Nebojsa Malic
RTMon, 08 Jun 2020 20:20 UTC
© Reuters/Hannah McKay
Black Lives Matter protest in London, June 7, 2020.
Activists protesting across the US are increasingly demanding abolishing police departments altogether. Ironically, one of the alternatives they offer sounds just like the modern police,
whose origin they wrongly insist is racist.
The city council of Minneapolis, Minnesota has just secured a veto-proof majority in favor of the proposal to disband its police department. It was Minneapolis PD officer Derek Chauvin whose actions sparked the protests last month, when he was filmed kneeling on the neck of George Floyd until the African-American man died.
While the campaign for abolishing or de-funding police is intensely emotionally satisfying for the activists,
there are few practical proposals as to how to go about it.
Even the Minneapolis councilors didn't say when they might get rid of their police, or what they wish to replace it with. More education and social workers are being mentioned as possible alternatives, but at the end of the day
someone still needs to put the 'force' into law enforcement.
© Jason Cairnduff/Reuters
Ryanair planes at Dublin airport
The Ryanair boss Michael O'Leary has said
he will not cancel flights despite the government's new quarantine rules for travellers arriving in the UK,
because "British people are ignoring this quarantine. They know it's rubbish."
O'Leary's comments come after
Ryanair, easyJet and IAG, the owner of British Airways, started legal action against the government in an attempt to overturn rules requiring all passengers arriving in the UK to self-isolate for 14 days, which came into effect on Monday.
Breaking the rules, which are designed to help prevent a second wave of the coronavirus, is punishable with a £1,000 fine. The policy is to be reviewed every three weeks and the idea of "air bridges" to popular destinations for holidaymakers such as Portugal has been discussed.
However, O'Leary said
thousands of Britons were still booking holidays with Ryanair, which intends to operate almost 1,000 flights a day from 1 July. He added that he had no intention of cancelling flights in the peak months of July and August if the rules were still in place then.
Comment: Unlike the planes, plans for resuming travel are up in the air.
United Kingdom introduced a 14-day quarantine period for international arrivals on Monday despite warnings from its biggest airlines that the move would decimate domestic tourism and damage exports. Under the new rules, UK nationals and international passengers traveling into the country (via airplane, ferry or train) will have to complete a form prior to their arrival, detailing an address where they will self-isolate for the next 14 days. The measure was designed "to prevent a second wave" of coronavirus, according to Home Secretary Priti Patel. Those who do not provide accurate information will be fined up to £1,000 ($1,270).
© Jaimi Chisholm/Getty Images
Muslim mourners from Christchurch, New Zealand massacre
Police in Germany has arrested a man on suspicion of planning to kill Muslims in an attack inspired by the 2019 massacre in two Christchurch, New Zealand, mosques, according to prosecutors.
The 21-year-old from the northern city of Hildesheim had announced his attack plans "in an anonymous internet chat", the state prosecutor's office in the town of Celle said on Monday.
Initial investigations show the suspect "has for some time been considering the idea of committing an attack in which he wanted to kill numerous people in order to attract worldwide media attention", prosecutors said.
The suspect referenced the Christchurch attacker, who killed 51 people in two mosques in March 2019, and said he wanted to carry out a similar attack. "His aim was to kill Muslims," prosecutors said.
Weapons found
Police found weapons in the suspect's home, as well as electronic files containing far-right content.
Matt London
Fox NewsSat, 06 Jun 2020 16:30 UTC
Establishment power move: Swamp creature Mitt Romney at a BLM protest
Veteran correspondent
Lara Logan, who has
done extensive reporting on the Antifa movement, warned that the far-left extremist group is going all out to capitalize on national unrest, as Attorney General Bill Barr confirmed Antifa's role in instigating recent violence and destruction.
"There's a difference between hijacking something and exploiting it and fueling it, and that's really the concern here," said Logan on
Fox and Friends on Friday.
"They've been planning this not just for a few months but for decades, and this is sort of the culmination," she argued. "It's almost like this is the super bowl of their efforts."
Barr said on Thursday that there is
evidence that Antifa and other groups are exacerbating violent riots that have erupted in American cities in the aftermath of the police-involved death of George Floyd last week in Minneapolis.
"We have evidence that [A]ntifa and other similar extremist groups, as well as actors of a variety of different political persuasions have been involved in instigating and participating in the violent activity," Barr said at a Justice Department news conference.
Comment: Logan's video reports appear to be unavailable for viewing outside the US, but we have a couple of segments of her interviews with Fox News over the last week. In the first two, she shares her observations of the tactics and organizing of the far-left militias on the ground during the riots:
In this third interview, she goes into more detail about Antifa's organization and ideology (her response begins at 01:05):
Ms. Logan's work is complemented by Millie Weaver, who has shown
here that climate change activists are networked with Black Lives Matter activists and other far-left revolutionary activists.
Without suggesting that either of these reporters have an agenda, it should be noted that their 'law enforcement and intelligence sources' - who have provided them with such evidence as video footage of Zoom conversations held between activists coordinating the riots/protests - likely know much more than they are telling them.
Specifically, that these groups and this 'revolutionary movement' are
backed by US intelligence. What the 'deep state' has exported abroad for so long - color revolution - is now being applied 'back home'.
