The US Department of "Justice" has announced their capture of 35 entrepreneurs for engaging in commerce while located within the borders of the evil empire (archived). The captured entrepreneurs made the common mistake of attempting to bring commerce to the USG operated tor network. This is not the first coordinated attack on "Darkweb" entrepreneurs, but this is the first to target individual vendors instead of marketplace operators.
Category Archives: Africa
Australia Ramps Up Flight Security Theater With Powder Restrictions
After declaring a "terrorist plot" was foiled, travelers seeking air transport to an from of Australia will be subject to "enhanced" rules restricting the amount of powdered materials allowed in carry on baggage (archived). Travelers will be restricted to transporting 350 grams of inorganic powders. The new rules specifically mention snow globes and table salt as a example items containing now restricted inorganic powders. The alleged plot cited in the creation of these restrictions involved an "improvised device" denied entry at the flight check in desk by airline employees for a trip from Sydney to Abu Dhabi.
Amazon Adds Jury Option To Firing Process
Jeff Bezos' Walmart and Google competitor Amazon has introduced a "coworker jury" system to their firing process. As an alternative to the existing options of eating the pink slip while severance pay is still on the table or accepting more stringent performance goals, Amazon employees can argue their case against their immediate managers in front of a panel composed of their peers one or three Amazon managers over video conference.
The move hailed as "putting an Amazon spin on the Union greviance process" in the early going has delivered the Amazonions a less than 30% success rate and an entirely new fountain of resentments to drink from.
Austria Threatens Border Controls Against Increasingly Isolated Germany
Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz has threatened to reinstate border checks against Germany as Mother Merkel's German government finds itself increasingly fractured domestically and isolated internationally (archived).
US Supreme Courts Mentions But Does Not Influence Bitcoin – Covetous Bryer Abuses Language Suggesting Taxman Steal A Bit More
Bitcoin has been mentioned for the first time in the US Supreme court decision 'Wisconsin Central Ltd. v. United States' on the the Railroad Retirement Tax Act of 1937 (archived). In a decision which determined that stock options are not cash compensation, Stephen Breyer dissented and attempted to weasel that stock options are equivalent to cash with:
Does a stock option received by an employee (along with, say, a paycheck) count as a “form”—some form, “any form”—of “money remuneration?” The railroads, as the majority notes, believe they can find the answer to this question by engaging in (and winning) a war of 1930’s dictionaries. I am less sanguine. True, some of those dictionaries say that “money” primarily refers to currency or promissory documents used as “a medium of exchange.” See ante, at 2–3. But even this definition has its ambiguities. A railroad employee cannot use her paycheck as a “medium of exchange.” She cannot hand it over to a cashier at the grocery store; she must first deposit it. The same is true of stock, which must be converted into cash and deposited in the employee’s account before she can enjoy its monetary value. Moreover, what we view as money has changed over time. Cowrie shells once were such a medium but no longer are, see J. Weatherford, The History of Money 24 (1997); our currency originally included gold coins and bullion, but, after 1934, gold could not be used as a medium of exchange, see Gold Reserve Act of 1934, ch. 6, §2, 48 Stat. 337; perhaps one day employees will be paid in Bitcoin or some other type of cryptocurrency, see F. Martin, Money: The Unauthorized Biography— From Coinage to Cryptocurrencies 275–278 (1st Vintage Books ed. 2015). Nothing in the statute suggests the meaning of this provision should be trapped in a monetary time warp, forever limited to those forms of money commonly used in the 1930’s.
The single mention of the word 'Bitcoin' has generated substantial headlines, but the real story here is how far Breyer is willing to go in an effort to help the criminal gang in Washington DC pick a few more pockets.
Harvard Exposed Systemically Discriminating Against Asian Applicants
Harvard University has been exposed engaging in systemic discrimination against Asian applicants in the name of "diversity" (archived). According to the internal report from 2013, 43 percent of Harvard's freshman class would have been Asian if they University had adhered to strict qualifications based admissions criteria. To prevent that outcome the University's admissions office increased the weight of subjective criteria like "personality" as part of an organized effort to marginalize Asian applicants.
British Court Places Rappers Under Musical Court Supervision For 3 Years
A court in Britain has imposed restrictions on a group of young 'Drill Rap' musicians (archived). The five young men have been ordered to inform police every time they release new music, and they have been barred from mentioning death, violence, or injury in their songs or social media postings.
German Government Divided As Interior Minister Decides To Skip Migrant Integration Summit
German interior minister Horst Seehofer has decided not to participate in an "Integration Summit" hosted by Mother Merkel in a growing internal dispute over Germany's border policies (archived). Seehofer has opposed Mother Merkel's demand that no migrants be denied entry to Germany, even if the migrants are caught in the act of entering illegally. Meanwhile Merkel is calling for a unified approach to the Migrant problem, chastizing the rest of the continent that:
Italy did not feel it was receiving sufficient support from other European Union states. (archived)
Earlier this week the new Italian Interior Minister closed all of the country's ports to a human trafficking vessel which intended to ferry more than 600 African clients from Libyan waters to Italy. Spain eventually decided to extend the vessel an invitation to offload its human cargo.
Apple Signing API Used To Bypass Third Party Anti-Malware Tools
Reports are emerging that Apple's code signing API as implemented by third party anti malware tools including Google Santa, Facebook OSquery, Little Snitch, xFence, Yelp’s OSXCollector, and more allowed unsigned code to pass checks by simply being bundled with code already signed by Apple (archived). This is being framed by parties involved as well as the mainstream tech press as a problem in how all of these third parties implemented the API and not Apple's API or Apple's documentation.
Israeli Knesset Quietly Disqualifies Equality Bill: Maintain The Jewish Majority Even If It Violates Rights
Last week a bill in the Israeli Knesset that proposed treating Jewish and Arab citizens equally under the law was quietly disqualified from consideration without drawing any mainstream international attention (archived). Justifications from various officials of the Jewish state on why they can't be inclusive included:
We would be seeing here a kind of creeping conquest from Africa.
I think that ‘Judaizing the Galilee’ is not an offensive term. We used to talk like that. In recent years we’ve stopped talking like that. I think it’s legitimate without violating the full rights of the Arab residents of Israel.
There is place to maintain a Jewish majority even at the price of violation of rights.
Israel is a Jewish state. It isn’t a state of all its nations. That is, equal rights to all citizens but not equal national rights.
Everyone has his own Judaism. In the nation-state bill, when it talks about a Jew, it means the nationality. (archived)
The roughly 2 million prisoners of the 365 square kilometer concentration camp operated by Israel in the Gaza Strip would have been unaffacted by the limited human rights bill.