NO MENTION OF THE BOOK OF THE LAW
China crackdown on Apple store hits holy book apps, Audible
By MATT O'BRIEN

In this Sept. 28, 2021 file photo, people wearing face masks to help curb the spread of the coronavirus try out the latest iPhone 13 handsets at an Apple Store in Beijing. Amazon’s audiobook service Audible and phone apps for reading the holy books of Islam and Christianity have disappeared from the Apple store in mainland China, in the latest examples of the country’s tightening rules for internet firms. Audible said in a statement Friday, Oct. 15, that it removed its app from the Apple store in mainland China last month “due to permit requirements.” (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

Amazon’s audiobook service Audible and phone apps for reading the holy books of Islam and Christianity have disappeared from the Apple store in mainland China, the latest examples of the impact of the country’s tightened rules for internet firms.

Audible said Friday that it removed its app from the Apple store in mainland China last month “due to permit requirements.”

The makers of apps for reading and listening to the Quran and Bible say their apps have also been removed from Apple’s China-based store at the government’s request.

Apple didn’t return requests for comment Friday. A spokesperson for China’s embassy in the U.S. declined to speak about specific app removals but said the Chinese government has “always encouraged and supported the development of the Internet.”

“At the same time, the development of the Internet in China must also comply with Chinese laws and regulations,” said an emailed statement from Liu Pengyu.

China’s government has long sought to control the flow of information online, but is increasingly stepping up its enforcement of the internet sector in other ways, making it hard to determine the causes for a particular app’s removal.

Chinese regulators this year have sought to strengthen data privacy restrictions and limit how much time children can play video games. They are also exerting greater control over the algorithms used by tech firms to personalize and recommend content.

The popular U.S. language-learning app Duolingo disappeared from Apple’s China store over the summer, as have many video game apps. What appears to link Audible with the religious apps is that all were recently notified of permit requirements for published content.

Pakistan Data Management Services, which makes the Quran Majeed app, said it is awaiting more information from China’s internet authority about how it can be restored. The app has nearly 1 million users in China and about 40 million worldwide, said the Karachi-based company.

Those who had already downloaded the app can still use it, said Hasan Shafiq Ahmed, the company’s head of growth and relationships.

“We are looking to figure out what documentation is needed to get approval from Chinese authorities so the app can be restored,” he said in an email.

The maker of a Bible app said it removed it from the Apple store in China after learning from Apple’s App Store review process that it needed special permission to distribute an app with “book or magazine content.” Olive Tree Bible Software, based in Spokane, Washington, said it’s now reviewing the requirements to obtain the necessary permit “with the hope that we can restore our app to China’s App Store and continue to distribute the Bible worldwide.”

The Council on American-Islamic Relations condemned Apple’s actions, saying the company was enabling China’s religious persecution of Muslims and others.

“This decision must be reversed,” said a statement from CAIR’s national deputy director, Edward Ahmed Mitchell. “If American corporations don’t grow a spine and stand up to China right now, they risk spending the next century subservient to the whims of a fascist superpower.”

The removals were first detected this week by watchdog website AppleCensorship, which monitors Apple’s app store to detect when apps have been blocked, especially in China and other countries with authoritarian governments.

This week, Microsoft said that it would shut down its main LinkedIn service in China later this year, citing a “significantly more challenging operating environment and greater compliance requirements in China.”

Unlike LinkedIn, which has been offering a specialized Chinese service since 2014, Amazon-owned Audible said it does not have a dedicated service for customers in China.

HE DIDN'T SEE IT COMING
New Zealand to cast out its official wizard

Issued on: 16/10/202

New Zealand's official wizard, also known as Ian Brackenbury Channell, has lost his job after Christchurch City Council said wizardy no longer fitted with their plans for a more diverse, modern city WILLIAM WEST AFP/File

Christchurch (New Zealand) (AFP)

New Zealand is losing its official wizard. Nearly 40 years after the city of Christchurch begged their wizard to stay, the council has told the charismatic sorcerer he has to go.

The 88-year-old wizard, also known as Ian Brackenbury Channell, has been a popular tourist attraction for more than three decades, addressing crowds in the city centre, with his flowing beard, straggly hair and wearing a long, black robe and pointy hat.

Nothing was off-limits for the modern-day Merlin, from castigating politicians to successfully leading a campaign to stop "an attack on the soul of the city" when it was announced the red public phone booths would be repainted blue.

He has been in demand casting spells to influence the outcome of events such as crucial rugby matches and being transported to Australia to perform a rain dance.

"It is a difficult decision to end this contract," the Christchurch City Council assistant chief executive Lynn McClelland said.

"The council is grateful for the valuable and special contribution The Wizard made to our city's cultural life, and he will forever be a part of our history."

But McClelland said wizardry no longer fits the "promotional landscape" of the South Island's largest city, and new programmes "will increasingly reflect our diverse communities and showcase a vibrant, diverse, modern city."

British-born Channell, a former airman with the Royal Air Force and a graduate from the University of Leeds with a double honours degree in psychology and sociology, arrived in Christchurch in 1974.

