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Australian PM Morrison's approval rating slumps on slow vaccine rollout

Renju Jose
Reuters
Mon, 19 Jul 2021 01:47 UTC
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison mask
© REUTERS/Pascal Rossignol
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison adjusts his mask during a news conference he holds with French President Emmanuel Macron in front of the Elysee Palace in Paris, France, June 15, 2021.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison's approval ratings fell to the lowest level in more than a year, according to a poll published on Monday, as a sluggish COVID-19 vaccine rollout dented voters' confidence in his conservative government.

A Newspoll conducted for The Australian newspaper showed Morrison's public support dropped two points to 51% over the last three weeks, the lowest level since he faced criticism early last year over his response to devastating bushfires.

Morrison has come under increasing pressure as a slow national vaccine rollout leaves Australia exposed to a deadly new wave of the coronavirus pandemic. Sydney and Melbourne, the country's biggest two cities, are in lockdown in a bid to stem a fast-moving outbreak of the Delta variant.


Comment: It's not a "deadly new wave". In the UK, there were 117 deaths among 92K Delta variant cases recorded through June 21 (of those, 50 were fully vaccinated).


Comment: While the French and the Greeks are in the streets fighting the vaccination push, Australians are unhappy with their leaders because they can't get their poison shots fast enough. There is a very clear divide among humanity at the moment.

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HAL9000

Leak exposes global abuse of cyber-spying weapon to target politicians, activists, & journalists


Zerohedge
Mon, 19 Jul 2021 09:07 UTC
spying on politicians
As Ed Snowden warned in a tweet when the story broke this weekend, "this leak is going to be the story of the year."

Southfront reports that an Israeli company's spyware was used in attempted and successful hacks of 37 smartphones belonging to journalists, government officials and human rights activists around the world, according to an investigation by 17 media organizations, published on July 18th.

One of the organizations, The Washington Post, said the Pegasus spyware licensed by Israel-based NSO Group also was used to target phones belonging to two women close to Jamal Khashoggi, a Post columnist murdered at a Saudi consulate in Turkey in 2018.

One of them was his fiancee, and she and the other woman were targeted both before and after his death.

The Guardian, another of the media outlets, said the investigation suggested "widespread and continuing abuse" of NSO's hacking software, described as malware that infects smartphones to enable the extraction of messages, photos and emails; record calls; and secretly activate microphones.

The investigation highlights widespread and continuing abuse of NSO's hacking spyware called 'Pegasus' which the company confirms is only intended for use against terrorist groups, drug and human traffickers, and criminals.

Pegasus is a very advanced malware that infects iOS and Android devices to allow operators of the spyware to copy messages, photos, calls and other data, including secretly activate microphones and cameras.

Comment:



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Arrow Down

Skynet has gone LIVE!

Rob Braxman Tech
YouTube
Fri, 11 Jun 2021 20:53 UTC
Skynet Amazon
© YouTube
On June 8, 2021 Skynet went LIVE. If you have an Amazon Alexa Echo or an Amazon Ring Camera then your devices have now been recruited with a default opt-in to support the Amazom SideWalk.

Now a secret network has been enabled that powers devices on the streets without the need for a Wifi connection or an Internet connection. Amazon Echos and Rings all over will now provide the network architecture by passing the signals to and from devices on 900mhz through the Internet by sharing in the bandwidth of everyone with these Amazon devices.

However these devices are not under the control of the owner of the device. These network activities are encrypted and kept private between Amazon and the device so you don't even know what your device is doing, what other devices it is listening to or whether it is doing Remote control.

Welcome to Skynet.
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Syringe

Gotcha, suckers! On 'Freedom Day', UK govt declares mandatory vaccinations for all adults "anywhere large crowds gather"

Heather Stewart
The Guardian
Mon, 19 Jul 2021 19:58 UTC
boris johnson

Days after the French govt declared mandatory vaccinations for 'anyone in contact with the elderly or frail', the British govt has declared likewise for 'anyone anywhere large crowds gather'...
Vaccine passports will be compulsory to enter packed venues such as nightclubs in an extraordinary U-turn announced by Boris Johnson hours after clubs were allowed to open for the first time in 16 months.


Comment: Extraordinary only to sleeping people.


In a move that provoked an immediate backlash from Conservative backbenchers and the entertainment sector, the prime minister said that from late September, once all adults have had the chance to receive two jabs, Covid vaccine certificates would be made mandatory in England.


"I should serve notice now that by the end of September, when all over-18s will have had their chance to be double jabbed, we are planning to make full vaccination the condition of entry to nightclubs and other venues where large crowds gather," he said.


