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The EU is demanding I hand over my personal medical data or I can't go on holiday there this summer? Here's why it can get stuffed

Damian Wilson
RT
Tue, 02 Mar 2021 20:32 UTC
COVID-19 vaccinations
© REUTERS/Henry Nicholls
COVID-19 vaccinations in London
Israel's vaccines-for-data deal shows that records governments keep on their citizens are now a highly valuable asset. But what gives states the right to sell our medical data and who's keeping it safe from being hacked?

Disaster contingency planning is the sort of thing to make any consultant's mouth water. Dreaming up catastrophic scenarios where things go very wrong is a good way to milk a client by exploiting their fears.

When I worked on Fleet Street, one big newspaper group used to host regular disaster contingency exercises. A number of us would hole up in a remote location, and we would run a shadow operation producing the next day's edition, away from head office - which in this instance was considered to have been levelled by a terrorist bomb, with all lives lost. (It's not a far-fetched scenario - the 1996 London Docklands bombing by the IRA just outside Canary Wharf caused several nearby newspaper offices to be evacuated).
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Clipboard

Poll: Americans worried more about violence over the summer than Capitol riot

Jordan Lancaster
The Daily Caller
Tue, 02 Mar 2021 19:20 UTC
kenosha prosvjedi
© SEAN KRAJAČIĆ / AP
Kenosha, Wisconsin riots
A new poll found that Americans are more concerned about the violence over the summer than they are about the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

Out of 1778 respondents, 55% said that they were more concerned with the "violence in American cities," and 45% said that they were more concerned with the "incident at the U.S. Capitol on January 6," a new Harvard/Harris poll found. The majority of respondents - 54% - called the Capitol riot an "armed insurrection" instead of "a protest that then turned violent."

Comment: It is interesting that while many state-level law enforcement agencies have declared Antifa a terrorist organization, the FBI and the Biden administration resist doing so.

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Colosseum

Most Americans realize cancel culture is a massive threat to our democracy, but it may be too late to halt it

Micah Curtis
RT
Wed, 03 Mar 2021 18:56 UTC
cancel culture censorship
© Getty Images / wildpixel
Recent polls suggest a majority of Americans are wise to exactly how damaging cancel culture is. The big concern is that it's become so entrenched and all-pervasive that we can never defeat it or repair the damage it's done.

In the past year that I have been writing for RT, it seems to me that the vast majority of articles that I have penned have been in regards to cancel culture. Specifically about the effects that it has on our society at large. With every new article, it seems to me that it's getting worse. Whether it's Gina Carano getting fired for being too conservative, or Dr. Seuss posthumously getting canceled, every single week someone else seems to be on the chopping block. All for imagined crimes that really only range from existing in a different time period or just having a different opinion.

Comment:

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Pumpkin 2

An own goal for the Woke: Publisher halts printing over 'hurtful' stereotypes - Amazon sales for banned Dr. Seuss book soar over 5.7 MILLION percent


RT
Wed, 03 Mar 2021 18:04 UTC
Seuss books censorship
© Reuters / Brendan McDermid
Books by Dr. Seuss are displayed in a bookstore in Brooklyn, New York, March 2, 2021
Classic Dr. Seuss books are flying off the shelves at Amazon after the late author's publisher moved to stop printing six titles containing "hurtful" imagery, driving up sales for one work by a staggering 5.7 million percent.

A decision by Dr. Seuss Enterprises to scrap the six books on Tuesday over what it called "hurtful and wrong" stereotypes appears to have sparked a buying frenzy on the e-retail giant, with the defunct McElligot's Pool surging to the top spot on Amazon's "Movers & Shakers" section. At the time of writing, the page showed that sales for the book were up by 5,785,593 percent over the last 24 hours, while If I Ran the Zoo - another nixed work - was up by more than 835,000 percent.

Comment: Social media has been weighing in:







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No Entry

Cuomo to be stripped of pandemic powers amid sex harass, nursing home scandals

Bernadette Hogan
New York Post
Tue, 02 Mar 2021 17:06 UTC
Governor Andrew Cuomo
© James Messerschmidt
Governor Andrew Cuomo was granted emergency powers in March 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic.
Top Democrats in the state legislature agreed Tuesday to strip Gov. Cuomo of the emergency powers granted him during the pandemic — possibly by week's end — as calls mounted for the governor to resign amid his dueling sexual harassment and nursing home scandals.

Sen. Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins (D-Yonkers) and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (D-The Bronx) brokered a deal on the bill, which could see a vote as early as Friday.

Once passed by both houses of the Legislature, it would immediately repeal the powers granted to Cuomo last March to largely control the state response to the coronavirus and issue executive orders.