The council's first reaction when he began his public speaking was to try to have him arrested, but he proved so popular that 10 years later, when he threatened to leave after a spell backfired at a rugby match, the council campaigned for him to stay.

"This was a welcome change of attitude by the city council after years of ill-concealed hostility," Channell said.

The council appointed him "Wizard of Christchurch", the New Zealand Art Gallery Directors Association made him "an authentic living work of art", and in 1990, prime minister Mike Moore named him the official "Wizard of New Zealand".

Since 1998, the wizard has been paid NZ$16,000 ($11,300) annually by the council "to provide acts of wizardry and other wizard-like-services", and he said he was not happy about being sidelined.

"They are a bunch of bureaucrats who have no imagination," he told the Stuff news website.

"They are not thinking of ways to promote Christchurch overseas."

"They are not making use of my worldwide fame. I am disappointed they haven't made use of The Wizard as part of the promotion of Christchurch.

"I don't like being cancelled."

Colombia sterilizes 24 hippos on former estate of drug lord Escobar

Issued on: 16/10/2021

Handout photo released by CORNARE of hippos at a care centre in Doradal, Antioquia Department, northeast of Bogota, Colombia bon October 15, 2021 -

CORNARE/AFP

Bogota (AFP)

Twenty-four out of 80 hippopotamuses roaming on the former ranch of the late Colombian drug kingpin Pablo Escobar were sterilized due to the "uncontrolled" spreading of this "invasive" species, authorities said on Friday.

Before he was shot dead by police in 1993, the notorious Escobar had purchased a number of exotic animals to live on his ranch, including flamingos, giraffes, zebras and kangaroos.

After his death, all but the hippopotamuses were sold to zoos.

Escobar originally acquired a single male and female hippos.

They were left to roam on his Hacienda Napoles estate, which has since been converted into a theme park, as they were considered to large to try to move, but since then their numbers have multiplied.

The hippos were shot with darts to inject them with a medicine called GonaCon, according to a bulletin by Cornare, a regional environmental protection organization in the northwest of Colombia.

"It's a contraceptive that is effective in males and females" and cheaper than surgical sterilization, said Cornare.

"However, it's complicated because experts suggest giving three doses."

Another 11 hippos were previously sterilized by more traditional means.

Experts believe this to be the largest herd of hippopotamuses outside of Africa and it has led to problems.

"The presence of these animals in an ecosystem that is not their own, brings consequences such as the displacement of local fauna," said David Echeverri, a Cornare expert quoted in the bulletin.

The hippos are also responsible for "changing ecosystems" and attacks on local fishermen.

Escobar became one of the richest men on the planet, according to Forbes, thanks to the drug trafficking empire he built.

Almost 30 years since his death, Colombia remains the largest producer of cocaine in the world, much of it smuggled to the United States.

© 2021 AFP

NASA to launch Lucy probe to investigate Jupiter asteroids

Issued on: 16/10/2021 - 

NASA's Lucy mission to explore Jupiter's Trojan asteroids 

Jonathan WALTER AFP

Washington (AFP)

NASA was set Saturday to launch a spacecraft called Lucy on a 12-year mission to explore for the first time a group of rocky bodies known as the Jupiter Trojan asteroids, gathering new insights into the solar system's formation.

The Atlas V rocket responsible for propelling the probe was scheduled to take off on Saturday at 5:34 am local time (9:34 am GMT) from Cape Canaveral.

Named after an ancient fossil of a pre-human ancestor, Lucy will become the first solar-powered spacecraft to venture so far from the Sun, and will observe more asteroids than any probe before it -- eight in all.

Additionally, Lucy will make three Earth flybys for gravity assists, making it the first spacecraft to return to our planet's vicinity from the outer solar system.

"Each one of those asteroids, each one of those pristine samples, provide a part of the story of the solar system, the story of us," Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission, told reporters on a call.

Lucy's first encounter will be in 2025 with asteroid Donaldjohanson in the Main Belt, between Mars and Jupiter. The body is named for the discoverer of the Lucy fossil.

Between 2027 and 2033, it will encounter seven Trojan asteroids -- five in the swarm that leads Jupiter, and two in the swarm that trails the gas giant.

The largest of them is about 60 miles (95 kilometers) in diameter.

Lucy will fly by its target objects within 250 miles (400 kilometers) of their surfaces, and use its onboard instruments and large antenna to investigate their geology, including composition, mass, density and volume.

- A diamond in the sky -

The Jupiter Trojan asteroids, thought to number well over 7,000, are leftover raw materials from the formation of our system's giant planets -- Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

Scientists believe they hold vital clues about the composition and physical conditions in the protoplanetary disk from which all the Sun's planets, including Earth, formed.

They are broadly grouped into two swarms -- the leading swarm is one-sixth a lap ahead of Jupiter while the trailing swarm is one-sixth behind.

"One of the really surprising things about the Trojans, when we started to study them from the ground, is how different they are from one another, particularly with their colors," said Hal Levison, the mission's key scientist.

Some are grey, while others are red -- with the differences indicating how far away from the Sun they might have formed before assuming their present trajectory.

