USA adds a new indictment to its charges against Julian Assange
WikiLeaks founder Assange faces new indictment in US, By ERIC TUCKER, 29 June 20, WASHINGTON (AP) — WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange sought to recruit hackers at conferences in Europe and Asia who could provide his anti-secrecy website with classified information, and conspired with members of hacking organizations, according to a new Justice Department indictment announced Wednesday.The superseding indictment does not contain additional charges beyond the 18 counts the Justice Department unsealed last year. But prosecutors say it underscores Assange’s efforts to procure and release classified information, allegations that form the basis of criminal charges he already faces.
Beyond recruiting hackers at conferences, the indictment accuses Assange of conspiring with members of hacking groups known as LulzSec and Anonymous. He also worked with a 17-year-old hacker who gave him information stolen from a bank and directed the teenager to steal additional material, including audio recordings of high-ranking government officials, prosecutors say.
Assange’s lawyer, Barry Pollack, said in a statement that “the government’s relentless pursuit of Julian Assange poses a grave threat to journalists everywhere and to the public’s right to know.”
“While today’s superseding indictment is yet another chapter in the U.S. Government’s effort to persuade the public that its pursuit of Julian Assange is based on something other than his publication of newsworthy truthful information,” he added, “the indictment continues to charge him with violating the Espionage Act based on WikiLeaks publications exposing war crimes committed by the U.S. Government.”
Assange was arrested last year after being evicted from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he had sought refuge to avoid being sent to Sweden over allegations of rape and sexual assault, and is at the center of an extradition tussle over whether he should be sent to the United States.
The Justice Department has already charged him with conspiring with former U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning in one of the largest compromises of classified information in U.S. history by working together to crack a password to a government computer.
Prosecutors say the WikiLeaks founder damaged national security by publishing hundreds of thousands of classified documents, including diplomatic cables and military files on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, that harmed the U.S. and its allies and aided its adversaries.
Assange maintains he was acting as a journalist entitled to First Amendment protection. His lawyers have argued the U.S. charges of espionage and computer misuse were politically motivated and an abuse of power.
Assange generated substantial attention during the 2016 presidential election, and in investigations that followed, after WikiLeaks published stolen Democratic emails that U.S. authorities say were hacked by Russian military intelligence officials. An investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller revealed how Trump campaign associates eagerly anticipated the email disclosures. One Trump ally, Roger Stone, was found guilty last year of lying about his efforts to gain inside information about the emails. Assange, however, was never charged in Mueller’s Russia investigation.
The allegations in the new indictment center on conferences, in locations including the Netherlands and Malaysia in 2009, at which prosecutors say he and a WikiLeaks associate sought to recruit hackers who could locate classified information, including material on a “Most Wanted Leaks” list posted on WikiLeaks’ website.
According to the new indictment, he told would-be recruits that unless they were a member of the U.S. military, they faced no legal liability for stealing classified information and giving it to WikiLeaks “because ‘TOP SECRET’ meant nothing as a matter of law.”
At one conference in Malaysia, called the “Hack in the Box Security Conference,” Assange told the audience, “I was a famous teenage hacker in Australia, and I’ve been reading generals’ emails since I was 17.”
The Anthropocene, begun in 16th Century colonialism, slavery -? for repair in 21st Century post-Covid-19 recovery
Why the Anthropocene began with European colonisation, mass slavery and the ‘great dying’ of the 16th century, The Conversation, Mark Maslin, Professor of Earth System Science, UCL, Simon Lewis, Professor of Global Change Science at University of Leeds and, UCL June 25, 2020 The toppling of statues at Black Lives Matter protests has powerfully articulated that the roots of modern racism lie in European colonisation and slavery. Racism will be more forcefully opposed once we acknowledge this history and learn from it. Geographers and geologists can help contribute to this new understanding of our past, by defining the new human-dominated period of Earth’s history as beginning with European colonialism.Today our impacts on the environment are immense: humans move more soil, rock and sediment each year than is transported by all other natural processes combined. We may have kicked off the sixth “mass extinction” in Earth’s history, and the global climate is warming so fast we have delayed the next ice age.
We’ve made enough concrete to cover the entire surface of the Earth in a layer two millimetres thick. Enough plastic has been manufactured to clingfilm it as well. We annually produce 4.8 billion tonnes of our top five crops and 4.8 billion livestock animals. There are 1.4 billion motor vehicles, 2 billion personal computers, and more mobile phones than the 7.8 billion people on Earth.
All this suggests humans have become a geological superpower and evidence of our impact will be visible in rocks millions of years from now. This is a new geological epoch that scientists are calling the Anthropocene, combining the words for “human” and “recent-time”. But debate still continues as to when we should define the beginning of this period. When exactly did we leave behind the Holocene – the 10,000 years of stability that allowed farming and complex civilisations to develop – and move into the new epoch?
Five years ago we published evidence that the start of capitalism and European colonisation meet the formal scientific criteria for the start of the Anthropocene.
