Society's Child

'Russian Hubble' observatory project bogged in embezzlement probe - report

RT
Thu, 10 Jan 2019 15:57 UTC

Crooks may have embezzled at least $425,000 of Russian budget money allocated for a $30-million project to create a UV-range space observatory. A police probe into the suspected crime was reportedly launched last month.

The Russia-led multimillion dollar-led international corroboration called Spektr-UV is aimed at building and placing into orbit an instrument of similar design to NASA's famous Hubble Space Telescope.

The Russian counterpart is to have a 1.7-meter primary mirror and will produce images in the 110nm to 320nm wavelength range. Germany and Spain are involved in the project, producing spectrographs for the telescope while Russia is handling the assembly of the craft and its launch.

The observatory was supposed to be placed in orbit years ago, but the launch was postponed several times and is now expected sometime before 2024.

Spain arrests 15 people in tennis match-fixing investigation

BBC
Thu, 10 Jan 2019 15:48 UTC

Law enforcement officials in Spain have arrested 15 people in an investigation into tennis match-fixing by an Armenian criminal gang.

Spain's Civil Guard said 83 people were implicated, among them 28 players from the ITF Futures and Challenger tours.

One of the players competed at last year's US Open, it said.

EU police agency Europol said 11 house searches had been carried out in Spain in which 167,000 euros (£151,000) in cash were seized, along with a shotgun.

It added that more than 50 electronic devices, credit cards, five luxury vehicles and documentation related to the case were also seized.

Forty-two bank accounts have also been frozen.

RT's popularity increasing in Middle East: More trusted as credible source of information than Western counterparts

Firas Samuri
Sott.net
Tue, 08 Jan 2019 00:00 UTC

Since the beginning of the Arab Spring, the population of Northern Africa and the Middle East found out about the events based on the news transmitted by the Western corporate media only. Exactly these outlets set the tone for the information flow and the local magnates like Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya which spread talking points given by CNN and BBC.

The Arab population has felt the need for an alternative point of view as the Western giants repeatedly have been caught for spreading fake news and disinformation. An obvious example is a chemical attack in Eastern Ghouta in 2013 that actually was a provocation orchestrated by the West and the Persian Gulf monarchies.

However, when Russia, a longtime Syrian ally, entered the conflict in 2015 the situation both in information and political field has started to change. RT Arabic and Sputnik have become popular and reliable information resources. This fact is evidenced by the research of the Jordanian analysts Jassar Al-Tahat, conducted in 2015. At the request of the British project Integrity Initiative, Al-Tahat released a series of reports on RT media campaigns, where he studied the reasons for its success in the information space of the Middle East.

Comment: The Empire and its propaganda organs know of RT and Sputnik's popularity and they are absolutely desperate to shut them down - which drives them to say even more egregious lies against Russia - which erodes their credibility still further...

See: NewsGuard - the latest in narrative control aimed at destroying alternative media

Drop in the bucket: US soldiers plead guilty for attempting to bring in $1mil worth of cocaine from Colombia on military plane

Jason Lemon
Newsweek
Mon, 07 Jan 2019 14:06 UTC

Two American special forces soldiers have pled guilty to conspiring to transport $1 million worth of cocaine from Colombia to the United States aboard a military transport plane.

Former Master Sergeant Daniel Gould, 36, and Sergeant 1st Class Henry Royer, 35, who were both Army Green Berets, were caught when they attempted to transport 90 pounds of cocaine via a military aircraft last year, Army Times reported this weekend. According to the report, the soldiers had already successfully trafficked a large quantity of the illicit drug from the South American country in the past, selling it to a distributor in Florida.

Gould and Royer had previously transported 22 pounds of cocaine from the Colombian city of Cali to northwest Florida. They reportedly used a hollowed-out punching bag to conceal the drugs, which were transported to the U.S. In a bid to reinvest the money they made from the sale and make a larger profit, the two men attempted to traffic a larger quantity when they were caught.

