Stephan: The Austin bomber, Mark Conditt, was a nice, clean cut, homeschooled christofascist youth. I have been saying for some years that you have much more to fear from White christofascist American male terrorists, than you do Muslim terrorists, and every time I do I get messages telling me that can't be true. Well, here is some more evidence that it is.
How did he end up this way, and how is it possible no one noticed? Or was the family's own hate and fear so strong he just seemed normal?
Mark Anthony Conditt, White cristofascist Austin bomber
Authorities on Wednesday identified the man they say is responsible for the Austin package bombings as Mark Anthony Conditt, a 23-year-old from Pflugerville, Texas.
They said Conditt died when he detonated an explosive during a confrontation with police. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott told KVUE Conditt appeared to have no military or criminal background and that investigators were still trying to determine his motive.
Before his death, federal criminal complaint and an arrest warrant were filed against Conditt on Tuesday night in connection with the bombings, the Department of Justice said in a statement.
He was charged with one count of unlawful possession and transfer of a destructive device. The complaint affidavit remains sealed due to the ongoing investigation, authorities said.
The charge was filed before he detonated the bomb early Wednesday as officers were attempting to apprehend him in Round Rock. He died shortly after.
Austin police said Conditt had two roommates, who had been detained for questioning. One of them was released while […]
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RENE CHUN , - The Atlantic
Stephan: China leads the way in becoming a 24/7 surveillance state, with the U.K. not far behind, and the U.S. under Trump gearing up. You hear almost nothing about this, but it is a very scary trend if citizen freedom is important to you. This is the future unless citizens rise up.
Credit: Rami Niemi
Dystopia starts with 23.6 inches of toilet paper. That’s how much the dispensers at the entrance of the public restrooms at Beijing’s Temple of Heaven dole out in a program involving facial-recognition scanners—part of the president’s “Toilet Revolution,” which seeks to modernize public toilets. Want more? Forget it. If you go back to the scanner before nine minutes are up, it will recognize you and issue this terse refusal: “Please try again later.”
China is rife with face-scanning technology worthy of Black Mirror. Don’t even think about jaywalking in Jinan, the capital of Shandong province. Last year, traffic-management authorities there started using facial recognition to crack down. When a camera mounted above one of 50 of the city’s busiest intersections detects a jaywalker, it snaps several photos and records a video of the violation. The photos appear on an overhead screen so the offender can see that he or she has been busted, then are cross-checked with the images in a regional police database. Within 20 minutes, snippets of the […]
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Mehreen Kasana , News Writer - Alternet
Stephan: I keep saying to you to pay close attention to Puerto Rico and Houston. How their recovery is being handled is a test case for how your town would be supported. Trump and his vampire minions are gutting the nation's infrastructure, and privatizing what they can't gut. This is what happens when that happens..
Credit: Shutterstock
The practice of governments and security firms conducting wide-scale exploitation of major disasters, natural and otherwise, is nothing new. Last week, the Intercept reported on TigerSwan, a mercenary security firm that follows a similar disaster-capitalist model and has attacked the No Dakota Access Pipeline (NoDAPL) movement since 2016, at least. But that’s not all: TigerSwan has also been preying on relief needs in hurricane-hit areas like Houston and Puerto Rico since 2017.
So far, the mercenary firm keeps its media presence at a minimum level, attracting little attention from the press. This makes sense considering the depth and scale of its massive military-style operations, including suppressing anti-pipeline activists by infiltrating activist groups with informants, surveilling the movement and calling on law enforcement agencies to suppress activist organizing.
In spite of how shadowy the firm may sound,
TigerSwan has the approval of the United States government. TigerSwan contracts with the U.S. military and the state department to offer its services to Energy Transfer Partners, the company behind the Dakota Access pipeline. In May 2017, the […]
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Rex Weyler, Co-founder and Columnist - Greenpeace - Greenpeace
Stephan: This is a very interesting essay from a man who has been in the forefront of the environmental movement for four decades, and one of its leading intellectuals. The issues he raises cry out for remediation. Why is it we can not seem to hear them.
I would suggest because of the madness of greed. When you live in a world where your only priority is profit, and the devil take the rest, you end up where we are today. Can we reverse this trend; it is up to you. And your vote will tell you where you really stand.
A small Chinese child sitting among cables and e-waste, Guiyu, China. Much of modern electronic equipment contains toxic ingredients. Vast amounts are routinely and often illegally shipped as waste from Europe, USA and Japan to countries in Asia.
Credit: Greenpeace
For the world’s rich, it may seem that life is getting better and that human expansion on Earth is not something to worry about. But if we look a bit closer, the ecological data today shows that humanity and Earth’s wildlife would all be better off had we heeded the warnings of Paul Ehrlich, 50 years ago.
In 1968, Ehrlich published The Population Bomb, warning humanity that runaway human population would limit quality of life for humans, lead to increased starvation and malnutrition, and would contribute to ecological decline and biodiversity collapse. At that time, the human population stood at about 3.5 billion. Now, 50 years later, it has more than doubled to 7.6 billion, and we face the most severe biodiversity collapse the Earth has seen in 65 million years.
Ehrlich, at 82, remains one […]
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