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Forget face masks and fear - let's relax and accept the risk

Peter Hitchens
Daily Mail
Sat, 11 Jul 2020 21:17 UTC
Boris Johnson

Prime Minister Boris Johnson
Every day I still see unhappy, frightened people cringing from human contact. They have been terrified almost out of their minds by foolish government propaganda, and the most basic trust, the very heart of civilisation, has been destroyed.

This is another side of savage, unforgivably cruel rules which have prevented grandparents from touching their grandchildren, or forbidden people to visit close relatives, even spouses, in their dying weeks.

Millions of us know this is all the most appalling rubbish, based on wild, wrong guesses and twisted figures, and one day soon I hope an icy public inquiry will condemn those responsible for the grave, incompetents they are.

But in the meantime what are those of us who have not been cowed into submission to do?

I suggest that we are allowed to register as 'relaxed'. We will sign declarations that we will not sue anyone or claim on anyone's insurance if we catch Covid-19. We regard it as a minor risk of life, to be coped with.
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Dollars

Asheville, North Carolina approves 'reparations,' apologizes for role in slavery

Morgan Phillips
Fox News
Wed, 15 Jul 2020 17:02 UTC
asheville north carolina
North Carolina's Asheville City Council apologized for its role in slavery and racial discrimination, voting unanimously to provide reparations in the form of community investments to help Black residents.

The council voted 7-0 on Tuesday night on the measure to mitigate racial disparities. The reparations will not provide direct cash payments, as some have suggested, but will provide investments in housing, health care and career growth in Black neighborhoods.

Councilwoman Shaneika Smith, who is Black, said the council had gotten emails from those "asking, 'Why should we pay for what happened during slavery?'"

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Eye 1

Ghislaine Maxwell breaks down in tears as she is denied bail and must stay locked up until her July 2021 trial


Conservative Fighters
Tue, 14 Jul 2020 06:50 UTC
ghislaine maxwell cries bail hearing

Ghislaine Maxwell at her bail hearing
Ghislaine Maxwell cried as she was ordered held without bail Tuesday — with a Manhattan judge ruling the accused sex abuser "poses substantial actual risk of flight" after she purposely hid from authorities.

The 58-year-old British socialite and pal of late convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein wiped tears from her left eye several times, using the back of her left index finger, as federal Judge Alison Nathan refused to free her from the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn until her trial next year.

"No combination of conditions" could ensure that Maxwell wouldn't try to flee prosecution, Nathan said during a video conference in Manhattan federal court — where Maxwell appeared on the feed remotely from a closet-size room at the jail.

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Family

Researchers say Earth is headed for "jaw-dropping" population decline

Victor Tangermann
Futurism
Wed, 15 Jul 2020 06:34 UTC
action figure population crowd models
People around the globe are having way fewer babies. By the year 2100, that might turn into a pretty big problem for humanity — rather than the relief one might expect.

If they aren't already, dozens of countries' populations will be going into decline in this century, according to a new study published in the Lancet this week. 23 countries are expected to feel this effect intensify, with their populations dropping to half of what they are now by the year 2100.

The global population will peak at 9.7 billion around 2064, according to the new projection, and then drop off to 8.8 billion towards the end of the century.

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NPC

Ultra-Woke Madness in Education: 2+2=oppression and 'achievement' is a white supremacist construct

Helen Buyniski
RT
Tue, 14 Jul 2020 00:00 UTC
Math on Chalk Board
© Getty Images / stellalevi
Injecting 'social justice' into every aspect of education is having a disastrous effect on kids' ability to learn. But what would you expect from a system that considers academic achievement itself a construct of white supremacy?

The ultra-woke educators of Seattle have pioneered the 'decolonialization' of education, in the process managing to defeat the purpose of teaching itself. It would be easy to simply mock the logical pretzels these theorists tie themselves into, but they're imposing their behavioral experiments in competitive navel-gazing on American children, inflicting deep alienation and harming kids' ability to learn anything at all. Indeed, the latest trend in culturally-aware pedagogy seems to be denouncing the desire to impart knowledge as a colonialist impulse that must be squashed.

The so-called 'achievement gap' - the academic divide between poor and minority children and their better-off, whiter counterparts - has long been the subject of hand-wringing among educators. With each failed strategy, progressive teachers return to the drawing board, determined to further plumb the depths of social theory in the hope that the next solution - ethnomathematics? decolonizing science? - will be the magic bullet that puts all students on an equal footing.

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Document

Leaked FBI, Fusion Center and DHS documents provide insight Into Antifa, Charlottesville, political bias, and the erosion of civil liberties

Eric Striker
National Justice
Fri, 10 Jul 2020 00:00 UTC
FBI personnel
On June 22nd, a group of anarchist hackers called DDoSecrets dumped 270 gigabytes worth of internal documents belonging to regional police fusion centers, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

The documents provide interesting insight into state surveillance tactics, political bias and dynamics, and how "threats" are prioritized.