Comment: Forget the nightclubs part - that's just the crack-in-the-door through which this will be expanded out to all activities.


Unlike at pilot events, where customers have been allowed to show evidence of a negative test, they will have to prove they have been double-jabbed amid concerns in government about vaccine uptake among young people. Some 35% of 18- to 30-year-olds are unvaccinated, he said.

Addressing younger people directly, Johnson said: "Some of life's most important pleasures and opportunities are likely to be increasingly dependent on vaccination."


Comment: The quiet part is: "That's why we're targeting those opportunities first. We'll get you all in the end..."

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Bad Guys

Iran, Australia, Singapore reimpose or tighten lockdown restrictions - because 'cases' - France "not ruling out" curfews


Yahoo News
Mon, 19 Jul 2021 20:12 UTC
mask australia
© DIEGO FEDELE/GETTY IMAGES
Iran on Monday imposed a week-long lockdown on the capital, Tehran, and the surrounding region as the country struggles with another surge in the coronavirus pandemic, state media reported.

The lockdown — the nation's fifth so far — will begin on Tuesday and last until next Monday. All bazars, market places and public offices will close, as well as movie theaters, gyms and restaurants in both Tehran province and the neighboring province of Alborz.

Iran reported 25,441 new cases on Monday and 213 deaths over the past day, bringing the overall death toll to 87,374 from among more than 3.5 million confirmed cases in the pandemic.

During an earlier surge in cases, in April, Iran reported the highest daily number of cases, 25,582. At the time, its daily death tolls surged to around 400, below the grim record of 486 reached last November.

Iranian authorities have lately been warning about a new surge, fueled by the fast-spreading delta variant. In sanctions-hit Iran, which has the highest COVID-19 death toll in the Middle East, less than 2% of the population of 84 million has received both doses, mainly of the imported Russian and Chinese vaccines.

Comment: Same goes for New South Wales and Victoria, Australia. Restrictions in Victoria were supposed to end on Tuesday, but have been extended. Quarantine-free travel to New Zealand is on hold (indefinitely for NSW). NSW has recorded 98 cases on Monday. Victoria recorded 12 cases. Yep. 12.

Singapore reimposed restrictions just a week after easing them after recording 163 new "cases".

And France, being France, isn't ruling out "localized curfews", "according to the gravity of the situation."

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Arrow Down

Republican senators abandon stronger IRS enforcement for funding $1.2T infrastructure plan

Kaelan Deese
Washington Examiner
Sun, 18 Jul 2021 12:54 UTC
Portman Biden
© AP
Senator Rob Portman and President Joe Biden
Republican senators working to negotiate a bipartisan $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill are ditching plans to strengthen enforcement at the Internal Revenue Service as a way to pay for the legislation, Sen. Rob Portman said Sunday.

The Ohio GOP lawmaker is one of 22 senators working to negotiate the lofty infrastructure bill. The proposal to amplify IRS enforcement as a means to raise new revenues was not supported by his fellow conservative colleagues, Portman told CNN, indicating that negotiators will have to find new ways to pay for the bill.
"Well, one reason it's not part of the proposal is that we did have pushback. Another reason is that we found out that the Democrats were going to put a proposal into the reconciliation package, which was not just similar to the one we had but with a lot more IRS enforcement."
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Star of David

Israel's foreign minister admits it's an apartheid state

Yossi Gurvitz
Mondoweiss
Mon, 12 Jul 2021 00:00 UTC
Lapid/Rivlin
© Twitter
Israeli FM Yair Lapid • Outgoing President Reuven Rivlin
By felicitous circumstances (for details, see here), the Israeli opposition brought down the Citizenship Law last week. The law prevents Palestinian citizens of Israel from granting resident status to their spouses who are non-Israeli Palestinians. The rules are different for Jews. A Jew who marries a Jewish woman from the United States will thereby grant her citizenship rights here; if he marries an American Christian, the Home Office will grit its teeth and grant her residency rights; but the law prevented Israeli Palestinians marrying other Palestinians from granting them any right here.

Basically, the law told Palestinian citizens of Israel that if they choose to share their lives with a non-Israeli Palestinian, they should live in exile.

Technically, the law, first passed in 2003, was a "temporary order": the Knesset knew the High Court wouldn't swallow such a law if it was permanent, since the violation of rights was too severe. But the HCJ is similar to the Jewish angel of death: Blind and rather stupid. So it could pretend a "temporary order" approved year after year is not a law. After all, it's not like the law would affect the children of the justices, is it?
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Cell Phone

Israeli spyware successfully broke into journalists' iPhones by sending iMessages that didn't even need to be read

Isobel Asher Hamilton
Business Insider
Mon, 19 Jul 2021 00:00 UTC
iPhone attacks
© Stanislav Kogiku/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Amnesty International found evidence of iPhones being hacked with 'zero-click' attacks
A forensic analysis by Amnesty International found a type of military-grade spyware was used to successfully break into journalists' iPhones, apparently by sending iMessages that didn't even need to be clicked.

