Society's Child

26 dead after Ukraine military plane crashes and bursts into flames

Stars and Stripes
Sat, 26 Sep 2020 09:55 UTC

© EMERGENCY SITUATION MINISTRY
In this TV grab released by Ukraine's Emergency Situation Ministry, an AN-26 military plane bursts into flames after it crashed in the town of Chuguyiv close to Kharkiv, Ukraine, late Friday, Sept. 25, 2020. Among 28 people on board 22 people were killed.

Searchers combing the area where a Ukrainian military aircraft crashed found two more bodies on Saturday, bringing the death toll to 26. One person survived.

The plane, a twin-turboprop Antonov-26 belonging to the Ukrainian air force, was carrying a crew of seven and 20 cadets of a military aviation school when it crashed and burst into flames Friday night while coming in for landing at the airport in Chuhuiv, about 250 miles east of the capital Kyiv.

Two people initially survived the crash, but one later died in a hospital. No cause for the crash has been determined.

Comment: See also:

Large protest against lockdown in London meanwhile polls of British public show many want HARSHER measures

RT
Sat, 26 Sep 2020 12:28 UTC

Demonstrators descended on London for the second straight weekend to air their disapproval of the coronavirus guidelines, with police warning they will break up the rally if protesters don't follow social distancing rules.

Several thousand protesters assembled at Trafalgar Square on Saturday, with some eyewitnesses claiming that attendance was even higher than the turnout at a similar event held last weekend.

Demonstrators held signs, waved British flags and cheered as speakers addressed the crowd. At one point the crowd could be heard chanting "freedom" as people whistled and clapped.

The protest, dubbed We Do Not Consent, received a warning from the Metropolitan Police, which said it would intervene if the protesters don't abide by social distancing guidelines.

Comment: Whilst the days may seem increasingly darker, there is still hope, because it would appear that not only is the movement questioning the government narrative growing but we're also seeing an increasing number of regional figureheads who have all criticised the futility and irrationality of these measures; as seen in Leicester in the UK, Marseille in France, and Madrid in Spain:

Christmas movies are going gay this year, but is this really progress for LGBT people?

RT
Sat, 26 Sep 2020 11:56 UTC

© Getty Images / Paul Archuleta
Actor Jonathan Bennett (R) attends Hallmark Channel's 10th Anniversary of "Countdown To Christmas" screening and party at 189 by Dominique Ansel on November 20, 2019 in Los Angeles, California.

The Hallmark and Lifetime channels are targeting their Christmas movies at gay audiences this year. Activists have hailed this as a victory, but there will be little to celebrate in terms of quality filmmaking.

"Don we now our gay apparel" takes on a whole new meaning this year as The Hallmark Channel airs The Christmas House, its first gay-themed Christmas movie.

The film stars Jonathan Bennett as one half of a gay married couple who visit family as they anxiously await a call about adopting their first child.

According to PinkNews, "LGBT+ fans have long been crying out for a queer festive film - and this year, they have finally been granted their grown-up Christmas wish".

PinkNews also reported that, "In July, queer Hallmark Christmas fans were sent into a frenzy when the company confirmed the LGBT+ Christmas films were on the way."

The 'queer frenzy' over The Christmas House is heightened by the fact that the Lifetime Channel also has a gay-themed holiday film this year, The Christmas Set-Up. Looks like there will be a lot of same sex canoodling under the mistletoe on TV this holiday season.

With misogyny now a hate crime, we're officially criminalising thought

Frank Furedi
RT
Sun, 27 Sep 2020 00:08 UTC

We'll soon have thought police exploring our private lives

Silence the wolf whistles, don't say 'you look lovely in lycra' to that woman at the gym, and don't tweet about transgender women not being real women. You could be breaking the law and be charged.

Welcome to an Orwellian world where what you think about women, gays or Muslims may now be criminalised under hate crime legislation proposed by the Law Commission. Since its invention in the United States in the 1980s, the number of different hate crimes have been growing and growing.

