September 9, 2016

TRANSPARENCY(LOL): WikiLeaks HIDES evidence of €2 billion transfer from Syria to Russia(!)

A trove of hacked emails published by WikiLeaks in 2012 excludes records of a €2 billion transaction between the Syrian regime and a government-owned Russian bank, according to leaked U.S. court documents obtained by the Daily Dot.

WikiLeaks has become an ever-prominent force in the 2016 presidential election through its publishing of tens of thousands of emails, voicemails, and documents stolen from the Democratic National Committee by hackers that U.S. authorities and cybersecurity experts believe are linked to the Russian government. The transparency organization, which boasts of a commitment to use “cryptography to protect human rights” against repressive regimes, has faced criticism from supporters of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and praise from Republican opponent Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The court records, placed under seal by a Manhattan federal court and obtained by the Daily Dot through an anonymous source, show in detail how a group of hacktivists breached the Syrian government’s networks on the eve of the country’s civil war and extracted emails about major bank transactions the Syrian regime was hurriedly making amid a host of economic sanctions. In the spring of 2012, most of the emails found their way into a WikiLeaks database.

But one set of emails in particular didn’t make it into the cache of documents published by WikiLeaks in July 2012 as “The Syria Files,” despite the fact that the hackers themselves were ecstatic at their discovery. The correspondence, which WikiLeaks has denied withholding, describes “more than” €2 billion ($2.4 billion, at current exchange rates) moving from the Central Bank of Syria to Russia’s VTB Bank.

http://www.dailydot.com/layer8/wikileaks-syria-files-syria-russia-bank-2-billion/


And here's the cherry: Assange told the writer not to publish because it could "help Clinton&quot !)
https://twitter.com/kevincollier/status/774306855971614720

So... Now there is indisputable evidence that Assange not only sat on something that didn't fit his agenda, he threatened retribution against those who wrote this story...Is this the beginning of the end for Julian Assange?

September 6, 2016

Sweden is way ahead of us.... WAY ahead!

So the Swedes can do this with rigs, but their road cars still suck?

September 2, 2016

Jared Fogle Wants to Sue His Underage Victim's Parents

Jared Fogle, the disgraced former Subway pitchman who is in prison on child pornography charges, is reportedly looking to sue the parents of one of his victims.

Parents of the underage girl had sued Fogle earlier this year, saying that their daughter became suicidal after learning that she was one of several minors who were unknowingly filmed while changing clothes or bathing. Fogle was sentenced to prison for 15-and-a-half years in November.

According to NBC News, Fogle’s lawyers on Thursday filed a motion stating that the girl’s parents’ divorce was the root of her psychological damage, charging that their “hateful and abusive relationship toward each other” contributed to her distress.

This “included, but was not limited to, engaging in frequent fighting and arguing between themselves; abusing alcohol and getting drunk; and engaging in frequent fighting, physical abuse, and arguing with Jane Doe,” Fogle’s attorneys stated, according to the Daily Mail.

Fogle’s attorneys also said that the parents’ custody arrangement “caused unnecessary stress, anxiety, and trauma” for the girl.

http://fortune.com/2016/09/02/jared-fogle-blames-parents-child-victim/


Whatever the hell chess game his attorneys are trying to play here, I sure don't see it...

September 1, 2016

MEANWHILE, in Rhode Island...

Westerly man charged with shooting corncobs at neighbor's home

WESTERLY, R.I. (AP) — A 50-year-old Westerly man is charged with shooting corncobs at his neighbor's home.

The Westerly Sun reports that Jeffrey Osella was arrested Tuesday night. Police say he answered his door shirtless and had corn kernels stuck to his chest.

Police say Osella used a potato gun to shoot corncobs at his neighbor's house, which is up for sale. The gun is made of PVC pipe and uses a light accelerant such as hair spray that can be ignited.

Police say Osella and his neighbor have long-running disputes.

Osella is charged with disorderly conduct and firing in a compact area. He's free on bail and is to be arraigned Friday.

A phone number for Osella could not be found.

