>Budapest and Warsaw have decided to beat Brussels at its own game by announcing the creation of an institute that would monitor violations of law within the EU, after the bloc accused the two member states of breaching the law.
Both countries were censured by the European Parliament in April for flouting “European values” during the coronavirus pandemic. Budapest and Warsaw were accused of overriding democratic processes as part of their response to the health crisis, even though most European states imposed their own draconian Covid-19 measures with little or no democratic oversight.
Later, peace.
>Russian aggression in Georgia in 2008 and in Ukraine in 2014
https://reaction.life/how-british-grannies-are-spreading-qanon-conspiracy-theory-memes-on-facebook/
How British grannies are spreading QAnon conspiracy theory memes on Facebook
A headteacher in Stoke-on-Trent told me that, alongside ensuring a COVID-safe return to school for her pupils this September, she’s having to reassure parents that their children will not be forcibly taken away and isolated in a secret location if they start coughing in class.
The headteacher keeps getting sent a Facebook post warning parents to “wake up” to the threat in the UK’s Coronavirus Act. “Is this true, can you take my child?” she is asked.
The Facebook post those parents had seen began going viral mid-August. It’s one of several similar posts seen in the UK and Australia, and follows a pattern in many posts linked to the QAnon conspiracy theory. These often include a direct appeal to parents, challenging the reader to do their own research to “prove” the veracity of the claim, a call to defend individual rights against big government, elites, or some undefined “they”.
Despite being quickly fact-checked and tagged as false, this and related posts which use the hashtag #SaveTheChildren are still circulating and the phrase “covid act 2020 children in school” still comes up as an autofill option if you search for “covid act” on Google.
The power of memes
For the past five years, my research has looked at how strangers talk with each other about politics on Facebook. I’ve focused on four English constituencies – Stoke-on-Trent Central, Burton and Uttoxeter, Bristol West and Brighton Pavilion – tracking conversations through public pages, posts and public information on people’s timelines and profiles.
Through the 2015, 2017 and 2019 UK general elections, I saw the increased polarisation of those Facebook conversations and with it increased incivility, partisanship and sectarianism. I was struck by the rising use of memes and how a handful of core themes made their way from meme to belief. During the 2019 election, I noticed how memes from far right US Facebook pages were being posted and spread via people in the UK constituencies I was studying.
I recently decided to explore how the upcoming US election might be translating into partisan ideas on Facebook in the UK. I decided to focus on one meme, and the individual Facebook users who cared enough about that issue to share or comment publicly – and see where it took me.
So, in late August, I returned to Facebook after a seven-month gap and picked the meme that happened to be at the top of my timeline – a post from the group Migrant Watch shared by the page of UKIP Brighton & Hove. This was consistently one of the most active meme-seeders among the constituency party Facebook groups I follow.
I’d found links during the last election between the active seeding of anti-migrant, anti-immigration memes by UK users and US far-right organisations and individuals, and so I expected to find similar links through that meme. But what I hadn’t expected to see was for the meme to lead me to UK mums and grandmothers engaging with QAnon conspiracy theories from the US.
https://theconversation.com/how-british-grannies-are-spreading-qanon-conspiracy-theory-memes-on-facebook-145820
QAnon conspiracies
Of the 45 people to comment on this Migration Watch meme shared by Brighton & Hove UKIP – 27 were women and most, from what I could tell from their profiles, were middle-aged grandmothers. When I looked at what other content these women were sharing, I found memes about anti-animal cruelty, anti-Black Lives Matter protests, anti-BBC proms and content in favour of Brexit.
Some of the women were also worried about the threat to “our” children posed by paedophile rings. And in this they demonstrated the next level of political meme sharing – freely interacting with content from both the UK and the US.
For one woman that meant sharing conspiracy theories from Mama Wolf, one of the Facebook accounts circulating QAnon content. One of these was entitled “Epstein Islands frequent flyers” a hotch-potch of unfounded accusations linking Hilary Clinton, Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates, Madonna, the Queen, and other (mostly black or Jewish) “elites” to the late Jeffrey Epstein, a global child trafficking network, drugs harvested from children’s blood, and secret messages coded into Trump’s press briefings on his plans to save the children.
