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Thailand's PM vows to lift state of emergency, but protesters insist he must quit in 3 days


RT
Wed, 21 Oct 2020 21:37 UTC
Thailand protests
© Reuters / Athit PerawongmethaDemonstrators line up as they march near the Government House during an anti-government protest in Bangkok.
Embattled Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha has promised to lift the state of emergency in Bangkok to defuse tensions with protesters, but it wasn't enough to make demonstrators retract their demand for his swift resignation.

Prayuth appeared on TV on Wednesday, insisting that he was ready to "make the first move to de-escalate this situation" in the capital, which has seen mass protests for three months. He said that he will lift "the state of severe emergency" introduced in Bangkok last week if no violent incidents occur during the ongoing gatherings.

The protests in Thailand have been mostly peaceful, with the most heated rally taking place last Friday, during which police deployed a water cannon against the crowd.

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Black Magic

Best of the Web: Young volunteer DIES during AstraZeneca's Covid-19 vaccine trial in Brazil. Pharma giant sez: 'No safety concerns'

Eduardo Simões
Reuters
Wed, 21 Oct 2020 07:24 UTC
AstraZeneca
© REUTERS/Amanda PerobelliFILE PHOTO: An employee is seen at the Reference Center for Special Immunobiologicals (CRIE) of the Federal University of Sao Paulo (Unifesp) where the trials of the Oxford/AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine are conducted, in Sao Paulo, Brazil, June 24, 2020. Picture taken June 24, 2020.
Brazilian health authority Anvisa said on Wednesday that a volunteer in a clinical trial of the COVID-19 vaccine developed by AstraZeneca AZN.L and Oxford University had died but added that the trial would continue.

Oxford confirmed the plan to keep testing, saying in a statement that after careful assessment "there have been no concerns about safety of the clinical trial."


Comment: Actually, vaccine trials in the US were suspended due to concerns about side effects, however trials were, for some unspecified reason, allowed to continue in South Africa... So far 8,000 of the planned 10,000 volunteers in the trial have been recruited and given the first dose in six cities in Brazil, and many have already received the second shot, he said.


A source familiar with the matter told Reuters that the trial would have been suspended if the volunteer who died had received the COVID-19 vaccine, suggesting the person was part of the control group that was given a meningitis vaccine.


Comment: This is an unproven claim.


CNN Brasil reported that the volunteer was a 28-year-old man who lived in Rio de Janeiro and died from COVID-19 complications.

Comment: China has successfully passed multiple trials of their coronavirus vaccine and Russia has officially launched theirs: Also check out SOTT radio's:

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2 + 2 = 4

New York City parents filing class-action suit to force full reopening of public schools

Selim Algar
New York Post
Wed, 21 Oct 2020 21:18 UTC
Joe Borelli
© Natan DvirCity Councilman Joe Borelli
A group of fed-up city parents is suing the city over the lack of full time schooling in the nation's largest school system.

The families, who will file the class action suit Wednesday, are stressing the damage being wrought by screen-dependent remote learning in making their demand.

Crystal Lia, 39, a parent of three, said the format is draining her family of both resources and educational value.

"My husband is a city worker," she said Wednesday. "I'm an essential employee, I run a business on Staten Island. We cannot physically teach three kids in three different grades. We cannot afford to pay our bills by staying home with three kids in three different grades."

Erin Ulitto, 34, said her special needs son is receding both academically and socially because of the lack of full time schooling.
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Gold Seal

Good! Colorado man sentenced to 300+ years for human trafficking

Lindsey Grewe
KKTV
Wed, 21 Oct 2020 20:35 UTC
Chauncey Price
© 18th Judicial District Attorney's Office
A 30-year-old Colorado man was just handed one of the longest sentences ever for human trafficking.

At 304 years, human trafficking and forgery ring leader Chauncey Price will spend the rest of his life and then some in prison. Douglas County District Court Judge Theresa Slade announced the sentence during a hearing Oct. 8, 10 months after Price was found guilty on 13 counts, including human trafficking for sexual servitude and criminal attempt to commit pimping of a child.

During his trial, three of his victims recounted their nightmarish ordeal at his hands, forced into having sex with strangers for money that they then had to turn over to Price. The customers were found through ads that Price and his accomplices would place online, ads that offered up women and girls for sex.