Comment: The US military (and intelligence agencies) have a long and storied history of trafficking drugs. The story above amounts to the proverbial drop in the bucket compared to the amounts of organized - and protected - drug sales the US has been, and continues to be, a part of:

Hundreds of flights canceled at 3 German airports over security workers' strikes

Sputnik
Thu, 10 Jan 2019 11:52 UTC

Hundreds of flights at Germany's Stuttgart, Duesseldorf and Koeln/Bonn airports were cancelled on Thursday because of strikes being held by security workers over a payment raise impasse.

A total of 350 out of 570 flights were canceled in Duesseldorf, more than 130 flights in Koeln/Bonn, while some 500 flights in Stuttgart. Around 110,000 passengers were affected by the strikes.

1 in 5 US millennials expects to die without paying off debts... and their parents and grandparents are broke, too

RT
Thu, 10 Jan 2019 01:45 UTC

A fifth of all American millennials, people aged 18 to 37, expect to die before their debts are paid off - and older generations are even more pessimistic about their ability to pay off their creditors, according to a new report.

It isn't just millennials - more than a quarter of their parents' generations also believe they'll never pay off their debts, according to a creditcards.com poll. This is true of both the stereotypically cynical "Generation X" - now aged 38 to 53 - and the more idealistic "baby boomers," aged 54 to 72.

The elderly aren't spared: more than a third of Americans over age 73 believe they, too, will die in debt. More than 80 percent aren't sure when or if they'll be able to pay down their debts, a larger share than any other age group.

Comment: It's common to read stories about the inability of millennials to function in the real world, and for some, in some ways, it's true, but clearly large portions of society are struggling to survive, even those who lived through the 'boom' years. And it's not just in the US, many Western nations are suffering similar financial hardships and seeing their economies tank; it's why some are choosing to take to the streets:

Vegans lose it over cafe's refusal to serve highly-processed soy milk

Ben Graham
News.com.au
Thu, 10 Jan 2019 09:46 UTC

Angry vegans have let rip at an Australian cafe on social media because it refuses to serve soy milk for health reasons.

Healthy food specialists Rough & Bare - which has cafes at Mona Vale in northern Sydney and St Leonards on the city's north shore - stoked one plant-lover's fury when she read the establishment's menu.

A Facebook user, who is vegan, took a picture of a full-page description inside the menu which states why the management have decided to omit the popular dairy substitute from the cafe's offerings.

Comment: It sounds like a good cafe that's trying to cater to multiple dietary choices and doing its best to keep their customers healthy. That vegans would nitpick this one aspect of the menu, and a controversial one at that, is typical vegan outrage over nothing. A normal person would go for the almond milk and not make a stink. But for the ideologically possessed vegan, an attack on soy is an attack on their very identity.

See also:

De-platforming TV: Red Lobster sez Tucker Carlson's show 'no longer in line' with company 'values', removes ads

Jessica Chasmar
The Washington Times
Wed, 09 Jan 2019 00:00 UTC

Red Lobster is pulling advertisements from Tucker Carlson's prime-time Fox News show amid an ongoing boycott against the conservative host for comments he made about illegal immigration and women's pay.

"Red Lobster's advertising buying guidelines reflect our core values and commitment to supporting programming that represents the highest standards of good taste, fair practice and objectivity," the seafood chain said in a statement Tuesday.

"We reserve the right to make changes to our purchases when the dialogue is no longer in line with our criteria," the company said.

Mr. Tucker sparked outrage last month after he claimed illegal immigration made the U.S. "poorer and dirtier." More recently, he cast doubt on the claim that higher pay for women is a "victory for feminism." Activists like ThinkProgress founder Judd Legum renewed the boycott, specifically calling on Red Lobster to pull its ads.

Comment: Tucker Carlson's show is one of the most watched TV news programs in the US - and has not only been a strong and critical voice to counter Washington's "conventional wisdom" on issues political and cultural, but does so in fairly coherent and well argued way. It is for this reason that, like many of the de-platforming attacks we are witnessing against figures like Jordan Peterson and others on the web, we are now seeing a concerted effort at pulling ads from Carlson's show, which relies on ad revenue to sustain his program.