Our planetary impacts have increased since our earliest ancestors stepped down from the trees, at first by hunting some animal species to extinction. Much later, following the development of farming and agricultural societies, we started to change the climate. Yet Earth only truly became a “human planet” with the emergence of something quite different. This was capitalism, which itself grew out of European expansion in the 15th and 16th century and the era of colonisation and subjugation of indigenous peoples all around the world.
In the Americas, just 100 years after Christopher Columbus first set foot on the Bahamas in 1492, 56 million indigenous Americans were dead, mainly in South and Central America. This was 90% of the population. Most were killed by diseases brought across the Atlantic by Europeans, which had never been seen before in the Americas: measles, smallpox, influenza, the bubonic plague. War, slavery and wave after wave of disease combined to cause this “great dying”, something the world had never seen before, or since.
In North America the population decline was slower but no less dramatic due to slower colonisation by Europeans. US census data suggest the Native American population may have been as low as 250,000 people by 1900 from a pre-Columbus level of 5 million, a 95% decline.
This depopulation left the continents dominated by Europeans, who set up plantations and filled a labour shortage with enslaved workers. In total, more than 12 million people were forced to leave Africa and work for Europeans as slaves. ……….
In addition to the critical task of highlighting and tackling the racism within science, perhaps geologists and geographers can also make a small contribution to the Black Lives Matter movement by unflinchingly compiling the evidence showing that when humans started to exert a huge influence on the Earth’s environment was also the start of the brutal European colonisation of the world.
In her insightful book, A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None, the geography professor Kathryn Yusoff makes it very clear that predominantly white geologists and geographers need to acknowledge that Europeans decimated indigenous and minority populations whenever so-called progress occurred.
Defining the start of the human planet as the period of colonisation, the spread of deadly diseases and transatlantic slavery, means we can face the past and ensure we deal with its toxic legacy. If 1610 marks both a turning point in human relations with the Earth and our treatment of each other, then maybe, just maybe, 2020 could mark the start of a new chapter of equality, environmental justice and stewardship of the only planet in the universe known to harbour any life. It’s a struggle nobody can afford to lose. https://theconversation.com/why-the-anthropocene-began-with-european-colonisation-mass-slavery-and-the-great-dying-of-the-16th-century-140661
Trump’s Justice Department drumming up new allegations against Julian Assange
ASSANGE EXTRADITION: Assange Hit With New Superseding Indictment, Reflecting Possible FBI Sting Operation The U.S. Justice Department on Wednesday unveiled the new superseding indictment against the WikiLeaks publisher, adding to existing computer intrusion charges. By Joe Lauria, Consortium News June 24, 2020 The Justice Department on Wednesday said it had filed a second superseding indictment against imprisoned WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange, adding to existing computer intrusion charges.“The new indictment does not add additional counts to the prior 18-count superseding indictment returned against Assange in May 2019,” the DOJ said in a press release.
“It does, however, broaden the scope of the conspiracy surrounding alleged computer intrusions with which Assange was previously charged,” the release said. “According to the charging document, Assange and others at WikiLeaks recruited and agreed with hackers to commit computer intrusions to benefit WikiLeaks.”…….
The indictment quotes Assange at hacking conferences encouraging hackers to obtain a “Most Wanted Leaks” list of classified materials that WikiLeaks sought to publish.
It provides new allegations that Assange instructed a “teenager” from an unnamed NATO country to conduct various hacks “including audio recordings of phone conversations between high-ranking officials” of the NATO nation as well as members of parliament from that country. The indictment claims Manning “downloaded classified State Department materials” about this country.
WikiLeaks has identified the “teenager” as Sigurdur Thordarson, “a diagnosed sociopath, a convicted conman, and sex criminal” who had impersonated Assange to embezzle money from WikiLeaks………..
Thordarson, an Icelander, became an FBI informant, and was flown to Washington in May 2019 for an interview with the FBI.
The superseding indictment says Assange was allegedly able to learn from “unauthorized access” to a website of this government that police from that country were monitoring him. The indictment says the source of this information was a former member of Anonymous who worked with WikiLeaks named Sabu, identified in the press as Hector Monsegur, who became an FBI informant after being arrested in June 2011.
In the same month, Iceland’s Interior Minister Ögmundur Jonasson prevented FBI agents from entering Iceland, testifying that “FBI dirty-tricks operations were afoot against WikiLeaks.” He said the agents had been sent to seek “our cooperation in what I understood as an operation to set up, to frame Julian Assange and WikiLeaks.” The possibility remains that the new evidence against Assange was obtained in an FBI sting operation.
Jeremy Hammond, a hacker arrested for obtaining the Stratfor files, is named in the new indictment has having revealed information about his activities with Assange to Sabu in December 2011. Last September, Hammond, who was serving a 10-year sentence in Memphis, TN, was brought by prosecutors investigating Assange to Alexandria, VA to compel him to give testimony against Assange. Hammond has refused.