Lucy the fossil was discovered in Ethiopia in 1974 and helped shed light on human evolution. The space mission's name was chosen with the hope that it will shed light on the solar system's evolution.

The paleoanthropologists who discovered the hominin remains named her after the Beatles' song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" which they were playing loudly at the expedition camp.

Lucy the probe will in fact be carrying a diamond beam splitter into the sky -- the Lucy Thermal Emission Spectrometer (L'TES), which detects far infrared radiation, to map asteroid surface temperatures.

By measuring the temperature at different times of day, the team can deduce physical properties such as how much dust, sand or rock is present.

© 2021 AFP

Macron marks 60 years since Paris Algeria protest massacre


Issued on: 16/10/2021 - 

Algerians arrested during the demonstration in Paris on October 17, 1961 are searched before boarding a plane bound for Algeria - AFP

Paris (AFP)

President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday will become the first French head of state to take part in commemorations of the massacre by Paris police of protesters at a rally 60 years ago against France's rule in its then-colony Algeria.

The events of October 17, 1961 were covered up for decades and the final death toll remains unclear. But many historians believe it could amount to several hundred.

The rally was called in the final year of France's increasingly violent attempt to retain Algeria as a north African colony, and in the middle of a bombing campaign targeting mainland France by pro-independence militants.

On Saturday, one day ahead of the formal anniversary, Macron will take part in a memorial ceremony for the victims at a park on the Paris outskirts from 1330 GMT.

A major question is whether he issues a formal apology for the actions of the Paris police that day or expresses regret, as the president seeks to carve out a modern relationship with France's past.

Maurice Papon, who was Paris police chief at the time of the 1961 protest and was later found to have collaborated with the Nazis in WWII - 

HARCOURT/AFP



The Paris police chief at the time, Maurice Papon, was later found to have collaborated with the Nazis during World War II.

The Elysee said the ceremony would take place in the presence of relatives of the victims, civil society activists who have campaigned for recognition of the massacre and veterans for Algeria's struggle for independence.

- 'State lie' -

Activists are hoping Macron, the first president born in the post-colonial era, will go further than his predecessor Francois Hollande, who acknowledged in 2012 that protesting Algerians had been "killed during a bloody repression".

Emmanuel Macron is the first French president born in the post-colonial era 

Ludovic MARIN POOL/AFP

Campaigners want an apology, reparations for the victims or recognition that the repression constituted a state crime.

The 1961 protests were called in response to a strict curfew imposed on Algerians to prevent the underground FLN resistance movement from collecting funds following a spate of deadly attacks on French police officers.

Some of the worst violence occurred on the Saint Michel bridge near the Notre-Dame cathedral where witnesses reported seeing police throwing Algerians into the river Seine where an unknown number drowned.

"There was a state cover-up, a state lie. There were government statements from the morning of October 18 that sought to incriminate the FLN and the Algerians," historian Emmanuel Blanchard told AFP.

Macron, who is expected to seek re-election next year, may be wary about provoking a backlash from political opponents or the French police in his comments.

His far-right electoral opponents, nationalists Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour, are outspoken critics of efforts to acknowledge or show repentance for past crimes.

Another complication is an ongoing diplomatic row between Paris and Algiers fuelled by comments attributed to Macron describing the country as ruled by a "political-military system" that had "totally re-written" its history.

French historian Benjamin Stora presented a report earlier this year in which he urged a truth commission over the Algerian war 

JOEL SAGET AFP

A report commissioned by the president from historian Benjamin Stora earlier this year urged a truth commission over the Algerian war but Macron ruled out issuing any official apology.

© 2021 AFP

SWITZERLAND
Lausanne tackles toxic soil after shock discovery


Issued on: 16/10/2021 - 

The situation, which has troubling implications for children and eating home-grown food, is unprecedented in wealthy Switzerland, which prides itself on its pristine mountains, lakes and pastures image Fabrice COFFRINI AFP

Lausanne (AFP)

Lausanne, the capital of Olympic sport overlooking Lake Geneva, is reeling after discovering that much of its soil is polluted with toxic compounds belched out by an old incinerator.

The situation, which has troubling implications for children and eating home-grown food, is unprecedented in wealthy Switzerland, which prides itself on its pristine mountains, lakes and pastures.

A domestic waste incineration plant in the Alpine nation's fourth-biggest city -- closed since in 2005 -- is being blamed for the dioxin fall-out.

Dioxins, which belong to the so-called 'dirty dozen' dangerous chemicals known as persistent organic pollutants, have the potential to be highly toxic. They have been shown to affect several organs and systems.

The problem was discovered by sheer chance between January and May this year at a planned new ecological allotment in the city.

For years, pollution monitoring had focused on air and water.

"As we did not look for dioxins, we never found them," Natacha Litzistorf, the city councillor for the environment, told AFP.

The discovery triggered soil analysis measurements at 126 sites across the city. Experts also looked at the risks associated with exposure to polluted soils.

- Pollution map -

This week Lausanne announced that those studies found the dioxin levels, and the expanse of the affected area, were much worse than previously thought.

