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'I was thrown in jail and a mental institution, then deported from Singapore... for not wearing a Covid-19 mask'

Glynn
© AFP/Gavin FOO
Benjamin Glynn
Don't like wearing masks? Neither does Benjamin Glynn. But his refusal to wear one, on account of his failure to accept Singapore's right to make them legally mandatory, saw him treated like a terrorist, as he tells RT.

The return leg of Benjamin Glynn's daily commute turned his life upside down. Violent arrests, a prison sentence and time in a mental institution followed, but he vowed, "I would do it all again, I don't regret anything."

Living in Singapore, the Brit and his partner decided to return home with their two kids, booking flights for May 31. On keen runner Glynn's final day at work, he went for a run with colleagues, followed by a few drinks. On the train home, a passenger videoed him not wearing a Covid mask - contrary to the local rules - and uploaded it to citizen journalism website Stomp.

Twenty-four hours later, the police knocked on his door, demanding he come to the station. Glynn said,
"I was happy to have a chat with them. I just thought it would be a conversation and I could go talk to them on the Monday, but they insisted they had to take me then. I objected to that as it was so late; it was my daughter's fifth birthday. But that's when the nightmare began."
Things turned ugly, and officers used batons which led to an ambulance being called due to Glynn bleeding from his knees, elbows and shoulders.
And it got worse and worse:

Target

Switzerland's vaccination centers could be targeted by terrorists, nation's intel agency warns

Vaccination center
© AFP/Valentin Flauraud
Patient or practitioner: Who is the secret ISIS-K agent?
Switzerland's vaccination centers are high on the list of potential terrorist targets, the country's secret service has claimed, adding that it was unaware of any concrete plots that could disrupt inoculation efforts.

Swiss daily NZZ am Sonntag reached out to the Federal Intelligence Service (FIS) to ask about how the Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan might affect security in the mountainous Central European country - but the response they received pointed to a different threat.

The Taliban's return to power doesn't fundamentally change the security situation in Switzerland, the FIS said. Instead, the main danger comes from jihadists who may try to attack infrastructure and places where there are large crowds - specifically, vaccination centers. A spokesperson for the agency told the paper:
"The targets of attack could also be the Covid-19 vaccination centers as well as vaccine transports and vaccine manufacturers."

Comment: Just how realistic is it ISIS-K will go after a mobile 'vaccination bus' with or without guards? Take a deep, deep breath Switzerland!


NPC

Teacher removes American flag from classroom, suggests students pledge allegiance to gay pride flag instead

Kristin Pitzen
© Image via Twitter @libsoftiktok screenshot
Kristin Pitzen
A California teacher instructed her students to pledge allegiance to a gay pride flag after she removed the American flag from her classroom because it made her uncomfortable, according to a report. The school district has allegedly launched an investigation into the incident.

The alleged teacher was exposed by the massively popular "Libs of TikTok" account on Twitter, which has over 176,000 followers. The page shared an apparent TikTok video of the teacher explaining how she handles the morning announcements in her school, which includes the Pledge of Allegiance.

"I always tell my class, 'Stand if you feel like it, don't stand if you feel like it, say the words if you want, you don't have to say the words,'" the teacher said in the video, which has over 1 million views. "So, my class decided to stand but not say the words. Totally fine."

NPC

Scottish teachers 'guilt-tripped' with white privilege tests instead of learning how to teach

teacher students classroom school
© Pexel / Max Fischer
Once upon a time, teacher training was informed by the imperative of helping them to become effective educators of subjects like mathematics, physics and history, but that was back when we thought kids should actually learn stuff.

Today, however, the Scottish government wishes to train teachers to develop the skill of dealing with 'white fragility'. In order for Scottish teachers to be able to deal with this imagined problem, they will be given 'white privilege lessons' by designated experts. According to the 38-page document published by Education Scotland, teachers will be asked to take a 'white privilege test'! Why? Because before teachers can effectively guilt trip their students about their 'whiteness', they need to feel uncomfortable and guilty about their own white privilege.

When teacher training is transformed into a medium for guilt-tripping it is evident that something has seriously gone wrong with Scottish education. This philistine initiative for politicising schooling bears the official imprimatur of the Scottish government, making it clear that the imperative of indoctrination has subordinated education to a second-order role in schools north of Hadrian's Wall.

Putin

Opinion polls suggest Russia's pro-Putin party still strong but fading in popularity

Vladimir Putin Russian presidential elections
© Sputnik / Sergey Guneev
Vladimir Putin votes at Russian presidential elections
Russians will head to the polls next month for parliamentary elections. Despite the importance of the vote, the campaign has received little international coverage - probably because everybody already thinks they know the outcome.

The United Russia party, which backs President Vladimir Putin and holds 334 of the State Duma's 450 seats, is likely to come out on top. That said, there is still a lot to play for at the margins and the possibility of some major upsets remains.

In the last parliamentary elections in 2016, the ruling bloc took almost 54% of the vote. This year, opinion polls have it running much lower, with only 27% of respondents saying that they definitely intend to vote for the party. This second figure is slightly misleading as a large percentage of people declare themselves to be undecided or as not intending to vote. Counting only those who are decided, definite voters, then United Russia's total goes up to something around 36%. This is substantially better than the headline figure, but still way below its share in 2016 when it was basking in popular support after the 2014 reabsorption of Crimea.

