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Australian Labor Party MP Raided Over China Allegations
'I have done nothing wrong': NSW MP Shaoquett Moselmane breaks silence after ASIO raids
NSW upper house MP Shaoquett Moselmane says he will not access his parliamentary office or use his work email, computer or phones while federal police investigate allegations Chinese government agents have infiltrated his office.
Mr Moselmane, who was suspended from the Labor Party on Friday just hours after his Rockdale home and Macquarie Street office were raided by Australian Federal Police, has taken indefinite leave from Parliament.
In his first public statement since the raids, Mr Moselmane said he had been told he was not a suspect in the investigation. "I have done nothing wrong", he said.
His statement came after Labor leader Jodi McKay said on Sunday she would move to have Mr Moselmane suspended from Parliament if he did not agree to step aside. The government also intends to move a motion to have him suspended.
NSW Labor's Shaoquett Moselmane says he is not Asio suspect
Making his first public comments since his suspension from the NSW ALP after his Rockdale home was searched on Friday, Moselmane defended his repeated trips to China and meetings with Chinese Communist party members as about delivering aid to disabled children.
[...] He said his comments praising Beijing’s handling of Covid-19 – views which saw him stand down as assistant president of the NSW upper house in April – were consistent with those expressed by Donald Trump and the World Health Organisation.
[...] Moselmane also said he had paid for airfares to travel to China for several trips. He said six of his nine trips to China as a politicians involved the delivery of wheelchairs to disabled children.
“Let me say it in plain English. I have never ever been on a Chinese government-sponsored trip. Never. I paid for all my own private overseas trips,” Moselmane said.
He also said China was just one of several countries he has worked to deliver 4,000 children’s wheelchairs to, naming Pakistan, Palestine and Lebanon as other nations.
[...] As the Guardian previously reported, in 2018 Moselmane gave a speech proclaiming a “new world order” was needed for China to reach its potential and appointed John Zhang to his parliamentary office at the beginning of 2019.
Zhang is listed as a vice-chairman of Australia China Economics, Trade and Culture Association on the organisation’s now-defunct website, which some China experts say has become a leading Chinese Communist party-aligned organisation in Australia.
Shaoquett Moselmane (what's his birth date?!! lol)
Princeton Removes Woodrow Wilson's Name From Building
Princeton to remove Woodrow Wilson's name from public policy school
Princeton University to remove Woodrow Wilson's name from building
Woodrow Wilson: Race relations
Wilson was the first Southerner to be elected president since Zachary Taylor was elected in 1848, and his ascension to the presidency was celebrated by southern segregationists. The federal government had pursued racist policies for decades, not limited to early defenses of slavery, treatment of Native Americans, intervention policies in Latin America, and immigration policies that specifically prevented Africans and Asians from immigrating to the United States. Several historians have spotlighted consistent examples in the public record of Wilson's overtly racist policies and political appointments, such as segregationists he placed in his Cabinet. Ross Kennedy writes that Wilson's support of segregation complied with predominant public opinion, and A. Scott Berg argues that Wilson accepted segregation as part of a policy to "promote racial progress... by shocking the social system as little as possible." Historian Kendrick Clements argues that "Wilson had none of the crude, vicious racism of James K. Vardaman or Benjamin R. Tillman, but he was insensitive to African-American feelings and aspirations."
Wilson continued to appoint African Americans to positions that had traditionally been filled by blacks, overcoming opposition from many southern senators. However, the Wilson administration escalated the discriminatory hiring policies and segregation of government offices that had begun under President Theodore Roosevelt, and had continued under President Taft. In Wilson's first month in office, Postmaster General Albert S. Burleson urged the president to establish segregated government offices. Wilson did not adopt Burleson's proposal to segregate all government departments, but he allowed Cabinet members to segregate their respective departments. By the end of 1913, many departments, including the navy, had segregated work spaces, restrooms, and cafeterias. There was almost no opposition in Congress toward these policies, most of which would stay in place for years afterward. Wilson's African-American supporters, who had crossed party lines to vote for him in 1912, were bitterly disappointed, and they protested these changes. Wilson defended his administration's segregation policy in a July 1913 letter responding to civil rights activist Oswald Garrison Villard, arguing that segregation removed "friction" between the races.