The city has issued a map showing four concentric rings, with zones containing concentrations in the soil of 20-50 nanogrammes (ng) per kilogramme, 50-100, 100-200 and then above 200 in the middle. A peak of 640 was recorded in the city centre.

The affected zone stretches 5.25 kilometres (3.2 miles) inland and measures around 3.6 kilometres across.

People are instructed to wash fruit and vegetables grown in gardens and allotments and wash their hands after touching soil.

In zones with more than 100 ng toxic equivalent per kg, root vegetables grown in the area must be washed and peeled. Courgettes, cucumbers, gherkins, squashes, marrows and melons grown in the soil should not be eaten.

In all the affected zones, people should not eat chickens raised on the soil, offer or sell eggs from such chickens, while only those in the 20-50 zone can eat their eggs -- though just one per week.

Parents must also stop infants aged under four from ingesting soil, for example by touching their mouths after playing on the ground.

Warning signs have been installed around the city's parks and playgrounds.

- 'Tempt the devil' -

The concentric circles appear to lead to only one source.

"We quickly suspected the cause was linked to a former incinerator," Litzistorf said.

The Vallon plant opened in 1958 and was initially welcomed as a way of dealing with the city's garbage.

"At the time, it was thought much better to site waste incinerators in the city centre to protect agriculture in the countryside," Litzistorf explained.

The dioxin pollution dates from 1958 to 1982, when the Vallon filters were upgraded to environmental norms.

Didier Burgi, who owns a vegetable garden plot, said the discovery had sparked questions among veteran home growers.

"We are not going to eat the squashes. We don't have a lot of them, but there was specific information about them and we're not going to tempt the devil," he told AFP.

The major Chatelard allotment, by the new football stadium on the edge of the city, heard Thursday that it had readings under 20 ng.

Plot holder Jose Torres compared his imperfect tomatoes to the flawless ones in supermarkets.

"Everything you buy is full of chemicals," he said. "From my plot, I know what I'm eating."

Jacqueline Felder, tilling her beans, spinach, lettuce and carrots in the afternoon sunshine, said: "I've been growing vegetables for 15 years. We are not worried.

"People are afraid of everything these days.

"The Earth is our mother. Respect it."

- Next steps -

The World Health Organization says short-term exposure to high levels of dioxins may result in skin lesions, such as chloracne and patchy darkening of the skin, and altered liver function.

Long-term exposure is linked to impairment of the immune system, the developing nervous system, the endocrine system and reproductive functions.

Litzistorf said she was not aware of anyone coming forward with physical conditions linked to dioxin pollution.

But the question of potential liability remains unresolved, as does the issue of what to do next, as the dioxin hunt expands.

Whether the soil can be cleaned up, on such a wide scale, "is the question that everyone is asking", said Litzistorf -- along with who should do it, how, and how much it might cost.

© 2021 AFP

Global law firm stops representing HKU in Tiananmen sculpture row

Issued on: 16/10/2021 - 

The 'Pillar of Shame' sculpture commemorates the victims of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown in Beijing Peter PARKS AFP/File

Hong Kong (AFP)

A top global law firm will no longer represent the University of Hong Kong in seeking the removal of a Tiananmen memorial from its campus after it came under heavy criticism in the United States for helping China purge dissent, the Washington Post reported.

Mayer Brown is the latest international company to face pressure over how its actions in China contradict its more progressive statements in the West.

The eight-metre (26-feet) high "Pillar of Shame" sculpture by Danish artist Jens Galschiot has sat on HKU's campus since 1997, the year the city was handed back to China.

It features 50 anguished faces and tortured bodies piled on one another and commemorates democracy protesters killed by Chinese troops around Beijing's Tiananmen Square in 1989.

"Going forward, Mayer Brown will not be representing its long-time client in this matter. We have no further comment," the firm said in a statement on Friday, the Washington Post reported.

The Chicago-founded firm has worked on civil rights issues in the United States but found itself under criticism from rights groups and US lawmakers over representing HKU to seek removal of the only Tiananmen memorial on Chinese soil.

"It is even worse American law firms are doing the bidding of the Communist Party to erase the memory of the brave, young Chinese students who gave their lives for freedom in Tiananmen Square," Senator Lindsey Graham told Substack newsletter Common Sense.

The eight-metre (26-feet) high sculpture by Danish artist Jens Galschiot has sat on HKU's campus since 1997, the year the city was handed back to China Peter PARKS AFP/File

Senator Ted Cruz also condemned Mayer Brown, saying the "American firms should be ashamed to be complicit" in the sculpture's removal.

In response to the law firm's decision, Galschiot said it would be almost impossible for Western law firms to represent and help Chinese and Hong Kong authorities suppress freedom of expression "without suffering severe damage to their reputation and image".

The controversy was sparked by a letter Mayer Brown wrote on behalf of HKU ordering the now-disbanded Hong Kong Alliance, which used to organise the city's annual Tiananmen remembrance vigils, to remove the statue by Wednesday.

HKU has so far not take any action since the deadline passed and Galschiot said he had requested a hearing with the university over the fate of the statue.

