Welcome to Sott.net
Mon, 08 Nov 2021
The World for People who Think

Society's Child
Map

Bullseye

Sweet revenge: France once denied Moscow Mistrals over Crimea reunification, now Russia will make its own carriers... in Crimea


RT
Fri, 13 Sep 2019 11:46 UTC
ENS Anwar El Sadat, a French-built Mistral-class amphibious assault ship
© Stephane Mahe / Reuters
ENS Anwar El Sadat, a French-built Mistral-class amphibious assault ship, in Saint-Nazaire, France, 2016.
Paris refused to sell helicopter carriers to Russia after its reunification with Crimea. Now Moscow will reportedly build its own ships of this class, using the technology, training and cash from the aborted deal with France.

The first of the two Russian-made helicopter carriers will be laid down next May, with one of them set to be completed by 2027, sources in the ship-building industry told TASS on Thursday. The vessels will reportedly carry up to 10 helicopters each and have large hangar-like well decks to deploy landing craft. The contract for the ships will be signed "in the coming months," the source said.

Filling the gap

The new vessels will significantly up Russia's naval game, since Moscow is in dire need of modern amphibious assault ships, according to RT's defense expert Colonel Mikhail Khodarenok. The existing amphibious APCs are "very bad swimmers," which are only able to "land troops in secure coves with calm waters."

Moreover, Khodarenok believes that modern warfare challenges would make it "impossible" to deploy the Soviet-era tech during actual combat. A new type of vessel is required to fill this gap, and this is something Russia has been working on.

Comment: France is now changing its stance on Russia having had time to consider the disadvantages of alienating this powerhouse:

      Read More...
Arrow Down

Political hit job? Twitter bans dozens of Cuban journalists moments before president's speech on fuel shortages


RT
Fri, 13 Sep 2019 10:00 UTC
Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel banned Twitter
© Reuters
Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel
Dozens of Cuban journalists with millions of followers combined were on the receiving end of a blanket Twitter ban, without explanation, just moments before the Cuban president delivered a much-awaited address on fuel shortages.

The purge, which began on Wednesday evening and continued into Thursday afternoon, targeted scores of Cuban accounts, focusing primarily on reporters as well as some political organizations. A correspondent for RT in Cuba was also affected.

"Problems accessing many Cuban accounts on Twitter. It seems a concerted operation of false allegations of abusive use and violation of platform policies," observed Rosa Miriam Elizalde from the Union of Journalists of Cuba (UPEC), adding that the "selectivity of affected users" showed "surprising political bias."
      Read More...
Briefcase

Huawei offering to sell rights to all 5G patents to break deadlock with US

Isobel Asher Hamilton
Business Insider
Thu, 12 Sep 2019 06:36 UTC

Comment: Wow. That's like "here's a headstart; you can have our tech for free"...


Huawei CEO Ren Zhengfei
© REUTERS/Aly Song
Huawei CEO Ren Zhengfei
Huawei is trying an unusual tactic to try to break its deadlock with the US government. It's offering to sell the rights to all its 5G patents in a one-time-only offer.

Huawei's CEO, Ren Zhengfei, told The Economist's Hal Hodson that the company was offering to bundle up its 5G patents, licenses, code, and technical blueprints in a one-off transaction.

The idea would be to create a rival for the Chinese tech giant. "A balanced distribution of interests is conducive to Huawei's survival," Ren told Hodson.

Ren said he had "no idea" who might be interested in buying, and he did not put a figure on how much Huawei's 5G "stack" might be worth. Hodson said it could run to tens of billions of dollars given the amount of money Huawei has poured into research.

The move is designed to placate concerns in the West about Huawei's 5G dominance, coupled with the national security concerns from the Trump administration, which argues that Huawei could act as a proxy for the Chinese government to spy. Huawei denies this.

Comment:

      Read More...
Camcorder

Movie review: 'Official Secrets' indicts Blair, Bush, and other mass murderers in the court of public opinion

Ed Campbell
Common Dreams
Sun, 01 Sep 2019 00:00 UTC
Official Secrets film
© IFC Films
Keira Knightley as Katharine Gun, a 29-year-old British whistleblower who leaked a memo about an illegal NSA-sponsored operation digging for information that might be used to blackmail U.N. Security Council members into supporting the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Official Secrets, co-written and directed by Gavin Hood, is one of the best movies ever made about investigative reporting and whistle-blowing — a film in a league with All the President's Men and Snowden.

