Welcome to Sott.net
Fri, 29 Oct 2021
The World for People who Think

Society's Child
Map

Eye 1

Man, woman found dead in Delaware River have been identified

Emily Shapiro
ABC News
Fri, 05 Jul 2019 11:24 UTC
Police
A man and woman found dead in the Delaware River have been identified, Philadelphia police said Friday.

The woman, identified Friday as 28-year-old Anjania Patterson, was found Thursday around 5:45 a.m., according to the Philadelphia Police Department. She was pulled out of the river and pronounced dead about one hour later.

Timothy Siler, 39, was pulled out of the river about 10:45 a.m. Thursday.
      Read More...
Bad Guys

Amazon sellers use fake reviews, hacking and bribery to mislead online shoppers

Katie O'Malley
The Independent
Fri, 05 Jul 2019 17:06 UTC
amazon box
Deceitful sellers are using a range of tactics to beat Amazon's security systems, including bribery and hacking, to post fake product reviews, a new Which? investigation finds.

The consumer giant said that features designed to make the online retailer's website more user-friendly were being "abused on a grand scale" to fool customers.

Last month, the watchdog analysed thousands of listings of the top 20 products in popular home technology categories on Amazon to find out how features on the website are being used to "cheat" the system.

Which? also reviewed almost 90 reports of issues with fake reviews in recent weeks, which include sellers offering buyers cash bribes and gift vouchers in return for fake five star reviews.
      Read More...
Sherlock

British tabloid claims to have found THOUSANDS of pages of docs from UK's secret lab at Porton Down in dumpster


RT
Fri, 05 Jul 2019 16:49 UTC
porton down
© AFP / NIKLAS HALLE’N; Getty / DNY59
Files from the UK's top-security chemical lab at Porton Down were allegedly found in a public dumpster. A former MI5 agent told RT that, if true, it could have been done by a spy or whistleblower.

British tabloid the Daily Star claimed to have discovered thousands of pages of documents from the Defense Science and Technology Laboratory at Porton Down inside a simple wheeled trash bin in a London car park. The publication said that it was initially alerted about the stash of documents last week by "a member of the public."

The paper shared a photo of its reporter holding a thick pack of white paper as he was standing next to a green garbage container. The documents are dated from the early 1980s to 2017. To back up the potentially bombshell find, the DS provided what appears to be a screenshot of one of the documents, which contains rubberstamp marks signed 'duty station officer' and 'Ministry of Defence'.
      Read More...
Marijuana

North Carolina proposes smokable hemp ban as demand grows

Amanda Morris
ABC News
Thu, 04 Jul 2019 11:49 UTC
Hemp plant
© AP Photo/Gerry Broome
In this photo taken Thursday, June 20, 2019, packaged smokable hemp flower is seen on the counter at the Hemp Farmacy in Raleigh, N.C. A proposed ban on smokable hemp is making its way through North Carolina's General Assembly after the product's popularity surged in the six months since the passage of the federal Hemp Farming Act of 2018.
North Carolina is the latest state considering a ban on smokable hemp, a product that's exploding along with the health craze surrounding a compound in the plant known as CBD.

Besides federal regulations laid out in the Hemp Farming Act of 2018, the Food and Drug Administration has no additional regulations on smokable hemp, leaving states to figure out how to govern it themselves.

This year, Indiana, Louisiana and Texas banned smokable hemp entirely, while Kansas banned products including hemp cigarettes and cigars. Tennessee prohibited smokable hemp sales to minors.

North Carolina's House is considering a smokable hemp ban after it recently passed the state Senate.

Comment: See also: Hemp 101: The incredibly versatile plant

      Read More...
Blackbox

'Projects that change cities': World experts design future metropolitan life at Moscow Urban Forum


RT
Fri, 05 Jul 2019 16:20 UTC
future city
© Reuters/Christian Hartmann/ FILE PHOTO
A booming economy is not the only characteristic of a truly modern city, Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin told RT, adding that people's needs, quality of life, and social equality play a central role in modern urban development.

Any future urban development strategy should be "human-centered," the mayor said, speaking to RT at this year's Moscow Urban Forum - an event attended by hundreds of city officials, heads of property development companies, urban specialists, architects, and scientists from more than 70 countries.

"The life of the big modern cities is based on human capital and people prefer to move to the places where they feel comfortable," Sobyanin explained. "This forum is a broad discussion about the quality of life, about the ways of making city life human-centered, focused on its citizens."
      Read More...
Bizarro Earth

Trump prediction comes to pass: Charlottesville cancels Thomas Jefferson's birthday

Joel B. Pollak
Breitbart
Fri, 05 Jul 2019 14:56 UTC
thomas jefferson
© Wikimedia Commons
Thomas Jefferson
The city of Charlottesville, Virginia, will no longer celebrate the birthday of Thomas Jefferson, the author of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, founder of the University of Virginia, and third president of the United States.

The Associated Press reported Tuesday:
Charlottesville, Virginia, will no longer celebrate Thomas Jefferson's birthday as an official city holiday and instead will observe a day recognizing the emancipation of enslaved African-Americans.

