Amerika

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• To prevent the next pandemic, we might need to cut down fewer trees
  

  About once every two years, a virus jumps from animals to humans, raising the specter of a pandemic like COVID-19. These “spillover events” are becoming increasingly common as humans encroach further into the natural world and have originated some of the worst outbreaks in recent memory, including SARS, Ebola, HIV and likely the new coronavirus too.

  Forest edges represent a major front line for spillover events. As humans clear swaths of forest for agriculture or roads, forest edges multiply, increasing spillover risk from once-isolated wildlife to humans and livestock. While such forest loss is accelerating in many places, some countries have taken action. From 2005 to 2012, Brazil implemented land-use zoning and paid people not to chop down forests, reducing deforestation by 70 percent.

  We are using too much land and sea. We can avoid this by setting aside half of Earth for nature, which will in turn keep humanity from expanding too rapidly.

• US to bring 6,400 troops home from Germany, move 5,600 more
  

  The decision fulfills Trump’s announced desire to withdraw troops from Germany, largely due to its failure to spend enough on defense. A number of forces will go to Italy, and a major move would shift U.S. European Command headquarters and Special Operations Command Europe from Stuttgart, Germany, to Belgium.

  Trump will force Europe to pay for its own defense, causing it to cut its entitlements state, starting the unraveling of international Leftism. In turn, this will force Putin to either admit weakness or attack Western Europe, at which point WW3 kicks off much as the last one did. Most likely, Putin will back down and let China take the lead on starting WW3, showing that the third world can create global cataclysm as well. So much progress!

• Zimbabwe agrees to pay $3.5 billion compensation to white farmers
  

  Two decades ago Mugabe’s government carried out at times violent evictions of 4,500 white farmers and redistributed the land to around 300,000 Black families, arguing it was redressing colonial land imbalances.

  The programme still divides public opinion in Zimbabwe as opponents see it as a partisan process that left the country struggling to feed itself. But its supporters say it has empowered landless Black people.

  Africa should be Black. However, seizing prosperous existing farms was probably not the right way to do this, especially since Zimbabwe has other fertile land which could have been used.

• Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine form Lublin Triangle to cooperate against Russian aggression
  

  In a declaration signed by the Lithuanian, Polish and Ukrainian foreign ministers in the Polish city of Lublin on Tuesday, the three countries committed to creating the so-called Lublin Triangle, a trilateral platform for political, economic and social cooperation, to achieve these and other goals.

  Feels like the run-up to WW1. The Cold War continues as the old Communist side regroups under new administration.

• US officials: Russia behind spread of virus disinformation
  

  Among the headlines that caught the attention of U.S. officials were “Russia’s Counter COVID-19 Aid to America Advances Case for Détente,” which suggested that Russia had given urgent and substantial aid to the U.S. to fight the pandemic, and “Beijing Believes COVID-19 is a Biological Weapon,” which amplified statements by the Chinese.

  So much for the Leftist conspiracy theory that Russians intervened in the last presidential election in order to help Trump.

• Kodak’s stock triples as company announces pandemic plan to start making pharmaceutical ingredients
  

  The Trump administration’s $765 million loan to the Eastman Kodak Co. for its launch of a business making pharmaceutical ingredients sent shares of the iconic camera company soaring.

  Kodak’s stock KODK, +318.13% rallied more than 200% on Tuesday after the news was announced by the Trump administration. The company emerged from a 2011 bankruptcy in 2013, and its shares tumbled from a 10-year high of $37.20 on Jan. 9, 2014, to a low of $1.55 on March 23 of this year.

  Kodak, which is based in Rochester, N.Y., and has a long history of manufacturing chemicals used in photographic film, now plans to support “America’s self-sufficiency in producing the key pharmaceutical ingredients we need to keep our citizens safe,” Kodak’s executive chairman, Jim Continenza, said in a statement.

  Smart thinking, repurposing this company. As said before: Trump aims to rebuild American industry by disconnecting from China. He is undoing the Clinton legacy. After this, he will have to tackle legal protection for unions, which set in motion the chain of events that drove American labor offshore. Kodak must be thankful for this, since only hipsters use film anymore.