The Establishment undoubtedly believes that they have these useful idiots agitating to 'destroy America and start anew' on a leash, and can reign them in once November's presidential election 'goes right' for them.
But they are likely in for a surprise or two...
Chloe Taylor
CNBCTue, 09 Jun 2020 09:20 UTC
© Aly Song | Reuters
Travellers line up with their belongings outside Hankou Railway Station after travel restrictions to leave Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province and China's epicentre of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, were lifted, April 8, 2020.
Covid-19 may have been circulating in China as early as August 2019, a new study from Harvard Medical School (HMS) claims.
The virus, which is widely believed to have originated in a wildlife market in the Chinese city of Wuhan, was first reported to the WHO in late December.
However, an analysis of hospital traffic and search engine data in Wuhan indicates that there was early disease activity in the fall of 2019, according to HMS researchers.
Comment: This supports the official announcements from some Western countries that also believe coronavirus was circulating much earlier:
Nate Day
Fox NewsTue, 09 Jun 2020 16:02 UTC
© Getty
J.K. Rowling (left) and Daniel Radcliffe
Daniel Radcliffe is making his position clear.
On Saturday, Harry Potter scribe J.K. Rowling issued a handful of tweets in response to an article that mentions "people who menstruate." Rowling responded by urging the word "woman" be used in place of the phrase, irking fans who accused her of ignoring transgender women.
Since then, Rowling, 54, has defended her position online and has faced even more
backlash from followers.
Now, Daniel Radcliffe, who starred in the film adaptations of Rowling's hit young adult series,
has published an essay on the matter.
Comment: Hey Daniel, way to throw the person who made your life what it is, under the bus. Maybe you ought to listen to someone who actually is female.
Not everyone was taking the tempest in a showbiz teapot seriously, calling it for what it is.
Robert Bridge
RTTue, 09 Jun 2020 15:31 UTC
'Hail Satan'
Events are now in the saddle and riding Americans. In most cases, the authors of those events - from harsh anti-Covid measures, to rioting and lawlessness - derive from the liberal left. How far are they prepared to go?
It would be difficult to name a more action-packed six months than the first half of 2020. From Russiagate to riots, Americans feel like blindfolded passengers on a roller-coaster ride, totally unprepared for the corkscrew curves and dizzying dives ahead. All they can do is scream and hold on for dear life.
The worst part of this amusement-park hellscape, however, is not the news per se, but how US leaders - specifically Democrat leaders - are responding to it. Consider, for example, the lockdown measures implemented in response to Covid-19.
While most people begrudgingly accepted the need for quarantine, masks and social distancing, Democratic leaders piled on additional pain that did nothing to stop the spread of the coronavirus. In fact, the measures seemed tailor-made - like a form-fitting straitjacket - to drive their imprisoned constituents crazy. How else to explain the ban on mowing lawns, swimming in the ocean, and using a motorboat on an empty lake?
A former member of the
ISIS terrorist group disclosed on Monday that Britain's spy agency, MI6, has recruited and used foreign terrorists in Syria. Mohammed Hussein Saud, a defected member of the ISIS, told reporters that the MI6 tried to spy on the Syrian and Russian military centers in Syria with the help of terrorists, the Arabic-language service of Russia Today reported.
"The British told me to go to Tadmur (Palmyra), saying that they would provide me with money, cell phone and anything I need," he said.
Saud also revealed his meetings with the British intelligence officers in the al-Tanf region at the bordering areas between Syria and Jordan,
where they asked him to collect intelligence about the important Russian military bases in Syria and ways to attack them. He added that the MI6 had hired a tour guide in Tadmur who knew several languages to guide the spying team.
Comment: Yet more confirmation of how ISIS and other terrorist boogeyman groups are merely the products and proxies of Western intelligence agencies and interests seeking to divide and conquer various parts of the Middle East (and other parts of the world).
See also:
RTTue, 09 Jun 2020 14:37 UTC
© Pixabay.com
The Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown measures have thrown the global economy into turmoil, the World Bank says, projecting global GDP (gross domestic product) to contract 5.2 percent in 2020.
The anticipated decline will be the worst since World War II and nearly three times as steep as in the 2009 global recession.
In its Global Economic Prospects report, the bank forecasts that the pandemic is expected to plunge most countries into recession in 2020, with "per capita income contracting in the largest fraction of countries globally since 1870."
Advanced economies are projected to shrink seven percent. The bank has expressed specific concern over developing markets with weaker public health systems, where up to 60 million people could be tipped into extreme poverty.
Owen Bowcott and Amy Walker
The GuardianMon, 08 Jun 2020 14:33 UTC
© Reuters / David Mirzoef
Prince Andrew has become embroiled in a war of words with US prosecutors investigating the disgraced financier and child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Lawyers for the Duke of York issued a statement on Monday accusing the American investigators of misleading the public and breaching their own confidentiality rules in their handling of the inquiry.
Blackfords, the London-based criminal law specialists, alleged in a strongly worded two-page statement that the US Department of Justice (DoJ) had effectively rejected three offers of help volunteered by the prince this year.
The firm noted that the DoJ had "advised us that the duke is not and has never been a 'target' of their criminal investigations into Epstein" and that they had instead sought his confidential, voluntary cooperation.
Comment: Unlike the planes, plans for resuming travel are up in the air.