Society's ChildS


Briefcase

New facts come to light in Feds' persecution of General Flynn

Margot Cleveland
The Federalist
Mon, 27 Apr 2020 00:00 UTC
Flynn
© U.S. Secretary of Defense/FlickrGeneral Michael Flynn
The criminal case against Michael Flynn imploded Friday. First, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia provided Flynn's legal team with documents discovered by an outside review of the Flynn prosecution — documents withheld for years. Then, Sidney Powell, the attorney who took over Flynn's defense nearly a year ago, filed new documents in the case, revealing a secret "lawyers' understanding" not to prosecute Flynn's son if the retired lieutenant general pleaded guilty.

The criminal case against Flynn began when President Donald Trump's former national security adviser pleaded guilty Dec. 1, 2017, to lying to the FBI about conversations he'd had with the Russian ambassador following Trump's election. That case, initiated by the now-disbanded special counsel's office, lingered for more than a year while Flynn cooperated with Robert Mueller's team. An end seemed near when Flynn appeared before presiding federal Judge Emmet Sullivan on Dec. 18, 2018, for sentencing. But after Sullivan harshly rebuked Flynn and suggested Flynn might spend time in jail, the retired lieutenant general accepted the longtime judge's offer to have the sentencing hearing continued until Flynn's cooperation was complete.
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Red Flag

'Burn it to the ground': COVID rumors spark violent threats against church in rural North Carolina

Michael Gordon
Charlotte Observer
Sun, 26 Apr 2020 17:58 UTC
Word of Faith Fellowship threats
© Charlotte Observer
Rumors that a secretive and highly controversial Foothills church is harboring an outbreak of COVID-19 has unleashed a series of violent social media threats against the congregation.

One person on Facebook called for an "old timey lynching" if it can be proven that Word of Faith Fellowship in Spindale is fueling Rutherford County's high rate of confirmed cases.

The county, about 70 miles west of Charlotte, has a population of less than 70,000 but more than 100 cases as of Sunday. That gives it North Carolina's ninth highest COVID-19 rate.

County health officials have refused to release specifics about where clusters of the coronavirus illness have occurred, citing federal and state privacy laws.

The void of information has been filled partially by widespread speculation that Word of Faith — the subject of fiery debate in and around Rutherford County for decades — has fueled the county's outbreak.
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House

Best of the Web: Looming in NYC: Largest rent strike in almost a century - millions unable to pay

Natasha Lennard
The Intercept
Sat, 25 Apr 2020 07:00 UTC
rentstrike
© Ted S. Warren/APScene in Seattle, WA April 1, 2020
Want a grim picture of the state of American dissent during the coronavirus pandemic? Take an overview of media coverage from the last week. The press focused disproportionate attention on a few hundred white reactionaries, in a small number of states, rallying against social distancing measures — buoyed, of course, by tweets from President Donald Trump. Meanwhile, some of the most radical and righteous acts of mass resistance this country has seen in decades — from a wave of labor strikes to an explosion of mutual aid networks — are earning but a fraction of the media focus accorded to fringe, right-wing protesters.

Based on mainstream news coverage alone, for instance, you'd likely never know that organizers and tenants in New York are preparing the largest coordinated rent strike in nearly a century, to begin on May 1.

At least 400 hundred families who live in buildings each containing over 1,500 rent units are coordinating building-wide rent strikes, according to Cea Weaver, campaign coordinator for Housing Justice For All, a New York-based coalition of tenants and housing activists. Additionally, over 5,000 people have committed, through an online pledge, to refuse to pay rent in May.

Comment: Structuring a 1M strong 'post Covid no income' outcome
The majority of tenants in the Cosmopolitan Houses complex in Woodside, Queens have joined a rent strike that hopes to enlist upwards of one million New Yorkers, set to begin May 1, organizers told the Wall Street Journal on Monday.

Strikers in New York are expected to be joined by groups in Philadelphia, Chicago, multiple California cities and elsewhere across the US.

Led by the Upstate/Downstate Housing Alliance, the New York rent-strike movement has brought together an impressive coalition of tenants' rights and labor groups to petition for a total suspension of all payments for the duration of Governor Andrew Cuomo's 'New York Pause' order, which has brought the state's normally-bustling economy to a standstill and thrown millions into unemployment. They also want a $10 billion investment in affordable housing, to include improving the quality of existing public housing, repurposing vacant properties into permanent housing for the homeless, and topping up the budget for subsidized housing.

Just 55.7 percent of New Yorkers surveyed by PropertyNest expected to be able to pay their rent "as usual" come May 1, though a sizable percentage more (15.8 percent) planned to borrow the money, pay late, or work out other agreements with their landlords.


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Chart Bar

SOTT Focus: The Undeniable Correlation Between Lockdown And The Unprecedented Destruction of Economies, Jobs And Lives

Rob Slane
The Blogmire
Sat, 25 Apr 2020 16:57 UTC
question mark
Leaving aside the fact that multiple studies show that Covid-19 has a case-fatality of between 0.1% and 0.5% (see here and here for instance), I remain bemused at the attempts of those who believe lockdown is essential to dealing with the virus to explain away the very simple fact that there is *so far* no correlation whatsoever between the policy they advocate and a reduction in deaths.