I found one of the same Facebook users who had shared the Migration Watch meme also sharing a post calling for people to flood the BBC’s Facebook page on August 25 with the #saveourchildren tag. “They won’t cover child trafficking so we will bring it to them. It’s time to take this up a level,” said the meme.
Hidden radicalisation
The bubble communities we inhabit on Facebook shield us from alternative views to our own, while also making it easier for views to be reinforced, enhanced – groomed even – towards more radical positions.
Facebook encourages pools of the like-minded, whether through architecture that encourages what the activist Eli Pariser’s termed “filter bubbles”, or what the psychologist Daniel Kahneman called “cognitive ease” – our willingness to believe ideas that are familiar, comfortable – easy – to believe, and to avoid ideas that would take effort to accept. It’s also possible to game Facebook’s algorithms to manipulate public opinion, as the investigative work of journalists such as Carole Cadwalladr and Craig Silverman has shown.
But seeing a radical meme isn’t enough to trigger more of the same content, it’s how we interact with the content that matters to Facebook. The depth of interest needed to comment and then share a political idea will trigger more of the same and, potentially, take the user through increasing levels of radicalisation.
A slightly racist granny can quickly become groomed towards adopting more radical views. Or a fellow mum be taken from conspiracy theories about the Coronavirus Act to those about Epstein’s island. And then that can lead to thousands of protesters to march in London in late August against mask wearing and in defence of a “truth” only they are being shown.
It can be tempting to dismiss the anti-mask protesters or groups marching to Buckingham Palace to #SaveOurChildren as a few thousand cranks in a sea of sensible people. But we do not know the size of the iceberg – beneath each visible protester may be thousands of partial believers, including an unknown number of grandmothers helping QAnon to grow.
https://www.newsweek.com/cindy-mccain-becomes-second-republican-join-joe-bidens-transition-team-1534674
Cindy McCain Becomes Second Republican to Join Joe Biden's Transition Team
Cindy McCain, the wife of late Senator John McCain, is taking her support for former Vice President Joe Biden beyond an endorsement to join his team.
Cindy will join Biden's transition team as a member of its advisory board, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. She endorsed the Democratic nominee for president on Tuesday, saying that her husband lived by a code of "country first," and that Biden is the "one candidate" that stands up for "our values as a nation."
She won't be a paid staff member, but will instead offer her counsel to the transition team, the WSJ reported. Cindy is the second Republican to join the board, with Obama's former Veterans Affairs Secretary Bob McDonald being the first.
While Biden and Senator McCain were friends who spent afternoons picnicking in the former vice president's backyard, there's no love lost between the McCains and President Donald Trump. In 2015, Trump, then a candidate for president, dismissed McCain as a "war hero" because he was captured. He's also called him "incompetent," a "dummy."
The senator's daughter, Meghan, who was close to her father, has pushed back on Trump's comments, calling them "vile and disgusting." After the senator's passing in 2018, past presidents honored him at his funeral, an event the family didn't invite Trump to attend.
"Even though it was a very public funeral, we are still a family," Cindy told BBC. "It was important to me that we kept it respectful and calm and not politicize it."
As a member of Biden's transition team, Cindy is expected to offer counsel on issues affecting women and children.
Transition co-chair and former Senator Ted Kaufman told Axios the transition is "like no other" and needs to be prepared during a pandemic and struggling economy. Cindy's experience as "a businesswoman, philanthropist and longtime advocate" for issues impacting women and children are "all the more valuable," he said.
"Diversity of ideology and background is a core value of the transition, and today's announcement is another step demonstrating the importance of unifying the country under a Biden-Harris administration," Kaufman said.