Wilson's War Department drafted hundreds of thousands of blacks into the army, giving them equal pay with whites. But in accord with military policy from the Civil War through the Second World War, they segregated them into all-black units with white officers, and kept the great majority out of combat.In response to the demand for industrial labor, the Great Migration of African Americans out of the South surged in 1917 and 1918. This migration sparked race riots, including the East St. Louis riots of 1917. In response to these riots, but only after much public outcry, Wilson asked Attorney General Thomas Watt Gregory if the federal government could intervene to "check these disgraceful outrages." However, on the advice of Gregory, Wilson did not take direct action against the riots. In 1918, Wilson spoke out against lynchings, stating, "I say plainly that every American who takes part in the action of mob or gives it any sort of continence is no true son of this great democracy but its betrayer, and ...[discredits] her by that single disloyalty to her standards of law and of rights." In 1919, another series of race riots occurred in Chicago, Omaha, and two dozen other major cities in the North. The federal government did not become involved, just as it had not become involved previously.
Wilson also lamented over the contamination of American bloodlines by the "sordid and hapless elements" coming from southern and eastern Europe.
In terms of Reconstruction, Wilson held the common southern view that the South was demoralized by northern carpetbaggers and that overreach on the part of the Radical Republicans justified extreme measures to reassert democratic, white majority control of Southern state governments. During Wilson's presidency, D. W. Griffith's film The Birth of a Nation (1915) was the first motion picture to be screened in the White House. Wilson agreed to screen the film at the urging of Thomas Dixon Jr., a Johns Hopkins classmate who wrote the book on which The Birth of a Nation was based. The film, while revolutionary in its cinematic technique, glorified the Ku Klux Klan and portrayed blacks as uncouth and uncivilized. Wilson, and only Wilson, is quoted in the film (three times) as a scholar of American history, and made no protest over the misquotation of his words. Nonetheless, after seeing the film, Wilson felt betrayed by Dixon, as he felt that Dixon had misrepresented his views. Wilson's book did try to explain why many Southerners joined the Klan, but Wilson personally rejected the Ku Klux Klan and lynching as un-American. After the screening, Wilson issued a public statement stating that he had been "unaware of the character of the play before it was presented and has at no time expressed his approbation of it. Its exhibition at the White House was a courtesy extended to an old acquaintance." Historians have generally concluded that Wilson probably said that The Birth of a Nation was like "writing history with lightning", but reject the allegation that Wilson also remarked, "My only regret is that it is all so terribly true."
The League of Nations was not enough to save Woodrow Wilson. But it's not over until Washington, D.C. is renamed to the Douglass Commonwealth (Autonomous Zone).
Fake Noose II: Electric Boogaloo
https://soylentnews.org/politics/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=38126&page=1&cid=1011274#commentwrap
“On Monday, fifteen FBI special agents conducted numerous interviews regarding the situation at Talladega Superspeedway. After a thorough review of the facts and evidence surrounding this event, we have concluded that no federal crime was committed.
The FBI learned that garage number 4, where the noose was found, was assigned to Bubba Wallace last week. The investigation also revealed evidence, including authentic video confirmed by NASCAR, that the noose found in garage number 4 was in that garage as early as October 2019. Although the noose is now known to have been in garage number 4 in 2019, nobody could have known Mr. Wallace would be assigned to garage number 4 last week.
The decision not to pursue federal charges is proper after reviewing all available facts and all applicable federal laws. We offer our thanks to NASCAR, Mr. Wallace, and everyone who cooperated with this investigation.”
FBI: Noose found in Bubba Wallace's garage had been there since at least October 2019
The "noose" was a pull rope for the garage door, seen in video footage from long before Bubba Wallace was assigned the garage stall.
Bubba Wallace did not see a noose, but was working with what he was told, probably by NASCAR's President.
NASCAR vows to continue investigation into noose at Bubba Wallace's Talladega garage
Presumably, NASCAR will conclude that while the noose knot is an optimum shape for pulling open garage doors, it is not the right climate for noose knots and we need to tie better.
