Society's ChildS


Rainbow

Nearly HALF of Moscow residents now immune to coronavirus, remaining restrictions to be dropped ahead of WW2 victory over Nazi's parade


RT
Fri, 26 Mar 2021 10:14 UTC
Moscow maskless
© Getty Images / Oleg ElkovMoscow, Russia - March 2021: People walking on a street in Alexander garden in Moscow.
Almost one in every two people living in Moscow has developed antibodies to Covid-19, the city authorities have announced, with curfew rules, and restrictions on bars and clubs having already been scrapped as the caseload falls.

Speaking as part of an interview with RIA Novosti published on Friday, Anastasia Rakova, the Russian capital's Deputy Mayor for Social Development said, "We are systematically measuring the level of population immunity. Between 43 and 44 percent of Muscovites have antibodies, on average."

"This is a fairly high figure," she added, "and it allows the city to live an almost normal life with minimal restrictions."


Comment: Russian experts predicted herd immunity would be achieved soon enough and that indeed appears to be what is happening. Meanwhile many authorities in Europe are forcing citizens back into lockdown claiming a 'third wave', despite all evidence to the contrary: Angela Merkel BACKTRACKS on Easter lockdown after uproar


Comment: And, as some countries drop the manufactured hysterics and attempt to return to a modicum of normality, the disastrous impact of the lockdown - not the coronavirus - are only just beginning: British Covid modellers predict 'severe flu next winter because lockdowns prevented usual herd immunity'



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Network

Facebook apps used in over half of online child sex crimes, says NSPCC

Martyn Landi
Independent
Fri, 26 Mar 2021 11:08 UTC
facebook logo lonely
© AFP via Getty ImagesFacebook has previously revealed it intends to make messages across its apps end-to-end encrypted.
Social media giant has been accused of 'turning back the clock on children's safety'

More than half of online child sex crimes are committed over Facebook-owned apps, data from the NSPCC suggests, as the charity called for more to be done to tackle abuse in private messaging.

Facebook has previously revealed plans to make messaging across its apps, including Instagram and Facebook Messenger, end-to-end encrypted like another of its services - WhatsApp - to boost user privacy.

Comment: See also:

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People 2

Gov. Asa Hutchinson signs law banning transgender women, girls from female sports teams

Rachel Herzog
Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette
Thu, 25 Mar 2021 17:09 UTC
Gov. Asa Hutchinson
© Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/Thomas MettheGov. Asa Hutchinson answers a question during the weekly Covid-19 update on Tuesday, March 23, 2021, at the state Capitol in Little Rock.
Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson has signed into law a bill that would ban transgender women athletes from participating on girls' and women's sports teams, he announced Thursday evening.

Similar bills have been filed in more than 20 states, and Arkansas is the second to sign one into law, following Mississippi.

Proponents of Senate Bill 354 by Sen. Missy Irvin, R-Mountain View, and other efforts say their aim is to create a fair playing field in sports, arguing that athletes assigned the male gender at birth have inherent physiological advantages over cisgender girls and women, though they have acknowledged there are no verified instances of transgender girls or women participating in K-12 or college sports in the Natural State.

Comment:


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Dollars

City of Oakland Mayor is branded racist for giving families of color $500 a month but offering poor white families nothing

Bevan Hurley
Daily Mail
Thu, 25 Mar 2021 04:06 UTC
Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf
Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf announces a privately funded program that will give low-income families of color $500 per month with no rules on how they can spend it.
A program to give $500 monthly checks to low-income families of color in Oakland, California, has been criticized for explicitly excluding the 10,000 white residents living in poverty in the city.

The lottery system, funded by private philanthropists, will see the no-strings-attached checks go to households with an annual income of less than $59,000 if they have at least one child. The other half of the $500 checks will go to those earning under $30,000.

According to data from an Oakland Equity Indicators Report, cited by officials to justify favoring people of color, white households earn about three times that of African-American ones.

Comment: As with any government initiative, it's all about trying to make the numbers look better. If Mayor Libby Schaaf really cared about poor people, she's make the program available to all families in poverty, regardless of skin color. But she doesn't; she only wants to get the statistics on poor black families up into the red.

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Gold Seal

Substack stands strong: Shoots down activists' 'pressure campaign' looking to silence non-PC journalists


RT
Fri, 26 Mar 2021 19:22 UTC
substack logo free speech
© substack
Independent publishing website Substack has faced recent criticism from mostly liberal critics looking for more policing of views and speech on the platform, but the company has shot these wishes down.

