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Orwellian: Canada moves to ban 'hate speech' online, punishable by a $50,000 fine

trudeau smirk
© USMCA
Last week, Canada's Liberal Party headed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau proposed new legislation to criminalize "hate speech" online, punishable by a $50,000 fine (roughly $40,000 U.S.D.), paid to the government. Government officials, including the attorney general and the minister of public safety, announced the new bill on Wednesday.

"Canadians expect their government to take action against hate speech and hate crimes. These legislative changes would improve the remedies available to victims of hate speech and hate crimes, and would hold individuals accountable. The actions we are taking today will help protect the vulnerable, empower those who are victimized and hold individuals to account for the hatred they spread online," David Lametti, minister of justice and attorney general, said in a statement.

Lametti introduced amendments to Canada's Criminal Code, the Canadian Human Rights Act, and the Youth Criminal Justice Act. Lametti and his allies justified their Orwellian move by claiming that "hate speech" online can turn into "offline hate."

Comment: See also:


No Entry

Ohio private school students denied reenrollment after moms' 'inflammatory' campaign against 'indoctrination'

columbus academy moms
Columbus Academy moms led campaign against purported attempt to 'indoctrinate' students with left-wing ideas.

An Ohio private school is denying reenrollment to several students, alleging that their mothers breached part of their contract by leading a public campaign against the school's purported attempt to "indoctrinate" students with left-wing ideas.

The decision capped off months of efforts by parents Andrea Gross and Amy Gonzalez to probe Columbus Academy's (CA) activities, which allegedly included divisive concepts about race and anti-conservative sentiment.

Fox News has obtained copies of the school's letters notifying Gross and Gonzalez, who lead the Pro-CA Coalition, of the decision. The school, which includes pre-K through 12th grade students, effectively expelled two of Gross' children and one of Gonzalez's. According to the moms, their coalition includes hundreds of other CA parents who are also concerned about recent changes to school materials.

Laptop

"Colossal": Latest ransomware attack hits hundreds of American businesses - UPDATE: 800 grocery stores in Sweden unable to open

cybersecurity attack
© Ritchie B Tongo/EPAGuardian staff and agencies
Supply chain attacks have crept to the top of the cybersecurity agenda.
Hundreds of American businesses have been hit by a ransomware attack ahead of the Fourth of July holiday weekend, according to the cybersecurity company Huntress Labs.

Huntress Labs said on Friday that 200 American businesses were hit after an incident at the Miami-based IT firm Kaseya, potentially marking the latest in a line of hacks destabilizing US companies.

"This is a colossal and devastating supply chain attack," John Hammond, a senior security researcher with Huntress, said in an email, referring to an increasingly high profile hacker technique of hijacking one piece of software to compromise hundreds or thousands of users at a time.

Comment: UPDATE: 3rd July 2021 @ 23:02 CET

The Guardian reports:
In Sweden, most of the grocery chain Coop's 800 stores were unable to open because cash registers weren't working, according to the public broadcaster. State railways and a major pharmacy chain were also affected.

The privately held Kaseya is based in Dublin with a US headquarters in Miami.

[...]

The Brazil-based meat company said it paid the equivalent of a $11m ransom to the hackers, escalating calls by US law enforcement to bring such groups to justice.

Kaseya's chief executive, Fred Voccola, said the company believed it had identified the source of the vulnerability and would "release that patch as quickly as possible to get our customers back up and running".

John Hammond of the security firm Huntress Labs said he was aware of a number of managed-services providers - companies that host IT infrastructure - being hit by the ransomware, which encrypts networks until the victims pay off attackers.

"It's reasonable to think this could potentially be impacting thousands of small businesses," said Hammond.

Voccola said fewer than 40 Kaseya customers were known to be affected, but the ransomware could still be affecting hundreds more companies that rely on Kaseya clients that provide broader IT services.

