Three Journalists Killed in Mexico in Less than a Week
August 3rd, 2019Via: Al Jazeera:
Three journalists have been killed in Mexico in less than a week, including two on Friday, bringing to ten the total number of journalists killed in the Central American country this year.
Russian Police Detain Over 800 in Opposition Crackdown in Moscow
August 3rd, 2019Also, Hong Kong simmering:
Hong Kong police said on Sunday they arrested more than 20 people after violent clashes with anti-government protesters overnight, as the Chinese-controlled territory braced for more protests and a general strike aimed to bring the city to a halt.
On Saturday police fired multiple tear gas rounds in confrontations with black-clad activists in the city’s Kowloon area, the latest escalation after more than two months of protests against a proposed bill to allow people to be extradited to stand trial in mainland China.
Via: Reuters:
Russian police forcibly detained over 800 people attending a protest in Moscow on Saturday to demand free elections, including prominent activist Lyubov Sobol, after authorities warned the demonstration was illegal.
Police removed Sobol, an ally of jailed opposition politician Alexei Navalny, from a taxi and bundled her into a van minutes before the start of what anti-Kremlin activists described as a peaceful walk to protest against the exclusion of their candidates from an election next month.
Multiple Fatalities Reported in Shooting at Walmart in El Paso, Texas
August 3rd, 2019Update: 9 Killed in Ohio in Second U.S. Mass Shooting Within 24 Hours
Via: AP:
A gunman wearing body armor and carrying extra magazines opened fire in a popular nightlife area of Dayton, Ohio, killing nine and injuring dozens, authorities say, in the second U.S. mass shooting in less than 24 hours.
Dayton police patrolling the area responded in less than a minute to the shooting, which unfolded around 1 a.m. Sunday on the streets of the Oregon District, Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley said at a press conference.
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Update: Texas Walmart Shooting Witness, “Saw Four Men, Dressed in Black, Moving Together Firing Guns Indiscriminately”
Via: AP:
Adriana Quezada, 39, said she was in the women’s clothing section of Walmart with her two children when she heard gunfire.
…
She said she saw four men, dressed in black, moving together firing guns indiscriminately. Police later said they believed the suspect, who was armed with a rifle, was the only shooter.
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Update: Manifesto
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Via: Guardian:
Multiple people have been killed in a shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, according to local law enforcement and the city’s mayor.
One person was in custody, a police department spokesman said in a televised briefing.
“It’s an absolutely tragedy,” El Paso’s mayor, Dee Margo, told KTSM, a local television station.
El Paso police tweeted on Saturday that officers were responding to an active shooting scene and that people were advised to stay away from the Cielo Vista Mall area.
Local television station KTSM reported earlier that 18 people were shot or injured inside a Walmart at the mall, but the full extent of the injuries and deaths is still unknown.
El Paso police tweeted that there were “reports of multiple shooters” and that police were conducting a “search of a very large area,” but further details were not immediately available. Early witness reports of multiple shooters are sometimes inaccurate.
Pentagon Testing Mass Surveillance Balloons Across the U.S.
August 2nd, 2019Via: Guardian:
The US military is conducting wide-area surveillance tests across six midwest states using experimental high-altitude balloons, documents filed with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) reveal.
Up to 25 unmanned solar-powered balloons are being launched from rural South Dakota and drifting 250 miles through an area spanning portions of Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin and Missouri, before concluding in central Illinois.
Travelling in the stratosphere at altitudes of up to 65,000ft, the balloons are intended to “provide a persistent surveillance system to locate and deter narcotic trafficking and homeland security threats”, according to a filing made on behalf of the Sierra Nevada Corporation, an aerospace and defence company.
The balloons are carrying hi-tech radars designed to simultaneously track many individual vehicles day or night, through any kind of weather. The tests, which have not previously been reported, received an FCC license to operate from mid-July until September, following similar flights licensed last year.
LightSail 2 Spacecraft Successfully Demonstrates Flight by Light
August 2nd, 2019Via: Planetary Society:
Years of computer simulations. Countless ground tests. They’ve all led up to now. The Planetary Society’s crowdfunded LightSail 2 spacecraft is successfully raising its orbit solely on the power of sunlight.
Since unfurling the spacecraft’s silver solar sail last week, mission managers have been optimizing the way the spacecraft orients itself during solar sailing. After a few tweaks, LightSail 2 began raising its orbit around the Earth. In the past 4 days, the spacecraft has raised its orbital high point, or apogee, by about 2 kilometers. The mission team has confirmed the apogee increase can only be attributed to solar sailing, meaning LightSail 2 has successfully completed its primary goal of demonstrating flight by light for CubeSats.
California Farmers Are Planting Solar Panels as Water Supplies Dry Up
August 2nd, 2019In Blade Runner 2049, the California Central Valley looks like this:
(In case you’re wondering, the solar concentrators in the opening scene of the film were inspired by the idiotic Ivanpah Solar Power Facility, which is based on concentrated solar thermal energy.)
Nestled in among the heliostat fields are protein farms:
They grow some variety of weevil which seems to have been genetically modified to live in vats of liquid.
Mmm mmm good.
Concentrated solar (as shown in the film) isn’t going to take off. However, if the place gets covered with the more conventional photovoltaic panels, it will be interesting to see if insect protein farms come along too.
After all, in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Philip K. Dick wrote, “Insects…are especially sacrosanct.”