Hong Kong used to be the one place in China where mass remembrance of Tiananmen's dead was still tolerated.

But the city is being remoulded in China's own authoritarian image in the wake of huge and often violent democracy protests two years ago.

Scores of opposition figured have been jailed or fled overseas and authorities have also embarked on a mission to rewrite history and make the city more "patriotic".

On Friday, eight pro-democracy activists were sentenced to between six and 12 months over an unauthorised assembly last year.

© 2021 AFP

WHITE PROPERTY OWNERS
Texas Republicans want to use federal Covid funds for tax relief — but only for homeowners

Joshua Fechter, The Texas Tribune
October 15, 2021

Texas House Republican Caucus on Facebook.

Texas Republicans want to use billions in federal pandemic relief to send checks to homeowners just ahead of next year's November elections — and call it property tax relief.

House lawmakers are pushing a proposal that would put $525 checks in the mailboxes of some 5.7 million homeowners who claim a homestead exemption — by tapping $3 billion sent to the state under the federal American Rescue Plan Act, the $1.9 trillion stimulus bill aimed at pandemic relief.

Senate Bill 1, which passed out of the House on Friday afternoon, is a roundabout way for Republican legislators to deliver on a longtime pet issue — property tax relief — without running afoul of a federal rule barring the use of stimulus dollars for tax cuts.

The bill originally came over from the Senate as a straight-up tax cut bill. House lawmakers gutted the Senate proposal to use it as a vehicle for the $3 billion in checks for homeowners. Now, lawmakers in both chambers will have to work out a compromise.


House lawmakers have justified the use of federal relief money, saying their plan addresses "negative economic impacts" resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic "including assistance to households."

Not all households would benefit. Excluded from that relief are renters, who make up more than a third of Texans.

"Here's the problem: A third of Texans don't own their property," state Rep. Gene Wu, D-Houston, said during debate on the House floor. "So none of this $3 billion would go to the one-third of Texans who rent. Not a penny."

Republicans argued that renters have already been taken care of because Texas has already received $2 billion in federal stimulus money for rent relief, state Rep. Jim Murphy, R-Houston, said.

"I think everyone has been hit hard by the pandemic, Mr. Wu," said state Rep. Morgan Meyer, a Dallas Republican who carried the bill in the House. "Everyone."

The checks would arrive no later than Sept. 1 — about a month before voters head to the polls next year for early voting in the November midterm elections. Dick Lavine, senior fiscal analyst with the liberal-leaning Every Texan, blasted the proposal as a "transparent political ploy."


"They'll have to print the check on legal size paper to fit the signatures of all the people who want to take credit for it," Lavine said.

Republicans tried to head off criticism that the checks would be politically timed.

The bill previously gave Comptroller Glenn Hegar until July 1 to identify property owners eligible to receive the money. Meyer amended the bill to move that date up to May 1, possibly allowing homeowners to get paid sooner.

The House proposal is significantly different from a $2 billion tax cut proposal that sailed through the state Senate last month intended to take about $200 off of an average Texas homeowner's tax bill.

That measure — authored by state Sen. Paul Bettencourt, a Houston Republican and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick's point person on property taxes — would use $2 billion in state surplus funds to "buy down" public education funding normally collected by school property taxes, which make up most of a homeowner's tax bill.

A homeowner whose property is worth $300,000, the median value of a Texas home, would see $200 in temporary tax relief under the Senate proposal — though that could grow depending on how much the Texas economy grows by next June.

Bettencourt did not respond to a request for comment.

Republicans are under pressure from the party's right wing to tackle the state's high property tax burden in one way or another.

Gov. Greg Abbott added property tax relief to the third special session agenda in September — after primary challenger Don Huffines, a former state senator, blasted Abbott for initially leaving it off the table. Abbott had included it in previous sessions this year, but nothing passed.

Patrick, meanwhile, called legislation cutting property taxes his top priority for this special session, which has a packed agenda that includes figuring out how to spend $16 billion in federal coronavirus relief dollars and redrawing the state's political maps.

CRIMINAL CRYPTO CAPITALI$M
Crypto firms Tether, Bitfinex to pay US$42.5 million to settle US CFTC charges

Signage is seen outside of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) in Washington, D.C., U.S., August 30, 2020. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly 

16 Oct 2021 

Cryptocurrency Tether and crypto exchange Bitfinex will pay US$42.5 million to settle civil charges from the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) over allegedly making misleading statements and making illegal transactions.

Firms doing business as Tether agreed to pay US$41 million to resolve CFTC charges they made misleading claims about Tether's cryptocurrency stablecoin, the CFTC said in a statement on Friday. According to the regulator, at various times from June 2016 to late February 2019, Tether made misleading or untrue statements about whether it held sufficient US dollar reserves to fully back up its US dollar tether token.

In a separate order, firms doing business as Bitfinex agreed to a US$1.5 million penalty over charges their controls were not adequate to keep US customers from illegally engaging in retail commodity transactions on the exchange. This violated US law and a 2016 settlement with Bitfinex over similar allegations, the CFTC said.

Bitfinex cryptocurrency exchange website taken September 27, 2017.

 REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/IllustrationNext 

Neither Tether or Bitfinex, which are controlled by the same parent company, admitted nor denied the findings.

In a statement on its website, Tether challenged the CFTC's statements, saying the agency's findings were that Tether's dollar reserves were not all in cash in a bank account titled in Tether's name at all times, rather than that the tokens were not fully backed.

CFTC Commissioner Dawn Stump, a Republican, affirmed the agency's findings that the "assurance provided to tether customers was not 100 per cent true, 100 per cent of the time" and that "wrongdoing occurred", according to a statement published alongside the CFTC orders.

However, Stump raised concern that the resolution - the first time the CFTC has applied the definition of "commodity" to a stablecoin - would sow confusion among cryptocurrency firms and investors.

Man tied to QAnon conspiracy announces bid for Congress
Issued on: 15/10/2021 

The conspiracy theorist group QAnon (supporters pictured August 2020) claims without evidence that the pandemic is a conspiracy by a cabal of Satanist paedophiles who control the world 

Kyle Grillot AFP/File

Washington (AFP)

A website administrator that many consider to be behind the QAnon conspiracy movement that fired up supporters of Donald Trump has announced he will run for a Republican seat in Congress.

Ron Watkins announced in a video posted on Telegram Thursday that he would contest a House of Representatives seat in Arizona that is currently held by a Democrat, in the election next year.

Echoing Trump's unsupported complaints about the 2020 presidential election, Watkins said voter fraud was a key issue.

"President Trump had his election stolen, not just in Arizona but in other states, too," he said.

"We must now take this fight to Washington DC to vote out all the dirty Democrats who have stolen our republic."

Watkins and his father Jim Watkins ran the 8chan and successor 8kun message boards that became a hub for conspiracy theories.

In 2017 they began publishing anonymous, cryptic postings by "Q" claiming bizarre child exploitation and deep state plots.

Over the next three years that snowballed into the QAnon movement boasting hundreds of thousands of followers in the United States and thousands more in other countries.

At the core of their myriad conspiracy theories was their belief that there was a secret cabal in Washington trying to undermine Trump.

Followers of the movement were convinced they were receiving top-level intelligence and encouragement to take action from inside Trump's circle.

Amid a number of violent incidents and rising threats, the FBI said last year that it was keeping an eye on QAnon as one of several potentially dangerous right-wing fringe groups.

Composite image of Ron Watkins. (Screengrabs.)

But no one knew who Q was. Many suspected it was the operators of 8chan themselves, the Watkins.

The original founder of 8chan, Frederick Brennan, who turned the site over to them in 2016, and Travis View, a leading investigator of QAnon, both suspected the two Watkins.

Q stopped posting in December after Trump lost the election, and around the time Ron Watkins became active in Trump's campaign to show that voter fraud cost him the election -- a claim never backed by evidence.

While the QAnon movement has lost steam, two Republicans who had endorsed it won seats in Congress, and adherents of the movement took part in the violent attack on Congress on January 6.

Media Matters, which has studied the group's political influence, said in August that at least 45 people who have supported or endorsed QAnon are running for Congress in the 2022 election.

© 2021 AFP

‘I’m not Q’: Arizona congressional candidate Ron Watkins denies starting satanic cult conspiracy theory

Bob Brigham
October 15, 2021

Ron Watkins @az_rww on Twitter.

Republican congressional hopeful Ron Watkins denied being "Q" from the QAnon conspiracy theory during a Friday interview with the Arizona Republic.

"I have never written a Q post. I'm not Q," Watkins claimed. "I don't have any idea about who Q is."

Although Watkins denied having "any idea" about who Q may be, the newspaper reported, "Watkins said he has his own theory about who Q might be. But said he has no proof and would not share his theory."

Watkins, who has never held public office, also discussed the legislation he would introduce as a member of the House of Representatives.

"Watkins spoke about at least one of his legislative priorities. He said he was drafting a bill that, if it were enacted, would have ensured more coverage of stories about a supposed stolen laptop belonging to President Joe Biden's son, Hunter," the newspaper reported. "The bill would ensure, Watkins said, that the government does not get involved in censoring online content."

  

QAnon’s Ron Watkins Is Running For Congress. How Did We Get Here?

The man who did more than anyone to facilitate the rise of the QAnon cult is now running for office in Arizona.

By David Gilbert
15.10.21



RON WATKINS APPEARS ON ONE AMERICA NEWS (OAN)


Back in May, Ron Watkins announced that he was launching a new venture called Alien Leaks. Essentially, Watkins wanted to make WikiLeaks, but for information about UFOs.

The site was a complete and utter failure. In fact, it attracted so few leaks that Watkins had to post his own close encounter three months later when he claimed to have seen an alien craft flying over his apartment in Sapporo, Japan—at a moment he just happened to be filming the right part of the sky.

When I contacted Watkins about Alien Leaks, I took the opportunity to ask him about what appeared to be his admission in Cullen Hoback’s HBO documentary that he had in fact posted on 8chan as Q, the mysterious leader of the QAnon movement.

