Society's ChildS


Bizarro Earth

Azerbaijani police disperse protesters storming parliament demanding 'mobilization' against Armenia amid border escalation


RT
Wed, 15 Jul 2020 12:26 UTC
azerbaijan protest
Police used water cannons and batons against protesters who stormed the parliament in Azerbaijan's capital Baku. The crowd demanded mobilization amid border escalation with Armenia, but officials said that it's unnecessary.

Enraged protesters broke into the parliament building around 4am local time, local media reported. Arriving several minutes later, police used batons to expel the intruders.

Parliament's Protocol Office told reporters that the rioters caused some "damage" on the building's first floor before being driven out.

Comment: See also:

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Info

The confusion in government goes beyond face masks


The Spectator
Fri, 17 Jul 2020 07:26 UTC
mask social distance
© Getty Images"Many spaces that have been shut down in fact don't need to be," said study coauthor Martin Bazant.
When Michael Gove delivered the Ditchley Annual Lecture last month he spoke about why citizens feel that the political system has failed them. 'The compact leaders offered — trust that we are the best, trust that we have your best interests at heart, and trust that we will deliver — was broken.' It was a powerful message. Voters have a right to expect honesty and competence from their leaders, not just decisiveness.

So Mr Gove will have thought carefully before saying on television last weekend that face masks should not be mandatory, and people should instead be left to use their own judgment. No one, it seems, told him that the Prime Minister was hours away from asking the police to enforce the wearing of masks in shops with a £100 fine for failure to comply. Polls suggest 60 per cent of the public support this move, but the proportion of government scientific advisers who agree is harder to ascertain.

'Our advice is clear,' said Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer, in March. 'Wearing a mask, if you don't have an infection, really reduces the risk almost not at all. We do not advise that.' His deputy, Professor Jonathan Van-Tam, was also emphatic. There is 'no evidence', he said, that the wearing of face masks by healthy members of the public slows the spread of the virus. At one stage, companies who advertised masks as a tool against the virus were prosecuted by the Advertising Standards Authority for making misleading claims.

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Laptop

Hackers targeted Twitter employees to hijack accounts of Elon Musk, Joe Biden and others in Bitcoin scam

Kif Leswing
CNBC
Thu, 16 Jul 2020 13:03 UTC
elon musk hacked tweet
Twitter shares sank Thursday, a day after hackers gained access to more than a dozen high-profile accounts, including those of Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Joe Biden, former President Barack Obama, Elon Musk and the corporate account of Apple.

The accounts displayed tweets telling followers to send bitcoin to a specific address.

Share prices were down more than 5% in Thursday's premarket.

Comment: The implications of this are huge. If Twitter has a lapse in their security so massive that the former president and vice president, as well as some of the most high profile CEOs of major corporations, can have their accounts entirely taken over, think of what could happen if the hackers wanted to achieve something more nefarious than a rather transparent bitcoin scam.

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Crusader

Julian Assange: Damage to the soul of a nation

Craig Murray
craigmurray.org.uk
Tue, 14 Jul 2020 21:10 UTC
julian Assange in 2011
© Getty Images
The imprisonment of Julian Assange has been a catalogue of gross injustice heaped upon gross injustice, while a complicit media and indoctrinated population looks the other way. In a truly extraordinary twist, Assange is now being extradited on the basis of an indictment served in the UK, which is substantially different to the actual indictment he now faces in Virginia if extradited.

The Assange hearing was adjourned after its first full week, and its resumption has since been delayed by coronavirus. In that first full week, both the prosecution and the defence outlined their legal arguments over the indictment. As I reported in detail to an audience of millions, Assange's legal team fairly well demolished the key arguments of the prosecution during that hearing.

This extract from my report of the Defence case is of particular relevance to what has since happened:
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NPC

San Francisco museum commits to diversity, but forces curator to quit for saying he won't 'reverse discriminate'


RT
Wed, 15 Jul 2020 00:11 UTC
Gary Garrels
© Getty Images/STEFANIE KEENAN/Patrick McMullan; AFP / Josh EdelsonGary Garrels; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art's commitment to diversity and inclusion seems to have hit a snag, as its chief curator was forced to resign after saying the institution will not be excluding white artists.

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) promoted its commitment to social justice in a public statement, and even established the position of "Director of diversity, inclusion, and belonging" at the end of June.

But all this talk of "inclusion" did little to save a longtime curator from having to resign after saying the museum "will definitely still continue to collect white artists."

Gary Garrels, who the media has called one of the most prominent curators in the country, made the comment at the end of a meeting about the museum's move to acquire more works from artists of color following the death of George Floyd. He also said that banning white artists from the institution would be a form of "reverse discrimination."


Comment: Obviously an extremist position to take...


His comments prompted several former employees to start a petition demanding Garrels resign or be fired from his position. The petitioners specifically focused on the term 'reverse discrimination', calling it "white supremacist and racist language."


Comment: These people are sick in the head.

