Society's ChildS


Apple Red

Apple pays 1.2bn ruble fine in Russia

apple
© Getty Images / Anadolu / Contributor
Apple has paid the Russian government a 1.2 billion ruble ($13.5 million) antitrust fine following a ruling by the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service (FAS) in November, the watchdog said on Monday.

The company has not publicly commented on the payment.

According to the FAS, Apple violated Russia's anti-monopoly legislation in July 2022 by banning app developers from informing customers about purchase options outside its App Store. Apple policies entail use of the company's own payment system.

No Entry

Supreme Court allows Border Patrol agents to remove razor wire Texas installed at Mexico border

razor-wire fencing texas mexico border
© REUTERS/Kaylee Greenlee BealRazor and concertina wire, installed by the Texas National Guard, is placed in Shelby Park at the U.S.-Mexico border in Eagle Pass, Texas, U.S., January 16, 2024.
The court weighed in on a dispute between the Biden administration and Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who installed the wire in an effort to prevent illegal border crossings.

A closely divided Supreme Court on Monday allowed Border Patrol agents to cut through or move razor wire Texas installed on the U.S.-Mexico border as part of the state's effort to prevent illegal border crossings.

The court on a 5-4 vote granted an emergency request filed by the Biden administration, which had argued that Texas was preventing agents from carrying out their duties.

Comment: While the Federal government fights tooth and nail to keep the border completely porous to illegal immigrants, Texas is trying to take matters into their own hands to defend the state's sovereignty. If this continues to escalate, perhaps Texas' long held threat to secede will come to fruition.

See also:


Cult

Disaster if WHO gets total medical control - Dr. Meryl Nass

who crest
Dr. Meryl Nass is an expert on vaccines. She has testified to Congress many times. Dr. Nass warned about the dangers of the CV19 vax. Massive amounts of deaths and disabilities have been documented around the world caused by what many doctors say are simply bioweapon injections. Early on, Dr. Nass was a proponent of treating Covid with Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine with outstanding results for her patients. For this, her medical license was suspended in the State of Maine two years ago. This did not stop Dr. Nass from fighting to get the word out about the evil being caused by the CV19 shots. Just when you think it's over, and we can all get back to normal, Dr. Nass warns of a more evil global plan to take control of your healthcare (and life) in the next pandemic. The UN and the WHO are wanting to do this by May 2024.


Bomb

Election expert hacks Dominion voting machine in front of judge using only a pen to change vote totals

expert hack dominion machine pen change totals
© via J. Alex Halderman on XA court drawing of J. Alex Halderman hacking a Dominion Voting Tabulator in court in Georgia on January 19, 2023, using only a pen! –
Update: After speaking with election integrity expert Garland Favorito we discovered the courtroom display was much more serious than we originally reported. J. Alex Halderman demonstrated in court how Dominion machines are hacked and their tabulations were altered.

In June 2023, the Federal District Court for the Northern District of Georgia unsealed the 96-page Halderman Report - the Security Analysis of Georgia's ImageCast X Ballot Marking Devices.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger had been hiding this report from the public for two years.

University of Michigan Professor of Computer Science and Engineering J. Alex Halderman and Security Researcher and Assistant Professor at Auburn University Drew Sringall collaborated on the report where they discovered many exploitable vulnerabilities in the Dominion Voting Systems' ImageCast X system.

Arrow Up

What a backflip: The Biggest political party in the EU now wants to drop the ban on petrol and diesel cars

Car Crash
© Marcel Langthim from Pixabay
The voter backlash begins

How much more would the car lovers and petrol-heads of Europe take? In draconian style, last February, the EU declared all petrol and diesel cars would be banned from 2035. It was their star policy for the Net Zero push. Car makers would have to cut their emissions by a shocking 55% by 2030 and an unthinkable 100% by 2035. It was to be the end of an era.

