Society's ChildS


Cell Phone

Norway halts Covid-19 tracking app over privacy fears, low infection spread


RT
Mon, 15 Jun 2020 15:58 UTC
Norway covid tracking app
© NTB Scanpix/Heiko Junge via Reuters
Norway is halting its Covid-19 tracking app and will delete the data it has already collected after the country's data protection watchdog criticized its continued use amid privacy concerns.

The Norwegian Data Protection Authority said on Friday that it was no longer reasonable to collect data through the app considering the low spread of the infection and concerns about privacy. It gave the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (NIPH) notice of its decision to put in place a temporary ban on processing personal data.

The Smittestopp app was created in a bid to limit the spread of the coronavirus but the data watchdog believes its use is no longer appropriate given the low-levels of the virus in the Scandanavian country. The app has been downloaded 1.6 million times and has 600,00 active users, according to NIPH figures.

"We don't agree with the DPA's evaluation, but feel it is necessary to delete all data and put work on hold as a result of this," NIPH's director Camilla Stoltenberg said on Monday. She added that this would "weaken an important part of our preparedness against a spread in infection, as we now lose time for development and testing of the app."
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Dominoes

Russian court finds ex-US marine Paul Whelan guilty of espionage, sentences him to 16 years in prison

Bryan MacDonald
RT
Mon, 15 Jun 2020 16:02 UTC
Paul Whelan
© AFP / Kirill KUDRYAVTSEVPaul Whelan
Eighteen months after he was arrested in a Moscow hotel room and accusing of spying, a Russian court has handed down a 16 year jail term to Paul Whelan, a national of four western countries: Canada, Ireland, the US and the UK.

The 50-year-old defendant described the trial, partly held behind closed doors, as a "sham" and protested his innocence throughout the process. After Monday morning's verdict, he immediately stated that he intends to appeal. There have been suggestions that Whelan could be returned to the US in a prisoner swap.

His lawyer has named Viktor Bout and Konstantin Yaroshenko - two Russians jailed in the US - as potential candidates. Bout, who Russia considers a 'political prisoner,' is serving a 25-year term for arms dealing. Meanwhile, Yaroshenko was arrested in Liberia in 2010 in what the Russian Foreign Ministry described as a "kidnapping" and brought to the US. He had never set foot in the country before. Russian authorities have repeatedly complained about the harsh conditions and lack of medical care he has received in US prison.

Comment: Previously:

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NPC

Best of the Web: Anti-Cultural Revolution: Portland protesters topple statue of Thomas Jefferson, father of US Declaration of Independence


RT
Mon, 15 Jun 2020 15:54 UTC
jefferson statue
© Twitter / @Pdx_resistance
A group of demonstrators in Portland has torn down a statue of Thomas Jefferson in front of a school bearing his name, fanning the flames of a growing cultural divide in the US as activists target landmarks deemed racist.

Around 1,000 people gathered at Jefferson High School in Portland, Oregon on Sunday to listen to speeches before setting off on a Black Lives Matter march across the city. Later in the evening, a crowd reconvened at the school and set their sights on a statue of the third US president and principal author of the Declaration of Independence. Two ropes were tied around the statue's neck as the group labored to pull Jefferson off his pedestal - which had already been defaced with graffiti reading "slave owner."

Videos show the group tugging on the ropes, eventually sending the statue falling onto the concrete steps in front of the school.

Comment: As the Left's "cancel culture" has proven, it does not matter how much good a person has done, past or present. If they represent traditional Western culture and society and have done even one "bad thing," they will attack. Today's version of totalitarianism isn't in the form of a soldier's boot on our throats, but rather a bunch of Karens scolding people and destroying anything that they don't like. Be careful if they are able to get a hold of any real political power.

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Magnify

Pilot missing after US Air Force F-15C fighter jet crashes in North Sea off UK coast

Don Jacobson
UPI
Mon, 15 Jun 2020 15:37 UTC
US Air Force F-15C Eagle jet
© AFP / PETRAS MALUKASUS Air Force F-15C Eagle jet
A U.S. Air Force F-15 fighter jet crashed into the North Sea off the coast of Britain on Monday and the condition of the pilot is unknown.

The USAF 48th Fighter Wing, based at the RAF Lakenheath station, said in a statement the F-15C Eagle crashed during a training mission early Monday morning. Though some F-15s can carry two pilots, military officials said the "C" variant involved in Monday's crash carried just one.

"The cause of the crash as well as the status of the pilot are unknown at this time, and U.K. Search and Rescue have been called to support," it said.
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Dominoes

Britain was oppressive 'empire of thievery', rapper Lowkey tells RT's Going Underground, as monuments torn down & vandalized in UK


RT
Mon, 15 Jun 2020 15:32 UTC
vandalised statue of Winston Churchill
© REUTERS/Dylan Martinez
Famous hip-hop artist and activist Kareem Dennis (stage name Lowkey) unloaded on British imperialism in an interview with RT, saying it's the bitter legacy of slavery and persecution that is being avenged at the moment.

People are coming to terms with the fact that "Britain didn't have an empire, Britain was an empire," Lowkey told RT's Going Underground when asked for his take on the heated debate on the removal of controversial statues. The subjugated colonies were essentially based upon people "long considered upstarts, if not barbarians."

