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India overtakes Brazil as second worst-hit Covid-19 country


Yahoo News
Mon, 12 Apr 2021 20:10 UTC
india covid test
India on Monday overtook Brazil as the country with the second-highest number of coronavirus infections, as it reported a new daily record of more than 168,000 cases.

The vast nation of 1.3 billion people has been reporting a rapid increase in new infections in recent weeks, with the surge taking the total toll to 13.5 million cases, above Brazil's 13.48 million.

Experts have warned that huge, mostly maskless and tightly packed crowds at political rallies in poll-bound states, mass religious festivals and at other public places were fuelling the new wave of infections.

"The whole country has been complacent -- we allowed social, religious and political congregations," Rajib Dasgupta, a health professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University, told AFP.

"No-one queued up (for social distancing) anymore."

The country has recorded more than 873,000 cases in the last seven days -- an increase of 70 percent compared to the previous week, according to data compiled by AFP.

Comment: Seasonality probably has a lot to do with this. And a daily reminder: lockdowns won't/don't work.

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NPC

Democrat Rashida Tlaib goes extreme: 'No more policing' and 'incarceration,' 'it can't be reformed'

Ryan Saavedra
Daily Wire
Tue, 13 Apr 2021 19:53 UTC
The squad omar, Tlaib
© Saul Loeb / Agence France-Presse File
From left: US Representatives Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan)
Far-left Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) was widely slammed online on Monday after she made arguably the most extreme far-left proposal of any notable public figure over the last year, calling for there to be "no more policing" and "incarceration" because the system "can't be reformed."


Comment: In practice this means criminals run free - plus the establishment of a secret police force (largely staffed by those criminals) to eliminate all dissidents.


Tlaib's remarks came after 20-year-old Daunte Wright was shot as he attempted to run from police who pulled him over on Sunday over expired license plate tags. Wright had a warrant out for his arrest for running from police and for a weapons charge. Police later said that the officer who shot Wright thought she was using her taser.

"It wasn't an accident. Policing in our country is inherently & intentionally racist," Tlaib said. "Daunte Wright was met with aggression & violence. I am done with those who condone government funded murder. No more policing, incarceration, and militarization. It can't be reformed."


Comment: There's no evidence racism had anything to do with Wright's death. Tlaib is exploiting his death to play revolutionary politics.



Tlaib was widely slammed online by people who called the proposal insane and who noted that the "no more policing" slogan would be a killer for the Democrats in the upcoming 2022.
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Black Magic

Man finds out government is lying on a monumental scale: Still thinks they're doing good

Rob Slane
The Blogmire
Tue, 13 Apr 2021 19:19 UTC
man watching television programmed
A man who spent last year believing everything the Government and media said about Covid-19 and Lockdowns, only to find out that none of the things he'd believed are true, has announced his continued belief that they must be acting out of purely altruistic motives. Brian Sprocket, a 38-year-old teaching assistant from Barnsley, spent most of last year staying home, wearing a mask on the few occasions he ventured out, and ensuring he stayed away from all human beings, whom he regarded as walking virus carriers.

But at the beginning of this year, he was forced to think for the first time about what was going on, after his television stopped working. With nothing to watch, Brian decided to look at an email sent to him by a friend last autumn, which he had previously dismissed as a conspiracy theory:
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Passport

As vaccine passports are rolled out across the world, what price freedom?


Lockdown Sceptics
Sun, 11 Apr 2021 00:00 UTC
IPhone vac certificate
© Alamy Stock Photo
It used to be that the crazy ideas of politicians seldom came to fruition because Government IT projects dragged on for years before being cancelled anyway. We were all protected by the ineptitude of civil servants who built the wrong things in the wrong way. That is not the case these days. Last year's NHS COVID19 app was a well-engineered piece of software, deployed at massive scale to 21 million people. In just two months it became one of the world's most downloaded medical software products.

It was certainly built in the right way, but did it live up to the barely credible claims made by the politicians? Has anyone heard NHSX, the app's creator, defending its claim that its venue QR codes "will help avoid the reintroduction of lockdown measures and support the country to return to a normal way of life"? That was two lockdowns ago, by the way.

Or can anyone provide evidence in support of NHSX's claim that "for every 1 to 2 people who download the app, an infection could be prevented"? Given that we know it was downloaded 21 million times that implies 11-21 million averted infections. The Alan Turing Institute gushed over its estimated 284,000 averted infections but failed to point out that meant NHSX were out by a factor of 56. We are indeed in an era of being able to successfully build the wrong systems in the right way.
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Stock Down

Poll: 15% of Americans worse off a year into pandemic

Sarah Skidmore Sell
AP
Tue, 13 Apr 2021 00:00 UTC
job center
© AP/Damian Dovarganes
Pasadena, CA community job center during coronavirus outbreak
While most Americans have weathered the pandemic financially, about 38 million say they are worse off now than before the outbreak began in the U.S.

Overall, 55% of Americans say their financial circumstances are about the same now as a year ago, and 30% say their finances have improved, according to a new poll from Impact Genome and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. But 15% say they are worse off.