Osella's attorney says he can't comment until he reviews the case.

http://www.providencejournal.com/article/20160901/NEWS/160909935/SHARED/st_refDomain=t.co&st_refQuery=/tFq1J3ZkTP

September 1, 2016

Aurora shooting massacre survivors ordered to pay Cinemark theater chain $700,000

Source: Salon

Four survivors of the shooting massacre in Aurora, Colorado, now owe the third-largest movie theater company in the country $700,000.

In 2012, 12 people were killed and at least 70 others were wounded when James Holmes walked into the Cinemark’s Aurora Century 16 theater and opened fire.

While Holmes was found guilty in 2015, a group of survivors filed a state lawsuit against Cinemark in 2012, claiming lax security allowed the heavily-armed Holmes to enter the theater and carry out the shooting. Ultimately, a jury of six sided with Cinemark in the civil case in state court, finding that there was no way they could have foreseen the attack and that additional security would have done little to stop Holmes, who was wearing body armor and was armed with gas canisters and multiple firearms.”

Colorado law allows the winning side of civil cases to seek costs. According to the Los Angeles Times, Cinemark’s lawyers at the time told a judge the money was needed to cover the costs of preserving evidence, retrieving and copying records, travel and other expenses – including $500,000 for expert testimony.

Read more: http://www.salon.com/2016/09/01/aurora-shooting-massacre-survivors-ordered-to-pay-cinemark-theater-chain-700000/

September 1, 2016

The Quest to Build the First Robotic Vagina (HAIL SCIENCE!!!)

he female body is a complicated thing—just ask your doctor. Specifically, women’s reproductive systems exhibit a wide array of anatomical variation, and the bulk of our lady parts are tucked inside and invisible to the eye. This presents doctors-in-training with a daunting challenge: how to master the dreaded gynecological exam.

Although an influential health panel recently suggested healthy women may not need a full pelvic exam every single year, many doctors still see the annual exam as a critical opportunity to look for cancers, cysts, fibroids and more. Now, researchers at Imperial College London are creating a robotic female pelvis which would allow medical students to learn to “see” the female body by feel, so they’ll be more prepared when they encounter a live human being with her feet in stirrups.

If these researchers succeed, their funny-looking silicone recreation of the lower female torso could help new doctors get better—faster—at conducting the most intimate exam most women regularly face. It could also ensure that these doctors’ first exams are more comfortable for the women on the receiving end. The team’s project involves 3D imaging as well as haptic technology to simulate the sense of touch—a suitably complex project to simulate a complex facet of the human anatomy.

But even with cutting-edge techniques, it's a tough feat. The team has been working on the project for about five years, and they’re finding that there’s still a lot to learn about the female body. “It’s fascinating, really,” says Fernando Bello, a professor in surgical computing and simulation science who leads the team. “We’ve been working on this for a number of years now, and in many ways, we feel as if we’re kind of just beginning.”



Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/your-vagina-biological-miracle-and-researchers-are-trying-recreate-it-180960304/#g5MtKG1o2TqlfQ5z.99
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September 1, 2016

The Curious Deaths Of Kremlin Critics

Two weeks from now in Surrey, England, a coroner's inquest is scheduled for a most peculiar death.

Here are the facts: In November 2012, a 44-year-old man died while out jogging near his Surrey home. The man was reported to have been in robust health, and police declared that the death was not suspicious.

But here are a few more facts: The jogger was a Russian banker who had fled Russia after helping expose tax fraud that implicated both the Mafia and the Russian state. Traces of a rare, poisonous flowering plant were found in his stomach.

This is one of several cases raising questions about why opponents of the Kremlin seem to be dying at an unusual rate.

"Vladimir Putin's enemies have this uncanny habit of being killed," says Guardian correspondent Luke Harding.

He says authorities couldn't find a cause of death in the case of the banker turned whistleblower, Alexander Perepilichny. "They decided that there was no foul play and it was just a kind of unexplained case that sometimes happens."

But a botanist at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, southwest London, was called in just last year to conduct more tests. What she found caused a sensation, says Harding: Gelsemium elegans, a lethal plant favored by Chinese and Russian assassins.

