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Internet renegade Kim Dotcom loses appeal to avoid extradition to US

Charlotte Graham-McLay
The New York Times
Thu, 05 Jul 2018 00:01 UTC
Kim Dotcom
© Fiona Goodall/Getty ImagesThe internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom in Auckland, New Zealand, in 2014. He has been fighting extradition to the United States since 2012.
The internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom lost another bid to avoid extradition to the United States on charges of copyright infringement and money laundering, after New Zealand's Court of Appeal on Thursday upheld rulings allowing for his deportation.

Mr. Dotcom, an online renegade who along with three associates faces the charges relating to a defunct file-sharing website, Megaupload, plans to appeal the ruling.

His lawyer, Ira Rothken, said Mr. Dotcom would appeal to the Supreme Court, New Zealand's highest. He added that if the court agreed to hear the case, the process could take a year.

Comment: To call Kim Dotcom a controversial figure is an understatement. While he has been accused of profiting from copyright infringement, he has been a strong internet freedom activist and Julian Assange advocate. One wonders how much of the impending case against him in the US is simply an attempted means of shutting him up.

See also:

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Ambulance

Injured Boston woman begs people not to call an ambulance because she can't afford it


RT
Thu, 05 Jul 2018 10:57 UTC
Ambulance in USA
© Larry Downing / ReutersAmbulance in USA
A woman trapped between a train and a platform in Boston, with her bone exposed through her thigh, pleaded with bystanders not to call an ambulance, asking them "do you know how much an ambulance costs?"

The accident happened on Friday, and a Boston Globe reporter on the scene described how the woman slipped between the subway train and the platform, trapping her leg. Left "in agony and weeping" as commuters rocked the train back and forth in an effort to free her, she begged them not to call an ambulance, as she said, "It's $3000...I can't afford that."

Comment: That is messed up.

You're on your own in this fight, America.

On this score, is it not time to join the civilized world?

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Microscope 1

Flashback Users of home DNA tests 'cherry pick' results based on racial bias

Ashifa Kassam
The Guardian
Sun, 01 Jul 2018 16:02 UTC
23andMe
© Alamy Stock Photo23andMe is among the genetic testing services that have expanded into a multibillion-dollar industry.
People who use home genetic testing kits to unlock the mysteries of their ancestry tend to "cherry pick" the results, relying on preconceived biases to embrace some of the findings while disregarding others, new research suggests.

Home genetic testing has become a multibillion-dollar industry that has seen millions of people around the world sign up for swab kits in hopes of uncovering the secrets hidden in their genomes.

Researchers at Vancouver's University of British Columbia focused on how the results shape perceptions of race and ethnicity. They interviewed 100 Americans from various ethnic and racial backgrounds who had taken the tests, returning to them 18 months later to examine whether the tests had gradually shifted how they saw their identity.

The findings, published this week in the American Journal of Sociology, showed that most of participants - 59% - did not alter their views on their identity, despite receiving new information from the tests.
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Pistol

Law and order 'not good there': China warns tourists about dangers of traveling to US


RT
Wed, 04 Jul 2018 11:24 UTC
chinese tourists
© Lucas Jackson / Reuters
Chinese tourists traveling to the US should be ever vigilant as gun violence and robberies are rampant, healthcare is expensive and natural disasters can occur at any moment, China's Washington embassy has warned.

Shootings, robberies and theft are commonplace in US cities as law and order "is not good" there, the embassy cautioned in newly released travel advice. Diplomats there say that going out alone at night or recklessness towards "suspicious people around you" is the easiest way of getting into trouble.

In addition, "medical services are expensive in the United States," the embassy notice said, urging Chinese citizens to organize health cover beforehand. Aside from gun violence and unaffordable healthcare, travelers should pay attention to US weather forecast and climate-related news, and take precautions in the event of a natural disaster.

The Chinese travel advice also touched upon US border policy, notifying travelers that border agents have the right to scrutinize incoming tourists in detail without a search warrant.
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Question

Are political moderates lying?

Vincent Harinam and Rob Henderson
Quillette
Wed, 04 Jul 2018 20:18 UTC
political moderates
Cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead once suggested that we should "never doubt that a small group of thoughtful citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." Mead is largely correct. Change is wrought by those willing to lead or force others toward it. Which is why we are skeptical that most people truly believe every position they express. Especially in public.

Do most people legitimately disagree with one another? Or are they merely conforming to supposedly dominant ideas? Though there are legitimate disagreements, we contend that modern American political tribalism has been artificially inflated by group-based conformity. That is, the moderate majority's submission to the demands of dedicated partisans has created a mirage of polarization.

Comment:

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Tornado1

Twitter debate erupts over Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez 'working-class' background


RT
Wed, 04 Jul 2018 14:22 UTC
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
© David 'Dee' Delgado / Reuters
A Twitter debate is raging over the family background of Democratic newcomer Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez after the working-class roots that helped her in the race on social issues were questioned.

Ocasio-Cortez recently shook up New York politics by defeating 10-term incumbent Joe Crowley in the party's congressional primary race. She used what she called her "working-class" background to garner support for her candidacy and convince voters that she understood their struggles. "I wake up every day and I'm a Puerto Rican girl from the Bronx. Every single day," she told the New York Times's in an interview.

On Sunday, conservative commentator John Cardillo posted a photograph of Ocasio-Cortez's childhood home on Twitter, pointing out that she lived in a "very nice area" in an effort to show that she experienced an upbringing that was a "far cry" from the Bronx girl image that was cultivated during her campaign against Crowley.