Rather than answering my questions directly, Watkins sent me a video of himself in the Japanese wilderness dressed as some sort of cowboy samurai. The video made little sense, especially since Watkins was speaking on camera but the sound came from a voiceover track he had recorded separately.

At the time, with former President Trump out of office and Q gone silent, many people believed that this was the beginning of the end of QAnon, and of Watkins’ moment in the spotlight.

But on Thursday, Watkins showed his ability to reinvent himself once again, announcing that he’s planning to run as a Congressional candidate in Arizona—where he claims he now lives.

How did we get to the point where one of the people who’s most responsible for the rise of QAnon believes that running for public office is a viable option?

Waktins was born in the late 1980s, after his father, Jim Watkins, met a South Korean woman while he was serving in the U.S. military. Watkins moved around a lot as a child due to his father’s job as a helicopter engineer with the army.

After his parents divorced when he was a teenager, Watkins lived mostly with his mother and attended high school in Mukilteo, Washington, where he graduated in 2005.

Meanwhile, Jim Watkins had retired from the U.S. military and had established a Japanese porn website hosted in the U.S. to circumvent Japan’s strict pornography laws. Then, in 2014, he seized an opportunity to take control of a hugely popular online imageboard called 2channel, the precursor to 4chan and 8chan. The founder of the site claims Watkins stole it from him.

The younger Watkins decided to get involved in his father’s businesses, and in 2014 suggested that they contact Fred Brennan, who had founded 8chan as a a "free speech friendly” 4chan alternative in the wake of the Gamergate controversy.

Brennan was at the time struggling to manage the site, and so the Watkinses swooped in and took control, keeping Brennan on board as an employee in the Philippines, where the Watkinses were based at this point.

The partnership between Brennan and Jim Waktins broke down and the father-and-son duo took full control of the site. Then, in early 2018, the nascent QAnon movement moved from 4chan to 8chan, and everything changed.

The mysterious Q began posting on 8chan exclusively, and as the conspiracy movement grew so did traffic to Watkins’ website.

However, at the time, the person who was in control of the 8chan board where Q was posting said that the account was hijacked and that someone else began posting as Q.

For many, this was evidence that Ron and Jim Watkins had decided to take control of the QAnon movement for their own benefit. Analysis of the “Q drop” before the move to 8chan and after it, clearly show there were two distinct authors, but aside from Waktins’ own “admission” on Hoback’s documentary, there is no conclusive proof that Watkins was behind the posts.

In fact there is evidence that due to his location in the globe and the timing of certain Q drops, Watkins could not have been Q.

As well as QAnon, 8chan gained notoriety for hosting child abuse imagery, and several mass shooters posted manifestos on the site prior to beginning their killing sprees. In the space of six months in 2019, the perpetrators of the Christchurch mosque shootings, the Poway synagogue shooting, and the El Paso shooting all used 8chan to disseminate their respective manifestos.

The result was that 8chan was deplatformed for several months, but it soon returned under a new name, 8kun.

But whether or not Ron Watkins was Q is moot. As administrator of the site, he facilitated the QAnon movement to grow to an unprecedented scale, helping it move from the obscure website into the mainstream.

The movement has torn families apart, driven people to conduct acts of horrific violence, and helped fuel the widespread belief that the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent. QAnon conspiracies have also now become deeply intertwined with mainstream GOP politics.

Ron’s transformation from QAnon facilitator to Congressional candidate began on Election day 2020.

On that day, he announced that he was resigning from 8kun. In the days and weeks that followed, as former President Donald Trump began his long and seemingly-never-ending campaign to discredit the election results, Watkins saw an opportunity.

Using the Twitter account where’d amassed hundreds of thousands of followers as the Q facilitator, he began tweeting about Dominion Voting Machines and obscure election processes, claiming—without evidence—that there was mass vote rigging taking place.

Such claims quickly got the attention of right wing networks like One America News and people in Trump’s orbit, like “Kraken” lawyer Sidney Powell and Trump’s former personal attorney Rudy Guiliani.

Soon, Watkins was appearing on TV as a cyber security expert, even though he had no experience in this area.

After the Jan. 6 Capitol riots, Watkins was banned from Twitter, but seamlessly moved to Telegram, where he amassed an even greater following. Here he began to drive his followers’ attention to Maricopa County, Arizona, where a bogus election “audit” had been authorized.

In between founding his Alien Leaks website—and launching a career as an NFT artist—Watkins continued to boost election conspiracies. He appeared virtually at the Cyber Symposium of MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, where his presentation was interrupted when he was told he might be breaking the law by talking about data taken from machines in Mesa, Colorado.

Like Lindell, Watkins loved to tell his followers that something huge was just around the corner, whether it was Trump’s return to office or some explosive lawsuit that would expose widespread vote rigging. But in the end, just like the mysterious Q, Watkins never delivered.

And so it was with the Cyber Ninjas report in late September. Watkins and many others on the right predicted it would provide vindication for their claims of vote rigging. In the end, all it did was further confirm that the election in Maricopa County was run properly and President Joe Biden won it.

But rather than retreating to the dark corners of the internet, Watkins clearly felt that now was the time for him to come into the light.