The city council voted Monday night to scrap the decades-old April 13 holiday honoring the slave-holding president and Founding Father. Charlottesville will now mark Liberation and Freedom Day on March 3, the day U.S. Army forces arrived in the city in 1865.
      Read More...
Magnify

Western media dubs Russia's mobile power plant 'floating Chernobyl', but is it?


RT
Fri, 05 Jul 2019 16:12 UTC
Akademik Lomonosov
© Sputnik / Pavel Lvov
With the horrors of HBO's dramatization of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster fresh in mind, the Western media has begun fearmongering about Russia's latest nuclear innovation - a floating power plant built to serve the isolated Arctic.

The mainstream media has dramatically dubbed the plant a "floating Chernobyl" - but is it all just hyperbole? In reality, the plant is based on long-established technology and concerns over nuclear Armageddon in the Arctic seem overblown to say the least.

The Russian-built Akademik Lomonosov was issued a 10-year operating license in June and is slated to be towed to its final destination - the small Arctic port of Pevek in the remote Chukotka Region. There it will begin supplying heat and electricity to local consumers before year's end.
      Read More...
Propaganda

Corbyn calls for independent inquiry into 'frailty' claims


The Guardian
Tue, 02 Jul 2019 07:36 UTC
corbyn

Jeremy Corbyn looking particularly old and frail drinking his cuppa.
Jeremy Corbyn has called for a "speedy and thorough" independent investigation into reported claims by senior civil servants that he is "too frail" to be prime minister.

The Labour leader, in a letter to the cabinet secretary, Mark Sedwill, said the matter had "undermined confidence in the principle of civil service neutrality" as he called for an inquiry.

The Times reported at the weekend that it had been told by two senior civil servants that Corbyn, 70, may have to stand down due to health issues. The report drew a furious response from Labour, which denounced the comments as a "scurrilous" attempt to undermine the party's efforts to gain power.

Comment: From the original article: Jeremy Corbyn too frail to be PM, fears civil service
The future of Mr Corbyn, 70, was openly discussed at an event attended by mandarins this month amid suggestions that he has become "too frail and is losing his memory".

They say they are increasingly worried about the prospect of him becoming prime minister because he is being "propped up" by his advisers and lacks a firm grasp of both foreign affairs and the domestic agenda.

One senior civil servant said: "When does someone say [he] is too ill to carry on as leader of the Labour Party let alone...
Sounds like hot air to further discredit and undermine Corbyn... nothing new here.

See also:

      Read More...
Bullseye

Germans display 'F*** You Greta' bumper stickers to protest being lectured about global warming

Paul Joseph Watson
Summit News
Wed, 03 Jul 2019 00:01 UTC
fuck you Greta Thunberg


Turns out adults don't like being told by a child how to live their lives.

German drivers have begun displaying 'f*ck you Greta' bumper stickers to protest against being lectured about global warming by a 16-year-old child.

Greta Thunberg is a Swedish teen climate activist who has been heavily promoted by the establishment and was placed on the front cover of Time Magazine back in May.

Ingmar Rentzhog, founder of the non-profit We Don't Have Time Foundation, claimed to have 'discovered' Thunberg and used her to push climate change messaging.

Comment: See also:

      Read More...
USA

Massive turnout as Trump delivers first Independence Day address at US National Mall since Truman in 1951

Nikki Schwab and Bruce Golding
New York Post
Thu, 04 Jul 2019 06:24 UTC

Comment: This is one of only a handful of US media reports about this event that did not either insinuate that Trump pushed for this event in order to declare the US a dictatorship, downplay its massive turnout, or suggest that, because it rained, 'God' disfavors Trump. This 'unreality' in the US infosphere is an extraordinary indicator of the chasm that exists between elites and people in the USA.


salute america 4 july military parade
© Getty Images
People react to a military fly-over on the National Mall while President Donald Trump gives his speech during Fourth of July festivities.
President Trump honored American history and heroes ranging from George Washington to Martin Luther King Jr. during a rousing Fourth of July speech punctuated by displays of the country's military air power.

Speaking before a cheering crowd that repeatedly erupted in chants of "USA! USA!," Trump hailed US innovations in science, medicine and space exploration during his 45-minute "Salute to America" speech on the National Mall in Washington, DC.


Comment: What was so hard about this event for Trump's powerful enemies - themselves mostly American and otherwise similarly die-hard 'exceptionalists' - to accept?

In what way do they perceive - or merely instinctively sense - that it hurts their plans or power?

Is it because the foundational tenet of America's independence means independence from Britain, about which America's Transatlanticists are ultra-sensitive?

Is it because the military should never be seen to be 'with' the president, but 'independent', thus controlled from the shadows?

Is it because they're vaguely self-aware that their military conduct is shameful, especially relative to its righteous use by rivals like Russia?

America, a land of strange contradictions!

      Read More...
Amazon Smile
Revolt! T-shirts