Reiterates Original Charges
The new indictment repeats the existing espionage and computer intrusion charges………
In 2010, Robert Parry, one of the best investigative reporters of his era, and the founder of this website, wrote that the then pending plans of the Obama administration to indict Assange “for conspiring with Army Pvt. Bradley Manning to obtain U.S. secrets strikes at the heart of investigative journalism on national security scandals.”
Parry added:
“That’s because the process for reporters obtaining classified information about crimes of state most often involves a journalist persuading some government official to break the law either by turning over classified documents or at least by talking about the secret information. There is almost always some level of ‘conspiracy’ between reporter and source.” [Emphasis added.]
Parry thus admitted to encouraging his sources to turn over classified information even if it meant committing the lesser crime of leaking classified information if it could help prevent a larger crime from being committed. In this way Assange encouraged Manning to turn over material such as the “Collateral Murder” video in the hope that it could end the illegal war in Iraq…….
The New York Times reported at the time that “federal prosecutors were reviewing the possibility of indicting Assange on conspiracy charges for allegedly encouraging or assisting Manning in extracting ‘classified military and State Department files from a government computer system,’” Parry wrote.
“The Times article by Charlie Savage notes that if prosecutors determine that Assange provided some help in the process, ‘they believe they could charge him as a conspirator in the leak, not just as a passive recipient of the documents who then published them,” wrote Parry.
This is precisely what the Trump Justice Department has done in the first computer intrusion indictment against Assange and now with this superseding one. https://consortiumnews.com/2020/06/24/assange-extradition-assange-hit-with-new-superseding-indictment-broadening-computer-intrusion-charges/?fbclid=IwAR3uZdqQkMLxeheGyUVLpkUYPIo0ywUZwFiQcu6pD9woYSYyPhZtyh3kiw4
LAWSUIT ALLEGES COVERUP AT US NUCLEAR WEAPON FACILITY
Nuclear Coverup
A physicist who was fired by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is suing over an alleged coverup that he claims could have compromised the U.S.’s ability to predict the behavior of nuclear weapons.
Peter Williams, the plaintiff, claims in the lawsuit that he was terminated in retaliation after complaining that his superiors tinkered with his models of nuclear weapon explosions, Science Magazine reports. In doing so, Williams alleges, his superiors were trying to make data align with the models rather than improving their accuracy — leaving the U.S. clueless as to how the weapons would actually behave when actually detonated.
Difficult Math
While he was at Livermore, Williams modeled the behavior of an explosive called a PBX 9502. When equipped to a nuclear warhead, the explosive first triggers a nuclear fission explosion that, in turn, sets off an even more powerful fusion blast, Science reports.
It’s a particularly-difficult dynamic to model, especially because the PBX 9502 is relatively slow-burning, and models also need to account for how the explosion travels through the sample of PBX.
Routine Maintenance
Williams’ central allegation, Science reports, is that supervisors would adjust the parameters of tests after the fact to make the models seem more accurate than they were — rendering them incapable of making meaningful predictions.
But astrophysicist Robert Rosner, a Livermore board member, told Science that modeling adjustments of that sort are commonplace and an expected part of improving them. Still, Williams sees his lawsuit as a matter of duty.
“I couldn’t look myself in the mirror if I didn’t do it,” he told Science.
NUCLEAR’s WHOPPING CLIMATE LIE – theme for July 2020
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. A lie told once remains a lie but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth ”
Dr Goebbels would be delighted with the nuclear lobby’s lie that nuclear power is zero carbon and will fix climate change. He would be even more delighted with the current success of this lie.
“Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play.”
The failing nuclear industry is fighting for its life. It now pitches its salvation on its claim to halt climate change. Even if 
that were true (which it isn’t) the world would have to construct several thousand ‘conventional’ reactors, or several millions of Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) very quickly, within a decade or two.
How is it that politicians , media, academics have swallowed this lie?
FAIR exposes the false claims about China and COVID-19
Debunking Trump and Corporate Media’s WHO/China Coverup Conspiracy Theories FAIR
The Trump administration suspended funding to WHO in April—the UN’s primary infectious disease–fighting body—accusing it of “severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus,” and of taking China’s allegedly deceptive claims about its handling of Covid-19 at “face value.” But corporate media had already been boosting these same talking points.
The Wall Street Journal’s “The World Health Organization Draws Flak for Coronavirus Response” (2/12/20) effectively accused WHO of being “too deferential to China in its handling of the new virus,” and criticized WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus for “bending to Beijing” after lauding China’s unquestionably effective swift quarantine of 60 million people, and for declaring that “China is actually setting a new standard for outbreak response” and identifying the virus in “record time.” The Journal further expounded the conspiracy theory of a seemingly omnipotent China having WHO under its thumb:
Over its decades of battling epidemics, the WHO has rarely had to deal with an entity as politically and economically powerful as China today. It can’t afford to alienate the country’s leadership, whose clout and financial largess it aims to attract to global health causes. It needs Beijing’s cooperation in preventing a full-blown pandemic—and this may not be the last time. China is the source of many emerging pathogens, which jump from animals to humans in its teeming live markets and can cause deadly epidemics.