That’s interesting, considering the fact that Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was published in 1968.
Flash forward several decades and there are a steady stream of articles related to insect population declines, and even, “The Earth may not have any insects at all by 2119.”
Via: Los Angeles Times:
Jon Reiter banked the four-seat Cessna aircraft hard to the right, angling to get a better look at the solar panels glinting in the afternoon sun far below.
The silvery panels looked like an interloper amid a patchwork landscape of lush almond groves, barren brown dirt and saltbush scrub, framed by the blue-green strip of the California Aqueduct bringing water from the north. Reiter, a renewable energy developer and farmer, built these solar panels and is working to add a lot more to the San Joaquin Valley landscape.
“The next project is going to be 100 megawatts. It’s going to be five times this size,” Reiter said.
Solar energy projects could replace some of the jobs and tax revenues that may be lost as constrained water supplies force California’s agriculture industry to scale back. In the San Joaquin Valley alone, farmers may need to take more than half a million acres out of production to comply with the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, which will ultimately put restrictions on pumping.
“FBI Document Warns Conspiracy Theories Are a New Domestic Terrorism Threat”
August 2nd, 2019Via: Yahoo News:
The FBI for the first time has identified fringe conspiracy theories as a domestic terrorist threat, according to a previously unpublicized document obtained by Yahoo News. (Read the document below.)
The FBI intelligence bulletin from the bureau’s Phoenix field office, dated May 30, 2019, describes “conspiracy theory-driven domestic extremists,” as a growing threat, and notes that it is the first such report to do so. It lists a number of arrests, including some that haven’t been publicized, related to violent incidents motivated by fringe beliefs.
The document specifically mentions QAnon, a shadowy network that believes in a deep state conspiracy against President Trump, and Pizzagate, the theory that a pedophile ring including Clinton associates was being run out of the basement of a Washington, D.C., pizza restaurant (which didn’t actually have a basement).
“The FBI assesses these conspiracy theories very likely will emerge, spread, and evolve in the modern information marketplace, occasionally driving both groups and individual extremists to carry out criminal or violent acts,” the document states. It also goes on to say the FBI believes conspiracy theory-driven extremists are likely to increase during the 2020 presidential election cycle.
The FBI said another factor driving the intensity of this threat is “the uncovering of real conspiracies or cover-ups involving illegal, harmful, or unconstitutional activities by government officials or leading political figures.” The FBI does not specify which political leaders or which cover-ups it was referring to.
New York Area Fire Commissioners Call for New 9/11 Investigation, “Overwhelming Evidence” that “Pre-planted Explosives . . . Caused the Destruction of the Three World Trade Center Buildings”
August 1st, 2019Via: Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth:
They started off by saying the Pledge of Allegiance. Ten minutes later, they were reading the text of a resolution claiming the existence of “overwhelming evidence” that “pre-planted explosives . . . caused the destruction of the three World Trade Center buildings.”
And so it was, on July 24, 2019 — nearly 18 years after the horrific attacks that traumatized a nation and changed the world forever — the Franklin Square and Munson Fire District, which oversees a volunteer fire department serving a hamlet of 30,000 residents just outside of Queens, New York, became the first legislative body in the country to officially support a new investigation into the events of 9/11.
The resolution, drafted and introduced by Commissioner Christopher Gioia, was unanimously approved by the five commissioners. Members of the audience — including the families of fallen firefighters Thomas J. Hetzel and Robert Evans, both Franklin Square natives — joined in solemn but celebratory applause after the fifth “ay” was spoken.
Spanish Scientists Create Human-Monkey Chimera in China
August 1st, 2019Via: El Pais:
Researchers led by Spanish scientist Juan Carlos Izpisúa have created for the first time a human-monkey hybrid in a laboratory in China – an important step towards using animals for human organ transplants, project collaborator Estrella Núñez confirmed to EL PAÍS.
The team, made up of members of the Salk Institute in the United States and the Murcia Catholic University (UCAM) in Spain, genetically modified monkey embryos to deactivate genes that are essential to the formation of organs. The scientists then injected human stem cells, which are capable of creating any type of tissue, into the embryo. The product of this work is a monkey with human cells that has not been born, because researchers stopped the process. The experiment took place in China to avoid legal issues.
“The results are very promising,” says Núñez, a biologist and vice chancellor of research at UCAM.
EPSTEIN BECAME FBI INFORMANT IN 2008
August 1st, 2019Via: Daily Mail:
Jeffrey Epstein managed to shut down a federal probe into his illicit and illegal activities with underage girls and secure his sweetheart plea deal by providing information’ to the government, FBI reports confirm.
A federal investigation into the pedophile led by the FBI was closed out on September 18, 2008 when Epstein ‘provided information to the FBI as agreed upon’ according to the case agent.
That investigation had been underway for two years at that point, but it was noted in the final report that ‘no prosecution will occur in this matter as long as Epstein continues to uphold his agreement with the State of Florida.’
The investigation had been dormant for seven months by then, with FBI records obtained by DailyMail.com showing that the lead agent had not filed a report since February 11 at the time he closed the case.
That February report notes that ‘that the criminal investigation into activities of Jeffrey Epstein is ongoing,’ and that the case agent had been told the matter was ‘highly sensitive’ by the United States Attorney’s Office.
More: Epstein Wanted Baby Ranch, Was Interested in Transhumanism