The problem is more pronounced at lower-income levels: 29% of Americans living below the federal poverty line say their personal finances worsened in the past year. Roughly that many also find themselves in a deepening financial hole, saying they struggled to pay bills in the past three months.
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Sheriff

One officer accused in pepper-spraying of black army officer during traffic stop fired


Washington Times
Sun, 11 Apr 2021 08:40 UTC
Windsor, (Va.) Police video
© Windsor Police via AP
In this image made from Windsor, (Va.) Police video, A police officer uses a spray agent on Caron Nazario on Dec. 20, 2020, in Windsor, Va. Nazario, a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army, is suing two Virginia police officers over a traffic stop during which he says the officers drew their guns and pointed them at him as he was dressed in uniform. Caron Nazario says his constitutional rights were violated by the traffic stop in the town of Windsor in December.
One of two police officers accused of pepper-spraying and pointing their guns at a Black Army officer during a traffic stop has since been fired, a Virginia town announced late Sunday, hours after the governor called for an independent investigation into the case.

The town of Windsor said in a statement that it joined calls from election officials, including Gov. Ralph Northam, in requesting an investigation by Virginia State Police into the December 2020 encounter in which two Windsor officers were accused of drawing their guns, pointing them at U.S. Army second lieutenant Caron Nazario and using a slang term to suggest he was facing execution.

Nazario was also pepper-sprayed and knocked to the ground by the officers, Joe Gutierrez and Daniel Crocker, according to the lawsuit he filed earlier this month against them.

Comment: This is rich, coming from Northam. The Virginia governor is not popular even in his Democratic party because of his hypocrisy. The same party canceled college mascots and syrup logos because of Black Lives Matter, but it was ok for him to be photographed in blackface mask with a guy with a KKK mask, and to offend black people publicly. The media were silent about that. Note the asymmetry - conservatives wouldn't be able to get away with any of that. And the media are happy to amplify the asymmetry wherever and whenever possible.

See also:

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NPC

Get the kids early: Scrabble goes woke, bans 400 words in latest culture war salvo

Frank Furedi
RT
Tue, 13 Apr 2021 16:47 UTC
scrabble board game
© https://cdni.rt.com/files/2021.04/article/60759d3085f5400e8a395e9d.jpg
Scrabble has followed Mr Potato Head and Barbie in trying to impose woke values on your children. Remember when toys and games used to be fun rather than tools used to ensure kids think in what's deemed an 'acceptable' manner?

Just when you imagined that the woke-inspired culture war could not get any crazier, you realise that they are desperately serious about turning people's lives upside down.

The toy manufacturer Mattel, which owns the rights to Scrabble outside North America, has just announced that it has decided to remove 400 words it considers derogatory from its list of officially accepted terms.

Comment: The kids are sitting ducks. It doesn't bode well.

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NPC

Facebook, Instagram users can now ask 'oversight' panel to review decisions not to remove content

Natasha Lomas
TechCrunch
Tue, 13 Apr 2021 16:20 UTC
facebook
© TechCrunch
Facebook's self-styled 'Oversight Board' (FOB) has announced an operational change that looks intended to respond to criticism of the limits of the self-regulatory content-moderation decision review body: It says it's started accepting requests from users to review decisions to leave content up on Facebook and Instagram.

The move expands the FOB's remit beyond reviewing (and mostly reversing) content takedowns — an arbitrary limit that critics said aligns it with the economic incentives of its parent entity, given that Facebook's business benefits from increased engagement with content (and outrageous content drives clicks and makes eyeballs stick).

"So far, users have been able to appeal content to the Board which they think should be restored to Facebook or Instagram. Now, users can also appeal content to the Board which they think should be removed from Facebook or Instagram," the FOB writes, adding that it will "use its independent judgment to decide what to leave up and what to take down".

Comment: In other words, Facebook has constructed a nice distraction for the proles that will have no real effect on its censorship capabilities or its capacity to punt "acceptable" propaganda content.

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Eye 2

What's happening in California prisons was entirely predictable

Andrea Widburg
American Thinker
Wed, 07 Apr 2021 00:00 UTC
Meet Karen
For those who are wondering how the Democrats' "Equality Act" — requiring people to be treated according to their gender identity — will operate if passed, we're getting some foreshadowing from California. On January 1, a law went into effect holding that state prisoners must be housed in a facility consistent with their gender identity, regardless of their anatomy. To date, 261 prisoners — 255 of them men — have asked to be relocated.

The reasoning behind the law wasn't just the usual woke madness of treating transgenderism as if it were not a sad case of body dysmorphia but were, instead, a magical change in sex. Instead, there was a humane goal: men who identify as women, when placed in all-male prisons, are extremely vulnerable to prison rape. One man in Australia claimed that he was raped over 2,000 times, which, if true, is appalling.

However, when you place men in women's prisons, there's also a rape problem, with the men — many of whom claim to be lesbians — raping those women unlucky enough find themselves in the same cell, ward, or shower as one of these so-called "transgender women."

Comment: This phenomenon is exactly what has been warned about here: MindMatters: Joshua Slocum: We're Living in a Cluster B World

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Megaphone

Canada to censor political taunts, implement internet kill switch

Mark E. Jeftovic
Bombthrower
Fri, 09 Apr 2021 00:01 UTC
Federal Heritage Minister Steven Guibeault

Federal Heritage Minister Steven Guibeault
Constituents to remain fair game for abuse from party apparatchiks.

A colleague forwarded me the text of an article from Blackrocks Reporter, which covers Canadian politics from Ottawa, our capitol.

It's a report on Federal Heritage Minister Steven Guibeault's ongoing vendetta against non-conforming political speech on the internet, in which he's calling for censorship of "hurtful" comments against politicians and implementation of an internet killswitch to facilitate it.

Comment: See also:

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