Society's Child
In a post on Friday evening, Bill Ottman said that Minds had received a "24 hour warning" from the Google Play store. This forced them to submit an updated version of the app, based on "interim solution and ninja developers," which removed the search, discovery and comments functionality.

In this March 21, 2016, file photo, the Flint Water Plant water tower is seen in Flint, Mich. Former Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, Nick Lyon, former director of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, and other ex-officials have been told they're being charged after a new investigation of the Flint water scandal, which devastated the majority Black city with lead-contaminated water and was blamed for a deadly outbreak of Legionnaires' disease in 2014-15, The Associated Press has learned.
Two people with knowledge of the planned prosecution told the AP on Tuesday that the attorney general's office has informed defense lawyers about indictments in Flint and told them to expect initial court appearances soon. They spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
Comment: See also:
- Michigan reaches $600M deal in Flint water crisis, attorney tells AP
- Flint prosecutors drop criminal charges in water scandal, will start investigation from scratch
- US judge: Flint residents may sue former state governor Rick Snyder over water crisis
- Elon Musk turns his philanthropy efforts to assisting Flint water crisis victims
- Beyond the Flint tragedy - everywhere in America the drinking water is contaminated
- CDC tests reveals 3,800 U.S. water supplies are up to 400% more contaminated than Flint, Michigan
- Child lead poisoning rates in New York and Detroit are worse than Flint
Spreading through social media under the hashtag #IoOpro ("I am opening"), the movement is largest country-wide act of civil disobedience since lockdowns began.
Italain opposition MP Vittorio Sgarbi has backed the movement, saying in an interview:
Open up, & don't worry, in the end we will make them eat their fines".Italy's government is already facing internal conflict and crisis, an early election is a possibility.
Comment: Go Italy!
"Civil disobedience underway. Conte and Lamorgese's police hunted down by citizens who joined #IoApro of a restaurant. This video is poetry, history is being written".
The CDC study noted that in the week beginning Dec. 6, coronavirus cases among the general population in counties where K-12 schools opened for in-person learning were similar to rates in counties that were online only.
"CDC recommends that K-12 schools be the last settings to close after all other mitigation measures have been employed and the first to reopen when they can do so safely," the authors of the report wrote.
As of Dec. 7, about 62 percent of K-12 school districts were offering either full or partial in person-learning, but reports of outbreaks at schools have been limited, according to the CDC.
Comment: See also:
- Experts can't find a single child under 10 who passed on coronavirus to an adult raising hopes they pose no risk
- BBC backtracks and admits children's wards are NOT seeing a surge in severe coronavirus admissions
- If they won't fully reopen schools, despite what science says, when will they?
- Second wave of school closures is killing our children
The group is calling itself the Vaccination Credential Initiative (VCI), and includes Microsoft, Salesforce and Oracle.
The US health provider Mayo Clinic is also involved in the project, which is being described as "the most significant vaccination effort in the history of the United States."
The idea is now a familiar one. Anyone who has been vaccinated will receive a QR code that can be stored on their mobile phone in the wallet app. Those without phones will have access to a printed version.
We have previously reported on the development of this so called 'CommonPass', which also has backing from the World Economic Forum, and now more details have emerged.
Andrey Yakovlev is a veteran Latvian journalist who founded Baltnews, a local news agency. His problems with authorities began when he handed control of the agency to the Russian Rossiya Segodnya media group.
The move "really did not sit well" with Latvian authorities and he was accused of violating the EU's and Latvia's sanctions against Russia.
"The media outlet [Baltnews] was working legally here", Yakovlev said, adding that the ownership transfer was done in accordance with local laws and duly registered. Still, this did not stop a court case being opened against him.
Alexander Stokes Contompasis, 37, of Rensselaer, N.Y., has been charged with felony first-degree assault, second-degree assault, two counts of criminal possession of a weapon and second-degree menacing over the stabbings of two men that occurred during a brawl in East Capitol Park between Antifa and pro-Trump "Stop the Steal" protesters.

Alexander Stokes Contompasis was interviewed by CNN and identified as an ‘Antifa protester from Albany’
New York State Police recovered the knife that they suspect was used in the stabbing from Contompasis's vehicle, which was parked near the Capitol building. The Daily Gazette reported that he fled the scene by car and was quickly stopped and taken into custody. Several other suspects were charged with minor offenses and given appearance tickets, including two counter-protesters who were reportedly armed with expandable batons.
Comment: This is what James Lindsay was talking about in this article:
- MindMatters: Pseudo-realities, Psychopathy and the Origins of Totalitarianism
- Psychopathy and the Origins of Totalitarianism
The 37-year-old man was arrested on Wednesday after an explosion and fire at an address in the Saint-Leu-la-Foret area northwest of the French capital, which injured the two occupants, a man and a woman.
"An investigation has been underway since Wednesday morning into the heads of criminal associations and the unauthorized manufacture of explosive devices," a spokesperson for the Pontoise prosecutor's office said on Thursday.
The US Attorney's Office in the Eastern District of New York on Thursday indicted the gang's leaders for conspiracy to provide and conceal material support to terrorists and conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism transcending national boundaries.
Prosecutors say they're charging the 14 highest-ranking members of the transnational gang — 11 of whom are already behind bars, mostly in El Salvador.
Federal authorities are seeking to extradite the jailed suspects to the US, sources said.
Three others — Hugo Armando Quinteros-Mineros, Cesar Humberto Lopez-Larios and Fredy Ivan Jandres-Parada — are the subject of a federal manhunt by the FBI.
Among the jailed suspects is Borromeo Enrique Henriquez, who is known as "Diablito de Hollywood" and is considered one of the gang's most powerful members, prosecutors said.
The suspects make up the "Ranfla Nacional" — or the gang's ruling body.
U.S. Secretary of Labor Eugene Scalia said in a January 12 statement:
"The U.S. Department of Labor is taking these steps to strengthen wage protections, address abuses in visa programs, and protect American workers from being undercut by cheaper foreign labor. These changes help ensure that these important foreign worker programs function as Congress intended, while securing American workers' opportunities for stable, good-paying jobs."The wage rules cover the H-1B program, which allows CEOs to keep roughly 900,000 foreign, mid-skilled, contract workers in the United States. The H-1B program also keeps roughly 150,000 spouses in white-collar jobs, and it helps attract roughly 300,000 foreign workers into white-collar jobs via the Optional Practical Training (OPT) program.
The labor department rules set the wage floors for the imported H-1B workers, and so hinder companies from hiring cheaper foreign workers instead of American graduates. The rule says:
A primary purpose of the restrictions on immigration created by the INA, both numerical and otherwise, is "to preserve jobs for American workers." Safeguards for American labor, and the Department's role in administering them, have been a foundational element of the statutory scheme since the INA was enacted in 1952.Lawsuits from business groups blocked a prior version of the rule.
Comment: This issue would unlikely be addressed by the Biden administration, considering the welfare of the American people is far down its list.
Comment: This purge is starting to make previous purges look like minor scuffles. Once the dust clears, it's unlikely those with conservative leanings will have a social media left on which to participate.
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