Bubba Wallace responds to FBI findings: 'Whether tied in 2019, or whatever, it was a noose'
Article shows an image of the offending knot. Bubba vows to stay outraged.
I think the only way this story stays alive is if it can be proven that the noose knot to garage door ratio was low and that Bubba was not randomly assigned to garage #4.
Previously: Fake Noose
Vulkan Driver for Raspberry Pi... 0/1/2/3
Nvidia Engineer's Vulkan Driver For Raspberry Pi Runs Quake III Over 100 FPS at 720p
Earlier this year, the Raspberry Pi Foundation hooked up with Igalia to start development on an open-sourced Vulkan graphics driver for the Raspberry Pi. However, Martin Thomas, an engineer at Nvidia, beat them to the punch.
Thomas announced yesterday via his personal Twitter that his RPi-VK-Driver is ready for primetime. The talented engineer had been working on the Vulkan driver in his spare time for more than two years.
Technically, Thomas' iteration isn't a Vulkan driver per se because it doesn't comply with the official standards established by The Khronos Group. Nonetheless, the resourceful developer produced a driver that adheres to the Vulkan parameters as much as possible, and as close as the hardware would permit it. There's just one limitation with the RPi-VK-Driver though. Unlike the official Vulkan driver that's still in the works, Thomas' version is only compatible with the Broadcom VideoCore IV GPU that's found inside the Raspberry Pi 1, 2, 3 and Zero devices.
Maybe 3B+ will briefly have better performance than 4B in some games and benchmarks.
Also at Phoronix.
ODROID-H2+ Intel x86 SBC
ODROID-H2+ An x86 Board to Challenge Raspberry Pi? (cache)
- Intel Celeron J4115 Gemini Lake quad core CPU 1.8 GHz, turbo to 2.3 GHz.
- Intel UHD Graphics 600 up to 700 MHz
- Dual-channel SO-DIMM Memory DDR4-PC19200 (2400MT/s) supporting up to 32GB RAM
- M.2 PCIe 2.0 x4 slot for one NVMe storage, 2x SATA 3.0 ports, eMMC flash support
- HDMI 2.0 up to 4K (4096×2160) @ 60 Hz
- DisplayPort 1.2 up to 4K (4096×2160) @ 60 Hz
- Dual 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet (RJ45) via RTL8125B chipset
- 24-pin header with I2C, UART (3.3V), USB2.0 and HDMI CEC signals
- 14V to 20V DC power input
ODROID-H2+ $119
ODROID-H2 $111
The change that stands out is the upgrade from 2x 1GbE to 2x 2.5GbE.
#AllBlackLivesMatter (Atlanta, Rayshard Brooks)
Atlanta Police Chief Resigns, Officer Fired After Police Shoot And Kill Black Man
Atlanta's chief of police has resigned, less than a day after police fatally shot a 27-year-old black man outside of a fast food restaurant. One officer has been terminated following the incident and another placed on administrative duty.
[...] Shields said in a statement her decision was made "out of a deep and abiding love" for her city. "It is time for the city to move forward and build trust between law enforcement and the communities they serve," she said.
Shields' resignation follows an outcry over the Friday night death of Rayshard Brooks. A police officer shot the 27-year-old after Brooks ran away with an officer's Taser and pointed it at police following a scuffle, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said. Police had been called after Brooks was found asleep in a car at a Wendy's drive-through. The GBI said officers attempted to arrest him when Brooks failed a sobriety test.
Authorities have not identified Brooks' race, though widely circulated video on social media shows a black man grappling with two police officers before running away with one of their Tasers. The two officers then give chase and shots are heard out of view.
During the press conference, Bottoms offered her condolences to Brooks' family. She also called for the immediate termination of the officer who fired the shots that killed Brooks.
"While there may be debate whether this was an appropriate use of deadly force, I firmly believe there is a clear distinction between what you can do and what you should do," Bottoms said. "I do not believe that this was a justified use of deadly force and have called for the immediate termination of the officer."
[...] The news of Brooks' death spread in a whiplash fashion and drew condemnation after weeks of nationwide protests over police killings of black people. Protests have broken out in Atlanta, with some protesters setting a fire inside of the Wendy's where the shooting took place.