Comment: More on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez:

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Stock Down

San Francisco's appalling street life driving away convention tourism

Matier & Ross
SFGate
Tue, 03 Jul 2018 07:58 UTC
San Francisco homeless guy
© Carlos Avila Gonzalez / The Chronicle
In a move that is alarming San Francisco's biggest industry, a major medical association is pulling its annual convention out of the city - saying its members no longer feel safe.

"It's the first time that we have had an out-and-out cancellation over the issue, and this is a group that has been coming here every three or four years since the 1980s," said Joe D'Alessandro, president and CEO of S.F. Travel, the city's convention bureau.

D'Alessandro declined to name the medical association, saying the bureau still hopes to bring the group back in the future.

Comment: San Francisco, the supposed poster child of utopian liberal values in America, is rotten to the core. See more:

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Bullseye

NYT: How liberal free speech defenders turned against the First Amendment

Thomas D. Williams, Ph.D.
Breitbart
Sun, 01 Jul 2018 00:00 UTC
Orwell comment
© Redbubble/KJNRights Overturned
In a remarkably honest exposé, the New York Times acknowledged Saturday that "liberals who once championed expansive First Amendment rights are now uneasy about them" ever since conservatives realized they should apply to them as well.

The Times cites First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams who noted that whereas the left once led support for First Amendment protections, they are now "at least skeptical and sometimes distraught at the level of First Amendment protection which is being afforded in cases brought by litigants on the right."

The difference between then and now? Many of the ideas currently being protected by free speech rights run contrary to progressive ideology. Over the last 13 years, the Supreme Court "has been far more likely to embrace free-speech arguments concerning conservative speech than liberal speech," the Times said.

One law professor at Georgetown, Louis Michael Seidman, who used to defend free speech now sees his prior position as a mistake.
"When I was younger, I had more of the standard liberal view of civil liberties," Seidman said. "And I've gradually changed my mind about it. What I have come to see is that it's a mistake to think of free speech as an effective means to accomplish a more just society."
Catharine A. MacKinnon, a law professor at the University of Michigan, goes further still, declaring that free speech reinforces and amplifies injustice because it is now being used to defend ideas she finds distressing.

Comment: For 'the Left': If what is said doesn't meet their approval, no one has 'the right' to say it. Welcome to 'dumb-down, silence and subdue' - the ultimate hobbling and mind control of all Americans.

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Bad Guys

UAE troops believed to torture, sexually abuse Yemeni detainees says UN Rights Office


RT
Wed, 04 Jul 2018 10:16 UTC
YemeniPrison
© Khaled Abdullah/ReutersPrison in Sanaa
There are reasons to believe that Yemeni detainees suffer from torture and sexual abuse by UAE soldiers, the UN Human Rights Office in Geneva said. They have requested access to the prisons, but have not been allowed in so far.

The UN Rights Office spokeswoman Liz Throssell spoke to the Turkish state-run Anadolu news agency on Wednesday.
"We have engaged with U.A.E. government on this issue and requested access to U.A.E.-run prisons in the country but to date we have not been granted access," the spokeswoman said. "From the initial information that our office in Yemen has managed to gather, we have reason to believe that a number of Yemeni detainees have been subjected to ill-treatment, torture and sexual abuse by UAE soldiers," she said.
The agency will further monitor the situation and might consider some follow-up steps, Throssell added.

The statement comes on the heels of a report, revealing harrowing conditions up to 2,000 of detainees face at Emirati-controlled prisons in war-torn Yemen. In late June, Associated Press investigation revealed that the detainees held by Emirati forces in Yemen were subjected to torture and abuse. AP said that Yemeni guards, commanded by Emirati officers, sexually violated detainees with wooden and steel poles. The violent acts were often filmed by the officers.

Some 18 secret prisons run by Emirati or by Yemeni forces were documented across southern Yemen, according to AP. Meanwhile Abu Dhabi denied the allegations, saying there are no secret facilities or torture.

Reacting to the gruesome report, independent investigative journalist Vanessa Beeley told RT that the UAE "is practicing similar techniques to those used in Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and other CIA-run black sites globally." She also stressed that the allegations of massive abuse obtained from the victims and their families appear more and more often.

Comment: As if starvation, waring factions, bombings and a cholera epidemic isn't enough tragedy for one nation, there is also barbarism in its most disgusting, despicable form.

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Target

Arrested: Man threatened to kill Rand Paul family with an ax

Katherine Rodriguez
Breitbart
Mon, 02 Jul 2018 00:00 UTC
Rand Paul
© Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesUS Senator Rand Paul
A man accused of threatening to kill Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) and his family members by dismembering them with an ax has been arrested. Paul addressed the threats against him and his family in a Monday tweet, thanking the U.S. Capitol Police for promptly arresting the man:

The man, who is in custody, allegedly placed the threatening phone calls to the senator's Bowling Green office several times last week, the Courier-Journal reported. Capitol Police are actively investigating the situation but did not comment further.

Paul also addressed this and other threats against him at an event in Leitchfield, Kentucky, on Monday, calling for more ways to settle political differences.
"It's just horrendous that we're having to deal with things like this," said Paul. "I've had this year where it's becoming more and more aware that we have these real threats out there."
The threat against Paul and his family is the latest of a series of threats and attacks against the Kentucky senator during the past year.

Comment: The social and political climate of the United States is bringing to the surface all sorts of actions and reactions, not the least of which is the triggering of the 'crazies' and those with radical intent. See also:

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