The idea was so big and embedded in the EU that only one month ago an insurance insider warned that his company was already devising elaborate plans for a world where everyone had an EV and the insurance giants and the government got access to all your data. Police would be issuing your speeding tickets while-you-drove, and insurance companies would be granting drivers a discount if they allowed them to sell all their data to the highest bidder. Indeed, the word was that insurance companies wouldn't even insure petrol cars. Obviously only the rich were going to be able to afford a petrol car or an EV "with privacy".

But now, the largest party in the EU is drafting a policy to ditch the same ban they voted in a year ago. The European People's Party (EPP) is theoretically a "centre right" party, despite acting like the radical left, but that means they stand to lose their voter-base in a blink as the reality of the bans sinks in, which it has.
von der Lying
© joannenova.com.au
Europe's conservative bloc calls for dropping ban on car engines, tripling border guards

Nicolas Vincur and Mari Eccles, Politico

BRUSSELS — Europe's biggest conservative force, the European People's Party, wants to massively bulk up the EU's external guard force and drop plans to phase out the combustion engine across the bloc by 2035, according to a draft of the party's manifesto obtained by POLITICO. With its heavy emphasis on migration control and call to "preserve our Christian values," the manifesto reflects the growing strength of right-wing parties across the bloc.
In other news, the EPP wants to triple the number of border guards in the EU, and to relax some of the rules protecting nature. The European Commission president Mrs von der Leyen is as green as they come, but decided maybe wolves don't need so much protection after one of them killed Dolly, her beloved horse.

By sheer coincidence the next EU elections are in June.

The mass farmers protests and electoral shocks in the Netherlands are making their marks.

Heart - Black

Palestinian death toll in Gaza surpasses 25,000 while Israel announces the death of another hostage

tank guys
© Leo Correa/APSouthern Israel: Israeli soldiers near Israeli-Gaza border as smoke rises
Gaza Strip • January 21, 2024
The Palestinian death toll from the war between Israel and Hamas has soared past 25,000, the Health Ministry in the Gaza Strip said Sunday, while Israel announced the death of another hostage and appeared far from achieving its goals of freeing more than 100 others and crushing the militant group.

The war's deaths, destruction and displacement are without precedent in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The war has divided Israelis while the offensive threatens to ignite a wider conflict involving Iran-backed groups in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen that support the Palestinians.

Furious with the Israeli government and demanding the release of remaining hostages, relatives and others set up a tent camp outside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's residence in Jerusalem and vowed to stay until a deal is reached.

Netanyahu, in a defiant new statement, said he stressed in his conversation Friday with U.S. President Joe Biden that he rejects Hamas demands for a cease-fire, Israeli forces' withdrawal and the release of Palestinians held by Israel in exchange for the remaining hostages. He said that agreeing means another devastating Hamas attack "would only be a matter of time."

Netanyahu also rejects calls from U.S, its closest ally, for postwar plans that would include a path to Palestinian statehood. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called the refusal to accept a two-state solution unacceptable:
"The Middle East is a tinderbox. We must do all we can to prevent conflict igniting across the region. And that starts with an immediate humanitarian cease-fire to relieve the suffering in Gaza."

Stock Down

Germany went all in on the green transition. Now, its economy is crumbling

Truckers block central Berlin avenue to voice demands.
© Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty ImagesTruckers block central Berlin avenue to voice demands.
Germany fully bought into the green energy transition, but its economy is now showing serious signs of weakness as a prolonged energy crisis runs its course.

The country is aiming to have its energy supply and demand reach "net-zero" emissions by 2050, relying on sources like wind, solar and hydrogen fuels after former Prime Minister Angela Merkel decided in 2011 to eventually shutter the country's nuclear power plant fleet. Despite the German government's regulatory and spending blitz to usher in the green transition, the country is not on track to meet its climate goals, but its decision to rely on intermittent green energy generation has contributed to an ongoing energy crisis that is crippling its economy.

