🔓 Today's Must-Reads - 14 August 2024

Exposing the narrative with the latest news, studies, reports and articles!

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• Starmer plan to expand facial recognition technology after far-right riots condemned by charities. Charities and human rights organisations have called on Sir Keir Starmer to reverse a planned expansion of the use of facial recognition technology following far-right riots across England and Northern Ireland. Amnesty International, Privacy International and Big Brother Watch are among the 27 campaign groups that have signed a letter to the prime minister to voice their “serious concerns” over facial recognition surveillance.

• Japan Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will not run for party reelection. Kishida said in a press conference that it is important for the LDP to have a new face in leadership and that a “first step” would be for him to step down, according to a Reuters translation. He added that he felt the need to step down in order for the LDP to regain the public’s trust.

• Ministers to review social media’s role in fuelling riots. Social media’s role in fuelling riots will be reviewed by ministers, in a veiled threat of further regulation if companies do not tackle incitement to violence online. Downing Street said that police would be “going after” influencers who stirred up violence online as part of a rapid justice programme which ministers believe has helped quell disorder.

• Occult Olympics, Solar Deities and the French Pagan Revolution. After a worldwide backlash from disgusted Christians, Jews, and Muslims alike, the official website of the Paris Olympics removed all recordings of the ceremonies, and while that may be considered a small victory for basic common sense, the damage was done. Not only were Christian-oriented populations of the world revved up by this intentionally provocative operation, but an arrogant celebration of a restoration of paganism under an occult priesthood was conveyed publicly, and the implications of this ritual has not been fully appreciated to this writers best knowledge.

• Brussels slaps down Thierry Breton over ‘harmful content’ letter to Elon Musk. Brussels has accused its internal market commissioner of going rogue by sending a letter to Elon Musk threatening punishment if content posted on social media site X was found to place EU citizens at risk of “serious harm”. Thierry Breton, the French commissioner, had posted the warning letter on X, the platform owned by Musk, hours before the billionaire interviewed US presidential candidate Donald Trump, also on X. On Tuesday the European Commission denied Breton had approval from its president Ursula von der Leyen to send the letter.

• Sutton man, 61, who chanted ‘who the f*** is Allah’ jailed. David Spring, of Longfellow Road in Sutton, was part of a group who confronted police officers during a gathering of around 700 people near Downing Street on July 31. Spring pleaded guilty to violent disorder after footage showed him at the forefront of the crowd while threatening and chanting at officers. Spring's role in the disorder was shown on CCTV in court where he was seen making threatening and hostile gestures towards police, calling officers "c****" and joining in chants of "you're not English anymore" and "who the f*** is Allah".

• Labour warned over attempt to define Islamophobia. Labour is considering adopting a controversial definition of Islamophobia – despite warnings it could harm free speech, according to The Telegraph. Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner, his deputy, are weighing up a “range of views” about whether to introduce an agreed description of anti-Muslim prejudice.

• New spin on quantum theory forces rethink of a fundamental physics law. Quantum reality just got stranger. A particle’s angular momentum – its spin around an axis or rotation around a point – may be able to travel between two places by itself, disembodied from the particle. This finding may require a rethink of some of the most fundamental laws of physics. Yakir Aharonov at Tel Aviv University in Israel likens it to the way the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland can move its body to one place while its smile remains elsewhere. “And here now we showed that physics actually realises this possibility,” he says.

• Starmer will let the ‘Blob’ take over Britain. How worried should we be about the ‘Blob’? Tory ministers in the last government would often complain about their plans being frustrated by unelected officials – from high-ranking civil servants to government lawyers to the bureaucrats and regulators who populate Britain’s vast array of arms-length bodies. Yet, just like the culture war, leading figures in the ruling Labour Party tend to claim that the Blob is a myth or an invention of the right. In truth, not only is the Blob real, but it is also getting considerably more powerful under Keir Starmer’s leadership.

• US approves $20 billion in weapons sales to Israel amid threat of wider Middle East war. Congress was notified of the impending sale, which includes more than 50 F-15 fighter jets, Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles, or AMRAAMs, 120 mm tank ammunition and high explosive mortars and tactical vehicles and comes at a time of intense concern that Israel may become involved in a wider Middle East war.

• Attempted Trump assassin Thomas Crooks trained at same gun range used by DHS. Thomas Crooks practiced shooting at his preferred gun range the day before the Department of Homeland Security conducted a training there — just two months before he opened fire at the former president’s rally. Crooks, 20, visited the Clairton Sportsmen’s Club in Pennsylvania on May 22 around 3:10 p.m., where he practiced alone at the rifle range, according to a club logbook obtained by Sen. Chuck Grassley’s (R-IA) office. The very next day, beginning at noon, DHS conducted a “police training” at the range with at least three people, club records show.

• [2019] How the UK Security Services neutralised the country’s leading liberal newspaper. The Guardian, Britain’s leading liberal newspaper with a global reputation for independent and critical journalism, has been successfully targeted by security agencies to neutralise its adversarial reporting of the ‘security state’, according to newly released documents and evidence from former and current Guardian journalists.

• Align or die: Revealing unknown mechanism essential for bacterial cell division. One of the hallmarks of life, self-organization, is the spontaneous formation and breakdown of biological active matter. However, while molecules constantly fall in and out of life, one may ask how they "know" where, when, and how to assemble, and when to stop and fall apart. A previously unknown mechanism of active matter self-organization essential for bacterial cell division follows the motto "dying to align": Misaligned filaments "die" spontaneously to form a ring structure at the center of the dividing cell.

• New U.N. Cybercrime Treaty Could Threaten Human Rights. The United Nations approved its first international cybercrime treaty yesterday. The effort succeeded despite opposition from tech companies and human rights groups, who warn that the agreement will permit countries to expand invasive electronic surveillance in the name of criminal investigations. Experts from these organizations say that the treaty undermines the global human rights of freedom of speech and expression because it contains clauses that countries could interpret to internationally prosecute any perceived crime that takes place on a computer system.

• Expatriate author CJ Hopkins views on COVID masks became own Orwellian reality, faces German trial. For years, Hopkins has channeled Orwellian themes in his writing, offering biting satire and incisive critiques of societal and political norms. Now, in a seeming twist of fate, Hopkins finds himself ensnared in a situation reminiscent of the dystopian scenarios he has long warned against. In other words, the author has become the subject.

• American Theocracy: Politics Has Become Our National Religion. Politics has become our national religion. While those on the Left have feared a religious coup by evangelical Christians on the Right, the danger has come from an altogether different direction: our constitutional republic has given way to a theocracy structured around the worship of a political savior. For all intents and purposes, politics has become America’s God.

• German investor confidence plunges to lowest since January. An expectations gauge compiled by the ZEW institute fell to 19.2 in August from 41.8 in July, a release on Tuesday (Aug 13) showed. That was much lower than the 34 forecast in a Bloomberg survey. An index of current conditions also declined more than expected. “The economic outlook for Germany is breaking down,” ZEW President Achim Wambach said in a statement. “It is likely that economic expectations are still affected by high uncertainty, which is driven by ambiguous monetary policy, disappointing business data from the US economy and growing concerns over an escalation of the conflict in the Middle East.”