Like the 1976 Watergate classic starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman as Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, and Oliver Stone's 2016 drama about exposure of the National Security Agency's clandestine mass warrantless surveillance program, the U.K.-set Secrets is based on a true story.

The film is about Martin Bright, a reporter with The Observer (played by Matt Smith), and Katharine Gun, a translator for the British government (played by Keira Knightley). Gun is responsible for what Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg called "the most important and courageous leak I have ever seen. No one else — including myself — has ever done what Gun did: tell secret truths at personal risk, before an imminent war, in time, possibly, to avert it."

In early 2003, during the lead-up to the U.S. attack on Iraq, Gun came across an email from a shadowy National Security Agency official named Frank Koza. It revealed U.S. plans to spy on U.N. Security Council members in order to blackmail them into voting for a resolution approving a military offensive against Baghdad. The resolution was seen as key to providing the strike with a fig leaf of legitimacy from the international community for a war based largely on the dubious proposition that Saddam Hussein possessed "Weapons of Mass Destruction."

Comment: See also:

      Read More...
Bizarro Earth

"Tragic and inexcusable": Chicago schools to overhaul handling of sex abuse complaints

Sophia Tareen
Associated Press
Fri, 13 Sep 2019 11:29 UTC
Janice Jackson
© AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast File
FILE - In this July 16, 2015, file photo, Janice Jackson, chief executive officer for Chicago Public Schools, appears at a news conference in Chicago. Federal education officials called Chicago Public Schools' handling of sexual abuse complaints "tragic and inexcusable" and outlined legally-binding corrective steps after a systemic investigation of the nation's third-largest school district.
Chicago Public Schools will overhaul how it handles sexual abuse complaints after a federal investigation found "tragic and inexcusable" problems following student complaints, the U.S. Department of Education announced Thursday.

The agency's Office for Civil Rights called its review — which began in 2015 after student complaints — among the most comprehensive of any major urban school district. Federal officials concluded that the district's management, handling and oversight of sexual harassment violated Title IX, which is a federal law designed to protect students from abuse, harassment and gender-based discrimination.

Under the legally binding remedy that the nation's third-largest school district agreed to, any complaints will be reviewed by a second, independent party. The district also will review the actions of current and former employees and change its Title IX procedures, among other things. Federal officials will monitor the district for three years.

Comment: See also:

      Read More...
Star of David

PewDiePie cancels $50,000 donation to the ADL: 'I messed up'


BBC
Fri, 13 Sep 2019 08:02 UTC
pewdiepie
© PewDiePie / YouTube
PewDiePie has changed his mind about donating $50,000 (£40,496) to a charity that campaigns to stop hate speech against Jewish people.

Earlier this week, he told fans he would give the money to the Anti Defamation League - a group which has previously criticised the YouTuber.

The gamer and comedian announced the donation to mark hitting 100 million followers on YouTube.

But he has since reconsidered, saying he was "sorry for messing this up."

Comment: The crux of the matter is missed in this article, along with all the other mainstream articles about Pewdiepie's donation and rescindment. It's stated best in Tim Pool's tweet:

This is why many in the small-creator community saw Pewdiepie's offer of donation as 'donating to the enemy'. The ADL's mandate is essentially to silence small voices on trumped up charges of 'hate speech', being at least partly responsible for YouTube's recent purge of 17,000 channels. Even Pewdiepie himself has been a victim of their broad brush-strokes. He should have known better, but as least he's corrected his mistake.

See also:

      Read More...
Attention

Baby body parts trafficking company StemExpress admits to keeping babies alive so that whole, beating hearts and heads can be harvested

Ethan Huff
Natural News
Thu, 12 Sep 2019 00:01 UTC
foetus
StemExpress, a company that we previously exposed for its involvement in trafficking aborted baby body parts along with Planned Parenthood, is back in the news - and the reason why is sure to disturb you.

