Society's ChildS


Stock Down

No inflation? AT&T stock crashes as Americans can't afford to pay their phone bills

at&t building
© Mike Blake / ReutersAT&T
Shares of AT&T fell on Thursday after CEO John Stankey said that customers are starting to put off paying their phone bills - which resulted in the wireless carrier cutting this year's forecast for free cash flow by $2 billion, Bloomberg reports.

Shares fell as much as 11% in early trading, the company's largest slide since 2022 which erased the stock's YTD gains.

A weakened consumer adds to pressure facing AT&T, which has already taken hits from deeply discounting new phones and capital outlay on network equipment. The company now expects 2022 free cash flow of $14 billion - with around $1 billion of the reduced amount tied to the "timing of customer collections."

Comment: Shadowstats.com can be relied upon to show the true financial picture in the U.S.. Their assessment as of June 13, 202. Buckle up.
The CPI chart reflects our estimate of inflation for today as if it were calculated the same way it was in 1990. The CPI on the Alternate Data Series tab here reflects the CPI as if it were calculated using the methodologies in place in 1980. In general terms, methodological shifts in government reporting have depressed reported inflation, moving the concept of the CPI away from being a measure of the cost of living needed to maintain a constant standard of living.
inflation rate us america 2022
© Shadowstats.com



Bad Guys

Casket manufacturer reports unprecedented orders of child-size coffins

child funeral casket
© LumberJocks
A Toronto-based casket manufacturer has taken to Twitter to report historically high child casket sales by the company he works for.

The casket salesman, who asked to be referred to by his first name only, told the Western Standard his company has never seen such a significant rise in bulk sales of caskets typically used to bury children. Mick said all producers are seeing this huge uptick in youth-sized coffin sales.

Children's caskets typically accommodate the bodies of children aged between 18 months to around 10 years of age.

"There's no denying it, I would say the sales versus the pre-pandemic period were probably up 30%, maybe 40%. And in this industry, for a 30% or 40% increase in sales, something dramatic has to have happened. And it's not just local to specific towns," Mick said.

Comment:


NPC

John Cleese: Wokeness has a 'disastrous' impact on comedy

john Cleese
© Fox News DigitalEntertainment icon John Cleese speaks at FreedomFest on July 15, 2022.
Entertainment icon John Cleese slammed wokeness for having a "disastrous" impact on comedy during an interview with Fox News Digital.

Cleese was a keynote speaker at last week's FreedomFest conference in Las Vegas where he spoke about how to cultivate creativity, a skill he believes is essential and not just in showbiz, but sounded the alarm that political correctness has become a major obstacle, particularly for young comedians.

When asked if comedians have the freedom to be funny in the year 2022, Cleese firmly responded, "No."

"There's always been limitations on what they're allowed to say," Cleese said. "Why you go to Molière and Louis XIV. I mean Molière had to be a bit careful. And there will always be limitations. I mean in England, until some ridiculous late date like 1965, all plays had to be submitted to what used to be a part of the palace called the Lord Chamberlain, and he would read it and there were hilarious letters used to go back was saying 'you may only say f--- once,' this sort of- 'and you cannot say bugger. But you can say-' this sort of ridiculous negotiating letters."

Comment: Cleese has suffered his own run-ins with the woke crowd.


Arrow Down

"Systemic failures" in Uvalde shooting went far beyond local police, Texas House report details

uvalade
© Evan L'Roy/The Texas TribuneFamily members and friends participate in a march in Uvalde on July 10, 2022, in support of those killed and injured in the school shooting at Robb Elementary.
The 18-year-old who massacred 19 students and two teachers in Uvalde on May 24 had no experience with firearms before his rampage began. He targeted an elementary school with an active shooter policy that had been deemed adequate but also had a long history of doors propped open.

No one was able to stop the gunman from carrying out the deadliest school shooting in Texas history, in part because of "systemic failures and egregious poor decision making" by nearly everyone involved who was in a position of power, a new investigation into the shooting has found.

On Sunday, a Texas House committee released the most exhaustive account yet of the shooter, his planning, his attack and the fumbling response he provoked.

Comment: See also: And:




Fire

Police say wildfires that tore through UK on hottest day ever may have been arson

wennington fires uk
© Peter Macdiarmid/LNPThis pictures show how the dramatic fire in the village of Wennington engulfed a row of homes as the blaze spread from the grass
Wildfires broke out across the UK as families fled for their lives as their homes which they tried to save with buckets of water were engulfed amid blazes across the country in record 40.3C heat - and police are now probing whether some were caused intentionally.

Firefighters have described blazes tearing through homes and buildings in London as 'absolute hell' - with residents evacuated after homes were destroyed, two people taken to hospital for smoke inhalation, and 1,600 calls for assistance.

Elsewhere in the country hundreds of fire crews are out battling raging infernos in Wales, Scotland and the rest of England as 'tinderbox' dry conditions in the UK caused wildfires to threaten homes, animals and people and a children's nursery was destroyed along with most of a street in Yorkshire amid police fears some of the fires could have been deliberate.

Beaker

Legendary biologist endorses lab leak theory

wuhan lab virus leak covid
A US government report last week concluded that the origin of COVID can most likely be traced to an accidental leak from a Chinese laboratory.
Not many experts have openly endorsed the lab leak theory of Covid origins.

