, unlike hundreds of people freezing in the street instead of gazing at the Mona Lisa.

To be fair to the museum, they were themselves apparently caught off guard by "ministerial instructions transmitted by the competent authorities," as a statement explained, prompting the museum to remain closed on Sunday. Three hours after the announcement, the museum said that it would not open at all on March 1, and left people in the dark regarding Monday.
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