And so last week he landed in Arizona, weeks ahead of his appearance at a big QAnon conference in Las Vegas. He has spent his time showing how completely unathletic he is, repeatedly failing to get a meeting with Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, and hobnobbing with some of the state’s most prominent Republicans.

And on Thursday the transformation was complete: Watkins announced he was running for the House seat in Arizona’s first district, where he will have a crowded primary as Republicans try to unseat incumbent Democrat Rep. Tom O’Halleran. And like so many other Republican candidates running in 2022’s midterms, he pegged his decision to run on the baseless belief that the election was a fraud.

“We must stay vigilant and keep up the pressure, both here in Arizona, and throughout the country to indict any and all criminals who have facilitated election fraud,” Watkins said in a video posted to his Telegram channel.

“President Trump had his election stolen, not just in Arizona but in other states too. We must now take this fight to Washington, D.C. and vote out all the dirty Democrats who have stolen our Republic.”

Watkins’ candidacy has already garnered the support of many of the biggest influencers in the QAnon community, but he’ll need more than that in order to secure the Republican nomination.

And Fred Brennan, who worked alongside Ron when Jim Watkins took over 8chan, believes he is missing something vital to win an election.

“Charisma is not optional for a politician,” Brennan told VICE News, adding that he felt the additional scrutiny on Watkins will turn out badly for him and his father.

“I actually welcome him submitting himself to the political process because all it's going to do is just create greater scrutiny into the fact that he has no legitimate source of income and his entire persona in Q is based on lies,” Brennan said.

But not everyone is convinced. Cullen Hoback, who spent a lot of time with Watkins believes that he does have charisma and that his online skills could be enough to get him elected.

“Elections are a popularity contest where facts no longer seem to matter,” Hoback told Vice News. “He’s got a base of followers who he’s strung along with wild promises. Nothing needs to come true. In fact, the more he tricks his followers, the more clever they think he is. Maybe his ability to read from a script isn’t great, but he’s playing a different game. He’s highly skilled at memetic warfare, trolling, and has a passionate army of ‘digital soldiers’ on the ready. In person, I think even Fred would begrudgingly admit Ron can be quite charming. Assuming Ron maintains the steam to keep up the act, he could find himself in a similar situation as Trump—a troll who gets memed into a position of power.”

Election deniers are organizing by state on a QAnon-linked platform to take over the Republican Party

Propelled by conservative media personalities, extremists and election deniers are organizing state by state on Pilled.net

Molly Butler / Media Matters
WRITTEN BY JUSTIN HOROWITZ
MMFA
PUBLISHED 10/07/21 1

Election deniers and extremists are organizing state by state on the QAnon-linked website “Pilled.net” in an attempt to “take the Republican Party over” and undermine local election administration.

This effort has been heavily promoted by former Trump adviser Steve Bannon on his War Room: Pandemic podcast over the past year. Alongside Republican activist Dan Schultz, Bannon has encouraged his listeners to pursue local election jobs that are often left vacant due to lack of public knowledge of the positions.

As explained by ProPublica, precinct officers play an important part in deciding how local elections are run, and the responsibilities of the positions differ by state. These positions can “have a say in choosing poll workers” and even “help pick members of boards that oversee elections,” among other responsibilities.

On the September 27 edition of conservative media personality John Fredericks’ show Outside The Beltway, the host discussed Schultz’s plan to “take the Republican Party over” and “end the Joe Biden regime in its tracks.”

During the interview, Fredericks played a video from Schultz’s group showcasing his “precinct strategy” website. Schultz also promoted a new button on his website to “connect with other conservatives in your state” and suggested the site allows users to “privately and securely communicate and collaborate with one another.” Fredericks responded, saying that is “exactly what we need.”

The button that Schultz referred to takes users to Pilled.net to sign up for a group named “Precinct Strategy.” However, if users were to go to the Pilled.net homepage by clicking the pill icon in the top left corner, they would see that the website is riddled with QAnon-linked content that has been banned by mainstream social media platforms.

QAnon is a baseless conspiracy theory that claims former President Donald Trump is secretly working to take down leading Democratic officials, global pedophilia rings, and his purported enemies in the “deep state.” It has been labeled a domestic terrorism threat by the FBI and QAnon followers have been linked to numerous incidents of violence, including the deadly January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

For example, QAnon influencer Zak Paine has an active account on the Pilled.net site with over 6,000 followers. Paine, who uses the pseudonym RedPill78, was part of the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol.


Patriots’ Soapbox, a livestream outlet devoted to the conspiracy theory, also has a profile on Pilled.net that posts similar content. Other extremist content on the site includes discussions of the chemical compound adrenochrome with QAnon influencer Jordan Sather and suggestions that liberal elites and celebrities are actually pedophiles who “will be exposed.”

Media Matters has previously reported on Bannon and Schultz’s calls to action being amplified and distributed by QAnon influencers and shared on far-right message boards. Schultz himself has appeared on a number of QAnon podcasts to encourage supporters to get involved with GOP precinct officer positions. Unfortunately, his plan seems to be working.