The powers are currently set to sunset on April 30.

The deal would allow some of the existing directives to continue within the first 30 days after passage, such as the statewide mask mandate and measures implemented to manage the vaccine rollout.

Beyond that period, Cuomo would also need to get permission to extend or modify actions from lawmakers and give them an opportunity to comment.

Comment: So far it seems as though these steps are a mere slap on the wrist for the out-of-control and authoritarian Cuomo. The real test of common sense will be whether or not the state legislature and other political groups compel New York to ease up on mask-wearing and other existing orders - to help economically devastated New York get back on its feet. One can only hope that the example of Texas, Florida and South Dakota would provide them with the healthier model they need to say "we should stop our hysterical and damaging response to the virus!!".

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Attention

Israeli mortality rates skyrocket following Pfizer's experimental COVID "vaccine" campaign

Brian Shilhavy
Health Impact News
Mon, 01 Mar 2021 17:41 UTC
COVID-19 vaccine - Israel
© AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov
"This is a new Holocaust" - Haim Yativ and Dr. Seligmann

We have previously reported how Israel rapidly vaccinated the highest percentage of their population with experimental COVID vaccines after the Israeli government struck a bargain with Pfizer to secure millions of doses of their mRNA COVID vaccines.

Vera Sharav wrote:
It is astonishing that the government of Israel entrusted the health of the people to Pfizer; by entering into a secret contract that enrolled the Israeli population to become research subjects, without their knowledge or consent.
To date, Israel has vaccinated over 53% of their population, twice the percentage of the next closest nation, Britain, with 26.9%.

Comment:

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Eye 1

FireEye cyber CEO: American internet users will be targeted in next war

Nicholas Johnston
Yahoo! News
Sun, 28 Feb 2021 00:00 UTC
Cyber Warefare
Any future real-world conflict between the United States and an adversary like China or Russia will have direct impacts on regular Americans because of the risk of cyber attack, Kevin Mandia, CEO of cybersecurity company FireEye, tells "Axios on HBO."

What they're saying: "The next conflict where the gloves come off in cyber, the American citizen will be dragged into it, whether they want to be or not. Period."
  • "Apps won't work. Appliances may not work. People don't even know all the things they depend on. All of a sudden, the supply chain starts getting disrupted because computers don't work."

Comment: See also:

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Brick Wall

Chinese blogger charged with 'defaming martyrs' after border-clash post


Hong Kong Free Press
Tue, 02 Mar 2021 00:00 UTC
Since last month, China has arrested at least six for allegedly defaming the dead soldiers in online comments, highlighting the political sensitivity of the border clash.
Indo-China Border
© Shayon Ghosh/Flickr.
Chinese prosecutors formally charged a popular social media influencer with "defaming martyrs" on Monday, for suggesting the death toll of the China-India border clash was higher than the official count of four.

The blogger, listed in the indictment by his surname Qiu, was charged under a newly added provision to China's criminal law that bans the "defamation of martyrs and heroes" and came into effect Monday.

Qiu had more than 2.5 million followers on the Twitter-like platform Weibo under the pseudonym "Crayon Ball".

Comment: See also:

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Syringe

No jab, no Hajj: Saudi says all Muslims will need to have Covid vaccine before they can perform annual pilgrimage to Mecca


RT
Tue, 02 Mar 2021 08:38 UTC
Mecca
© Reuters / Ahmad Masood
The annual Hajj rituals normally attract 2 million pilgrims to Mecca.
Health authorities in Saudi Arabia have said that any Muslim wanting to perform the annual Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca will first need to be provide proof that they've been vaccinated against Covid-19.

Saudi Arabia's Health Ministry confirmed the decision in a statement on Tuesday, saying that vaccination would be "the main condition for participation," after Health Minister Tawfiq Al Rabiah said "compulsory vaccination" would be required for all pilgrims.

Comment: See also:

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Life Preserver

New variant scare tactics are an own goal

Allison Pearson
The Telegraph
Tue, 02 Mar 2021 19:00 UTC
Van-Tam
© MATT DUNHAM/POOL/AFP via Getty Images
I used to really like Van-Tam’s homespun analogies but now I find them disingenuous and borderline unforgivable.
Our vaccine programme is world-beating and Covid-19 cases are plummeting, so why does the Deputy Chief Medical Officer keep sparking fear?

Another week, another Covid variant on the loose. Watch out! I refer, of course, to the deeply worrying Whitehall variant.

The Whitehall variant is rapidly transmitted by scientific advisers whenever there is encouraging news. The better the news, the more aggressive the variant.
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