[...] Former gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams said Brooks' death must be investigated.
"The killing of #RayshardBrooks in Atlanta last night demands we severely restrict the use of deadly force," Abrams tweeted. "Sleeping in a drive-thru must not end in death."
Just hours before Bottoms' announcement, the state's NAACP called for Shields' resignation.
"Georgia woke up to disturbing videos and reports of Rayshard Brooks being killed by an officer of the Atlanta Police Department," the Georgia NAACP said in a statement. "This is not the first time a Black man was killed for sleeping."
Earlier in the day, state investigators offered more details about the shooting. GBI Director Vic Reynolds said his agency had reviewed restaurant security footage showing Brooks running with what appeared to be one of the officer's Tasers. Brooks is then shown turning around and apparently pointing the Taser at police.
In Atlanta, protesters started gathering after Brooks was shot but tensions escalated Saturday night, when larger crowds congregated in the area surrounding the Wendy's where the shooting occurred. Some shattered the store's glass, CNN's Natasha Chen reported.
By nightfall, the fast-food eatery was engulfed in flames. It took firefighters more than an hour to approach the building as it was surrounded by protesters, CNN affiliate WSB reported.
Taser safety issues - "Non-lethal" designation
While they are not technically considered lethal, some authorities and non-governmental organizations question both the degree of safety presented by the weapon and the ethical implications of using a weapon that some, such as sections of Amnesty International, allege is inhumane. As a consequence, Amnesty International Canada and other civil liberties organizations have argued that a moratorium should be placed on Taser use until research can determine a way for them to be safely used. Amnesty International has documented over 500 deaths that occurred after the use of Tasers. Police sources question whether the Taser was the actual cause of death in those cases, as many of the deaths occurred in people with serious medical conditions and/or severe drug intoxication, often to the point of excited delirium.
The solution to police killings in America? Cops in space marine/Robocop suits with advanced integrated tasers.
Kimχ Micro: RasPi Zero Competitor With Up to 4 Cores + mPCIe
Kimχ Micro: A powerful alternative to the Raspberry Pi that supports PCIe cards
The Kimχ Micro is a small but mighty single-board computer (SBC). At a footprint of just 65 x 32 mm, the Kimχ Micro is just slightly larger than the Raspberry Pi Zero. However, the Kimχ Micro offers greater possibilities and power reserves than its micro SBC counterpart.
Specifically, the Kimχ Micro includes an NXP i.MX 8M Mini processor, which features up to four ARM Cortex-A53 cores. These cores can clock up to 1.8 GHz and are complemented by an ARM Cortex-M4F real-time core, along with a Vivante GC NanoUltra 3D GPU. The latter will allow the Kimχ Micro to encode and decode 1080p content at 60 FPS.
Additionally, the micro SBC includes 1 GB of LPDDR4 RAM, 8 GB of eMMC flash storage and a micro SD card reader. There is a serial EEPROM too. The Kimχ Micro also features a built-in mPCIe connection for adding PCIe cards like a Wi-Fi card. The board should support LTE or LoRA cards, incidentally.
Kimx Micro Offers Open Source Hardware Raspberry Pi Alternative
This open-source hardware board is still under development but it is great to see the progress of the board being made publicly available. When the board is ready for purchase it will be offered via GroupGets.
Raspberry Pi Zero Sized Kimχ Micro SBC is Equipped with a Quad-Core Processor, an mPCIe Slot
Power supply options are quite interesting too, as I think it’s the first board of this type (tiny Linux board) to offer USB PD power/charging, and it also supports LiPo battery power. Another advantage is that it is open-source hardware, and that’s how I managed to derive somewhat detailed specifications since documentation is WiP: reading the BoM and KiCad schematics & PCB layout which you’ll find on Github. Everything is licensed under CERN-OHL-S V.2. Linux will be supported via a layer for the Yocto Project.
Kimχ = kimchi
Zoom Suspends Activist for Tiananmen Square Event
Zoom suspends U.S.-based activist's account after Tiananmen Square commemoration event
Zoom shut down the account of an activist who was holding an event on the video conferencing platform to commemorate China's Tiananmen Square crackdown.