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Heart - Black

Child suicides surge during lockdown in Kent, UK

Sally Weale
The Guardian
Thu, 16 Jul 2020 18:53 UTC
school
© Lady Harriet Brocket/Rex/ShutterstockThe children’s special needs may have made it particularly difficult for them to cope with the closure of schools.
Five children with special educational needs have killed themselves in the space of five months in Kent, a council official has revealed in a warning over the impact of school closures on pupils.

Sarah Hammond, the county's director of integrated children's services, said ordinarily two or three children might be expected to take their lives over 12 months.

All five of the children had special needs, including autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), which may have made it particularly difficult for them to cope without the routine of school, she said.

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V

Ricky Gervais slams PC police, calling cancel culture a 'weird sort of fascism'

Ben Kew
Breitbart
Wed, 15 Jul 2020 19:53 UTC
gervais
© Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images
British actor Ricky Gervais raged against the rising tide of political correctness and cancel culture in the wake of the Black Lives Matter uprising, describing it as a "weird sort of fascism" fueled by trendy myths.

"There's this new, weird sort of fascism of people thinking they know what you can say and what you can't," Gervais said in an interview with talkRADIO. "There's this new trendy myth that people who want free speech want to say awful things all the time. This just isn't true. It protects everyone."

Gervais also bemoaned the growing level of exaggeration across the political divide, a trend he says is worsened by social media."If you're mildly left-wing on Twitter, you're suddenly Trotsky, right?" he said. "If you're mildly conservative, you're Hitler and if your centrist and you look at both arguments, you're a coward."

Comment: Gervais is becoming the modern version of George Carlin, skewering fake Hollywood virtue signaling and throwing the truth in their faces. His Golden Globes monologue earlier this year is a must watch for anyone who wants to see what a courageous social commentator looks like:



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NPC

North Carolina city approves reparations for Black residents

Joel Burgess
USA Today
Thu, 16 Jul 2020 08:10 UTC
BLM protest in Manhattan, NY
© Reuters/Carlo AllegriBlack Lives Matter protest in Manhattan, NY.
In an extraordinary move, the Asheville City Council has apologized for the North Carolina city's historic role in slavery, discrimination and denial of basic liberties to Black residents and voted to provide reparations to them and their descendants.

The 7-0 vote came the night of July 14.

"Hundreds of years of Black blood spilled that basically fills the cup we drink from today," said Councilman Keith Young, one of two African American members of the body and the measure's chief proponent.

"It is simply not enough to remove statutes. Black people in this country are dealing with issues that are systemic in nature.

The unanimously passed resolution does not mandate direct payments. Instead, it will make investments in areas where Black residents face disparities.

Comment: The mayor of Providence, Rhode Island has also signed an order to pursue reparations for Black and Native American residents.

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Bullseye

Not publicizing black & brown mugshots is not fixing the racial problem with the justice system - it's hiding it

Helen Buyniski
RT
Wed, 15 Jul 2020 19:16 UTC
handcuffs
© Reuters / Eric Gaillard
News outlets and even police departments are ending the publication of jail booking photos, claiming they foster stereotypes because minorities are more often arrested. But hiding inequities in the system doesn't fix them.

The Sacramento Bee, the Orlando Sentinel, the Houston Chronicle and a number of other city papers across the US have curtailed the practice of publishing "mugshot slideshows," image galleries showing booking photos of arrested individuals who haven't yet been convicted of crimes.

With exceptions for celebrity mugshots, suspected serial killers, "threats to public safety," and "hate crime" suspects, the move is intended to counter racial stereotypes about criminality.

The papers have a point about the galleries' lack of context - a wordless array of scowling black and brown faces may indeed give the false impression that this is what all criminals look like. Some of the most destructive and dangerous criminals, the ones stealing your (or your parents') retirement savings or bombing civilians in the Middle East are unlikely to ever appear in one of these "rogues' galleries" (or, alas, to be arrested at all). And publishing a person's mugshot before they're even tried for a crime does impinge on the prisoner's constitutional right to the presumption of innocence.
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Laptop

Deepfake used to attack activist couple shows new disinformation frontier

Raphael Satter
Reuters
Wed, 15 Jul 2020 06:07 UTC
Oliver Taylor NOT
© Cyabra/Handout via REUTERSA combination photograph showing an image purporting to be of British student and freelance writer Oliver Taylor (L) and a heat map of the same photograph produced by Tel Aviv-based deepfake detection company Cyabra is seen in this undated handout photo obtained by Reuters. The heat map, which was produced using one of Cyabra's algorithms, highlights areas of suspected computer manipulation. The digital inconsistencies were one of several indicators used by experts to determine that Taylor was an online mirage.
Oliver Taylor, a student at England's University of Birmingham, is a twenty-something with brown eyes, light stubble, and a slightly stiff smile.

Online profiles describe him as a coffee lover and politics junkie who was raised in a traditional Jewish home. His half dozen freelance editorials and blog posts reveal an active interest in anti-Semitism and Jewish affairs, with bylines in the Jerusalem Post and the Times of Israel.

The catch? Oliver Taylor seems to be an elaborate fiction.
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