In a Thursday statement titled 'How we approach moderation decisions,' Substack did not leave much room for hope for its recent vocal critics who have attacked users such as Glenn Greenwald and claimed the platform tolerates harassment.

As Substack points out in their statement, they already have a harassment policy in place, but their definition of "harassment" and "hate" may not be as loose as those of their critics.

Comment:

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Bullseye

Craig Murray found guilty of contempt of court

Joe Lauria
Consortium News
Thu, 25 Mar 2021 00:00 UTC
Craig Murray
© Mohamed ElmaaziCraig Murray
Craig Murray, an ex-British ambassador and blogger, was found in contempt of court by a tribunal in Scotland on Thursday for articles he had written that the court says helped identify accusers of former First Minister Alex Salmond of sexual abuse.

Murray faces up to two years in jail as well as a fine. The sentencing is set for May 7.

Murray was charged with contempt of court for allegedly revealing the identity of four anonymous accusers indirectly; of writing about the exclusion of two jurors in violation of a court order and of allegedly prejudicing the case in Salmond's favor. There was no pronouncement of guilt on the latter two charges. Salmond was acquitted at trial of 13 sex charges in March 2020.

The judgement against Murray was leaked to the Scottish newspaper, The National, on Monday. On the same day Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon was cleared by a cross-party inquiry of lying to Parliament about the Salmond affair. The inquiry looked into whether SNP officials, including possibly Sturgeon, conspired to arrange anonymous civil servants to level the sexual assault and attempted rape charges against Sturgeon's political rival Salmond.

Comment: It seems the court is bent on judging 'the cart before the horse' in its prejudice against Craig Murray:
The former British diplomat argued that the contempt of court charges against him undermine the right to free speech, are unduly broad in their scope, and are a form of politically motivated retaliation.

The High Court in Edinburgh has confirmed the conviction of former British diplomat-turned-whistleblower Craig Murray on one of the contempt of court charges filed against him by the Crown.
"The court has concluded that, having regard to the context in which the articles appeared, including the terms of the article of 18th January and the tweet referring thereto on the 19th of January, that the articles of 11th, 18th, 19th March, 3rd April and the tweet of 2nd April, must be considered to constitute contempt of court relating to material capable of identifying four different complainers. We therefore make a finding of contempt of court. The reasons will be issued in full, in due course. Those reasons have been shared in draft with Mr Scott and the Advocate Depute."
The hearing only lasted a few minutes and adjourned until 7 May, 10AM, so that the parties may file their respective submissions in relation to sentencing. Murray faces up to two years in prison and an unlimited fine.

John Scott QC, speaking for Murray, prepared the court for the kind of evidence that would be submitted in mitigation, for the purposes of what's known as a Criminal Justice Social Work Report.

Scott noted that:
"there has been a change in the Respondent's family circumstances recently, in that his partner gave birth on the 18th of February to his son, Oscar", adding that Murray, "is also keen to communicate his anxiety and stress over these proceedings, especially the uncertainty of outcome, and also the possibility of very serious penalty, which clearly still exists".
The defence, for its part, noted that the prosecution could have brought the articles to the attention of the presiding judge in order to get her to issue an order that they be taken down, a position which the Advocate Depute admitted his office had considered and ultimately rejected. Murray was not found guilty on this charge.

The government also suggested that Murray was responsible for "improper moderation" of comments made underneath those two articles on his website. A position that was objected to by the defence as creating too much of a burden and legal obligation on their client for remarks made by others. There was no reference to this argument in Lady Dorrian's brief statement, and as such, it appears that this charge was rejected.
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Attention

We mustn't lose the right to protest

Emily Hill
Spiked
Wed, 24 Mar 2021 00:00 UTC
Protester riot police
© Getty ImagesThe Protester
Our freedom to dissent is in peril. It's time to stand up.

On 20 March 2021, hundreds of riot police, armed with batons, busted up a crowd of peaceful protesters who'd marched for four hours before concluding at Speakers' Corner in Hyde Park. They felt they were living in a democracy and had the right to protest, but we're living under Covid law so we don't. The following day, 33 people died of coronavirus, and yesterday 17, so the idea that the right to demonstrate is prohibited due to a public-health emergency is rot.