"Hollowing out the economy is not benefiting the German people, nor is it helping climate change," Diana Furtchtgott-Roth, Director of the Center for Energy, Climate and Environment at the Heritage Foundation, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. "It is not reducing emissions, because manufacturing is being shifted to other nations, like China and India, that use dirtier energy. The German economy is going down, and their people do not have the jobs and economic opportunities that they used to."

Comment: Either the German government is a collection of incompetent clowns who don't know what they are doing, or they're sadistic psychos who know exactly what they are doing and gleefully accept the suffering of the population. Are the decisions surrounding the 'green agenda' just completely nonsensical arguments leading to even more stupid decisions, or is it the institution of a nefarious larger agenda?

The sad truth: The rise of AfD is evidence of how fed up the people are, as even non-right wingers are flocking to the only party speaking even a modicum of sense, even willingly braving the 'right-wing-extremist' stigma.

See also:


Handcuffs

Mexican state cops capture gulf cartel boss behind kidnapping, murder of US citizens

arrest
© Breitbart Texas/Cartel ChroniclesThe arrest of Jose Alberto Garcia Vilano
Mexican state authorities arrested a top leader within the Gulf Cartel who is ultimately responsible for the 2023 kidnapping of four U.S. citizens, where two of them died, last year in the border city of Matamoros, Tamaulipas. That cartel boss has been directly responsible for the spread of violence in the northern part of Tamaulipas but managed to avoid capture for a long time due to his ties to the top government officials.

On Thursday afternoon, detectives with the Nuevo Leon State Investigations Agency (AEI) arrested Juan Alberto "La Kena or Ciclon 19" Garcia Vilano, the leader of the Escorpiones faction of the Gulf Cartel, along with two other men at a luxury store in the ritzy suburb of San Pedro in the Monterrey metropolitan area. The state investigators tracked down the fearsome cartel leader in coordination with the Tamaulipas Attorney General's Office since Garcia Vilano is currently wanted in that state on kidnapping charges.

At the time of the arrests, Garcia Vilano was shopping inside the Palacio De Hierro, a luxury department store, when Nuevo Leon state detectives and their Tamaulipas counterparts arrested him and dragged him out of the shopping center in handcuffs. A local shopper recorded the moment when authorities moved la Kena out of the mall and into a convoy of police vehicles before they rushed him to their offices.

Health

"I'm a public health fascist": Journalist who led calls for lockdown publishes book demanding we prepare to do it all again but harder (so it works this time)

Donald G. McNeil.
Donald G. McNeil.
Do you think we need a Pentagon for public health to wage war on new pathogens? Not likely, and that is based on recent experience. The pandemic planners wrecked our lives. We have yet to recover.

Cities are still suffering from business closures, learning losses and school absenteeism, and rampant crime. Trust in once-revered institutions is at an all-time low, as is public health generally (depression, obesity and substance abuse). We could go on and on.

One man thinks the problem is that we didn't go far enough. Next time, he says, we should go much farther in locking down. No travel. Jail doctors for dissenting. Force everyone to accept whatever pharma dishes out. Censor all critics. Nonprofits who object should be targeted by the IRS. All dissenters should face "severe consequences".

Comment: See also:


MIB

Massive cyberattack targets Ukraine's largest online bank

Oleh Horokhovskyi
© Pete Kiehart/Bloomberg via GettyOleh Horokhovskyi, CEO of mobile-only banking service Monobank, at the company's office in Kyiv on July 4, 2023.
Hackers targeted Monobank, Ukraine's largest mobile-only bank, with waves of denial of service (DDoS) attacks on Jan. 21, the company's co-founder and CEO Oleh Horokhovskyi reported.

DDoS attacks direct excessive amounts of traffic at a website in order to overload its servers, often causing disruptions to service.

Horokhovskyi said Monobank was targeted with 580 million service requests in one attack.

Comment: See also: UK could be brought to a halt 'at any moment' by cyberattack, Parliament report warns

The following is just a selection of cyberattack incidents from this year: