https://www.rt.com/op-ed/528614-uk-court-assange-extradition/

There is a whole other world happening just below the surface of mainstream public attention. The membrane of celebrities and entertainment and partisan bickering overlays public perception of the world almost the entire time, only occasionally being disrupted by short-lived blasts of dissonance piercing through the fog.

You’ll be reading about what Ronnie Republican said to Debbie Democrat, and it will feel so real and normal, then all of a sudden you’re getting blasted in the face with talk of Jeffrey Epstein getting suicided in prison amid reported ties to government-run sexual blackmail operations using minors for the purpose of controlling society’s leading influencers. Then it gets quickly memory-holed, the membrane returns, and it’s back to Ronnie and Debbie once again.

But before the fog returns there’s always a short-lived moment of “What?? Huh??” as you try to re-orient yourself to reality in light of the new information you just received. What you just saw is completely irreconcilable with your current view of the world, the one you’ve been fed piece-by-piece by school and mass media and internet algorithms. The clash between your comfortable existing worldview and the new information you just received causes a kind of psychological discomfort known as cognitive dissonance, which makes it hard to hold them both at the same time.

Antifa is recruiting

FBI Portland

Beth Anne Steele

(503) 460-8099

Share on Twitter Twitter Share on Facebook Facebook Email Email

July 6, 2021

Join Us for the FBI’s Special Agent Recruiting Event for Women!

It’s time to challenge yourself to a new future! The FBI is hosting a recruiting event to introduce women to the special agent position within the Bureau. The event will take place Tuesday, July 27th starting at 6 p.m.

The first 50 registrants can choose to take part in person on the FBI’s Portland campus. Other Oregon registrants—including those outside the Portland metro area—can participate virtually.

All registrants MUST reserve a spot ahead of time by emailing PortlandApplicants@FBI.gov.

https://www.axios.com/chinese-surveillance-lobbying-us-sanctions-official-7863505e-babe-4e2a-aeaa-eed9c498b03b.html

A Chinese surveillance firm has enlisted the help of a former senior U.S. official at the Treasury Department's sanctions program, just weeks after the company was reported to have ties to the Chinese military, records show.

Why it matters: The company, Hikvision, has disputed its place on a Pentagon blacklist of companies with Chinese military ties. The new hire by its D.C. lobbying firm is just the latest aimed at rolling back U.S. government measures that threaten to deal a body blow to its business.

What's new: The lobbying firm, Mercury Public Affairs, announced last month that it had hired Peter Kucik, a former senior sanctions policy advisor at Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control. Last week, Mercury added Kucik to its Hikvision account.

Kucik's hiring was announced just days after the Wall Street Journal reported on new research on Hikvision's ties to the Chinese military.

The company disputed the reporting, saying it had never "conducted research and development work for Chinese military applications," and that any equipment sold to China's army was manufactured for "dual use" military and commercial purposes.

The WSJ report was based on findings by the surveillance technology research service IPVM, which also flagged Kucik's hiring to Axios.

Previous reporting has linked Hikvision to the surveillance of Uighur Muslims in mosques and detention camps in the Chinese province of Xinjiang. The company has denied “any inappropriate actions in Xinjiang."

https://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/health/a36955891/us-military-testing-anti-aging-pill/

U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM), the organization that administers America’s Spec Ops forces, says it will soon start clinical trials of an “anti-aging pill” that could halt some naturally degenerative effects of aging.

“We have completed pre-clinical safety and dosing studies in anticipation of follow-on performance testing in fiscal year 2022,” Navy Commander Tim Hawkins, a SOCOM spokesperson, told Breaking Defense.

The pill involves what Hawkins called a “human performance small molecule” that will be fashioned into a nutraceutical form for both civilians and military personnel. He continued:

“These efforts are not about creating physical traits that don’t already exist naturally. This is about enhancing the mission readiness of our forces by improving performance characteristics that typically decline with age. Essentially, we are working with leading industry partners and clinical research institutions to develop a nutraceutical, in the form of a pill that is suitable for a variety of uses by both civilians and military members, whose resulting benefits may include improved human performance—like increased endurance and faster recovery from injury.”