• Wiley permanently banned by Twitter
  

  Wiley’s series of anti-Semitic tweets appeared on Friday night.

  One tweet read: “I don’t care about Hitler, I care about black people”, and compared the Jewish community to the Ku Klux Klan.

  You have freedom… to think freedom thoughts. Anything else and you get banned.

• Samoan chief in New Zealand sentenced to 11 years in jail for slavery but experts say he is just the tip of the iceberg
  

  Starting in 1994, Matamata began inviting family members or people from his village in Samoa to come to New Zealand to work and live at his property in Hastings, a city on New Zealand’s North Island where there are a number of orchards and wineries. All were poorly educated, most could not speak English and some could not read.

  When I was a wee bairn, I remember seeing cool lizards in the park and wanting to take them home. Wiser adults convinced me that these creatures would be happier in their environment. Perhaps the same is true of the third world. We can always visit to appreciate them in their native habitat.

• Flag removed from Saint Johns bed and breakfast over Confederate confusion
  

  Greg and Kjersten Offbecker moved into the historic mansion two years ago and turned it into a bed and breakfast. As decoration, they hung a Norwegian flag next to the American flag at the front entrance of the inn, but dozens of guests and people driving by have accused the couple of flying a Confederate flag.

  “They are the same color, but there are no stars on the Norwegian flag, and the Confederate flag is a big ‘x’ and the Norwegian flag is part of the Nordic countries, they’re all crosses,” Offbecker said.

  People are this stupid, but more likely, they resent any flag that is European and consider it “racist.” That is how you goodthink, and only goodthinkers get promoted to the level where they can afford luxury condominiums in gated communities, and they will then inherit mostly ceremonial jobs where they can attend for relatively few hours, do little of importance, and get paid a lot for having gone through the hazing and obedience ritual. Ever wonder why people in their 40s and 50s look so blown out? It may be the guilt.

• ‘This is no joke’: Calgary single mom warns others after getting scammed twice
  

  George was hit by a second scam. What appeared to be Hollywood action star Vin Diesel contacted her through direct messages, flattering her and started a romantic exchange of hundreds of messages.

  These people vote. Democracy is suicide.

• “The virus is not of natural origin and did not emerge in Wuhan”
  

  A Chinese virologist who fled the country for the United States has claimed that the government of Xi Jinping has been covering up the truth about the coronavirus pandemic and that she is gathering “solid evidence” about the real origins of Covid-19. “The virus did not originate in nature and did not emerge from the market in Wuhan,” Li-Meng Yan, who says she was employed by the Chinese authorities to study the coronavirus alongside the World Health Organization (WHO), said in an interview with Spanish daily El Mundo.

  Big point is: we cannot know. We cannot trust our institutions, media, corporate-subsidized scientists, academics, or lower-level government officials who are part of the “Deep State” (permanently entrenched bureaucracy, which always leans Left because only the Left wants to make government bigger, richer, and more powerful). She may be right. We will never know, and that shows us that our society is forever broken, at least until we pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and rebuild it from where it was in the past.

• More in Hong Kong Prefer Donald Trump, While Taiwan Leans Toward Biden, Polls Show
  

  In Hong Kong, a plurality of respondents, or 36 percent, said they would prefer Trump to win the 2020 election. However, the findings were close. About 33 percent of them said they backed Biden, while 31 percent said they did not know.

  In Taiwan, respondents appeared to be largely indifferent about the race. About 44 percent of those surveyed said they did not know who their preferred candidate would be. But of those with an opinion, Biden slightly edged out Trump with 29 percent of those surveyed saying they’d prefer to see him take office in November as opposed to the 26 percent of them choosing the current leader.

  Voters operate by “wishful thinking.” In Hong Kong, they face an immediate crisis and so have finally turned to the strong leader; in Taiwan, they are still hoping that the crisis passes them by, so they have chosen appeasement or confused apathy. The worse things get, the better it is for the Right, since the Left has taken over and people will associate those failures with them.

• EU funding withheld from six Polish towns over ‘LGBTQ-free’ zones
  

  The announcement was confirmed on Twitter by the EU’s Equality Commissioner, Helena Dalli.

  “EU values and fundamental rights must be respected by member states and public authorities,” Helena Dalli said on Tuesday.