"Chauncey promised to take care of me," one of his victims said in a statement she read at the sentencing. "At first he paid for my drug habit and food and let me stay for free. But nothing is free. ... He threatened to kill my sister if I didn't work for him -- that is when he turned me out. He kept pushing me to sleep with more and more men, up to eight a day. ... I couldn't even use the bathroom without someone watching me. Once I didn't eat for three days.

Comment: Not too long ago, this creature would have been pushed off a cliff to protect the community. Prison just doesn't seem enough punishment for these types.

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NPC

Instagram refuses to remove 'black art' depicting severed heads of white people citing 'differences of expression'


RT
Wed, 21 Oct 2020 12:35 UTC
BLM Art
© Instagram / @supportblackartScreenshot: Instagram / @supportblackart
Instagram has refused to remove an image depicting two black women holding the severed heads of white people, claiming that "people may express themselves differently" and that the picture doesn't violate community guidelines.

The image, produced by an artist working under the name 'sugarygarbage', was shared to a page called 'supportblackart' and shows two obese black women posing with the severed heads of a white woman and man.

Despite an ongoing crackdown on offensive content, Facebook-owned Instagram refused to remove the 'black art', claiming it didn't violate community guidelines.

Comment: See also:

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Sheriff

Liverpool's gyms win battle to reopen because government concedes lockdown measures were contradictory


RT
Wed, 21 Oct 2020 10:55 UTC
gym lift
© Getty Images / Christopher RobbinsFILE PHOTO.
Liverpool's fitness community has won a hard-fought victory against the government as gyms will now reopen on Friday morning in spite of the Tier 3 lockdown restrictions in place in the region.

The city was among the first in the UK to re-enter lockdown amid a spike in Covid-19 cases in the north of England, however, local gym owners remained defiant throughout.

Nick Whitcombe, owner of Bodytech Fitness in Moreton, defied the government's rules and remained open, prompting a visit from armed police who issued him with a £1,000 fine for breach of coronavirus restrictions, following an anonymous tip.

Comment: Imagine if the owners hadn't stood up for themselves, the government would have had no qualms about sending out more police to enforce contradictory and irrational rules that would likely bankrupt numerous business owners.

It's also worth noting that the same gym owner released a video just days before claiming to have an audio recording of environmental health officials meeting to devise a plan to "sabotage" the gyms' collective pushback, and he just so happened to have a copy and was planning on leaking it, apparently they are heard describing the situation as "embarrassing":

See also:

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Arrow Up

Bolivia: Against all odds, the people still won!

Chris Faure
The Saker
Mon, 19 Oct 2020 00:00 UTC
Arce and Choquehuanca
© Systemic AlternativesNew president Luis Arce and running mate David Choquehuanca
Bolivia went to the polls yesterday for the first election since the coup d'état in November 2019, that removed Evo Morales from the leadership and from the country and put the country under a western backed right wing coup government. This coup was carried out for lithium, as Morales was developing the Lithium sector and had made agreements to start the long road to manufacturing batteries and electric vehicles. Elon Musk was accused of having had a hand in the coup (Lithium prices rose sharply a day or so before) and his comment was: "We will coup whoever we want. Get used to it!"

So for the past year, the notable members of Movement Towards Socialism (MAS), and IPSP, the party of Evo Morales, were in some cases massacred, persecuted and beaten. This did not stop them and they demanded elections. Having united into one Bloc, having inherited the gentle style of Morales and under new young, educated and committed leaders, they are now more powerful than ever before. The intervention from the usual suspects could not break through, despite a self-appointed president, despite the persecution, despite US intervention, the MAS is back and even more powerful. This is what a true majority of the people looks like.

Last night's exit polls show that Bolivia's Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) won the presidency in the 1st round with 52.4% of the vote. This is an even higher score than when Evo Morales won in 2019. According to exit polls data, 31.5% people voted for Carlos Mesa.

Comment: See also: Observations about Bolivia's socialist blowout

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Star of David

US fighting on behalf of Israel: ex-Israeli author claims

Mohammad Mazhari
Tehran Times
Sun, 18 Oct 2020 22:57 UTC
Gilad Atzmon
© UnknownEx-Israeli author Gilad Atzmon
"America is willing to sacrifice its young soldiers and national interests and even its economy for Israel," Gilad Atzmon, who was born in a Jewish family in Israel and grew up in Jerusalem al-Quds, tells the Tehran Times. Atzmon, who now lives in Britain, also says, "Israeli pressure groups seem to believe that they are actually more powerful and certainly more important than the American constitution."