According to the Journal’s logic, when WHO praises China for an effective response containing Covid-19 and giving the rest of the world ample time to take health precautions, it is “compromising its own epidemic response standards, eroding its global authority, and sending the wrong message to other countries that might face future epidemics.” When Dr. Bruce Aylward—a Canadian medical expert with 30 years of experience combating polio, Ebola and other global health emergencies—concluded that he “didn’t see anything that suggested manipulation of numbers,” after leading a team of experts visiting China for WHO, that can’t be an accurate observation. For corporate journalists, it can only be because he was duped by the devious Chinese government “underreporting both total cases and deaths it’s suffered from the disease” (Bloomberg, 4/1/20).
The Journal flimsily explained that China wields such formidable control over the WHO because China is a “future source of funds and a partner with which to tackle the biggest global health problems,” and not as a “current donor.” That would be because a cursory examination of WHO’s funding would reveal that the US donated more than 10 times more money to WHO ($893 million) than China ($86 million), despite the US having almost $200 million in arrears before suspending payments (Axios, 4/15/20).
Neither does the Journal explain how or why WHO could possibly withhold information from Western nations even if it wanted to, when its leadership is stacked with Americans and Europeans, and 15 US officials were embedded with the WHO in Geneva, given that the US is the most “politically and economically powerful” nation on Earth. This makes the Trump administration’s declaration of the US terminating its membership in WHO after threats to permanently cut funding especially egregious.
Nor can the Journal explain the source of China’s fearsome influence over independent and prestigious medical journals like Nature (5/4/20), Science (3/28/20) and the Lancet (3/7/20), which also credited the effectiveness and transparency of China’s response for saving thousands of lives (CGTN, 5/1/20, 5/10/20). Does China’s mysterious and awe-inspiring influence extend over Western medical journals as well?
When Foreign Policy (5/12/20) reported on the exclusive scoop of a leaked dataset of coronavirus cases and deaths from the Chinese military’s National University of Defense Technology, it confirmed that the leaked information “matches” the publicly available numbers the Chinese government posts online—which poses an inconvenience to those spouting conspiracy theories of a Chinese government coverup. Corporate media accounts of Chinese deception and fake statistics also fail to explain how the Chinese government possesses the fantastical ability to deceive governments and independent medical experts around the world, even if it wanted to. As FAIR’s Jim Naureckas (4/2/20) pointed out earlier:
The reality is that it’s very hard to hide an epidemic. Stopping a virus requires identifying and isolating cases of infection, and if you pretend to have done so when you really haven’t, the uncaught cases will grow exponentially. Maintaining a hidden set of real statistics and another set for show would require the secret collusion of China’s 2 million doctors and 3 million nurses—the kind of improbable cooperation that gives conspiracy theories a bad name…. If China is merely pretending to have the coronavirus under control, the pathogen will rapidly surge as people resume interacting with their communities. Once international travel is restored, it will be quite obvious which countries do and don’t have effective management of Covid-19.
Countries revising their figures upon receiving new information is to be expected, and is not necessarily evidence of deceit, as plenty of nations besides China revise their data upwards. Yet only China is singled out as being exceptionally deceptive. For example, in the same week New York revised its death toll upwards by nearly 3,800, China’s adding almost 1,300 dead to its Wuhan data was presented as a possible coverup (Politico, 4/14/20; Guardian, 4/17/20). The Moon of Alabama blog (4/1/20) explained some of the complexities in reporting numbers during a pandemic in real-time:
Does one include co-morbids or not in the count? What about casualties of a car accident that also test positive for Covid-19 when they die? What about those who died with Covid-19 symptoms but could not be tested for lack of test kits? Are the tests really working reliably?… What about asymptomatic cases that test positive. Are these false positives, or do these people really have the virus? One can only know that by testing them a month later for antibodies………
this manipulation of public opinion by the US government and corporate media appears to be working. According to a recent Ipsos survey, more than 30% of Americans have witnessed someone blaming Asian people for the coronavirus pandemic (even though new research indicates that travel from New York City was the primary source of the US outbreak, with New York’s outbreak originating in Europe). Pew Research (4/21/20) found that around two-thirds of Americans have an unfavorable view of China, which is the most negative rating for the country since Pew began asking the question in 2005. This suggests that public opinion has been turned against China, despite it being the first to detect the virus, alert the world and provide a model for containing it.https://fair.org/home/debunking-trump-and-corporate-medias-who-china-coverup-conspiracy-theories/
BOLTON BOOK: Trump Endorsed Israeli Airstrike On Iranian Nuclear Reactors
BOLTON BOOK: Trump Endorsed Israeli Airstrike On Iranian Nuclear Reactors https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/featured/1874761/bolton-book-trump-endorsed-israeli-airstrike-on-iranian-nuclear-reactors.html
USA’s secret plan for “dominance”by exploding a nuclear bomb on the moon
REVEALED: The US wanted to detonate a nuclear bomb on the MOON in 1959 to counter the Soviet lead in the space race and show dominance
- New details of an astonishing scheme, first detailed in 1999, have been revealed
- John Greenewald, Jr writes in Secrets from the Vault about numerous plans
- He says a nuclear bomb on the moon was ‘one of the stupider things’ considered
- The US government also wanted to build a military base on the moon by 1966
By HARRIET ALEXANDER FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 10:28 AEST, 21 June 2020 | UPDATED: 15:01 AEST, 21 June 2020
New details about a U.S. plan to blow up a nuclear bomb on the moon as a Cold War ‘show of dominance’ have been revealed in a recently-published book.
