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Tue, 02 Nov 2021
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Masked Antifa mob blocks path, shouts at elderly couple outside Dave Rubin/Maxime Bernier event in Canada

antifa canada
© Twitter / @ThinGrayLine01
Several Antifa members crowded around an elderly woman with a rolling walker, blocking her from crossing a street outside a college in Canada, where they held a rally against a local MP, ending with scuffles and arrests.

The ugly scene took place amid a loud Antifa protest outside Mohawk College in Hamilton, Ontario on Sunday. Video of the event, shared on social media, shows an elderly couple attempting to cross the street on a marked crosswalk as four masked protesters deliberately loom over them, blocking their path.

The couple remained calm, seemingly trying to reason with the protesters. One incensed activist appears to be screaming at the woman in response and later makes an aggressive hand gesture to the man accompanying her.


Fire

Swedish school under fire for forcing kids to take part in climate strike

Protest
© REUTERS / Lindsey Wasson
A school in eastern Sweden, perhaps hoping to create the next Greta Thunberg, has come in for heavy criticism after saying that its students must take part in a climate change protest during school hours.

Västangård school in Umeå, Sweden, notified parents and guardians that participation in last Friday's climate strike was mandatory.

According to local media, some school principals in Sweden have given approval for students to step out and attend the climate strike, once their permission was sought. However, the school in Umeå said that its students must take part in the movement, regardless of if they'd asked to or not.

Comment: See also: Greta Thunberg: False Prophet of the Children's Crusade


Footprints

Human trafficker, on the run for 17 years after prison break, found in Chinese cave by police drone

Cave
A 63-year-old man who had been on the run for 17 years after pulling off a daring prison break was finally captured by Chinese police, who tracked the fugitive to a cave using drones.

Song Jiang was apprehended at his mountainous hideout on September 19 by Yongshan police in Yunnan province, south-west China, after authorities used unmanned aerial vehicles to search the area.

Cell Phone

Manchester opens UK's first slow lane for people looking at phones while walking

mobile phone lane
© AO Mobile
It's pretty hard to pull yourself away from your mobile phone nowadays.

And with a world of information at your fingertips, not to mention all of your mates, it's not difficult to understand why that is.

Many of us are so glued to our mobile devices that a whopping 75 per cent of Brits say they are guilty of walking and using their phone at the same time, according to the new research.

Comment: It's unbelievably sad that people are so absorbed in their phones they can't do something as simple as navigate while walking. Humanity is truly doomed.

See also:


Newspaper

20,000 gather for post-election anti-govt protest in Moscow

moscow protest
© REUTERS / Tatyana Makeyeva
An opposition demonstration in Moscow.
Thousands of protesters gathered on Sunday in central Moscow to demonstrate against political and justice systems that they see as unfair, and to demand the release of fellow opposition activists.

The rally was organized by the same figures that were behind the string of protests in the Russian capital in July and August, some of which defied the law, ending with mass arrests. The latest event, however, was properly sanctioned by the city and was peaceful. In a rare case of agreement on estimates, both the Moscow police and the organizers said that some 20,000 participants braved the cold rainy weather to take part.

The rally saw people holding party flags and banners demanding the release of activists that had clashed with police - some of them got real jail sentences.

Comment: See also:


Stock Down

'Something's amiss': Risk of recession increasing, markets similar to last year's before the collapse - Morgan Stanley

recession risk growing stocks
Authored by Michael Wilson, Morgan Stanley chief equity strategist
Deja Vu

As we head toward the end of the third quarter, I can't help but think it feels very similar to last year in many ways. The S&P 500 is near its all-time high at 3000, while the MSCI EM Index and the Topix sit 20% and 15% below their highs and the Eurostoxx is 7% lower, leaving all these indices exactly where they traded a year ago. Growth stocks are still the most crowded part of equity managers' portfolios - and the love affair may be stronger than ever at this point. But there are important differences too. Cyclical stocks have completely fallen out of bed and trade 20% lower than last September, while long-duration sovereign debt has been the best investment by far over this period, with 10-year Treasury yields 50% lower than just 12 months ago. To put this into context, over the past 50 years such a dramatic move in yields over the prior 12 months has only happened twice - during the global financial crisis in 2008 and the European sovereign debt crisis of 2011-12.