There are many ways of showing that there is no correlation, but the simplest is to compare a country not in lockdown — Sweden, for example — with those that are. Yet despite having done this using as many metrics as you like (daily figures, daily figures per million, daily figures per 100,000, weekly figures, weekly figures per million, weekly figures per 100,000), and despite the fact that not one of them shows Sweden doing any worse than countries in lockdown, there seem to be 101 reasons given by some (mainly on Twitter) as to why the figures shown aren't showing what they should show, and that if only other figures were shown they would surely show what should be shown. Something like that.

Okay, so let me try and show a real correlation, but to do so I first need to demonstrate absence of correlation again. Below is a chart showing weekly deaths per million people for 13 European countries, as well as the United States. Of these countries, only one (Sweden) is not in lockdown (although a few States in the US aren't as well), but as you can see, *so far* it is doing no worse than the others. In fact, it is doing better than some, despite its apparent suicide mission caused by not locking people up under house arrest and putting its economy into a nosedive:
slane stats covid

Comment: Do read more of Rob Slane's work on the Covid-19 madness:

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Question

Tajikistan acting as if there's a pandemic, although it has no (ZERO) coronavirus cases (officially)


RFE/RL
Tue, 28 Apr 2020 14:08 UTC
Tajikistan citizens coronavirus masks
© Radioi Ozodi (RFE/RL)While the government has said there are no coronavirus cases in Tajikistan, some Tajiks have chosen to wear masks to protect themselves.
Wearing rubber gloves and a homemade face mask, a middle-aged woman named Ziyoda sells herbs at a vegetable market on the outskirts of Khujand, the ancient Tajik city that is one of the oldest in Central Asia.

She comes in close contact with dozens of customers every day, some haggling with her as buyers have done with sellers in Khujand since its days as a stop along the Great Silk Road. Others just stop to chat with Ziyoda as they carefully select coriander, spring onion, or early garlic leaves from her stall.

Some customers wear face masks -- but many don't.

Ziyoda, 48, shrugs nonchalantly when she's asked if she worries about contracting the coronavirus in the busy bazaar.

"The government says we don't have the coronavirus," she says. "I thought about staying at home when there were rumors recently that someone died in the [nearby] Rasulov district. But our officials said it wasn't coronavirus and that people shouldn't believe such false rumors."
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Attention

Missouri snitches get doxed! Personal info from 900+ tattlers exposed online

PJ Randhawa, Erin Richey
KDSK
Sat, 25 Apr 2020 04:20 UTC
covid snitches missouri
A spree of social media posts this week warn that St. Louis County released the information it got from people who reported businesses in violation of the stay-at-home order.

The document, released in response to a Sunshine Law request, included names and contact information of the people making the reports. In their messages, some asked for anonymity.

Posts and comments in response to the document invited retaliation against the people who utilized the county's inbox for tips about non-essential businesses that stayed open.

The I-Team's PJ Randhawa talked with a woman whose tip was among those released. Patricia asked that we not use her last name, because she fears what someone might do with the information in the document.

Comment: Careless whispers: How the German public used and abused the Gestapo
It's been estimated that only 15 per cent of Gestapo cases started because of surveillance operations. A far greater number began following a tip-off from a member of the public. Every allegation, no matter how trivial, was investigated with meticulous and time-consuming thoroughness. It's been estimated that about 40 per cent of these denunciations were personally motivated. [...] During the second World War, denunciations increased as a raft of new regulations were brought in. This was a golden age for snitchers.
See also:

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Airplane

JetBlue becomes the first US airline requiring passengers to wear face coverings

Elizabeth Rosner
The New York Post
Tue, 28 Apr 2020 13:16 UTC
jetblue
© Lucas Jackson / Reuters
JetBlue became the first US airline to require passengers to wear face coverings on flights to help prevent the spread of coronavirus.

The new policy goes into effect May 4 and comes after the airline began to require all crew members wear face masks on flights.

"Wearing a face covering isn't about protecting yourself it's about protecting those around you," said Joanna Geraghty, president and chief operating officer, JetBlue.

"This is the new flying etiquette. Onboard, cabin air is well circulated and cleaned through filters every few minutes but this is a shared space where we have to be considerate of others."

Comment: No good choices: A mask may block out some pollution but have other ill health effects:
A person wearing any kind of mask faces breathing resistance as air filters through the device, making the wearer work harder to inhale than he would without the mask. This can have several adverse physiological effects when the mask is worn for long periods of time. Moreover, carbon dioxide that is exhaled can get trapped in the chamber of the mask the re-enter the body each time the mask user inhales. This delivers less oxygen into the body than when the person is not wearing a mask.

"It can lead to oxygen shortage, suffocation, respiration trouble, and heart attacks," said Dr D Saha, scientist and additional director at the Central Pollution Control Board.