No Entry

China launches campaign to censor online content that 'bad-mouths' its economy

China
© AP Photo / Andy Wong
Beijing has launched a two-month campaign to probe commercial platforms and social media accounts that post economic information, in an attempt to cleanse the media of content that criticizes China's economic policies.

The National Cyberspace Administration of China on Friday launched a "special rectification" action targeting illegal procurement and misinterpretation of financial information. The agency called on social media platforms to carry out checks to cleanse finance-related content that "violates China's regulations."

China's major regulatory agencies will supervise and guide the moves, focusing on eight types of violations. These include "bad-mouthing" China's financial markets and "misinterpreting" domestic economic policies, spreading finance-related rumors and "hyping negative information to threaten, intimidate, blackmail relevant stakeholders and seek illegal benefits." Those who repost foreign media articles or commentaries that are deemed to falsely interpret China's financial policy "without taking a stance or making a judgment" will also be considered violators under the regulation.

Health

'It's all for your own good'

For your Health
© Off-Guardian
One of the most annoying aspects of the current measures supposedly created "against the pandemic" that we have been subjected for almost two years now is the insistence that everything is done "for our own good", as if governments and big companies were strict but caring parents, and we were just unruly or disobedient children who don't really know what they need.

It brings to mind CS Lewis' warning about that most oppressive of tyrannies, "a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims."

Now, I cannot tell for sure if the vaccines, the lockdowns, the travel restrictions and the masks work or not. My feeling is that they don't, or at least, not in the way we are being told, but that's not the issue. The question is why are we being treated like stupid children who cannot simply choose, but have to take a "jab" and then get "green passes" to travel or work or enter any establishment.

Apparently, governments and big corporations worldwide are worried about our "health".

But are they, really?

Like monomaniacs, they seem to be worried exclusively about Covid.

Not about the incredible amount of mental health issues and the alarming increase of teenage suicides during the various "lockdowns".

Not about people, like my elderly neighbours, who could not see their family (who live in another country) for over two years and are suffering with solitude.

Not for the people who, afraid of contracting Covid, didn't go to the hospital to treat other conditions and died.

Not for the people who died or got sick because of side effects of the vaccines.

No, it's just "Covid". And even that doesn't seem to be their main worry. As long as they get their "vaccine passports" and their "tracking apps" and their "cashless society", they don't really care if you get the disease or not.

No Entry

Twitter permanently bans science journalist Alex Berenson after viral COVID Tweets

Alex Berenson
It was never a matter of if, but when.

Science journalist Alex Berenson has been permanently suspended from Twitter, just one day after a viral series of tweets spotlighting an Israeli preprint study which showed that natural immunity from a prior Covid-19 infection is 13 times more effective than vaccines against the delta variant.

"The account you referenced has been permanently suspended for repeated violations of our COVID-19 misinformation rules," a Twitter spokesperson told Fox News.

The last tweet he posted, meanwhile, accurately noted that the vaccine "doesn't stop infection. Or transmission."

"Don't think of it as a vaccine," he added. "Think of it - at best - as a therapeutic with a limited window of efficacy and terrible side effect profile that must be dosed IN ADVANCE OF ILLNESS."

"And we want to mandate it? Insanity."

NPC

CDC goes woke, demands Americans use 'inclusive language' for their 'health'

CDC Director Rochelle P. Walensky
The CDC has released new, inclusive language that they want the American public to use in place of lots of already extant words that we typically use to describe individuals or groups. Essentially, in place of single words that are used, the CDC wants us to put the word "person" first, before the descriptor, except in the areas where they believe that group identity supersedes individual identity, as in race, ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation.

There are many examples of this, in many categories, such as "Corrections & Detentions," where words for "prisoner," "criminal," and others are to be replaced with "People/persons who are incarcerated or detained," or "Persons in pre-trial or with charge." In the category of "Disability," terms like "Differently abled" should be replaced with "People with disabilities/a disability." "Drug-users/addicts/drug abusers," etc., should be instead "Persons who use drugs/people who inject drugs."

The idea behind this is clear even without reading the CDC's preamble: the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention want Americans to see and think about each other as people first, before they consider the person's condition. The CDC's intention is to humanize us, and seem to believe that their function is to tell us how to speak, and how to think, in order to do that. However, it is poorly designed, and will only be replaced by new missives in very short time.

Comment: See also:


Brain

Pandemic's teen mental health crisis in Victoria worse than feared

Victorian Mental Health Minister James Merlino
© Getty Images
Victorian Mental Health Minister James Merlino.
More than 340 teenagers a week have been admitted to hospital suffering mental health emergencies, according to a confidential Andrews government report that reveals Victoria's pandemic and lockdown-fuelled youth crisis is worse than previously feared.

The tragic case load - recorded every week in the six weeks leading up to May 30 - is a 57 per cent increase on the same period last year, prompting calls from mental health experts for an immediate boost to services.

The Victorian Agency for Health Information (child and adolescent edition) reveals an average 342 children, aged up to 17, presented to emergency departments each week.

Comment: The elephant in the room here is that this is, in all likelihood, completely attributable to lockdowns, social distancing and mask wearing. The government's hysterical overreaction to a rather mundane virus is arguably worse than the disease itself, especially for children and teens who are, for all intents and purposes, immune to the virus.

See also: