(Detroit News) A former Eastern Michigan University student pleaded guilty Monday to painting racist graffiti on campus, school officials announced.
In Washtenaw County Circuit Court, Eddie Curlin admitted to three counts of malicious destruction of property stemming from several incidents in 2016 and 2017, EMU reported in a statement.
The first incident Curlin, who is African-American, was charged with included red, white and blue spray-painting of “KKK” and the n-word, along with “leave” on the side of King Hall. In another incident, a message was painted outside of Ford Hall, near the campus monument to Martin Luther King Jr., telling blacks to go home. Racist graffiti also was found inside a men’s restroom stall at Sherzer Hall.
Julian Assange appears to be painfully close to being unceremoniously thrown out of the Ecuadorian embassy in London. If that happens, the consequences for journalism, for freedom of speech, and for press freedom, will resound around the world for a very long time. It is very unwise for anyone who values truth and freedom to underestimate the repercussions of this.
In essence, Assange is not different from any journalist working for a major paper or news channel. The difference is he published what they will not because they want to stay in power. The Washington Post today would never do an investigation such as Watergate, and that’s where WikiLeaks came in.
It filled a void left by the media that betrayed their own history and their own field. Betrayed the countless journalists throughout history, and today, who risked their lives and limbs, and far too often lost them, to tell the truth about what powers that be do when they think nobody’s looking or listening.
Julian is not wanted because he’s a spy, or even because he published a number of documents whose publication was inconvenient for certain people. He is wanted because he is so damn smart, which makes him very good and terribly effective at what he does. He’s on a most wanted list not for what he’s already published, but for what he might yet publish in the future.
He built up WikiLeaks into an organization that acquired the ultimate trust of many people who had access to documents they felt should be made public. They knew he would never betray their trust. WikiLeaks has to date never published any documents that were later found out to be false. It never gave up a source. No documents were ever changed or manipulated for purposes other than protecting sources and other individuals.
Julian Assange built an ’empire’ based on trust. To do that he knew he could never lie. Even the smallest lie would break what he had spent so much time and effort to construct. He was a highly accomplished hacker from a very young age, which enabled him to build computer networks that nobody managed to hack. He knew how to make everything safe. And keep it that way.
Since authorities were never able to get their hands on WikiLeaks, its sources, or its leader, a giant smear campaign was started around rape charges in Sweden (the country and all its citizens carry a heavy blame for what happened) and connections to America’s favorite enemy, Russia. The rape charges were never substantiated, Julian was never even interrogated by any Swedish law enforcement personnel, but that is no surprise.
It was clear from the get-go what was happening. First of all, for Assange himself. And if there’s one thing you could say he’s done wrong, it’s that he didn’t see the full impact from the campaign against him, sooner. But if you have the world’s largest and most powerful intelligence services against you, and they manage to find both individuals and media organizations willing to spread blatant lies about you, chances are you will not last forever.
If and when you have such forces running against you, you need protection. From politicians and from -fellow- media. Assange didn’t get that, or not nearly enough. Ecuador offered him protection, but as soon as another president was elected, they turned against him. So have news organizations who were once all too eager to profit from material Assange managed to obtain from his sources.
That the Guardian today published not just one, not two, but three what can only be labeled as hit pieces on Julian Assange, should perhaps not surprise us; they fell out a long time ago. Still, the sheer amount of hollow innuendo and outright lies in the articles is astonishing. How dare you? Have you no shame, do you not care at all about your credibility? At least the Guardian makes painfully clear why WikiLeaks was needed.
No, Sweden didn’t “drop its investigation into alleged sexual offences because it was unable to question Assange”. The Swedes simply refused to interview him in the Ecuador embassy in London, the only place where he knew he was safe. They refused this for years. And when the rape charges had lost all credibility, Britain asked Sweden to not drop the charges, but keep the pressure on.
No, there is no proof of links from Assange to Russian hackers and/or to the Russian government. No, there is no proof that DNC computers were hacked by Russians to get to John Podesta’s emails. In fact there is no proof they were hacked at all. No, Ecuador didn’t get tired of Julian; their new president, Moreno, decided to sell him out “at the first pressure from the United States”. Just as his predecessor, Correa, said he would.
Julian Assange has been condemned by Sweden, Britain, the US and now Ecuador to solitary confinement with no access to daylight or to medical care. Without a trial, without a sentence, and on the basis of mere allegations, most of which have already turned out to be trumped up and false. This violates so many national and international laws it’s futile to try and count or name them.
It also condemns any and all subsequent truth tellers to the prospect of being treated in the same way that Julian is. Forget about courts, forget about justice. You’ll be on a wanted list. I still have a bit of hope left that Vladimir Putin will step in and save Assange from the gross injustice he’s been exposed to for far too many years. Putin gets 100 times the lies and innuendo Assange gets, but he has a powerful nation behind him. Assange, in the end, only has us.
What’s perhaps the saddest part of all this is that people like Chelsea Manning, Kim Dotcom, Edward Snowden and Julian Assange are among the smartest people our world has to offer. We should be cherishing the combination of intelligence, courage and integrity they display at their own risk and peril, but instead we let them be harassed by our governments because they unveil inconvenient truths about them.
And pretty soon there will be nobody left to tell these truths, or tell any truth at all. Dark days. By allowing the smartest and bravest amongst us, who are experts in new technologies, to be silenced, we are allowing these technologies to be used against us.
We’re not far removed from being extras in our own lives, with all significant decisions taken not by us, but for us. America’s Founding Fathers are turning in their graves as we speak. They would have understood the importance of protecting Julian Assange.
To say that we are all Julian Assange is not just a slogan.
Given the fact that the new Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman has had such a stringent and overwhelming focus on rooting out corruption in Saudi Arabia since his November 2017 declaration to do so – and the ensuing arrests that took place shortly thereafter – it would certainly be ironic (though not entirely surprising) to learn that the crown prince could be involved in what could only be described as optically questionable business practices himself.
But such was the topic of a Wall Street Journal article detailing bin Salman's business dealings, including a recent massive deal with Airbus, that has helped him grow his wealth from almost nothing - at least by local standards - to untold billions.
Prince Mohammed bin Salman was a teenager when he realized his father, Prince Salman bin Abdulaziz, was, by Saudi royal standards, a pauper.
While other sons of Saudi Arabia’s founder grew wealthy from government business, Salman, then the governor of this capital city, supported his family with handouts from his brother the king. Mohammed decided to change that, he later told associates.
The crown prince - who has grand plans to usher in a new era of prosperity for Saudi Arabia, including a "Saudi 2030" economic vision that looks to modernize and change the landscape of the country's economy over the course of the next decade or so - is often credited with expanding the role that women play in Saudi corporations - removing a ban on female drivers, and implementing Saudi sports stadiums that admit women. Despite this, organizations like Human Rights Watch still contend that the Prince is overseeing a growing and unprecedented number of human rights violations.
And now, the Wall Street Journal is digging deeper into his business practices, which look to be politically influenced and organized within the Prince's close family.
The Journal has released a report detailing several of the prince's own business dealings and methods that he himself has used to enrich himself and build exorbitant personal wealth. The incredibly long and detailed piece put out by the Journal talks about some of the prince's business ventures which have been little publicized in the past, noting:
Prince Mohammed is managing director—and 20% owner—of a chemical producer that supplies large, state-controlled firms, Saudi corporate filings showed as recently as last year. A company majority-owned by two of the crown prince’s younger brothers was awarded a coveted broadband license from the government, Saudi records showed.
Additionally, in 2015, Prince Mohammed helped engineer a multibillion-dollar deal between European plane giant Airbus SE and Saudi Arabia’s state-owned Saudia Airlines, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal and interviews with more than a dozen people involved in the transaction. The deal is worth tens of millions of dollars to his family, the documents show.
The article notes the obvious - that the "anti-corruption" attitude could be a "do as I say, not as I do" policy for the prince:
The story of the Airbus deal suggests this mixing of business and government remains a staple of the Saudi economy, despite the crown prince’s highly publicized crackdown on many other royals who the prince said abused their power to get rich. Indeed, Airbus decided to go into business with the king’s family despite its reservations over the blurry distinction between private and public financial interests, according to people familiar with the matter.
Further called into question is a company called Tharawat that the prince allegedly helps control, despite not having an equity interest in. His younger brother supposedly owns 99% of the company, keeping it tied closely to the prince:
A company called Tharawat has emerged as a key player in the business activities of Prince Mohammed’s family. According to Saudi corporate filings, one of his younger brothers, Turki bin Salman, owned 99% of the investment firm as of May 2017, while another brother, Naif, owned the remaining 1%. Prince Turki has since bought his brother’s stake, according to Ammer al Selham, Tharawat’s CEO.
In practice, Prince Mohammed controls and benefits from Tharawat’s business, say several people familiar with their dealings, including two who have discussed the firm with him. Mr. Selham disputed that, saying: “At no time was HRH Prince Mohammed bin Salman a shareholder or a beneficiary of the company.”
The journal reported that this company is involved in several businesses:
Tharawat and a subsidiary own the majority of a tech firm called Jawraa that was awarded a coveted broadband license from the Saudi government in 2014, Saudi records show. The license allowed it to become one of three companies operating new mobile-phone networks in the country.
Tharawat has had interests in fish farms, real estate, tech services, agricultural-commodity trading and restaurants. It owns an office park in Riyadh. An investment vehicle Tharawat owns, Nasaq Holding, says on its website that it is investing in construction to take advantage of “the government’s tenth development plan including investments worth $358.2 billion in real estate.” Saudi corporate filings show that Tharawat owned a company that partnered with Ochsner Health System in New Orleans to bring Saudis to the U.S. for organ transplants.