There are the 'internet sleuths' who make up DRASTIC (several of whom remain anonymous). There's the science writer Nicholas Wade. And there's Matt Ridley and Alina Chan - co-authors of Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19. (In a recent interview, Ridley told me that both he and Chan now think a lab leak is "more likely".)

Few others have been willing to come out and say that, yes, the balance of evidence favours a lab leak. This may be because they're genuinely undecided, or because they hold the opposite view (that the evidence favours a natural spillover).

Comment: They always miss the Fort Detrick connection.

See also:


Propaganda

Russia: Wikipedia designated as lawbreaker

wikipedia header
© Altan Gocher / DeFodi Images via Getty Images
Russia wants its search engines to inform users that the platform promotes false information about the Ukraine conflict.

Russia's state media regulator, Roskomnadzor, has obliged search engines to label Wikipedia as being in violation of the law, saying that the online encyclopedia promotes misleading information about the conflict in Ukraine.

The watchdog said on Wednesday that it would take steps to punish Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., which hosts Wikipedia, due to its failure to delete content deemed in violation of Russian law. With this in mind, the regulator "has decided to apply a coercive measure which would see search engines inform internet users about a violation of Russian legislation by a foreign entity."

Comment: See also:


Attention

If the Dutch farmers' protest was happening in Canada, it would be an 'insurrection'

Dutch farmer protest
© KEES VAN DE VEEN / ANP / AFP via Getty ImagesFarmers block the arrival and departure halls at Groningen Airport Eelde in Eelde, the Netherlands, to protest the Dutch government's far-reaching plans to cut nitrogen and ammonia emissions, on July 6, 2022.
There is something happening in the Netherlands that has been happening for weeks, which if anything even closely resembling it were happening in Canada, especially in Ottawa, it would surely be called an "insurrection." It might even have cabinet ministers and the prime minister calling those participating an intolerable "fringe minority." Come to think of it, it would probably have driven the government to invoke the civil-rights-denying Emergencies Act, and arrest any of its leaders, especially any of those from the rebellion hot spot of darkest and most menacing Medicine Hat.


I am referring to the huge and continuous protest against the Dutch government. For some weeks now upwards of 40,000 farmers have been on their tractors and in their trucks crowding highways and snarling traffic in a mass protest against a green edict that would force them to halve emissions of nitrogen oxide and ammonia by 2030. Among the minor (sarcasm here) consequences of this wand-wave from on high is that the Dutch would lose about 30 per cent of their livestock numbers. Only 30 per cent — a mere rounding error. Who needs livestock? Food suppliers?

It's quite an amazing story for a couple of reasons, not least of which is the extremely limited, diluted coverage it is receiving worldwide. From our perspective, amazing, too, in that some of the protesters have noted the truckers protest here in Canada as something of their inspiration. So where are the nightly reports, breathless with the "Canadian connection" of a major ongoing European protest?

Eye 1

Let the people pay: How EU leaders make their citizens suffer the fallout from their failed Russia policy

president macron
© Chesnot / Getty Images
In a Bastille Day interview, French President Emmanuel Macron told citizens to "prepare ourselves for a scenario where we have to do without Russian gas entirely." At the same time, Macron accused Moscow of using the fuel as a "weapon of war," echoing the spin emanating from a European Union leadership that obscures the real reason the bloc is facing an energy shortage that's driving up the cost of living.

This crisis is entirely self-inflicted.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen accused Russia of energy "blackmail" at the end of April, citing the state-owned Gazprom's announcement of a halt in gas deliveries to Poland and Bulgaria for failing to pay for in rubles. What von der Leyen - and now Macron - conveniently omitted was that it was the EU's own anti-Russian sanctions, adopted in a knee-jerk and ideologically-driven fashion at the outset of the Ukraine conflict, that represent the root cause of these disruptions.

The West quickly adopted a strategy of targeting and sanctioning various aspects of the Russian financial system, including banks and foreign reserves, cutting it off from the SWIFT global transaction system - and then had the gall to complain that Moscow was asking for payment for its gas exports in its own currency to mitigate the hassle of navigating a system from which it was effectively blocked. "Export your gas but good luck trying to get paid," is hardly a reasonable expectation.

Comment: See also:


Light Saber

Historic decision against mandatory vaccination by Italian court + covid vaccine risk to human genome now legally established

justice
On July 6th, 2022, the court of Florence has approved a sentence annulling the measure taken by the Order of Psychologists of Tuscany against one of its members, the reason being: 'the suspension of the exercise of the profession risks compromising primary individual rights such as the right to a livelihood and the right to work'.

The judge ruled that the psychologist doesn't need to be vaccinated in order to do his job by establishing that:
  • these substances don't prevent infection and transmission. Therefore, in front of the Italian law, there can not be an obligation.
  • She also recognises that these substances provokes severe adverse events.Therefore, it even less legitimate to force anybody to be injected.
  • The judge put the dignity of the human being at the centre and referred twice to the period of Nazism and Fascism. Mandatory vaccination is possible if there is informed consent. For Covid injections, she explained that an informed consent is not possible as we don't know the ingredients and the mechanisms of these substances because of industrial and alleged military secret.
This interim decision is grounded in serious conclusion: there is no right to suspend a citizen from the right to work based of this illegal request of vaccination with these experimental substances.

With this historic court decision, "the Risk to human genome is now legally established" Renate Holzeisen, Italian attorney engaged in the defense of the Human Rights, said in an interview for an Italian radio.