He pointed out that masks are a potential source of bacteria and viruses. "The moisture from exhalation inside the mask, when in constant contact with the 37 degrees Celsius warm human body, becomes ideal place for virus and bacteria to thrive," he said. This could result in the growth of microbes on masks and aid the spread of airborne diseases like influenza.
See also:

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House

Best of the Web: The lockdown is not backed by science. And now the economy is flatlining

Mike Whitney
The Unz Review
Sun, 26 Apr 2020 00:01 UTC
running off cliff
Can we admit that we were wrong? Can we admit that the coronavirus is not going to kill "hundreds of thousands or even millions" of Americans? Can we admit that the public health system is not going to buckle and collapse? Can we admit that we fashioned our public policy on flawed computer models that proved utterly worthless? Can we admit that the number of people infected is significantly larger than the official numbers? Can we admit that the percentage of fatalities is going to be significantly lower? Can we admit that the majority of people who have died are over 60 with serious underlying conditions like high-blood pressure, diabetes, obesity etc? Can we admit that there is no "historical scientific basis" for using "lockdowns" to fight a pandemic? Can we admit that "social distancing", "shelter in place", "self isolation" and "self quarantine" are arbitrary directives aimed at social control and not science-based remedies derived from serious research? Can we admit that the new data and the hard science do not support the existing policy but suggest that savaging civil liberties, decimating the economy and keeping the entire population in a perennial state of hysteria, is a gross overreaction that has done incalculable damage to the country, to our economic well-being, and to our tattered credibility as a responsible nation?

The bottom line is this: The data and the science do not support the current policy. That alone should give us pause.

Comment: See also:

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Light Saber

SOTT Focus: If Sweden Succeeds, Lockdowns Will All Have Been For Nothing

Daniel Hannan
The Telegraph
Sun, 26 Apr 2020 18:00 UTC

Comment: The following criticism of the draconian lockdowns is from the mainstream media (alt-media criticism on this topic is in short supply these days). It takes the 'COVID-19 pandemic' as a given - that is, its author assumes the officially-reported numbers are correct and that the virus is of course something governments and people ought to take precautions against.

Nevertheless, the author points out that Sweden - the ONLY country in Christendom whose government did not go 'full Hitler' on its population - is reporting essentially the same (low - really low) 'COVID-19 death numbers' as every other country, a 'fly in the ointment' that completely exposes the lockdowns as having ZERO EFFECT on preventing or mitigating the so-called 'pandemic'...


people outside
When foreign commentators discuss Sweden's light-touch response to Covid-19, they tend to adopt an affronted tone. Which is, on the surface, surprising. You'd think everyone would be willing the Nordic country to succeed. After all, if Sweden can come through the epidemic without leaving a smoking crater where its economy used to be, there is hope for the rest of the world. So far, many signs appear encouraging. The disease seems to be following the same basic trajectory in Sweden as elsewhere.

Although we must wait for complete data, modelling by country's authorities suggests that the infection rate in Stockholm peaked on 8 April. If so, we need to consider the implication, namely that, once basic hygiene and distancing measures are in place, tightening the screw further perhaps makes little difference. Which would be good news for the rest of us. Adopting Sweden's more laissez-faire response might not restore our economies to full health, but it would at least allow us to bring them out of their induced comas.

Sweden is, broadly speaking, sticking to the approach that Britain followed in the week before the lockdown - the approach, indeed, that our strategists had wargamed in cooler-headed times. On 23 March, in an abrupt shift, Britain's shops were closed and its people told to stay at home.

What had changed? Was it the hysterical media demand for a Continental-style crackdown? Or the furious reaction to people visiting beauty spots on Mothering Sunday? Or was it the Imperial College model, published a few days earlier, which warned of hundreds of thousands of deaths unless there was a mass quarantine? Whatever the explanation, the lockdown soon took on a momentum of its own, with every new death turned into an argument for tighter restrictions.

Comment: See also:

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Airplane

Lower your expectations: Boeing CEO says 'it will be years' before global aviation returns to pre-pandemic levels

Andrew Tangel and Doug Cameron
Wall Street Journal
Mon, 27 Apr 2020 02:11 UTC
Boeing
© EPA-EFE/Arhiva
Air traffic may not bounce back for two or three years, Boeing Co. Chief Executive David Calhoun said, outlining the tough outlook for global aviation to the plane maker's shareholders on Monday.

"The health crisis is unlike anything we have ever experienced," Mr. Calhoun said at the annual meeting. "It will be years before this returns to pre-pandemic levels."

Mr. Calhoun laid out the coronavirus pandemic's toll on the industry: Global airline revenues are set to drop by $314 billion this year. In the U.S., more than 2,800 planes are idled. Passenger demand is down 95% from last year.

"We are in an unpredictable and fast-changing environment, and it is difficult to estimate when the situation will stabilize," he added. "But when it does, the commercial market will be smaller and our customers' needs will be different."
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