But the main focus of the WSJ article appeared to be to put a recent deal with Airbus under the microscope. As the article explains, Airbus conducted a recent deal with Saudia Airlines using Therawat as an intermediary. In addition, Therawat is reported to have an interest in a bank that raised capital to enter the jet leasing business. Ultimately, Tharawat was to benefit by being able to somehow get Airbus to sell them jets at a discount, and then not passing those discounts to Saudia Airlines who would pay close to the market price to lease them:
Tharawat in 2014 acquired a 54% stake in Quantum Investment Bank, a Dubai-based company with scant history of deal making, corporate documents show. Prince Turki, Mohammed’s younger brother, became Quantum’s chairman. Quantum executives didn’t respond to requests for comment, and the bank later took down its website.
Executives from Quantum and another small bank formed a company called International Airfinance Corp., or IAFC, to enter the jet-leasing business.
IAFC became the manager of a fund called ALIF, structured to follow Muslim strictures against paying interest. Airbus agreed to invest $100 million in ALIF if the fund bought only Airbus planes. On June 23, 2014, Airbus and IAFC held a “signing ceremony” in London to announce the new fund, hosted by Prince Turki bin Salman, International Airfinance said in a press release. The fund was aiming to raise $5 billion in equity and debt, deal documents show.
Of course, it was then reported that Saudia didn't really "shop around" for a deal and that Airbus wanted to complete the deal despite reservations, including investigations into potential corruption overseas because they didn't "want to prevent the son of the king doing business.”:
People involved in the process say Saudia didn’t solicit competitive bids from leasing companies, and rebuffed the advances of companies seeking to offer competitive rates before choosing ALIF to do the deal.
In response to questions about the deal, Saudia Vice President Abdulrahman Altayeb said in an email that “the aircraft acquisition transaction was in accordance with Saudia’s internal procedures, which included a review of the lease price to ensure its competitiveness against the market benchmark, as well as aircraft delivery schedule being in line with Saudia’s requirements related to its fleet plan.”
Lending his name to the deal made it easier to consummate, WSJ reported:
Others with a stake in the deal were thrilled by the involvement of a Saudi prince. “We took it as a good thing that there were people with deep pockets and political connections that we thought would make this transaction happen,” says one of those people, who says he considered the princes’ involvement “a good risk mitigator” for investors.
And so, in addition to receiving a share of income that the country produces from its oil, these new business ventures that seem to leverage the crown prince's political and family ties are helping propel him to new levels of wealth and power. If the Prince is trying to consolidate power, his actions are likely helping him do that and the addition of grandiose wealth as a result of these types of deals also comes in handy.
If the prince wants to convince us that he's really serious about rooting out corruption, maybe he could start to understand that when one finger points forward, three more point back.
A shooting at a gas station in Myrtle Beach was caught on camera by a Twitter user. The dramatic video shows one man opening fire on another, while the person catching the action on his phone tried to hide behind his dash. Police say no injuries were reported.
Former NOPD chief Warren Riley said Wednesday that he's disappointed and surprised at Mayor Latoya Cantrell's decision not to hire him as homeland security director.
A bill that originally allowed teachers to fully participate in student-initiated prayer underwent major changes limiting what teachers can do before passing unanimously in the House Wednesday.
A bill that would restore voting rights to felons on parole who have been out of prison for five years is on its way to the governor’s desk after it passed the Senate Wednesday.
After lengthy debate Wednesday night, the Louisiana Senate voted 21 to 16 in favor of a new 20-year deal for Harrah’s New Orleans with a 10-year option.
Entergy officials released a statement Wednesday evening explaining that hotter-than-normal temperatures is what caused Tuesday's major power outage in Uptown New Orleans.
A “granny cam” bill to allow nursing home residents or their legal representatives to install monitoring devices in those residents’ rooms passed unanimously in the Senate Wednesday.
In the 1980s, fishermen working off the coast of Indonesia made a surprising haul: a cargo of ceramic vessels, elephant tusks, sweet-smelling resin, and other artifacts from a ship that had lain on the bottom of the Java Sea for centuries. Most of the ship's hull was long since gone; wood decays quickly in warm waters, leaving behind only its former contents.
Now, a closer look at its cargo reveals that the ship may have gone to the bottom a century earlier than archaeologists first suspected, which puts it in the middle of a very interesting period in Chinese history.
May you live in interesting times
The Song dynasty (1127-1279) was the height of ceramic export production in China, when the imperial court encouraged overseas trade. Ships crossing the seas were beginning to form a more direct link between far-flung trading partners than the ancient Silk Road could allow. The Srivijaya empire, a formidable maritime power based on Sumatra, was in decline, and other coastal powers in the region were vying for its former supremacy.
A Texas man shot his ex-wife, her boyfriend and three children before taking his own life, police said Tuesday.