No doubt we will soon learn of yet another organization, tied to the US 'deep state' that - like Hamilton68, The Alliance for Securing Democracy or the ironically-named Integrity Initiative (in the UK) - has been the driver behind getting companies to pull their ads in the Orwellian name of "values" or "objectivity". The real voices for social sanity are now being marginalized, demonitized, and evicted outright from their respective media spaces at an ever increasing pace.

The politics of the Patreon purge

Douglas Murray
UnHerd
Tue, 08 Jan 2019 00:01 UTC

Outside the world of the internet, there are millions of people who have never heard of Patreon and won't know what you are talking about if you mention the 'Patreon Purge'. Within the world of the internet, it's a different matter. The significance of Patreon and its influence is recognised and bitterly fought over. Though most of the old media will allow such a story to float by, the internet is right on this one.

Patreon, for those who haven't heard of it, is an online membership platform where people can seek crowdfunding from fans. There are 'creators' who use the platform to get people to support them, and there are 'supporters' who donate to those whose work they favour. To an extent, Patreon, and companies like it, have filled the space that the internet destroyed as it popularised the idea that you can get almost anything you like for free.

So companies like YouTube, for example, allow people to infringe copyright by ripping videos from actual 'creators' (musicians, writers, public speakers and others). Nearly all the benefit goes to the platform; a tiny amount (through advertising) in very specific and approved cases potentially goes to the person who has posted it, and zero goes to the person who has actually created the content. This is the way that the internet has been for many years now, and it has come to be accepted as though it was part of nature, rather than the greatest intellectual property heist in history.

Comment: See also:

Sex offender rabbi negotiated a public comeback with deputy minister

Times of Israel
Tue, 08 Jan 2019 11:41 UTC

© Unknown
Rabbi Eliezer Berland (L), a convicted sex offender, meets with UTJ's Meir Porush at a Beit Shemesh wedding on January 6, 2019.

Recording shows Eliezer Berland's aides offering followers' political backing in Jerusalem mayoral race in exchange for photo op with ultra-Orthodox leaders.

A popular rabbi convicted of sexual offenses has been negotiating his public rehabilitation with ultra-Orthodox politicians in exchange for his followers' political support, according to a television report on Tuesday.

After evading arrest for three years, Eliezer Berland, 80, was sentenced to 18 months in prison in November 2016 on two counts of indecent acts and one case of assault, as part of a plea deal. He was freed after five months, in part due to ill health. Now, his associates are working to bring him back into the fold, according to a recording obtained by Hadashot.

In the recording, captured before the October municipal elections in Jerusalem, an aide to Berland, Natan Bezenson, is heard speaking with United Torah Judaism's MK Meir Porush. The TV report was aired days after Deputy Education Minister Porush was photographed speaking with Berland at a wedding, sparking an outcry.

UTJ is comprised of two parties, the ultra-Orthodox Agudath Israel and the Lithuanian Degel HaTorah. The parties ran separately in the local elections, and Berland's supporters apparently made use of this rivalry to offer the support of his followers in exchange for legitimization.

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Society's Child

'Russian Hubble' observatory project bogged in embezzlement probe - report

Spain arrests 15 people in tennis match-fixing investigation

RT's popularity increasing in Middle East: More trusted as credible source of information than Western counterparts

Drop in the bucket: US soldiers plead guilty for attempting to bring in $1mil worth of cocaine from Colombia on military plane

Hundreds of flights canceled at 3 German airports over security workers' strikes

1 in 5 US millennials expects to die without paying off debts... and their parents and grandparents are broke, too

Vegans lose it over cafe's refusal to serve highly-processed soy milk

De-platforming TV: Red Lobster sez Tucker Carlson's show 'no longer in line' with company 'values', removes ads

The politics of the Patreon purge

Sex offender rabbi negotiated a public comeback with deputy minister

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