According to reports, the company's CEO admitted during a recent court hearing that StemExpress profits from the sale of fetal hearts and heads harvested from live human babies - meaning babies are being obtained by the biotech industry while they're still alive, and murdered on-demand to provide "fresh" flesh for "medical research."

During the hearing, Peter Breen from the Thomas More Society asked a question that was surely on everyone's mind: Where, exactly, is StemExpress getting these fully intact human children? And it's a question that demands an answer.

Comment: The word 'satanic' comes to mind.

See also:

      Read More...
Airplane

Some airplanes did something?! New York Times article 'de-terrorizes' 9/11 attacks


RT
Thu, 12 Sep 2019 08:35 UTC
World Trade Center plane hit
© Reuters / Sara K. Schwittek
A plane hits the World Trade Center in New York, September 11, 2001
On the anniversary of the most devastating terrorist attack on US soil, a story by the New York Times suggested that "airplanes" brought down the twin towers. The seeming shift of responsibility did not sit well with readers.

"18 years have passed since airplanes took aim and brought down the World Trade Center," read a tweet from the New York Times on Wednesday. "Today families will once again gather and grieve at the site where more than 2000 people died." Inside an accompanying article, the same bizarre sentence was repeated.

Though technological dystopia was all the rage in 2001, what with the success of 'The Matrix' two years earlier and the passing of Y2K after that, the 9/11 attacks were not carried out by sentient airplanes, but by terrorist hijackers. Enraged readers made sure the NYT knew that, slating the newspaper for omitting the terms 'Islamic terrorists' or even the less-loaded 'Al Qaeda' from its story.

Comment: See also: 9/11, Identity Politics And The Coming Storm

      Read More...
Binoculars

Hong Kong protest leader Joshua Wong, seen with White Helmets boss, Kiev mayor, Rubio, Pelosi...

Danielle Ryan
RT
Wed, 11 Sep 2019 19:16 UTC
Joshua Wong and WHelmet guy
© Reuters/Hannibal Hanschke
Joshua Wong posed with the "White Helmets" head Raed Al Saleh (L), Kiev Mayor Vitali Klitschko (R) and Iranian-Austrian political activist Mina Ahadi
Hong Kong protest figurehead Joshua Wong, who has been rocking up to 'pro-democracy' meetings with various Western officials in recent weeks, has been spotted hanging out with the chairman of the White Helmets in Berlin.

Wong attended the 'Bild 100' summer party in Berlin this week, where he seems to have bumped into White Helmets boss Raed Al Saleh. That's a tad awkward, since the Syrian first-responders group has been heavily linked to Al Qaeda and US-sponsored jihadist militias - a fact that did not go unnoticed on Twitter.
      Read More...
Handcuffs

Former senior FEMA officials arrested on bribery, fraud charges re: Puerto Rico, Hurricane Maria relief efforts

Daniel Chaitin
Washington Examiner
Tue, 10 Sep 2019 02:11 UTC
HurricaneMaria PuertoRico
© Reuters/Carlos Garcia Rawlins
Hurricane Maria, Canovanas, Puerto Rico, September 26, 2017
Two former officials with the Federal Emergency Management Agency were arrested on charges of bribery and fraud following a federal corruption investigation in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria devastated the island in 2017.

The former president of Cobra Acquisitions, a company that secured $1.8 billion in federal contracts to repair Puerto Rico's destroyed power grid, was also arrested by the FBI, federal prosecutors said Tuesday.

An indictment returned by a federal grand jury includes 15 charges against Ahsha Tribble and Jovanda Patterson, who were former FEMA officials, and Donald Keith Ellison, who was president of Cobra Acquisitions up until June.

A Justice Department statement said Tribble, who was FEMA deputy administrator of the region, and Ellison are alleged to have "developed a personal relationship wherein Ellison provided Tribble with things of value with the intent to influence Tribble's performance of official acts. Ellison provided Tribble with personal helicopter use, hotel accommodations, airfare, personal security services, and the use of a credit card."

Patterson was a FEMA deputy chief of staff assigned to San Juan from October 2017 to March 2018 before being hired by Cobra.

If found guilty, the defendants face sentences up to 5 years in prison for conspiracy, travel act violations, conflict of interest, and false statements and 30 years for honest services wire fraud and disaster fraud, according to the Justice Department.

Comment: See also:

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