Society's Child

Assange won't face charges over role in devastating CIA leak

Natasha Bertrand
Politico
Sun, 02 Jun 2019 12:54 UTC

The decision surprised national security experts and some former officials, given prosecutors' recent decision to go after the WikiLeaks founder on Espionage Act charges.

The Justice Department has decided not to charge Julian Assange for his role in exposing some of the CIA's most secret spying tools, according to a U.S. official and two other people familiar with the case.

It's a move that has surprised national security experts and some former officials, given prosecutors' recent decision to aggressively go after the WikiLeaks founder on more controversial Espionage Act charges that some legal experts said would not hold up in court. The decision also means that Assange will not face punishment for publishing one of the CIA's most potent arsenals of digital code used to hack devices, dubbed Vault 7. The leak - one of the most devastating in CIA history - not only essentially rendered those tools useless for the CIA, it gave foreign spies and rogue hackers access to them.

Comment: One can only assume that the US feels they have enough to go after Assange with the Manning leak to be able to avoid having to admit the legitimacy of the Vault 7 material. There's no question they're out for blood, how they get it is almost immaterial.

See also:

Left-wing activists shut down Harvard's president. Harvard didn't even threaten to punish them

Greg Piper
The College Fix
Mon, 03 Jun 2019 00:01 UTC

Divestment is their new 'favorite tactic'

Universities tell students it's okay to disrupt campus events when administrators fail to punish activists for previous disruptions.

Harvard University went even further with anti-fossil fuel activists: It didn't threaten to punish them at all.

Isa Flores-Jones of Divest Harvard told The Harvard Crimson that "none of" the group's members were "directly" threatened with discipline, much less punished, for their shutdown of President Lawrence Bacow's event with the Harvard Kennedy School in April.

Comment: Regardless of the justness of their cause, this whole 'scream-and-shout-not-letting-others-speak' and rejecting invitations for actual dialogue will be the downfall of the social justice movement. That Harvard has chosen to do nothing in response shows who's really in charge in the Universities.

See also:

Thirty-two tips for navigating a society that is full of propaganda and manipulation

Caitlin Johnstone
Medium
Mon, 03 Jun 2019 00:01 UTC

For as long as there has been human language, humans have been using it to manipulate one another. The fact that it is possible to skillfully weave a collection of symbolic mouth noises together in such a way as to extract favors, concessions, votes and consent from other humans has made manipulation so common that it now pervades our society from top to bottom, from personal relationships between two people to international relationships between government agencies and the public.

This has made it very difficult to figure out what's going on, both in our lives and in the world. Here are some tips for navigating this complex manipulation-laden landscape, whether that be the manipulations you may encounter in your small-scale personal interactions or the large-scale manipulations which impact the entire world:

Comment: See also:

Key Mueller figure George Nader charged with transporting child porn

Morgan Chalfant and Jacqueline Thomsen
The Hill
Mon, 03 Jun 2019 17:47 UTC

George Nader, a Lebanese American businessman with links to associates of President Trump, has been arrested on a charge of transporting child pornography.

U.S. officials arrested Nader at John F. Kennedy Airport on Monday morning, the Justice Department said. Nader was charged under seal after he arrived in Washington from Dubai in January 2018 with a cellphone containing images of minors engaged in sexual conduct, officials said.

The criminal complaint, dated April 19, 2018, was made public after his arrest Monday.

Nader was a key figure in special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference, sitting for multiple interviews and providing information on his effort to broker a meeting in the Seychelles between Trump ally and Blackwater founder Erik Prince and a Russian financier.

He was arrested after landing at JFK and is expected to be arraigned Monday afternoon, according to the Department of Justice.

Nader pleaded guilty to the same charge in 1991.

An affidavit that was unsealed Monday alleges that a search warrant approved in a "matter unrelated to child pornography" allowed for the search of any items on Nader's person as well as his baggage. Among the items cleared for search were electronic devices, including cellphones.

Facial recognition and mass surveillance being introduced to US schools

Mac Slavo
SHTFplan.org
Sun, 02 Jun 2019 00:00 UTC

We are staring our Orwellian future right in the face. Beginning in New York, facial recognition is coming to schools in the United States and it'll be switched on for testing next week.

The dystopian future George Orwell warned about in his accidental historical predictions book, 1984, has arrived. According to an article by Engadget, the Lockport City School District in New York will start testing a facial and object recognition system called "Aegis" on June 3rd. According to BuzzFeed News, that will make it the first in the U.S. to pilot a facial recognition mass surveillance system on its students and faculty.

The district installed cameras and the software suite back in September, using $1.4 million of the $4.2 million funding it received through the New York Smart Schools Bond Act. Funding provided through the Bond Act is supposed to go towards instructional tech devices, such as iPads and laptops, but the district clearly had other plans. -Engadget

Chinese intellectual property 'theft': Indicting Huawei Is an embarrassment to the US tech industry

Moshe Adler
Counterpunch
Fri, 31 May 2019 21:41 UTC

Huawei’s European Research Center in Munich, Germany

With its criminal indictment at the beginning of the year the US government has successfully made Huawei the poster child for technology theft by China. But the indictment is an embarrassment. Huawei is not a thief.