The secret mission, code-named Project A119, was conceived at the dawn of the space race by an Air Force division located at New Mexico‘s Kirtland Air Force Base.
A report authored in June 1959 entitled ‘A Study of Lunar Research Flights’ explained plans to explode the bomb on the moon’s ‘terminator’ – the area between the part of the surface that is illuminated by the sun, and the part that’s dark.
The explosion would have likely been visible with the naked eye from Earth because the military had planned to add sodium to the bomb, which would glow when it exploded
A nuclear bomb on the surface of the moon was definitely one of the stupider things the government could do,’ said John Greenewald, Jr., author of Secrets from the Vault.
The book, published in April, details some of the more surreal suggestions made in history.
Greenewald, 39, has been interested in U.S. government secrets since he was 15 and has filed more than 3,000 Freedom of Information Requests……… https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8443569/US-wanted-detonate-nuclear-bomb-moon-1959-dominance.html
Kim Jong Un’s cyberwar preparations
Kim Jong Un has quietly built a 7,000-man cyber army that gives North Korea an edge nuclear weapons don’t, Business Insider, ELLEN IOANES, JUN 17, 2020,
- North Korea has a cyber army of about 7,000, trained to find secrets, disrupt critical infrastructure, and steal money to circumvent sanctions.
- These cyberattacks are often difficult to pin on North Korea because they originate in countries like China and Russia, and a counterattack is almost impossible because of North Korea’s rudimentary internet.
- North Korea’s likely next targets are critical US infrastructure like power plants, dams, and electrical grids.
The WannaCry virus, on the one hand, was ransomware; you could argue that it’s aimed at getting money, but it caused a huge disruption of hospitals in the UK and, potentially, in something like 100-plus other countries where they had disseminated the ransomware. This was software that brought the operation of critical facilities to a standstill.
This is not hacking; this is cyber warfare.
Because North Korea depends so heavily on China, not just for cyber, but in the case of cyber, for access to servers, its pipelines, and so on, it would be critical for the United States to develop some degree of cooperation with China to limit North Korea’s offensive cyber threat.
South Carolina Electric and Gas lawyers and executives could face gaol for fraud
SCE&G LAWYERS MAY BE CHARGED IN NUCLEAR FRAUD, https://www.lexingtonchronicle.com/news/sceg-lawyers-may-be-charged-nuclear-fraud More utility executives may face prison time, too
By Jerry Bellune
JerryBellune@yahoo.com
Former SC Electric & Gas executive Steve Byrne may have company.
His plea agreement on fraud charges reveals that other executives and lawyers for SCANA, the owner of SCE&G, are at risk of being charged,.
Federal officials believe a conspiracy of executives and their lawyers hid a $9 billion nuclear failure from state officials, investors and the public for years.
An official federal document filed in US District Court in Columbia revealed:
• Byrne and unidentified “others” orchestrated a cover-up of costly errors at the nuclear construction site.
• They “deceived regulators and customers to maintain financing for the project and to financially benefit SCANA” and themselves.
• “As construction problems mounted, costs rose and schedules slipped,” Byrne and others hid the truth.
For the rest of what the federal documents reveal, see Thursday’s Lexington County Chronicle.
Number two executive of the defunct SCANA Corpto plead guilty to fraud conspiracy in nuclear plant failure
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Top SCANA ex-official to plead guilty to fraud conspiracy in nuclear plant failure https://www.thestate.com/news/local/crime/article243356621.html, BY JOHN MONK
JUNE 08, 2020 The number two executive of the defunct SCANA Corp. — whose top officials engineered the biggest business failure in South Carolina history: the $10 billion V.C. Summer nuclear plant fiasco — has agreed to plead guilty to criminal conspiracy fraud charges in connection with the nuclear failure, according to a document filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Columbia.