The following is the text of the interview:

Q: Numerous human rights bodies have slammed Western countries' arms trade with Israel. What is your comment?

A: For decades, Israel has been selling killing machines to the most oppressive regimes around the world, and this shouldn't be surprising, as Israel itself is at the forefront of the list of oppressive regimes.

Embarrassed by the Israeli government's current arming of Azerbaijan in its war with Armenia, Holocaust scholar Israel W. Charny penned an article for The Times of Israel titled: "Would Israel sell a used drone to a Hitler?" Charny admits in his piece that Israel's conduct is fundamentally unethical. He ends his commentary writing, "to my Armenian colleagues and friends, I can only say that as a Jew and as an Israeli, I am mortified - and angry."
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Bullseye

Babylon Bee CEO: Facebook censored Monty Python Coney Barrett satire article, demonetized site - UPDATE: Facebook apologizes, restores account

Kayla Sargent
NewsBusters
Wed, 21 Oct 2020 17:44 UTC
hirono coney barret babylon bee satire duck witch
© The Babylon Bee
Facebook may have hit a new low today in its seemingly eternal quest to rid the world of, well, anything the platform deems problematic.

Seth Dillon, CEO of The Babylon Bee (The Bee) said that Facebook demonetized the Babylon Bee and removed a satirical article entitled "Senator Hirono Demands ACB Be Weighed Against A Duck To See If She Is A Witch." Dillon also stated that the social media platform warned The Bee not to speak publicly about the matter, which Dillon promptly ignored in a tweet on his Twitter page.

Comment: UPDATE 23/10/2020: Washington Times reports:
"Facebook reached out to us to apologize for having made a 'mistake,'" Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon wrote in a note to readers Wednesday evening.

"They've lifted the restrictions on our account and restored the article they previously deleted," Mr. Dillon said. "But questions remain. Why did it have to take getting the media involved to fix this? And why did it happen in the first place?"

Mr. Dillon blamed human actors for singling out the post, which played off a joke from the 1975 classic Monty Python and the Search for the Holy Grail. It involved Ms. Hirono seeking to weigh Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett against a duck to see if Ms. Barrett was "a witch."

"This was not just an algorithm flagging an article in error," Mr. Dillon said. "A manual review took place, and the ruling to penalize us was upheld."

Facebook did not respond to questions about how it handled the issue.

While this is not the first time The Babylon Bee, which trends conservative in its humor, has clashed with social media companies that increasingly control the dissemination of news. The Bee has also had issued with Twitter, on which it has nearly three quarters of a million followers.

But this week's flare up came at a time when Facebook and Twitter are under renewed scrutiny for their apparent attempts to smother stories by the New York Post. They claimed Joseph R. Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, and his son, Hunter, allegedly profited off the elder Mr. Biden's position as vice president under Barack Obama.

Both social media behemoths initially blocked links and references to The Post articles, which were derived from an old laptop Hunter Biden allegedly left at a Delaware computer repair shop. The laptop contained emails that appear to show companies in the Ukraine and China funneling millions to Hunter Biden in an effort to get close to the vice president.


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Arrow Down

Studies are pointing to big drop in Covid-19 death rates

Geoff Brumfiel
NPR
Tue, 20 Oct 2020 17:03 UTC
covid hospital staff PPE
© Mario Tama/Getty ImagesCOVID-19 mortality rates are going down, according to studies of two large hospital systems, partly thanks to improvements in treatment. Here, clinicians care for a patient in July at an El Centro, Calif., hospital.
Two new peer-reviewed studies are showing a sharp drop in mortality among hospitalized COVID-19 patients. The drop is seen in all groups, including older patients and those with underlying conditions, suggesting that physicians are getting better at helping patients survive their illness.

"We find that the death rate has gone down substantially," says Leora Horwitz, a doctor who studies population health at New York University's Grossman School of Medicine and an author on one of the studies, which looked at thousands of patients from March to August.

The study, which was of a single health system, finds that mortality has dropped among hospitalized patients by 18 percentage points since the pandemic began. Patients in the study had a 25.6% chance of dying at the start of the pandemic; they now have a 7.6% chance.

Comment: If even as stalwart leftist bastion as the NPR has to admit the 'pandemic' is fading. With very few exceptions, the virus was a nothing burger.

CDC reviewing 'stunning' test results from Boston homeless shelter; almost half tested positive and with NO symptoms

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