If the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill is passed, that liberty will be stripped from us permanently.

The British have had the last word in Hyde Park since 1196, when those condemned to die at Tyburn Gallows were granted it before they were hanged. Marches and protests have long convened or terminated their routes at Speakers' Corner itself. When a meeting of the Reform League, demanding an extension of the franchise, found the gates of the park locked, demonstrators tore up the railings to gain access and there was rioting for three days. By 1872, the government had given up trying to suppress British rights to this bit of London, passing the Parks Regulation Act which granted thinkers - from Marx to Orwell - the right to speak there. A right withdrawn only by Covid-19.
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Camera

Photojournalist, removed by law enforcement for photographing migrants, calls on Biden admin to lift 'media border ban'


RT
Thu, 25 Mar 2021 16:51 UTC
Migrants at the border
© Reuters/Adrees LatifMigrants at the border
A photojournalist covering the crisis at the US-Mexico border has detailed the media blackout imposed on the area, which he says has included him being prevented from snapping images of struggling migrants.

"I respectfully ask the White House to stop the media border ban," Getty Images special correspondent John Moore tweeted on Thursday, accompanying his text with multiple photos he took of migrants near the southern border.

Moore revealed that local law enforcement agents removed him from the area and prevented further pictures from being taken. According to Moore, the officers said they were doing so at the request of US Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

Comment: No pictures? No transparency at the border? Diverting Biden administration's bad judgement by blaming Trump for the migrant surge is a flat out lie. Could they have something to hide - like incompetence?
Border images
© John Moore/CBP/Getty ImagesnewsThe Border Line
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Pistol

Hunter Biden's gun was found in a dumpster near a school; Secret Service tried to cover it up

Natalie Winters
The National Pulse
Thu, 25 Mar 2021 00:00 UTC
Hunter Biden
© Getty Images/KJNHunter Bideb
Secret Service agents involved themselves in an incident where Joe Biden's son Hunter Biden lost possession of a firearm despite the former veep not being under Secret Service protection at the time, according to a Politico report. The outlet notes:
"On Oct. 23, 2018, President Joe Biden's son Hunter and daughter-in-law Hallie were involved in a bizarre incident in which Hallie took Hunter's gun and threw it in a trash can behind a grocery store, only to return later to find it gone. Delaware police began investigating, concerned that the trash can was across from a high school and that the missing gun could be used in a crime, according to law enforcement officials and a copy of the police report obtained by POLITICO."
Secret Service agents then approached the owner of the store Hunter purchased the gun at and asked for the paperwork related to the sale.
"The gun store owner refused to supply the paperwork, suspecting that the Secret Service officers wanted to hide Hunter's ownership of the missing gun in case it were to be involved in a crime, the two people said. The owner, Ron Palmieri, later turned over the papers to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, which oversees federal gun laws.

"Days later, the gun was returned by an older man who regularly rummages through the grocery's store's trash to collect recyclable items, according to people familiar with the situation."
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Book

Jordan Peterson's 'Beyond Order' could not be more relevant today

Sarah H. Weaver
The Daily Signal
Thu, 25 Mar 2021 18:42 UTC
jordan peterson
© Romy Arroyo Fernandez/NurPhoto/Getty Images
In the introduction of his newest book, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life, author and clinical psychologist Jordan B. Peterson states that he wrote it to explore "how the dangers of too much security and control might be profitably avoided."

Beyond Order is a companion to his previous book, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, which explored the dangers of venturing without the requisite humility and grounding into the vast unknown. Beyond Order explores the dangers of a state of too much order, which "can rigidify as a consequence of ill-advised attempts to eradicate from consideration all that is unknown."

The book, written gradually during Peterson's own battle with various health difficulties, is refreshingly relevant in a world rattled by challenges, including racial riots and group divisions, a global pandemic, and post-election partisan violence, to name a few.

Peterson has had no shortage of negative press, and after more than a year out of the public eye, his media foes haven't let up. The Guardian summed up Beyond Order in a headline as "a ragbag of self-help dictums." Helen Lewis, a journalist Peterson had clashed with before in a viral GQ interview, wrote that his return to the public eye was due to the "irresistible ordeal of modern cultural celebrity."

Yet Peterson is far from the evil right-wing provocateur his media foes wish him to be, and he is back with a much-needed message to a rattled and shiftless world.
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