Voccola said the problem was only affecting "on-premise" customers, organizations running their own data centers. It was not affecting cloud-based services running software for customers, though Kaseya shut down those servers as a precaution, he said.

The company said "customers who experienced ransomware and receive a communication from the attackers should not click on any links - they may be weaponised".

A Gartner analyst, Katell Thielemann, said it was clear Kaseya "reacted with an abundance of caution. But the reality of this event is it was architected for maximum impact, combining a supply chain attack with a ransomware attack."

Supply chain attacks infiltrate widely used software and spread malware as it updates automatically. Complicating the response this time is that the Kaseya attack happened at the start of a major holiday weekend in the US, when most corporate IT teams are not fully staffed.

That could leave organizations unable to address other security vulnerabilities, such as a dangerous Microsoft bug affecting software for print jobs, said James Shank, a threat intelligence analyst.

"Customers of Kaseya are in the worst possible situation," he said. "They're racing against time to get the updates out on other critical bugs."

Shank said "it's reasonable to think that the timing was planned" for the holiday.



2 + 2 = 4

Largest teachers union to debate demanding vaccinations before returning in person

school social distancing
The National Education Association will debate whether to demand mandating COVID-19 vaccines for all students and staff returning to school in person this fall, a polarizing move that would apply to 3 million teachers.

"The NEA will call for mandatory safe and effective COVID-19 vaccinations and testing for all students and staff before returning to face-to-face instruction in the fall, subject to medical exceptions in accordance with existing law," according to the organization's annual meeting agenda.

Federal regulators have only authorized a single vaccine, the two-dose Pfizer vaccine, for children 12 through 15. The Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines, with two shots and one shot, respectively, have been authorized for adults 18 and older. Moderna has already announced its vaccine is 100% effective in protecting children 12 through 17 against infection. Trial results also showed an efficacy of 93% after just one dose. Johnson & Johnson has also begun similar trials in children in the same age range.

The Pfizer vaccine, meanwhile, was granted emergency use authorization to be administered to children on May 10, after a study of more than 2,200 young people found that the shots were 100% efficacious and produced a "robust antibody response."

Comment: Let the lawsuits begin! Any such mandatory orders will likely conflict with those states like Florida who have banned mandatory vaccination efforts. Then it will be a battle of wills, in the courtrooms largely, which could just mean that major employers will have to pay major fines, while keeping their mandatory vaccine policies in place. The Borg is not so easy to escape.


Heart - Black

Hundreds protest in Istanbul as Erdogan withdraws Turkey from international treaty protecting women's rights

Erdogan/protesters
© sputniknews.com/Erdem Sahin/EPA
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan • Women of Turkey protest treaty withdrawal
Protesters have taken to the streets across Turkey to express their outrage over President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's move to quit the Istanbul Convention - a treaty offering protection against domestic violence.

Crowds of hundreds, mainly women, marched in central Istanbul on Thursday. Activists and members of various NGOs, as well as representatives of the LGBTQ+ and feminist communities were seen chanting, drumming, and carrying banners opposing Ankara's withdrawal from the international treaty.

Protesters carried banners reading: "We will not be silenced, we will not fear, we will not bow down" and "We are not giving up on the Istanbul Convention," and law enforcement intervened with a heavy-handed response. Officers in riot gear tried to clear the streets and set up barriers, while demonstrators attempted to break through them, footage from RT's video agency Ruptly shows.

"I am a woman and I want to live freely in this country, without being subjected to violence," one protester told Ruptly, adding that activists "will not give up our struggle" against the withdrawal from the treaty.

"We fight for ourselves, react and do not remain silent. This cruelty will not end if we remain silent," another protester said. There were smaller protests seen in other Turkish cities, including Izmir.

Dollars

Three people in Norway receive compensation after AstraZeneca vaccination due to serious side effects

AstraZeneca
© Bloomberg/Mikael Sjoberg
Three claimants have been granted compensation by the Norwegian Patient Injury Compensation (NPE) due to serious side effects after the AstraZeneca vaccine. The three are the first to be upheld for vaccine-related injuries in connection with the COVID-19 pandemic in Norway, NPE stated.