In endorsing Biden for president, Cindy acknowledged that the two disagreed on some issues and that her husband and the presidential candidate had some "passionate arguments." But, she called Biden a "good and honest man" who will lead the country "with dignity." Having experience sending a "child off to fight," she added that he will be the commander in chief that America's military can "depend on."
https://www.theepochtimes.com/trump-gets-third-nomination-for-nobel-peace-prize_3516917.html
>guy that takes trips to disney world alone
>´
>https://www.businessinsider.com/navy-avenger-ammo-backpack-looks-like-gear-from-predator-movie-2020-9
https://twitter.com/JimCarrey/status/1310393318279446531
The IRS doesn’t do Fake News. We paid for the billionaire lifestyle of Dishonest Don and his creepy friends. Maybe it’s time for all of US to stop paying our taxes and report giant fake losses so we can be billionaires too! Hmmm…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Auten
Commander Harold Auten VC, DSC, RD (22 August 1891 – 3 October 1964) was a Royal Naval Reserve (RNR) officer who was awarded the Victoria Cross, the highest award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces. He received his medal for an action during the English Channel campaign of the First World War.
A former pupil of Wilson's School, Wallington, London, Auten had joined the RNR before the outbreak of the First World War during which he served in Q-ships. He was promoted to Lieutenant in 1917 and was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross "for services in Vessels of the Royal Navy employed on Patrol and Escort duty" in that year.
He was awarded the Victoria Cross in 1918 following an action when he was commanding a Q-ship, HMS Stock Force:
H.M.S. "Stock Force," under the command of Lieutenant Harold Auten, D.S.C., R.N.R., was torpedoed by an enemy submarine at 5 p.m. on the 30th July, 1918. The torpedo struck the ship abreast No. 1 hatch, entirely wrecking the fore part of the ship, including the bridge, and wounding three ratings. A tremendous shower of planks, unexploded shells, hatches and other debris followed the explosion, wounding the first lieutenant (Lieutenant E.J. Grey, R.N.R.) and the navigating officer (Lieutenant L.E. Workman, R.N.R.) and adding to the injuries of the foremost gun's crew and a number of other ratings. The ship settled down forward, flooding the foremost magazine and between decks to the depth of about three feet. "Panic party," in charge of Lieutenant Workman, R.N.R., immediately abandoned ship, and the wounded were removed to the lower deck, where the surgeon (Surgeon Probationer G.E. Strahan, R.N.V.R.), working up to his waist in water, attended to their injuries. The captain, two guns' crews and the engine-room staff remained at their posts.
The submarine then came to the surface ahead of the ship half a mile distant, and remained there a quarter of an hour, apparently watching the ship for any doubtful movement.
The "panic party" in the boat accordingly commenced to row back towards the ship in an endeavour to decoy the submarine within range of the hidden guns. The submarine followed, coming slowly down the port side of the "Stock Force," about three hundred yards away. Lieutenant Auten, however, withheld his fire until she was abeam, when both of his guns could bear. Fire was opened at 5.40 p.m.; the first shot carried away one of the periscopes, the second round hit the conning tower, blowing it away and throwing the occupant high into the air. The next round struck the submarine on the water-line, tearing her open and blowing out a number of the crew.
The enemy then subsided several feet into the water and her bows rose. She thus presented a large and immobile target into which the "Stock Force" poured shell after shell until the submarine sank by the stern, leaving a quantity of debris on the water. During the whole of the action one man (Officer's Steward, 2nd Class, R.J. Starling) remained pinned down under the foremost gun after the explosion of the torpedo, and remained there cheerfully and without complaint, although the ship was apparently sinking, until the end of the action.
The "Stock Force" was a vessel of 360 tons, and despite the severity of the shock sustained by the officers and men when she was torpedoed, and the fact that her bows were almost obliterated, she was kept afloat by the exertions of her ship's company until 9.25 p.m. She then sank with colours flying, and the officers and men were taken off by two torpedo boats and a trawler.
The action was cited as one of the finest examples of coolness, discipline and good organisation in the history of "Q" ships.
(Note: the "panic party" was a group of the crew who would pretend to "abandon ship" when a Q-ship was attacked.)
>During the whole of the action one man (Officer's Steward, 2nd Class, R.J. Starling) remained pinned down under the foremost gun after the explosion of the torpedo, and remained there cheerfully and without complaint, although the ship was apparently sinking, until the end of the action.
https://twitter.com/KarluskaP