The upcoming guilty plea of Stephen A. Byrne, 60, is a centerpiece of a Monday filing involving his alleged criminal actions. He will need to have his guilty plea formally accepted by a U.S. District Court judge before it becomes official. Byrne is charged with conspiring to commit mail fraud, the document said. The document is a motion requesting a stay in a Securities and Exchange civil fraud lawsuit against Byrne and SCANA’s former CEO, Kevin Marsh. That civil lawsuit was filed in February. One big difference between civil and criminal proceedings is that in a criminal proceeding, a defendant can be subject to a prison term. The document alleges that “through intentional and material misrepresentations and omissions, Byrne and others deceived regulators and customers to maintain financing for the (nuclear) project and to financially benefit SCANA.” The Monday filing said there is “an ongoing criminal investigation” and indicated more criminal charges against other former SCANA top officials may be in the offing. |
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Huge police squadron paid by nuclear industry to monitor residents of Bure
the tens of millions of euros per year disbursed by Andra to pay for the presence of the gendarme squadron represents a significant sum. In 2018, the agency’s net profit amounted to only 11.5 million euros,
Cigeo related expenses are directly funded by the three major nuclear players: EDF and Orano, two private companies, and CEA, a public research establishment. In 2018, they poured 212 million euros into the landfill project.
Large Man Looking At Co-Worker With A Magnifying Glass — Image by © Images.com/Corbis
In Bure, the nuclear waste agency pays the police, 
À Bure, l’agence des déchets nucléaires se paie des gendarmes, Reporterre, 5 juin 2020 / Marie Barbier (Reporterre) et Jade Lindgaard According to information obtained by Mediapart and Reporterre, an agreement was signed in 2018 between the national gendarmerie and Andra, the agency responsible for the burial of nuclear waste, in this village of the Meuse. Since then, the agency has paid tens of millions of euros to monitor residents through gendarmes. This partnership poses ethical and legal problems.
Around Bure, in the Meuse, where the most dangerous nuclear waste from French power plants must be buried in a gigantic mine 500 meters underground, the villages are only inhabited by a handful of people. And yet, 75 gendarmes patrol there 24 hours a day. For almost a year and a half, according to information collected by Mediapart and Reporterre, these soldiers are paid by Andra, the National Agency for Radioactive Waste Management, which has set up a laboratory at the future landfill.
In October 2018, an agreement was signed between Andra and the General Directorate of the National Gendarmerie (DGGN) “in order to guarantee the safety of personnel and facilities in the long term” the agency confirmed to us, in response to our questions. According to figures given by the agency itself, “ten million euros” are spent each year by Andra, a public industrial and commercial establishment (EPIC), to pay the soldiers engaged and cover related costs, including catering. To date, therefore, at least twenty million euros have been spent – or are in the process of being spent – in this context
The mobile gendarmes are hosted directly on Andra’s site, in a block built for this purpose. They sleep there, store their equipment and their vehicles and take their recovery days there before leaving to patrol. These soldiers, often very young, stay there for three to six weeks before leaving on another assignment. They are immediately replaced by new arrivals. The DGGN refused to communicate the exact content to us The government decision to assign a squadron of mobile gendarmes to this territory dates from the summer of 2017. In June, Le Bindeuil, a hotel-restaurant known to accommodate Andra staff and gendarmes, suffered damage during the anti-nuclear days. And in August, a demonstration ended in confrontations with the police. These facts are today the subject of judicial information, in which ten people are under investigation, and which gives rise to massive and particularly intrusive surveillance, as we detailed in our four-part investigation……..
Is it legal to pay a squadron of gendarmes to protect themselves?….
Long dormant, this system was revived by a decree, signed by Alain Juppé in 1997…..
….. In 2009, an agreement was signed with EDF for the protection of nuclear power plants. “At the national level, the overall workforce is around a thousand gendarmes,” confirms EDF, who specifies that “this specialized platoon is financed by EDF” but that the latter “does not communicate on the cost of this protection” .
This is to prevent a new Zad, like that of Notre-Dame-des-Landes, from forming But Andra’s laboratory cannot, unlike nuclear power plants, be considered a sensitive site. No radioactive waste is present there. Cigeo’s excavation work.
So what is the purpose of the gendarmerie platoon paid by Andra at the Bure site? According to many residents that we were able to contact, these gendarmes are mainly assigned to the surveillance of the territory and its inhabitants. For the police, it is a question of preventing the militants evicted from Lejuc wood – a communal forest once occupied by opponents of Cigeo – from returning. And to prevent a new Zad from forming, he example of Notre-Dame-des-Landes, in Loire-Atlantique
According to residents interviewed for this article, the patrol vehicles are reformed vehicles, old Range Rovers, or newer models from Kangoo and Transit. A villager saw them move at night with torches bearing the acronym of Andra. What exactly are their prerogatives? The Directorate General of the National Gendarmerie refused to answer our questions.
“Permanent and repeated identity checks infringe on individual freedoms” and can “only lead to incidents”.
Me Matteo Bonaglia, one of the lawyers indicted in the framework of the criminal investigation for association of criminals, says he is “surprised by such means allocated to Andra. This explains, however, the over-militarization that we observe in this territory where the fight against the project to bury nuclear waste is playing out, Andra being able to allocate the assistance of the police force in a proportion three times greater than everywhere elsewhere.