UK gov figures show 75,000 could die because of lockdown, excess deaths are already soaring

RT
Sat, 26 Sep 2020 09:58 UTC

Thousands of Britons who suffer heart attacks and strokes are dying at home instead of seeking medical treatment, a new study has found, as new government figures show 75,000 are projected to die as a result of lockdown measures.

Stay-at-home orders prompted countless people suffering from serious medical conditions to avoid hospitals, according to the study's findings, which were published in the Heart medical journal and first reported by the Daily Mail. The paper noted that deaths from heart disease in private homes surged by 35 percent from March to July, resulting in 2,279 more fatalities on average over the past six years. However, heart and stroke deaths in hospitals dropped by around 1,400 during the same period, suggesting that some who chose to stay home would have died anyway even if they had been hospitalized. The researchers calculated that in total, there were 2,085 excess deaths in England and Wales that could be linked to heart attack and stroke sufferers who refused to seek out medical treatment. This means that between March 2 and June 30, every day 17 people died needlessly from heart attacks.

Comment: And likely tens of thousands more - and counting:

China approves Covid-19 vaccine for emergency testing in last phase of human trials, hundreds of thousands of vaccinations already given

Huizhong Wu
Yahoo
Sat, 26 Sep 2020 12:00 UTC

After the first shot, he had no reaction. But Kan Chai felt woozy following the second dose of a COVID-19 vaccine approved for emergency use in China.

"When I was driving on the road, I suddenly felt a bit dizzy, as if I was driving drunk," the popular writer and columnist recounted in a webinar earlier this month. "So I specially found a place to stop the car, rest a bit and then I felt better."

His is a rare account from the hundreds of thousands of people who have been given Chinese vaccines, before final regulatory approval for general use. It's an unusual move that raises ethical and safety questions, as companies and governments worldwide race to develop a vaccine that will stop the spread of the coronavirus.

Chinese companies earlier drew attention for giving the vaccine to their top executives and leading researchers before human trials to test their safety and efficacy had even begun. In recent months, they have injected a far larger number under an emergency use designation approved in June, and that number appears poised to rise.

Comment: Evidently the article is written with the intent to smear China where possible, but what is clear is that China was already in late trials for the vaccine in July - way ahead of the West - and (again) unlike the US and the UK it was confident enough to trial it on some of its top staff; surely it wouldn't do that if it was having results similar to the 'serious concerns' seen at AstraZeneca.

Democracy muzzled

Peter Hitchens
The Critic Magazine
Sat, 26 Sep 2020 20:26 UTC

Covid masks are a potent symbol of the West's headlong flight from Enlightenment values

The long retreat of law, reason and freedom has now turned into a rout. It was caused by many things: the mob hysteria which flowered after the death of Princess Diana; the evisceration of education; the spread of intolerant speech codes designed to impose a single opinion on the academy and journalism; the incessant state-sponsored panics over terror; the collapse and decay of institutions and traditions.

These have all at last flowed together into a single force, and we seem powerless against it. Absurdly, the moment at which they have achieved maximum power is accidental, a wild, out of-proportion panic response to a real but limited epidemic.

Maryland man sentenced to prison for throwing parties against COVID-19 orders

Vincent Barone
New York Post
Fri, 25 Sep 2020 18:59 UTC

He's serving hard time for hard partying.

A Maryland man was sentenced Friday to a year in prison for hosting two parties in defiance of the state's coronavirus orders barring large gatherings, a local Fox affiliate reported.

Shawn Marshall Myers, 42, had 50 to 60 people over in his Hughesville home for the first bash he threw on March 22, according to the Charles County Sheriff's Office.

When officers arrived to shut down the soiree, Myers was "argumentative...but eventually agreed to disband his party," the county State's Attorney alleged.

But he went right back to raging, throwing another party with more than 50 people less than a week later on March 27, the station reported.