"We're talking about suburban England and a [plant] that comes from the Himalayas being used. It's not growing in your or my back garden," he says. "And I think the calculation was that it would never be discovered — that this would just be simply an unexplained murder, and the whole thing would go away."

http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2016/08/30/491898040/the-curious-deaths-of-kremlin-critics?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20160830

September 1, 2016

How Russia Often Benefits When Julian Assange Reveals the West’s Secrets

Julian Assange was in classic didactic form, holding forth on the topic that consumes him — the perfidy of big government and especially of the United States.

Mr. Assange, the editor of WikiLeaks, rose to global fame in 2010 for releasing huge caches of highly classified American government communications that exposed the underbelly of its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and its sometimes cynical diplomatic maneuvering around the world. But in a televised interview last September, it was clear that he still had plenty to say about “The World According to US Empire,” the subtitle of his latest book, “The WikiLeaks Files.”

From the cramped confines of the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, where he was granted asylum four years ago amid a legal imbroglio, Mr. Assange proffered a vision of America as superbully: a nation that has achieved imperial power by proclaiming allegiance to principles of human rights while deploying its military-intelligence apparatus in “pincer” formation to “push” countries into doing its bidding, and punishing people like him who dare to speak the truth.

Notably absent from Mr. Assange’s analysis, however, was criticism of another world power, Russia, or its president, Vladimir V. Putin, who has hardly lived up to WikiLeaks’ ideal of transparency. Mr. Putin’s government has cracked down hard on dissent — spying on, jailing, and, critics charge, sometimes assassinating opponents while consolidating control over the news media and internet. If Mr. Assange appreciated the irony of the moment — denouncing censorship in an interview on Russia Today, the Kremlin-controlled English-language propaganda channel — it was not readily apparent.

Now, Mr. Assange and WikiLeaks are back in the spotlight, roiling the geopolitical landscape with new disclosures and a promise of more to come.

In July, the organization released nearly 20,000 Democratic National Committee emails suggesting that the party had conspired with Hillary Clinton’s campaign to undermine her primary opponent, Senator Bernie Sanders. Mr. Assange — who has been openly critical of Mrs. Clinton — has promised further disclosures that could upend her campaign against the Republican nominee, Donald J. Trump. Separately, WikiLeaks announced that it would soon release some of the crown jewels of American intelligence: a “pristine” set of cyberspying codes.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/01/world/europe/wikileaks-julian-assange-russia.html?smid=tw-share

I'm just glad more people are discovering what I've been saying all along...

September 1, 2016

How will history look back on Rousseff's impeachment?

In 1992, senators and MPs in Brazil's Congress came together to impeach the country's first democratically elected president in almost 30 years.

Fernando Collor de Mello (simply known as Collor) had won the votes of 53% of the electorate three years earlier, but was caught in a massive corruption scandal.

Mr Collor's impeachment was a clear-cut case. There was abundant proof of bribes paid to him and a smoking gun - a car that was bought with illegal money. Also Collor was part of a small political party with weak support both from Congress and the streets.

Twenty-four years later, Brazil has for the second time impeached a president. But this time the circumstances seem far less clear cut.

Although polls suggest there is ample rejection of Dilma Rousseff as a president, the question of whether she is guilty of a crime punishable with the loss of her mandate has proven explosively controversial in Brazil.

How did things get to this point and how will history look back on the impeachment of Brazil's first woman president?

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-37235510

September 1, 2016

Impeachment or Coup in Brazil? Depends on Your Politics

WASHINGTON — Was the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff as the president of Brazil on Wednesday a coup?

Technically, the answer is no. Although there is no single definition of what constitutes a coup, it is at its core an illegal seizure of power. The Brazilian Senate’s 61-to-20 vote to remove Ms. Rousseff was the culmination of a legal process set forth in the Brazilian Constitution, and it simply does not meet that standard.

But Ms. Rousseff and her supporters have argued for months that the effort to oust her was in fact a coup engineered by a small group of elites.

They are not bothered by strict legal definitions. Rather, “coup” has become shorthand for accusing Ms. Rousseff’s political opponents of exploiting the law to subvert democracy.

There is truth to that. But it is rooted in problems that afflict Brazil’s entire political system, not just its right or its left.

Any opposition party anywhere stands to gain from the downfall of the governing party’s leader. In Brazil, that was heightened by the fact that members of the opposition had been caught up in a major corruption scandal.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/01/world/americas/brazil-impeachment-coup.html