It is already difficult to oppose the Cigeo project and assert its anti-nuclear opinions. Here, the multiplication of controls and the over-representation of gendarmes constitutes a de facto obstacle to freedom of opinion and the free expression of ideas. It also explains the large number of trials that have taken place in recent years for offenses such as contempt and rebellion, not everyone is so willing to be subject to constant scrutiny. ”
This agreement with the gendarmerie is all the more problematic since Andra appears several times in the file currently being examined after the start of the fire at the Hôtel-restaurant du Bindeuil, in which ten anti-nuclear activists are put under review and to which Mediapart and Reporterre had access.
The agency did not bring a civil action, but complained three times. Thus, on February 17, 2017, its director, David Mazoyer, filed a complaint “on behalf of Andra” after “degradations” committed on the site of the eco-library, belonging to the agency. “During the night of February 16 to 17, 2017,” explains the director of gendarmes in Ligny-en-Barrois the opponents damaged, bent or tore down the fence around the site, mainly on the west facade and on a line of about 150 meters. These degradations were the subject of an additional indictment and joined the long list of crimes covered in this sprawling instruction.
A few months later, on June 21, 2017, the day of the fire at the Le Bindeuil hotel and restaurant, David Mazoyer filed a second complaint: “Other members of their movement attacked the code on the pedestrian portal giving access to the Ecothèque site. This device is damaged and out of use. I am filing a complaint on behalf of Andra for the destruction of this device. ”
Finally, on April 24, 2018, it was the head of Andra’s risk protection and prevention service who complained about receiving documents after discovering photos belonging to the Ecoteca during a search.
According to our information, the platoon of gendarmes paid by Andra is not assigned to the “Bure cell”, a cell of gendarmes with their own badge in charge of the current investigation. But what about a complainant who pays gendarmes to go and monitor the people against whom he has complained? By order of the prefecture, Andra gendarmes can also in theory be assigned to the maintenance of order at demonstrations or at the courthouse. The mix of genres would then be total: a complainant who pays the police in a demonstration against him or worse, during trials of opponents of his project …
In addition to this potential conflict of interest, the apparently legal agreement between Andra and the national gendarmerie raises legal questions. In 2018, a circular from the Minister of the Interior Gérard Colomb paved the way for a much wider billing than what had been initially planned. “The circular no longer takes the precaution of limiting it to” organizers of sporting, recreational or cultural events for profit “. We can invoice everyone, regardless of the object and the lucrative purpose or not, “said Mickaël Lavaine.
In 2018, the publication of his article in the review of legal current events in administrative law gave rise to an action brought by the Collectif des Festivals before the Council of State, the organizers denouncing the considerable sums of security which they owed. ” discharge to the State.
This mixture of genres questions the impartiality of police work
In this legal debate, the two paragraphs of article L211-11 of the code of internal security, organized by the Columbus circular, are opposed. The first specifies that these conventions concern only “organizers of sporting, recreational or cultural events for profit”, the second target much more broadly all “natural or legal persons”. “The Council of State will have to rule on this debate: is paragraph 2 linked to paragraph 1? If he decides in this sense, which I defend, that means that Andra cannot be invoiced, nor of the associations which organize the potato festival. This would return to the spirit of the text of the Tour de France, “said Mickaël Lavaine. The Council of State is expected to decide by summer.
For the researcher, this legal debate poses a much broader question: “The internal security code specifies that the police or gendarmerie forces may be charged for law enforcement services which cannot be attached to the normal obligations incumbent on the public authorities’. But what is the obligation normal state? This notion is vague enough to be able to put what you want into it. If we push the logic of the Columbus circular to its end, there is nothing to prohibit charging the organizer of an FO demonstration or the CGT for the police devices of a demonstration. However, the Declaration of Human Rights provides that the public force must be financed by taxes. ”
For Alexandre Faro, lawyer for one of the activist witnesses assisted in the investigation opened after the fire at Bindeuil, “this amounts to privatizing the police in favor of Andra. From a strict legal point of view this is very questionable because in France the police are a monopoly of the state and the Constitution provides that sovereignty is exercised by the people and for the people. ”
These debates also animated Andra employees when the agreement with the DGGN was signed. An internal source tells us that “that posed questions”: “Why is Andra paying when it is a public establishment?
Far from being anecdotal, the tens of millions of euros per year disbursed by Andra to pay for the presence of the gendarme squadron represents a significant sum. In 2018, the agency’s net profit amounted to only 11.5 million euros, mainly made up of research tax credit, as indicated in the establishment’s annual financial report. Cigeo related expenses are directly funded by the three major nuclear players: EDF and Orano, two private companies, and CEA, a public research establishment. In 2018, they poured 212 million euros into the landfill project.