The spyware is made by Israeli company NSO Group, a private firm that sells advanced hacking tools to clients including governments.

A group of 17 media outlets and Amnesty International published a report Sunday claiming NSO Group's Pegasus software was used by its clients to hack the phones of at least 37 journalists, activists, politicians, and business executives around the world.

NSO Group strongly denied the report, claiming it contained factual inaccuracies and lacked evidence.

Amnesty International published a forensic methodology report of how it analyzed targets' phones to discover whether they had been compromised by Pegasus.

The organization found evidence of "zero-click" iMessage attacks being targeted at journalists going back to 2018, with alarming implications for iPhone security. Zero-click attacks don't require any interaction from the victim to break into a phone.

Comment: What were some of the targets for Pegasus?
A leaked list of over 50,000 phone numbers is believed to include targets marked by clients of Israeli surveillance firm NSO Group for hacking. Some of the phones were reportedly infected with its flagship malware, Pegasus.

Among the people presumed to be selected for digital surveillance are
"hundreds of business executives, religious figures, academics, NGO employees, union officials and government officials, including cabinet ministers, presidents and prime ministers."
It also includes "close family members of one country's ruler, suggesting the ruler may have instructed their intelligence agencies to explore the possibility of monitoring their own relatives."

The bombshell allegations came on Sunday from members of a collective of 17 media organizations, which includes the British newspaper, based on their investigation of a leak obtained by the French outlet Forbidden Stories and the human rights group Amnesty International.

The average number of targets per customer was 112 and that the company had 45 customers for its Pegasus spyware, corroborating the NSO Group's assessment of the 50,000 figure.

The suspected hacking 'wishlist' reportedly goes back to 2016 and consists of entries selected by NSO Group clients in 10 countries, including Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Morocco, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Hungary, India, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Clients in Mexico selected the most numbers - more than 15,000 - followed by Morocco and the UAE, each with more than 10,000 numbers.
See also:

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Footprints

Russian envoys in Afghanistan evacuated 'temporarily' as Taliban fighters gain ground in troubled nation after US forces withdraw


RT
Mon, 12 Jul 2021 15:58 UTC
Afghan militia
© AFP/Hoshang Hashimi
Afghan militia in support of Afghanistan security forces against the Taliban
Russian diplomats and consular staff stationed in the Afghan border city of Hairatan have now been relocated to neighboring Uzbekistan, as the country descends into fierce fighting between Taliban militants and government troops.

Zamir Kabulov, the Russian president's special representative for Afghanistan, told TASS on Monday that personnel located in the northern town had crossed the frontier amid a worsening security situation.

"In Hairatan, since it is in a state of limbo, in order not to jeopardize the safety of our employees, we temporarily moved them to the territory of Uzbekistan," he said. The diplomats had reportedly been providing support to citizens in the region in recent days, and have only crossed into the relative safety of the former Soviet republic until fighting has died down.

However, Kabulov emphasized that there is "no such threat" to Russian staff working in the embassy in the capital, Kabul. While the situation is deteriorating, he said that the state of affairs was "alarming, but predictable. What we predicted is happening."
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Star of David

Israel comes up with new plan 'for punishing violators of lockdowns'


Sputnik
Sun, 18 Jul 2021 23:41 UTC
Bennett
© Ronen Zvulun/Reuters
Israeli PM Naftali Bennett
Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is boosting the enforcement of coronavirus regulations against violators, the prime minister's office announced.

Bennet held a Corona Cabinet discussion on Sunday, during which the Public Security Ministry presented the prime minister with a plan for a national effort to enforce COVID-19 pandemic regulations.
"Our goal is to determine logical directives, alongside aggressive and efficient enforcement against violators. Whoever violates the directives is endangering his health and the other citizens of Israel. We will not allow this. The Delta mutation is leaping forward around the world. Implementing the directives on the ground is a critical component in managing the pandemic in order to beat the mutation."
The plan, presented to the Israeli prime minister. combines technological means and enforcement actions to be carried out by police officers and municipal inspectors.

Enforcing coronavirus regulations envisages the filing of criminal indictments against verified coronavirus patients who knowingly violate quarantine. Special emphasis will be put on weddings and other celebratory events as they carry greater potential for infection, according to the Israeli government.
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