Thursday, June 17, 2021

Cold War: Swiss secret service spied on Dürrenmatt

 Another Facility Leak in China, This Time with the Threat of Radiation


       As swissinfo.ch summarizes, Swiss secret service spied on Dürrenmatt
       Okay, apparently: "The Swiss federal police ended up collecting information on more than 800,000 people – every 20th Swiss citizen and every third foreigner – suspected of “unSwiss” behaviour during the Cold War". Still .....


Holy robbery

In 9th century CE France, a monk went undercover in a rival monastery for ten years to steal a holy relic



The Tiananmen Square massacre: the one sided story

If you thought we knew everything about the Tiananmen Square Massacre of June 3-4, 1989, think again.  Mysteries remain. Some are so significant we need to review our ideas about what was going on in China at that time.... 


Was it a relative of Eugene’s? Did the New York crew not honor the ceasefire? Or did an interior decorator who killed 16 Czechoslovakians get his revenge? Where has Furio (Federico Castelluccio) been all this time?

Not knowing for sure is a symbol in itself. Just as the family and loved ones of other killed-off characters never got their closure throughout the series, neither does Chase’s audience, with the future of both the nuclear and criminal Sopranos family up in the air.

Hopefully, September’s prequel film, which stars Gandolfini’s 22-year-old son, Michael Gandolfini, as young Tony Soprano, will give even more closure to one of television’s most cryptic puzzles.

‘The Sopranos’ Ended 14 years Ago But We Still Want To Know: Did Tony Die?


anonymous-breach-pixel

Organised crime groups are using a new strategy to target law enforcers to exploit personal and sensitive information in a bid to bring drugs into Australia.

    Organised crime groups are trawling social media platforms for opportunities to exploit law enforcers as they actively seek to infiltrate police and border agencies for intelligence to traffic drugs through our ports and wharves, police investigators have found.

    ‘Grooming law enforcers’: New strategy organised crime groups are using


    In most government agencies that accept grant applications, online systems will track and monitor common characteristics — such as repeated names, bank accounts or email addresses used by applicants — that could indicate the same person was applying for a grant improperly or fraudulently.

    Data-matching software would automatically pick up these similarities and flag them.

    A summary of Core Integrity's advice written by the Service NSW (SNSW) Grant Administration Taskforce sets out that Service NSW did not have the capacity or systems to undertake these checks.

    "Core Integrity identified early in their engagement that SNSW's ability to undertake this type of analysis was limited if not non-existent," the Service NSW Grant Administration Taskforce sets out.


    Fraudulent applications flagged

    A trove of documents released to the NSW Parliament after a request from Greens MLC David Shoebridge revealed the inner workings of the agency at the time.

    They revealed the Customer Owned Banking Association — an industry body that represents a number of banking institutions — tipped Service NSW off in early May last year about some applications suspected of being fraudulent. 



    This is leadership: Germany bids farewell to Angela Merkel

    At a press conference, a female Journalist asked Merkel : We notice that you’re wearing the same suit, don’t you have any other? She replied: “I am a government employee and not a model”...


     Pseudo-reality, as James Lindsay noted at the start of the year, in a piece titled, “Psychopathy and the Origins of Totalitarianism.” “Pseudo-realities are, simply put, false constructions of reality. It is hopefully obvious that among the features of pseudo-realities is that they must present a plausible but deliberately wrong understanding of reality. They are cult ‘realities’ in the sense that they are the way that members of cults experience and interpret the world—both social and material—around them. We should immediately recognize that these deliberately incorrect interpretations of reality serve two related functions. First, they are meant to mold the world to accommodate small proportions of people who suffer pathological limitations on their abilities to cope with reality as it is. Second, they are designed to replace all other analyses and motivations with power, which these essentially or functionally psychopathic individuals will contort and deform to their permanent advantage so long as their pseudo-real regime can last.”


    COLD WAR II: Feds Investigating Chinese Spies’ Return to US Ahead of COVID Travel Ban.

    Intelligence officials are investigating why suspected Chinese spies returned to the United States on student and work visas at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to internal government documents reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon.

    Hundreds of Chinese nationals are the subject of a federal probe after law enforcement officials flagged their travel at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Chinese nationals returned to the United States earlier than expected in January 2020, often having modified their travel plans. Then-president Donald Trump signed an executive order restricting entry from non-citizens and residents from China on Jan. 31, 2020.

    Isn’t the “why” self-evident?

    Plus: “Although intelligence officials have not concluded whether the hundreds of monitored students were confirmed spies, the students’ modified travel suggests that many Chinese nations were aware of the severity of COVID-19, in spite of assurances to the contrary from their government and U.S. health officials.