Society's Child

What critical thinking? Wayback Machine is now complicit in Big Tech censorship

Elliot Leavy
RT
Tue, 19 May 2020 18:29 UTC

The webpage archive service Wayback Machine's decision to additionally label already-deleted articles as 'disinformation' is internet history revisionism that comes at a time when critical thinking is desperately needed.

Earlier this month, Wayback Machine took heed of MIT Technology Review's protests that they are breathing life into debunked coronavirus 'hoaxes', and took to retroactively labelling past web pages and content removed from their original pages with warnings decrying the information presented as false.

The pages in question come from popular platforms such as Medium which, in theory, were launched to allow users to create content without it being editorialised by the powers that be. By redefining content after it has already been removed, Wayback Machine is adding a level of editorialisation atop of another — adding insult to injury by obfuscating original messages and overlaying them with a warning of disinformation. Disinformation being defined as misleading information that is spread deliberately to deceive.

Hull mum disgusted as 11-year-old's homework was to define 'hardcore porn'

Joanna Lovell
Hull Daily Mail
Tue, 19 May 2020 18:09 UTC

Mrs Taylor is "fuming" with her daughter's school

A Hull mum is "fuming" over her 11-year-old daughter's school work which asked children to define hardcore pornography - among other "inappropriate" topics.

Children in Years 7, 8 and 9 at Archbishop Sentamu Academy in east Hull were set the work in their Personal, Social and Health Education (PSHE) class as part of their home learning.

Teachers have asked the 11 to 14-year-olds to "define" pornography, soft pornography, hardcore pornography and transsexual pornography, as well as female genital mutilation, wet dreams, trafficking, male circumcision, breast ironing and more.

They were also asked questions about alcohol, drugs and smoking.

Following complaints from parents, the academy has now apologised for any offence caused.

Don't believe your lying eyes, says New York Times feminist claiming #BelieveAllWomen is a 'right-wing canard'

Nebojsa Malic
RT
Wed, 20 May 2020 17:38 UTC

Believe All Women, anti-Kavanaugh protestors

Believing all women is a trap set for feminists and Democrats by evil Republicans seeking to create an impossible purity test, says a new op-ed. That's one way out of the who-whom conundrum about Joe Biden. Too bad it's nonsense.

Time and again, Democrats have picked up the banner of feminism, from accusing Donald Trump of being a misogynist, sexist rapist during the 2016 campaign to the 2018 attempt at railroading Justice Brett Kavanaugh with salacious and entirely unverified claims of sexual assault when he was in high school. Now, however, their own presidential candidate stands accused of sexually assaulting a staffer decades ago.

Some Democrats have flat-out said they don't care about justice or equality or credible accusations, they hate Trump that much and just want Biden to win. Others, however, have struggled with the obvious hypocrisy of that position and desperately sought something - anything - that would bridge the cognitive dissonance and make their position look virtuous again.

To equalize a $54B budget hole, California cuts will stick it to the most vulnerable

George Skelton
The Mercury News
Mon, 18 May 2020 11:40 UTC

The aged, blind and disabled always get the shaft whenever a governor pulls out his cutting knife.

So it was no surprise on Friday when 1.2 million Californians who are aged, blind or disabled and living on the edge — clinging to government benefits for subsistence — got whacked again, this time by Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Many Californians were dinged in Newsom's revised state budget proposal. And most of it couldn't be helped without a major tax increase.

The governor and Legislature have a projected $54-billion budget hole to fill because the economy was practically shut down in mid-March when Newsom ordered most people to stay at home to slow the spread of coronavirus.

That will reduce state government's tax receipts by an estimated $41 billion through June 2021 compared with what Newsom projected when he sent his original budget proposal to the Legislature in January. His revised spending plan totals $203 billion, down $19 billion from what he first proposed. The governor expects to fill the rest of the deficit hole with federal relief money, internal borrowing, accounting gimmicks, cash reserves and some relatively minor tax hikes.

One Israeli settler convicted for Dawabsheh family murders five years later

Yumna Patel
Mondoweiss
Tue, 19 May 2020 00:00 UTC

Five years after the infamous arson attack that killed three members of the Dawabsheh family, one of the Israeli settlers responsible for the attack was convicted on Monday.

The Lod District Court in Israel convicted 25-year-old Amiram Ben-Uliel on three counts of murder, two counts of attempted murder, two counts of arson, and conspiracy to commit an ethnically-motivated crime, which can carry up to a life sentence in prison.

According to the indictment, Ben-Uliel was the person responsible for firebombing two homes in the village of Duma, south of Nablus in the early morning of July 31st, 2015. He allegedly targeted homes that he thought were inhabited, with the intention of harming as many Palestinians as possible.

After firebombing the first home, whose inhabitants weren't inside at the time, Beni-Uliel set his sights on the Dawabsheh family home, where he spray-painted the words "revenge" and "Long Live King Messiah" on the walls before throwing a Molotov cocktail through the family's bedroom window.

18-month-old Ali Dawabsheh died in the fire, and his parents, Riham and Saad later succumbed to their wounds in the hospital. Their son Ahmad, who was 4-years-old at the time, sustained severe burns on over 60% of his body.