The empire prospered as its per capita GDP "actually increased by 347 percent" between 1757 and 1900 - but that boomeranged in the 21st century, Lowkey said.

Comment: It is good to become aware of the reality of what has occurred under Western imperialism, but then one has to question what kind of world is being created to replace the one that the Left is attempting to tear down. It seems to be more about who wants power than about removing warmongers and psychopaths from power.

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Red Pill

Best of the Web: As the Left now controls every lever of power, we face nothing less than Regime Change

Peter Hitchens
Daily Mail
Sun, 14 Jun 2020 15:01 UTC
boarding up of Winston Churchill's statue
The boarding up of Winston Churchill's statue in Parliament Square was act of appeasement if ever there truly was one.
As the Left now controls every lever of power, we face nothing less than Regime Change

What we now face is regime change. That is why these strange crowds have begun to gather round ancient and forgotten monuments, demanding their removal and destruction.

They do not know what they want, or understand what they are destroying. But that no longer matters. They think their moment has come, and they may well be right.

This is why the memorial to Winston Churchill, and the Cenotaph itself, were shamefully boarded up on Thursday night - an act of appeasement if ever there truly was one.

That is why police chiefs kneel like conquered slaves to the new gods of woke, and the leaders of the Labour Party do likewise. I have seen it happen before, but only when things were moving in the opposite direction.
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Che Guevara

New York Gov. Cuomo ignores THOUSANDS of BLM protesters in Brooklyn but threatens party goers in the Hamptons for 'violating social distancing'

Cristina Laila
The Gateway Pundit
Sun, 14 Jun 2020 18:14 UTC
'black trans lives matter’ protesters
Thousands of 'black trans lives matter' protesters gathered outside of the Brooklyn museum on Sunday.

The protesters were shoulder-to-shoulder and not practicing social distancing.

Watch:


Comment: Anyone who hasn't succumbed to the incredible amount of cognitive dissonance being induced by authoritarian leaders like Cuomo, and who have a shred of common sense - are now asking themselves how they can live under such subjective and arbitrary "laws" that seek only to satisfy the ideologically-motivated whims of those in charge. It will not be long before many more respond to this sort of oppression, and voice their discontent with action. And when the now silent majority does this, a roar may be heard that will make the recent protests sound like a Sunday church choir.

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NPC

The 'Goth ISIS Utopia' and other leftist nonsense

Clarice Feldman
American Thinker
Mon, 15 Jun 2020 07:09 UTC
Seattle Autonomous zone
© REUTERS/Lindsey Wasson
The left everywhere, from college campuses and newsrooms, to corporate headquarters and city councils, has gone stark, raving mad. I'm not the first to say it, and probably not the last, but most Americans are rational and aren't going to take this much longer. As for those wanting to defund and abolish the police, and -- in colleges and newsrooms -- forbid dissent from the BLM injustice mantra, Edmund Burke's observation is timeless:
"Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites... in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters."
The Newsroom Revolts

In an essay in which this leftist writer bends a necessary knee to Trump hatred, Matt Taibbi nevertheless hits the press where it deserves to be smacked:
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Bullseye

Do masks and respirators prevent viral respiratory illnesses? Interview with Professor Denis Rancourt

Kim Petersen
OffGuardian
Mon, 15 Jun 2020 06:22 UTC
doctor's face mask
A health professional told me back in March that face masks were ineffective but that respirators (the N95) were. Because of the source, I thought there must be validity to this. However, it seemed counterintuitive.

I reasoned that there would be differentials between using any type of mask versus no mask because no mask usage would allow aerosols to penetrate unabated, whereas a mask should capture much of the aerosol and reduce risk of spread to others and presumably should also function to mitigate breathing in viral-laden droplets. Because of the greater density of respirator material, the prophylactic would be reasoned to be greater.

However, what I had not considered was how extremely small the virion was in relation to the porosity of the material in the masks and respirators. I also had not looked at the scientific literature on the subject...until now.

Denis Rancourt, an eminent physics professor, former anarchist, and author, examined the scientific evidence for using face masks and respirators as preventative of contracting respiratory influenza-like disease, or respiratory illnesses believed to be transmitted by minuscule droplets.

Comment: See also:

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Recycle

A crash in the dollar is coming

Stephen Roach
Bloomberg
Mon, 08 Jun 2020 12:00 UTC
dollar
© Mark Wilson/Getty ImagesThe world is having serious doubts about the once widely accepted presumption of American exceptionalism.
The era of the U.S. dollar's "exorbitant privilege" as the world's primary reserve currency is coming to an end. Then French Finance Minister Valery Giscard d'Estaing coined that phrase in the 1960s largely out of frustration, bemoaning a U.S. that drew freely on the rest of the world to support its over-extended standard of living. For almost 60 years, the world complained but did nothing about it. Those days are over.

Already stressed by the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. living standards are about to be squeezed as never before. At the same time, the world is having serious doubts about the once widely accepted presumption of American exceptionalism. Currencies set the equilibrium between these two forces — domestic economic fundamentals and foreign perceptions of a nation's strength or weakness. The balance is shifting, and a crash in the dollar could well be in the offing.
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