A small molecule is exactly what it sounds like: a molecule with low molecular weight. Pharmaceutical manufacturer AstraZeneca, who is not involved with the anti-aging pill—SOCOM’s partner is instead the private biotech lab MetroBiotech—explains:

“[S]mall molecule drugs have some distinct advantages as therapeutics: most can be administered orally and they can pass through cell membranes to reach intracellular targets. They can also be designed to engage biological targets by various modes of action and their distribution can further be tailored, for example to allow for systemic exposure with or without brain penetration.”

the molecule in question is something called nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+). MetroBiotech touts NAD+ as a treatment for mitochondrial diseases in particular. Mitochondria are organelles (cell parts) that we often call the factory or powerhouse of the cell because they produce energy for the cell. This is in the form of a chemical called adenosine triphosphate (ATP).

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2021/07/07/militarys-border-mission-will-continue-least-another-year.html

The U.S. military's mission at the U.S.-Mexico border has been extended through 2022, Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby told reporters Tuesday.

There are currently 3,600 National Guard troops assisting Customs and Border Protection. They are largely uninvolved with law enforcement and generally provide logistical support, including surveillance. However, Kirby said the troop presence will be reduced to about 3,000.

An email requesting information from U.S. Northern Command about the timing of the reduction did not receive a response before publication.

Thousands of U.S. troops have been deployed to the southern border since 2018, when then-President Donald Trump ratcheted up the military presence there.

In one of President Joe Biden's first acts in office, he rescinded the emergency declaration at the border, but the military's mission remains largely intact. At least 23 states have sent troops to the border in 2021, according to a spokesperson for Northern Command.

A string of new National Guard deployments to the border have recently been announced, including South Dakota's controversial mobilization of 50 troops funded by a $1 million contribution from a billionaire Republican donor. However, a specific unit hasn't been tagged for the mission yet, according to a South Dakota Guard spokesman.

You are watching a movie

https://maritime-executive.com/editorials/who-moved-the-position-of-a-u-s-navy-ship-from-odessa-to-crimea

In June, a UK Royal Navy destroyer and Dutch Royal Navy ship safely moored in Odessa, Ukraine, were spoofed to locations off-shore of a Russian naval base on Crimea.

One week later, it was a US Navy ship moored in the same port that was spoofed (above).

These are interesting cases in several ways.

First, how was it done?

No other vessels seem to have been impacted, so this is much different from the wide-area spoofing the Russians have long conducted in the area.

It could have been highly targeted GPS spoofing that only impacted the three ships. But the three ships were in port alongside a pier. Did they even have their GPS and AIS activated?

It could be that typical GPS spoofing had nothing to do with it and it was just AIS signals that were imitated and detected by satellites.

It is possible that the AIS equipment aboard the three ships was programmed by the ships’ crews to transmit the false information.

Second, who did it?

The Russians are clearly capable of doing this. They have regularly spoofed large numbers of vessels in the Black Sea over the last five years. This was a bit different as only one or two vessels were impacted, but it is not much of an additional challenge.

The NATO (UK, Dutch, US) crews could have done it. They certainly had access to the equipment and the ability to do it.

It could have been a third party. Perhaps a bit more of a challenge, but not a particularly heavy lift for a reasonably competent RF hacker.

Third, why was it done?

If it was the Russians, it was likely yet another demonstration of their impressive electronic warfare capability and a chance to show dominance over the West

It it was the NATO ship crews, perhaps it was a way of nettling the Russians without the trouble of having to actually sail by. It could also have been an attempt to confuse them with a feint. The UK ship, HMS Defender, actually sailed somewhat close to the spoofed route several days later and was harassed by Russian forces.

If it was a third party, perhaps it was just to cause confusion, hate, and discontent. In the 1997 James Bond film “Tomorrow Never Dies,” the super-villian spoofs a Royal Navy ship into Chinese waters to provoke an armed conflict (see clip below).