The move has prompted accusations that Zoom, a U.S. company, has bowed to pressure from Beijing.
U.S.-based rights group Humanitarian China held an event on Zoom on May 31 to commemorate those who lost their lives in the violent crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in China's Tiananmen Square in 1989. The topic is taboo in China and references to it online are heavily censored.
The account that hosted the event was shut down on June 7, according to Zhou Fengsuo, who founded Humanitarian China and took part in the 1989 protests as a student. The account has since been reinstated.
Also at The Guardian.
Kim Yo-jong, the Leader We've Been Waiting for
North Korean leader's sister emerges as policymaker in spat with South Korea
The sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is taking a leading role in a new, more hard-line pressure campaign against South Korea, highlighting what analysts say is a substantive policy role that goes beyond being her brother’s assistant.
[...] this year, Kim has taken on a more public policy role, cementing her status as an influential political player in her own right.
“Prior to this, Kim Yo Jong was portrayed in state media as Kim Jong Un’s sister, his protocol officer, or one of his accompanying officials,” said Rachel Minyoung Lee, a former North Korea open source intelligence analyst in the U.S. government. “Now, North Koreans know for sure there is more to her than that.”
Kim has worked behind the scenes in North Korea’s propaganda agencies, a role that led the United States to add her to a list of sanctioned senior officials in 2017 because of human rights abuses and censorship.
In March, state media carried the first ever statement by Kim, in which she criticised South Korean authorities. That was followed by several more, including a response to comments by Trump, and last week, a warning that the North would cut communications with South Korea.
Lee said Kim’s statements have a unique style, showcasing her wit and underscoring her powerful position.
“In addition to the harsh words and sarcasm, they can be bitingly witty in ways that the other statements are not,” Lee said. “She seems to have more leeway in crafting her statements, which of course is not surprising.”
Defund the Police
Democratic leaders clash with Black Lives Matter activists over 'defund the police'
As Trump seizes on the slogan to paint his opponents as radicals who envision a world of lawlessness and anarchy, Biden and most other Democrats are resisting the left's calls and floating more modest measures to curtail bad police behavior.
“No, I don't support defunding the police," Biden told CBS Evening News on Monday. "I support conditioning federal aid to police based on whether or not they meet certain basic standards of decency and honorableness and, in fact, are able to demonstrate they can protect the community."
Johnetta Elzie, a civil rights activist and organizer, said Biden's calls for "reform" sound stale, mealy-mouthed and out of touch as "black people are still dying behind these antiquated ideas and policies."
"It's not enough. Joe Biden knows it's not enough. Joe Biden's team knows it's not enough. It's not at all answering the calls of the moment," Elzie said. "People have been saying to anyone who's f---ing up in this moment: Read the room. People are calling for defunding the police.
"People in power — politicians and policymakers — are still talking about reform. We're beyond that. We're over that," she said. "If they wanted reform, they would have done it six years ago when we actually had the chance to. But that's not what happened."
The clash pits an ideological movement aiming to transform the national debate against a Democratic electoral apparatus whose overriding goal is to defeat Trump. While activists say they believe the need for radical change is worth taking political risks, party leaders say they worry about alienating moderate white voters who sympathize with the protesters' cause but still support police.
[...] Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, a Democrat, was loudly booed and forced to retreat from a gathering of demonstrators Saturday after he responded to a question about whether he would commit to defunding the police by saying, "I do not support the full abolition of the police."
When pressed to explain what the slogan means in policy terms, activists say "defund the police" is not actually a call for a country with no cops.
"It does not mean a world where we do not have safety and justice. It does not mean a world where we do not have order," Robinson said. "But what it does mean is that right now we seem to try to solve all of our society's problems by increasing the role and responsibility of law enforcement, and it has not worked."
Elzie said "defund the police" means "reducing police budgets, to me, down to the bare minimum."
[...] "It's not the job of activists to present poll-tested ideas," said Sean McElwee, a left-wing organizer and data scientist who popularized #AbolishICE. "It's the job of activists to demand we imagine a world built on fundamentally different assumptions. We've already seen a number of concrete and actionable policies that can fundamentally change the way we understand policing in this country."