Comment: Gov. Larry Hogan should be serving this time instead, and preferably for much longer than one year.

One China? Only 2-6% of Taiwanese identify as Chinese over Taiwanese

Rhoda Kwan
Hong Kong Free Press
Fri, 25 Sep 2020 18:20 UTC

A large majority of residents surveyed in self-governed Taiwan consider themselves to be Taiwanese rather than Chinese, an opinion poll on national identity has found.

The survey conducted by a group called Taiwan Thinktank asked respondents whether they consider themselves to be Taiwanese or Chinese. Some 62.6 per cent identified themselves as Taiwanese while only 2 per cent identified as Chinese and 32.6 per cent considered themselves to be both.

Separately, when asked to choose between a Taiwanese identity and a Chinese one, 86 per cent identified themselves as Taiwanese over Chinese, while 6.2 per cent saw themselves as Chinese over Taiwanese.

The survey, whose findings were released at a press conference on Thursday, was conducted to gauge public opinion towards constitutional amendments proposed by the Legislative Yuan, the Taiwanese parliament. These proposals are geared towards prioritising "Taiwanese" as a national identity in the international arena.

One element of the proposed constitutional amendments will mean the island will seek to represent itself as "Taiwan" at international events such as the Olympics where in the past it has taken part as "Chinese Taipei".

Death Race 2020: Mad Max meets Through the Looking Glass in BLM riots

Michael Prescott
michaelprescott.typepad.com
Sat, 26 Sep 2020 18:04 UTC

Folks, we've officially entered a dystopian alternate reality that seems to be combination of Mad Max and Through the Looking Glass. It's not even October, and the wheels of our society are coming off.

In this video from Hollywood, the glamour capital of the USA, a confused driver in a Prius blunders into a BLM-Antifa (aka BLAMtifa) riot. The driver cautiously maneuvers around the rioters, avoiding contact with any of them. The rioters, having none of it, dispatch a customized truck to chase down the Prius and block it off. (This is the Mad Max part.) Rioters then swarm the trapped Prius and try to drag the driver out of his car in the hope of delivering a savage beatdown. After having his windshield smashed, the driver manages to back away in his vehicle and escape the scene. In a charming coda (this is the Through the Looking Glass part), we see him pulled over by L.A.'s Finest, the Thin Blue Line, the brave "men" of the LAPD, who arrest him for the crime of not allowing BLAMtifa to kill him.

CBS News, "reporting" the story, says that the driver struck several rioters (he did not) and was "stopped" by "protesters" (no, CBS, he was chased down, trapped, and swarmed by a homicidal mob that tried to assassinate him).

Many people who are hesitant to be vaccinated for Covid-19 see the drug as a treatment or prophylactic for the disease, though so far there is no...

Good Optics

With mail in voting likely to become a thing, does it really matter any more? Stick a fork in us...this country is done.

Bezel Bub

Other comets coming sooner, although not quite as big. E.g. "Leonard" this December https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C/2021_A1_(Leonard)

Tsidkenu

Tornadoes here in Aus too, as I reported here [Link]

Tsidkenu

Small tornado also struck Armidale. We had another tornado hit farmland near Bathurst last week. This summer will be the summer of floods, hail...

Tsidkenu

Society's Child

26 dead after Ukraine military plane crashes and bursts into flames

Large protest against lockdown in London meanwhile polls of British public show many want HARSHER measures

Christmas movies are going gay this year, but is this really progress for LGBT people?

With misogyny now a hate crime, we're officially criminalising thought

UK gov figures show 75,000 could die because of lockdown, excess deaths are already soaring

China approves Covid-19 vaccine for emergency testing in last phase of human trials, hundreds of thousands of vaccinations already given

Democracy muzzled

Maryland man sentenced to prison for throwing parties against COVID-19 orders

One China? Only 2-6% of Taiwanese identify as Chinese over Taiwanese

Death Race 2020: Mad Max meets Through the Looking Glass in BLM riots

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