The files -- dated from 2015 to 2020 in the sample National Justice looked at -- show a massive contradiction between the FBI's ideologically selective priorities and the actual intelligence being provided to them by regional police centers, which often stress the role of "antifa" as instigators of violence.

Police Know Anarchist Extremists Always Instigate Violence At Rallies

Law enforcement is fully aware of who provokes the fighting and rioting at riots: the left. The documents from fusion centers across the country (intelligence provided by local police departments) repeatedly report this.
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Bad Guys

Making face masks mandatory is inconsistent, illogical, illiberal & divisive

Rob Lyons
RT
Tue, 14 Jul 2020 17:35 UTC
uk mask
© Getty Images / bennymarty
The UK government's U-turn in mandating the wearing of face masks - which provide moderate protection at best - in shops and on public transport is another epic fail in Boris Johnson's handling of the Covid-19 crisis.

Boris Johnson's government in Westminster has performed a sharp U-turn and announced that wearing face masks will now be compulsory in shops in England from July 27. While there is some evidence of a moderate protective effect from wearing masks, the whole affair says more about the chaos inside the cabinet than it does about the merits of face masks. Worse, the leap from mild advice to legal compulsion shows how little regard the UK government now has for freedom.

Back in the early days of the pandemic, the UK governments - both in Westminster and the devolved governments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland - took their lead from the World Health Organisation when it came to face masks. Reviews of randomised controlled trials on the use of face masks - the "gold standard" of medical evidence - seemed to indicate little benefit. In short, we were told, they were pretty much useless. Other things, like isolating if we had possible symptoms, washing our hands and making sure we sneezed into tissues or our elbows were far more important, we were told.

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Star of David

While the world was looking elsewhere: Israel arrested 1363 Palestinians during the coronavirus pandemic


Quds News Network
Mon, 13 Jul 2020 21:29 UTC
IDF arresting a Palestinian
© QNN
The Israeli army has arrested 2330 Palestinians during the first half of 2020, including 1363 during the coronavirus pandemic, according to a joint report by human rights watchdogs.

The report added that since the start of this year, the occupation state has arrested 304 children, 70 women, and 565 under administrative detention.

The watchdogs (the Committee of Prisoners and Former Prisoners Affairs, the Palestinian Prisoners' Association, Addamir, and Wadi Hilweh Information Center) stated that the total number of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails has been estimated at nearly 4700 prisoners until the end of June, including 41 women, 160 children, and 365 administrative detainees.

In June only, Israeli forces arrested 469 Palestinians, including 211 from Jerusalem, 45 from Ramallah and Bireh, 33 from Hebron, 36 from Jenin, 43 from Bethlehem, 32 from Nablus, 27 from Tulkarm, 18 from Qalqilya, 11 from Tubas, 4 from Salfit, 8 from Jericho, and one from Gaza.

Most arrests took place in January with 496 arrests, while the Palestinian capital city had the highest arrests' number with 1057 arrests, including 57 women.

Comment: See also: Israel arrested over 5,500 Palestinians in 2019 - Annual occupation report

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Blackbox

Ghislaine Maxwell is secretly married, refuses to reveal spouse's name

Jack Salo and Lia Eustachewich
New York Post
Wed, 15 Jul 2020 21:32 UTC
Ghislaine Maxwell court
© Jane Rosenberg | Reuters
Ghislaine Maxwell is secretly married — and refusing to reveal her husband's name, prosecutors said this week at the accused madam's bail hearing.

The bombshell detail was divulged Tuesday as Manhattan prosecutors accused her of purposely hiding the extent of her wealth.

"In addition to failing to describe in any way the absence of proposed co-signers of a bond, the defendant also makes no mention whatsoever about the financial circumstances or assets of her spouse whose identity she declined to provide to Pretrial Services," Assistant US Attorney Alison Moe told Manhattan federal Judge Alison Nathan during a video conference.

Moe added, "There's no information about who will be co-signing this bond or their assets, and no details whatsoever."

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Sherlock

Seven ships catch fire in Iranian port of Bushehr - latest in string of suspicious incidents


RT
Wed, 15 Jul 2020 15:08 UTC
Bushehr
© AFP / IRIB News Agency
Firefighters combatting a blaze at the Delvar Kashti Bushehr boat factory in the Iranian city of Bushehr.
Follow RT on A major fire broke out at a boat factory in the southern Iranian port city of Bushehr on Wednesday. At least seven ships have been damaged by the blaze, according to local media reports.

Footage circulating online shows firefighters battling the blaze on the pier, while some of the damaged ships emit thick black smoke.

The vessels appear to be small civilian fishing boats, another video suggests. The fire produced a large smoke column visible from other parts of the city.

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