  “This is why six town twinning applications involving Polish authorities that adopted ‘LGBTI free zones’ or ‘family rights’ resolutions were rejected.”

  Leftists seek to crush, kill, destroy, dominate, manipulate, and force obedience. They are basically serfs on a power trip, and their incompetence leads them to overestimate their competence, which is why they take over, wreck nations, and then flee elsewhere. Beware the individualist because he has no loyalty to anything but himself, and he will gather others around him who feel the same, and soon you will have a nasty gang within your country that aims for nothing short of total power. Once they gain control, as they did in the West following WW1 — although gradually, only peaking in the 1960s — they will take you on the same path to ruin that the Soviet Union and French Revolution took.

• Holocaust survivors urge Facebook to remove denial posts
  

  Zuckerberg raised the ire of the Claims Conference and others with comments in 2018 to the tech website Recode that posts denying the Nazi annihilation of 6 million Jews would not necessarily be removed. He said he did not think Holocaust deniers were “intentionally” getting it wrong, and that as long as posts were not calling for harm or violence, even offensive content should be protected.

  Must…have…ideological…conformity. Obey!

• Mystery of origin of Stonehenge megaliths solved
  

  Archaeologists pinpointed the source of the stones to an area 15 miles (25km) north of the site near Marlborough.

  Continuity from origins through future is important.

• Women charged in beating of Wisconsin state senator
  

  Kerida O’Reilly, 33, and Samantha Hamer, 26, were each charged with one count of being a party to substantial battery, a felony punishable by up to $10,000 in fines and three-and-a-half years in prison, online court records show.

  Extensive Irish and Italian participation in these race riots shows us how “assimilation” has always been a fiction.

• Five Eyes alliance could expand in scope to counteract China
  

  The coronavirus crisis has revealed the west’s key strategic dependencies on China, and plans will be announced shortly under Five Eyes auspices for a major increase in production of rare and semi-rare metals from Australia, Canada, and America in order to reduce dependency on Chinese stocks.

  Conscious decoupling. Anything sourced from China will be used to manipulate us and hold companies hostage, forcing them to take pro-China positions much like social media.

• University of Texas in FBI probe over claims Chinese government tried to illegally obtain coronavirus research
  

  In recent years, the US has accused China of transferring sensitive technology by enlisting Chinese researchers working in America, and they have come under close scrutiny in the country.

  But their share our values! They wave the flag, vote, love capitalism, and support civil rights. Even generations removed from the homeland, blood is thicker than ideology.

• Dangerous levels of mercury found in shark fin sold in Hong Kong
  

  “The results were astonishing,” Laura Garcia Barcia, a marine biology Ph.D. candidate who took part in the research said. “The mercury levels are extremely high and, on average, six to ten times higher than what a safe level of mercury would be considered in Hong Kong.”

  Hint: the nice oceans and fields where you could once source food are long gone, conquered by pollution. The net is closing around humanity.

• 57% of Mumbai slumdwellers have Covid antibodies: Sero survey
  

  A sero survey conducted by the BMC on almost 7,000 people in three civic wards in the city found 57% of the people tested in slum pockets had antibodies to Covid-19 as against 16% in non-slum pockets.

  Somehow most of them survived despite the air pollution.

• Kentucky town hires social workers instead of more officers – and the results are surprising
  

  After four years on the job, Pompilio said there has been a significant drop in repeat 911 calls with approximately 15 percent fewer people going to jail.

  Correlation is not causation, as they say. One wonders what else happened during this time.

• Coronavirus Queensland: Teens who allegedly failed to quarantine fined

  

• Albuquerque woman discovers racist word tagged on her vehicle
  

  Brown says she was told security cameras didn’t capture what happened to her car.

  Brown said no one in the parking lot had information about the person who vandalized her vehicle.

  Brown said she plans on filing a report with the city.

  Another fake hate crime that will never be revealed as debunked once the narrative collapses.

• Ethnic minorities hold less than 5% of Britain’s top jobs
  

  All of Britain’s political party leaders, Supreme Court judges and chief constables are white and less than 5% of the country’s most powerful roles are held by non-white people although they make up 13% of the population, a study on diversity found.