The gendarmes paid by Andra who crisscross the territory are not the same as those who are investigating for justice as part of the judicial information and have listened for months to opponents of Andra. But they belong to the same institution. This mix of genres questions the impartiality of police work. Then does not public power find itself in a situation of insincerity towards the citizens whom it controls with such relentlessness? The gendarmes, Andra, justice, political leaders on one side; opponents of the other. Two tight-knit camps, one facing the other, like in a war situation.
https://reporterre.net/A-Bure-l-agence-des-dechets-nucleaires-se-paie-des-gendarmes
Uranium mining protests in Russia
“……..Uranium mining protest
In the Kurgan region, Rosatom’s subsidiary company, Dalur, has been mining uranium and the local communities fear an environmental disaster. In the summer of 2019, the state environmental appraisal revealed a discrepancy between Dalur’s documentation and the Russian legislation
Activists attribute her persecution to her work at the Public Monitoring Fund for the Environmental Condition and the Population Welfare which she led back in 2017. The Foundation has repeatedly published information on the possible environmental damage resulting from Dalur’s mining activity. (28)
9
In the fall of 2019, environmentalists revealed that radioactive and toxic waste (uranium hexafluoride, UF6)were being imported from Germany through the port of Amsterdam into Russia. This is the waste from the uranium enrichment process which will be sent to the Urals or Siberia and stored in containers above the ground. Thus, under the auspices of a commercial transaction, the German uranium–enriching enterprise, Urenco, avoids its nuclear waste problem, while Rosatom profits by taking the hazardous waste into Russia.
Assange too sick to attend the very unjust process of the UK extradition hearings
Monica Del Mestre 3 June 202. In addition to other ongoing health concerns, Assange faces the serious risk of exposure to Covid in Belmarsh prison, and has been advised that even going to the video room to take part in hearings is unsafe. This is another reason he should be immediately released.
3. Assange’s lawyers have long complained they have had insufficient access to him in prison. Under lockdown conditions, they have had no access to him at all. They have repeatedly flagged that this lack of access seriously impacts their ability to prepare his defence.
4. One of the next steps agreed today is that psychiatric reports on Assange from the prosecution and defence will be due to the court on 31 July. Remember that UN Special Rapporteur @NilsMelzer has expressed alarm many times that Assange shows symptoms of psychological torture.
5. It is a welcome step that the continuation of the full extradition hearing was adjourned, as lockdown conditions present clear barriers to open justice – but 7 September may not be late enough to make a meaningful difference. Also the court is still struggling to find a venue.
6. It remains extremely frustrating that the court does not adequately accommodate NGO observers. I have never experienced so much difficulty accessing a trial in any country as at Woolwich Crown Court in February, and the teleconference option we now have is far from sufficient.
7. The press are also facing severe restrictions. Only 6 journalists have been allowed to attend in person the past 2 hearings, with others limited to the awful phone line. This case is of high public interest and a better solution must be found before the full hearing resumes.
8. Assange’s next callover hearing has been scheduled for 29 June at 10 am. We urge the court to find workable solutions to enable his safe attendance and ensure the press and observers are able to properly monitor proceedings. /END
Confidential documents stolen, hacked from US nuclear missile contractor
Hackers steal secrets from US nuclear missile contractor
Cyber extortionists have stolen sensitive data from a company which supports the US Minuteman III nuclear deterrent. Sky News, Alexander MartinTechnology reporter @AlexMartin Wednesday 3 June 2020 UK Hackers have stolen confidential documents from a US military contractor which provides critical support for the country’s Minuteman III nuclear deterrent, Sky News has learnt.
After gaining access to Westech International’s computer network, the criminals encrypted the company’s machines and began to leak documents online to pressure the company to pay extortion.
It is unclear if the documents stolen by the criminals include military classified information, but files which have already been leaked online suggest the hackers had access to extremely sensitive data, including payroll and emails.
There are also concerns that Russian-speaking operators behind the attack could attempt to monetise their haul by selling information about the nuclear deterrent on to a hostile state.
Court documents in the US allege that Russian cyber criminals with a financial motivation have collaborated with the intelligence services in order to steal classified government documents.
A spokesperson for Westech confirmed to Sky News that the company had been hacked and its computers encrypted, and that investigations to identify what data the criminals had managed to steal were ongoing.
The company is involved with the nuclear deterrent as a sub-contractor for Northrup Grumman, providing engineering and maintenance support for the Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Minuteman III is the land-based component of the US nuclear deterrent, stored in hundreds of protected underground launch facilities operated by the US Air Force.
Each ICBM is capable of delivering multiple thermonuclear warheads further than 6,000 miles, or the distance between London and Buenos Aires.
Brett Callow, a researcher for Emsisoft which specialises in tackling ransomware incidents, told Sky News: “This is not the first incident in which a contractor has leaked data and, unless action is taken, it will not be the last.
“The information exposed in these incidents could potentially be of interest to other nation states and present a risk to both national security and to the safety of service personnel.
“Even if a company pays the ransom, there is no guarantee that the criminals will destroy the stolen data, especially if it has a high market value.
“They may still sell it to other governments or trade it with other criminal enterprises,” Mr Callow warned, adding that another criminal group operating under the same model is offering interested parties the opportunity to bid for its stolen data…….. https://news.sky.com/story/hackers-steal-secrets-from-us-nuclear-missile-contractor-11999442
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