Comment: See also:


Sun

The world may be getting hotter, Greta Thunberg... but having a meltdown isn't going to help

Greta Thunberg
© AFP
I’m sorry Ms Thunberg, but if you’re going to lay into my generation, you must accept it when I lay into you and yours.
When a teenage girl has an angry, tearful strop, most parents just send them to their rooms until they've calmed down.

However, when 16-year-old Greta Thunberg got on to the stage at the UN this week and had a full-on adolescent meltdown, she was deafened by the applause.

Not from me she wasn't.

Because I was in the bog, being sick.

Comment: What it comes down to is that Greta is an uninformed child having a temper tantrum and being applauded for it. And when anyone points out this obvious fact, they're accused of being an old white male who's attacking a child. The whole situation is absurd to nth degree, but pointing that out is painting a large target on one's forehead.

See also:


Propaganda

Hey, NYT! If Sentsov is the proof that Crimean Russians never wanted to be with Russia, why does he say otherwise?

Oleg Sentsov rally protest kiev
© Reuters / Valentyn Ogirenko / File
A rally demanding the release of Oleg Sentsov in front of the Russian Embassy in Kiev.
Oleg Sentsov, whose imprisonment in Russia made him a figurehead for the country's critics, is now free to talk to the media but - surprise! - not everything he says fits the narratives favored by those who praise him.

Turning an individual into a symbol for a political cause always carries the risk that the person won't live up to expectations. A Crimean-born ethnic Russian, Sentsov rose to international prominence as a 'prisoner of conscience,' whose opposition to the 'Russian annexation of Crimea' led to an 'unfair' 20-year prison term. The hashtag #FreeSentsov popped up throughout the world, while movie celebrities made public statements to support him.

Bulb

Does Russia have the solution to Greta Thunberg?

nuclear plant
The Mainstream and Social Media have exploded after Greta Thunberg's impassioned speech at the UN. Greta's words were either bold and daring or the hysterics of a spoiled child depending on your position and as someone who lives in Russia it must be said that her rant came across as deeply offensive from a cultural standpoint and highly irrational from an environmentalism standpoint as at least one Earth-shaking development towards an ecologically safe future is being developed in Russia.

Some of the claims of Thunberg's comments (as the daughter of wealthy successful parents in Western Europe, who sailed to give said speech on a heavily sponsored sea vessel) are shockingly offensive to a solid majority in the former Soviet Union.

Perhaps maybe one day people will be "suffering" and "dying" from climate issues but at present it is delusional to make this claim and a slap in the face to anyone going through real tangible suffering. How could some imaginary misery due to the environment made up in a teenage mind in an ivory tower compare to the loss of innocence suffered by an entire generation of Russian-speakers who had to fight poverty, starvation and in some cases military conflict during the collapse of the USSR? The amount of naivety and Eurocentrism needed to truly believe in this worldview is stunning.

Her other claim that politicians' lack of climate action has "stolen" her childhood could at best be viewed as dark humor as to this day children every day lose their childhood to artillery shells in the Donbass. It also goes without saying that during our lifetimes children all over the planet have lost their innocence in places like Rwanda, Iraq, Afghanistan, Serbia etc. and I am sure the survivors would be thrilled to have "Climate Change" as the only problem in their lives.

People 2

French #MeToo trial: There are no victors in the battle of the sexes

metoo
© Reuters / Christian Hartmann
The "MeToo" campaign has seemingly spread to all the levels of the western society, including the European Parliament.
The man whose case launched France's #MeToo movement has won damages in a defamation case, but it's a Pyrrhic victory at best, celebrated on the ruins of cultural norms and legal practices that the movement has destroyed.

Journalist Sandra Muller launched #balancetonporc ("expose your pig") in October 2017, naming and shaming TV executive Eric Brion as a man who made crass comments about her at a party. Brion, who acknowledged the comments were "boorish" and apologized for them, later sued Muller for defamation, saying that the tweet had destroyed his reputation and livelihood.

A French court agreed earlier this week, ordering Muller to pay Brion €20,000 (about $22,000), delete the offending tweet, and post a court-ordered explanation instead.

Muller's original tweet came on the heels of the "Me Too" campaign in the US, accusing the Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein of a veritable train of abuses, from sexual harrassment and inappropriate comments to assault and rape. Weinstein was eventually arrested and charged in May 2018, and the case against him is still pending.