Huawei is charged with stealing technology for a robot that T-Mobile-USA uses to test phones. The robot, "Tappy," taps phones repeatedly to determine their durability. Huawei wanted T-Mobile to offer its phones to its subscribers, and eager for its phone to pass the test, sent engineers to T-Mobile's lab to learn how Tappy works. One of the conditions T-Mobile set for permitting Huawei to examine Tappy was that the robot would not be photographed. But a Huawei engineer did photograph it, and the indictment alleges that this was a breach of a trade secret. It first tells to what length T-Mobile went to keep Tappy a secret, and then it recounts how the Huawei engineer went about photographing it secretly. Reporting about the indictment NPR told its readers "[w]e would like to include a photo here of Tappy, but photographing the robot is expressly prohibited by T-Mobile, and Tappy is kept under very tight security in a lab at T-Mobile headquarters in Bellevue, Wash." What the indictment does not say is that Tappy is not a secret but a sales-prop. T-Mobile invites customers to "Say Hello to T-Mobile Tap Happy" in a video that displays it in operation. Huawei did sign a confidentiality agreement that prohibited it from photographing Tappy, but when it did, it was not photographing a secret.

Russian Syrian war veteran killed near Moscow defending people assaulted by angry mob

RT
Mon, 03 Jun 2019 20:04 UTC

A former special forces soldier, who fought against terrorists in Aleppo, has tragically died in the Moscow region as he rushed to defend a group of people attacked by a vengeful gang and was stabbed to death.

The tragic incident took place in the town of Putilkovo located close to the Russian capital. Nikita Belyankin, a Syrian war veteran and a former serviceman with the Russian military intelligence (GRU) special forces unit, was walking down the street with his girlfriend when he saw about a dozen angry men beating two people lying on the ground outside a local bar. One of them had already suffered a stab wound.

Belyankin rushed to help the victims and first fired a warning shot from his rubber-bullet handgun in an attempt to disperse the crowd. The attackers, however, assaulted him instead. "He could not just move along in such a situation and not interfere," Belyankin's friend told the Russian media.

The former war veteran then used all his ammo firing at the attackers' legs in a bid to stop them but they still eventually managed to corner him. In the scuffle that ensued one of the mobsters stabbed him right in the heart.

Cell phone tower to be removed from school grounds in Sacramento after several children get cancer

John Vibes
Truth Theory
Sun, 02 Jun 2019 00:00 UTC

Sprint was forced to shut down a cellphone tower that was located outside of a school in the suburbs of Sacramento, California. The tower location became a topic of controversy in recent years, as numerous children in the school have developed cancer.

At least 4 students at a San Joaquin County elementary school have gotten cancer since the cell tower was installed, and after a while, many of the parents began pointing the finger at Sprint.

Monica Ferrulli, the mother of one of the children diagnosed with cancer, says that her son's doctors have indicated that this specific type of cancer is caused by something the patient was exposed to in their environment.

"We had a doctor tell us that it's 100 percent environmental, the kind of tumor that he has," Ferrulli told CBS Sacramento.

"It is classified as a possible carcinogen. That tells us that there is some evidence out there," Ferrulli said. "We're not naive to the fact that there could be other components out there - other environmental influences... but the bottom line that we feel in regards to this tower is it doesn't belong there... if there's any indications that it's unsafe," Ferrulli added.

ISIS claims responsibility for triple bombing in Kabul that killed 2, injured 24

RT
Sun, 02 Jun 2019 17:31 UTC

© STR / AFP
Afghan security personnel stand near the a damage bus carrying university students at the site of the successive bomb blasts in Kabul

Three bombs hit the Afghan capital Kabul on Sunday killing at least two people and leaving 24 others injured, officials said. The first bomb was on a bus carrying university students, before two roadside blasts struck.

The bomb on the bus exploded in a residential area of western Kabul, killing one person. Two roadside bombs went off 20 minutes later, Interior Ministry spokesman Nasrat Rahimi said. The second fatality occurred in hospital and it isn't clear which blast they were injured in. Two journalists were reportedly among the dozens injured in the explosions.

Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) claimed responsibility for the Kabul attacks, saying the bus was allegedly transporting minority Shiite Muslims and that they had set up the subsequent explosives to go off as security forces and journalists gathered in response to the first blast.

Twitter erupts in fury after transgender runner claims US women's college title: 'Create a new category'

RT
Mon, 03 Jun 2019 16:41 UTC

US transgender runner Cece Telferm, who previously competed against men, has become embroiled in controversy after winning the women's 400m hurdles title - with many fans accusing the athlete of having an unfair advantage.

Franklin Pierce University senior Telfer took the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) women's 400m hurdles title in dominant fashion at the end of May, setting a new personal best of 57.53 and finishing more than a second ahead of rival runners.

However, the victory was met with mixed reaction on social media, with many users insisting that Telferm should not have been allowed to compete against women.

Comment: It's a commentary on today's society that so many are able to close their eyes to the complete unfairness of allowing male-bodied athletes to compete with natural women. And notice, have there been any female-bodied transgender men trying to compete in male sports? Of course not. That inequity was the reason for creating separate events for women in the first place.

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Orwik

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Society's Child

Assange won't face charges over role in devastating CIA leak

Left-wing activists shut down Harvard's president. Harvard didn't even threaten to punish them

Thirty-two tips for navigating a society that is full of propaganda and manipulation

Key Mueller figure George Nader charged with transporting child porn

Facial recognition and mass surveillance being introduced to US schools

Chinese intellectual property 'theft': Indicting Huawei Is an embarrassment to the US tech industry

Russian Syrian war veteran killed near Moscow defending people assaulted by angry mob

Cell phone tower to be removed from school grounds in Sacramento after several children get cancer

ISIS claims responsibility for triple bombing in Kabul that killed 2, injured 24

Twitter erupts in fury after transgender runner claims US women's college title: 'Create a new category'

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