  Bureaucrats navigate by rules and precedent. When they saw that the third world was rising in numbers, they decided to compete by importing the third world. They figured that this way, at least The System would live on, in the hands of others. As it turns out, this strategy has failed massively and the third world will collapse of its own weight if we stop supporting it. That scares the bureaucrats, who depend on The System, and will do anything to perpetuate it; government is a self-interested corporation like any others, and its employees are the shareholders. In groups, people lose sense of who they are as individuals and what reality is.

• Intel fires its Indian-origin chief engineer Murthy Renduchintala for production failures
  

  Renduchintala’s departure marks an escalation of the pressure on Intel’s leadership following a disastrous announcement last week that knocked more than $40 billion off Intel’s market value and caused multiple analysts to question the future of its manufacturing organization, which has been a cornerstone of the company’s semiconductor dominance for decades. The Santa Clara, California-based chipmaker on July 23 said its plants had failed to keep up with the most advanced chip-production technology, signaling that the man tasked with fixing persistent production issues had failed.

  Intel finds itself in a tight spot anyway as people use more mobile chips and fewer desktop chips. No one has figured out how to work around this, and the company has entered a final cycle where it keeps doing the same dumb stuff and hoping that results magically vary. They do not. This guy may have gotten thrown under the bus, or maybe like Boeing, Intel is finding out that diversity is only our strength on paper.

• Madonna’s Instagram account flagged for spreading misinformation
  

  In her post, the singer claimed a vaccine for Covid-19 had already been found, but was being hidden to “let the rich get richer”.

  Instagram blurred out the video with a caption saying: “False Information”.

  It also directed users to a page debunking the claims in the video, noting there is no coronavirus vaccine.

  We have reached Soviet levels of thought control.

• Police agencies pulling out of Democratic convention
  

  Since the Milwaukee order was issued, more than 100 law enforcement agencies in Wisconsin and across the country decided against coming to Milwaukee, Morales told WTMJ-TV on Tuesday. They were concerned with directives placed on the police department, including not allowing tear gas or pepper spray, he said.

  Dumb rules have consequences, and Leftist protesters are about to learn that private security behaves much differently that our rule-bound police.

• Seattle Mayor Says U.S. Agents Have Demobilized and Left the City
  

  Durkan, Gov. Jay Inslee and other local leaders said in a joint news release that the Department of Homeland Security’s Border Patrol Tactical Unit had demobilized. Durkan, Inslee and others had expressed concerns over the deployment of federal forces to Washington state without consulting or seeking consent from local officials.

  Local officials want the riots to go on, and then the feds to pay for the damage. Trump could always pull federal presence from the city entirely and let it starve. Since the whole Northwest has become CHAZ/CHOP now, there is no point throwing good money, time, and energy into the abyss.

• Endangered tigers making a ‘remarkable’ comeback
  

  In India alone, the number of wild tigers is now estimated at between 2,600 and 3,350 animals – which makes up around three-quarters of the world’s population.

  Neighbouring Nepal has seen its population of tigers is up from 121 in 2009 to 235 just under a decade later.

  Fewer humans means more wildlife. Conservation efforts can help, but these creatures need more land without humans interfering.

• Return of sailor with white supremacist past sparks protest in navy
  

  In December, CBC News identified Mihajlovic as Moonlord, one of the former administrators of Iron March, a notorious neo-Nazi hate forum that gave rise to the terror group Atomwaffen Division. The site closed down in 2017.

  Welcome to pluralism, where Nazis rub shoulders with Zionists and Black Panthers in the street. Seem logical? Somehow the voters approved this idea.

• Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google face claims of ‘harmful’ power
  

  Amazon boss Jeff Bezos said the world “needs large” firms, while the heads of Facebook, Apple and Google argued their companies had spurred innovation.

  Reducing the marketplace entirely to a flow of symbols created a new type of monopoly: network effects. Whoever gets there first and gets the audience also gets the best engineers and most money, and so can easily stay on top, and will forever because no one can achieve that same audience and challenge it. Once they innovated… now they are just rent-seekers who have become abusive in order to maintain the appearance of calm and order on their platforms so that their Leftist fanatical audience feels safe and happy.

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