Comment: See also:

Another news bungle? Bloomberg's op-ed mixes up hospital bed stats and OECD in its attack on Russian Covid-19 response

RT
Wed, 20 May 2020 08:03 UTC

Shortly after asking "why the coronavirus did not kill more Russians," Bloomberg illustrated a stinging op-ed with a graph suggesting Russia is far behind OECD states in hospital beds...though the exact opposite is true.

Everything's fine if it fits the narrative, Bloomberg Opinion editors might have thought when they misquoted World Bank statistics on the number of hospital beds per 1,000 residents, including the misrepresented data in a Russia-bashing op-ed by Clara Ferreira Marques, titled 'How Putin's Russia Bungled the Pandemic'.

Taking a swipe at Russia's efforts to upgrade the Soviet healthcare system to make it less cumbersome and more effective, the piece argued that the endeavor failed, only leading to a drop in hospitals, beds available, and doctors.

Italy: 101 'Ndrangheta mafia bosses arrested for illegally collecting basic income

ANSA English
Wed, 20 May 2020 17:17 UTC

Sons of 'Italian Pablo Esobar' among fraudulent claimants

Over 101 bosses and members of the Calabrian-based 'Ndrangheta mafia have been discovered claiming the government's 'citizenship wage' basic income for poor households and job seekers, without being entitled to it, the tax police said Wednesday.

The 'Mala Civitas' operation led to the citing of the false claimants, representatives of the main Calabrian clans.

Among the claimants were the sons of Roberto Pannunzi, known as "the Italian Pablo Escobar", unanimously considered by Italian and US investigators as one of the world's biggest cocaine brokers.

Ex-Green Berets believed US backed plan to oust Maduro, according to their families

Yaron Steinbuch
New York Post
Mon, 18 May 2020 16:52 UTC

© European Press Agency
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro showing the passports of the two Americans detained in Venezuela.

Friends and relatives of two US mercenaries captured by Venezuela in a botched attempt to oust President Nicolás Maduro said they believe the former special forces soldiers would only have taken part in the mission had they been convinced it was backed by the White House, according to a report.

Luke Denman and Airan Berry have appeared on Venezuelan TV admitting their role in the wild May 3 attack, which authorities said was orchestrated by former Green Beret Jordan Goudreau and Gen. Cliver Alcala, a Venezuelan army defector.

They are among 34 combatants taken into custody for the raid, which Goudreau reportedly helped set up to cash in on a $15 million US bounty for Maduro's capture.

Comment:

UK gov's virus surveillance firm Serco apologises for sharing private data of recruits

The Canary
Wed, 20 May 2020 10:09 UTC

Outsourcing giant Serco has apologised after it accidentally shared almost 300 email addresses of new recruits to the government's coronavirus contact-tracing programme.

The company is helping to sign up people to support efforts to track and trace cases of Covid-19 to help reduce the spread of the disease in the UK.

The government has promised to recruit 18,000 contact tracers to manually gather information about the places infected people have visited and other individuals they have been in contact with to get a detailed picture of who might be at risk of infection.

Comment: And we're expected to believe this scandal ridden company can be trusted with the public's confidential data?

10 steps to turn a pandemic into the brave new normal

Catte Black
OffGuardian
Tue, 19 May 2020 00:01 UTC

Now, dear reader, I know you're not a member of an institutionally sociopathic elite caste, trying to extend your power back to the good old days of supreme monarchs ordained by God himself.

But imagine you were.

Imagine you were one of the richest people to ever exist, and your vast network of wealth and influence was based on some imaginary money and the widely cultivated belief that "there is no alternative".

Now imagine the lies which secure your position are suddenly and violently challenged. Imagine Yellow Vested protests in the streets of Paris, an independence referendum in Catalonia. Anti-globalists, on the left and right, surging in popularity all around the world.

Comment: See also:

I once wore a kilt to elementary school but that was because it was part of my homemade Braveheart costume. I had shorts on underneath but pranked...

Animanarchy

She hopefully also knocked out a complete chronology of her situation and made it available to the press. God speed lady! Fight that good fight -...

Rowan Cocoan

.. .. Never go to Happy Hour when it's nurses night.. or, Let's go phizzer [Link]

Jibrish

But we're going into a mini 'ice age'! HAARP has nothing to do with this...

tekdude

Ehret an idiot beyond belief

smertzasmert

Society's Child

What critical thinking? Wayback Machine is now complicit in Big Tech censorship

Hull mum disgusted as 11-year-old's homework was to define 'hardcore porn'

Don't believe your lying eyes, says New York Times feminist claiming #BelieveAllWomen is a 'right-wing canard'

To equalize a $54B budget hole, California cuts will stick it to the most vulnerable

One Israeli settler convicted for Dawabsheh family murders five years later

Another news bungle? Bloomberg's op-ed mixes up hospital bed stats and OECD in its attack on Russian Covid-19 response

Italy: 101 'Ndrangheta mafia bosses arrested for illegally collecting basic income

Ex-Green Berets believed US backed plan to oust Maduro, according to their families

UK gov's virus surveillance firm Serco apologises for sharing private data of recruits

10 steps to turn a pandemic into the brave new normal

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