All three received the AstraZeneca vaccine, which was later removed from the Norwegian vaccination program due to several cases of severe blood clots, low platelets, and bleeding.

One case concerns a woman in her 40s who died in March. The woman was prioritized in the vaccine queue due to her position as a health worker. She leaves behind a husband and children, Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) writes.

In the other two cases, the patients, a female health worker and a man in their 30s, survived.

Covered for losses and permanent damage

"Our assessment is that the vaccine was the cause of the serious side effects some people have had," director Rolf Gunnar Jørstad in the NPE noted. He says they have good medical information in the relevant cases. "Therefore, we upheld the applicants, and will now calculate the size of the compensation."

Syringe

Probe launched after Ukrainian man passes out, dies 4 hours after taking Pfizer Covid vaccine

ukraine ambulance
© Gleb Garanich/Reuters
An ambulance van in Ukraine, March 2021.
Ukrainian health authorities are reviewing an incident in which a man died hours after taking the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. Officials have stressed that previous such cases were not linked to the immunization campaign.

The Ukrainian health ministry said in a statement that a 47-year-old man from the Vinnytsia region was vaccinated by a mobile team at around 1:45pm local time on Friday.

The man initially appeared to have no side effects, but at around 5pm he began complaining about nausea, and then he lost consciousness. An ambulance was called in, but resuscitation efforts failed and the patient died about an hour later.

Comment:


Clipboard

Wapo/ABC poll shows 48% of Americans disapprove of Biden's handling of crime

joe biden
© Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters
President Joe Biden delivers remarks on the economy during a visit to Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland, Ohio, May 27, 2021
According to a new poll from the Washington Post and ABC News, a plurality of Americans (48 percent) disapproves of the job that the Biden administration has done handling the rise in crime across the country. The poll, conducted at the end of last month, surveyed more than 900 American adults, and the results have a margin of error of 3.5 points.

Respondents were asked whether they approve or disapprove of "the way Biden is handling the issue of crime in this country," and just 38 percent of all those surveyed said they approve of the job the president has done. A plurality (48 percent) of respondents said they disapprove of his performance on the issue, and 14 percent said they have no opinion.

Comment:


Attention

Another Florida high-rise evacuated due to structural concerns after Surfside building collapse

miami apartment surfside collapse demolition
© Reuters/Joe Skipper
A view of the partially collapsed residential building in Surfside, near Miami Beach, Florida, U.S. July 1, 2021
The death toll of the Surfside condo building collapse rose to 22 people on Friday, with 126 people remaining unaccounted for. The collapse took place earlier last week, prompting an extensive rescue operation and causing, as US President Joe Biden put it, the whole nation to mourn.

The city of North Miami Beach in Florida on Friday ordered an evacuation of a condominium that was deemed unsafe after an inspection report found structural flaws in the building.

Comment:


Wolf

California Antifa groups call for rally to support biological male who exposed genitals to women and children in LA spa

biological male women change room LA spa children
© SoCal Antifa/Twitter
"Everyone has a right to self care!" SoCal Antifa argues, defending the transgender individual who is alleged to have exposed their male genitals to women and children at the Los Angeles spa.

Antifa accounts on Twitter are promoting a direct action against a rally outside a Los Angeles spa where a woman complained last week that a transgender individual's male genitals were exposed to women and girls in the female section.

The Koreatown health club became the center of controversy after a female customer confronted spa staff about a transwoman with male genitals being permitted to disrobe in the spa's women section. The confrontation was caught on camera over the weekend, fueling online discourse with threats of a boycott against the spa. Antifa groups are now painting the incident as as a matter of trans rights — opposed to the rights of "cisgender" females to not be exposed to male anatomy.

Comment: