Archive

Archive for the ‘WORLD NEWS’ Category

“Demand Is Set To Explode” – Nevada’s Recent Shortages Are Nothing Compared to What’s Coming…

September 19, 2017 Leave a comment

Ian Jenkins

Canada has a pot problem, as Quartz Media recently warned us, but it’s a lucrative problem to have. One thing holding back this $8-billion market (Forbes Magazine, April 13, 2017) is supply, and one little-known company plans to be the steward of it in a big way.

When Canada legalizes recreational marijuana in less than a year, in line with a bill pushed through by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, legal supply is likely to be limited. There may not even be enough even if we are only considering medical marijuana usage.

The supply picture is so fantastically tight that Health Canada has had to streamline the approval process for growers because medical marijuana users have tripled in number since last year alone, according to Quartz. When it becomes legal recreationally, a Deloitte report estimates the economic  impact will be worth $22.6 billion annually—in other words, more than the combined sales of beer, wine and spirits.

Meet Cannabis Wheaton (TSX:CBW.V; OTC:KWFLF), the world’s first cannabis streaming company, backed by a powerhouse team, with the biggest industry trailblazer leading the way.

Not only is Cannabis Wheaton jumping into a huge potential market where supply is forecast to struggle to reach demand, but it’s offering a lifeline to new and existing growers who need financing to get off the ground fast.

Producers need a miracle grow strategy, and Cannabis Wheaton is stepping in to fill the gap with a “royalty” business model that is new to this market.

And for investors, the major upside is that this model removes the risks associated with putting all your money into a single-crop producer.

Cannabis Wheaton is intending to ‘stream’ pot, and 15 partners have already been lined up, along with 1.4 million square feet of growing acreage.

Here are 5 reasons to keep a close eye on Cannabis Wheaton (TSX:CBW.V; OTC:KWFLF) right now:

#1 ‘Streaming’ Deals Already Lined Up

To say that Cannabis Wheaton is a catalyst for change in an $8 billion market that is set for an explosive boost in less than year is an understatement.

The company’s royalty business model reduces risk for everyone. For the investor, it means less risk associated than with a single-crop producer. For producers, it means more opportunities and avenues of financing to get growth off the ground.

This is the evolution of the traditional licensed cannabis producer—and Cannabis Wheaton is the only company on this track.

And they’ve already sealed 15 partnership agreements in 17 facilities across six Canadian provinces to fund the construction and expansion of cannabis growing facilities and innovations. In return, they get minority equity interests and a portion of the cannabis produced. They’ve also got 39 solid clinic relationships, and this is growing fast, with access to over 30,000 registered medical marijuana patients.

cbw1

By 2019, just for starters, Cannabis Wheaton will have more than 1.4 million effective square feet of pot cultivation.

But it’s not just about risk, for investors—it’s about exposure. Through Cannabis Wheaton, exposure isn’t limited to a single-crop: You get access to multiple licensed producers to take full advantage of this $8-billion industry.

#2 Quick Scaling and Capitalization of Market Share Potential

A unique confluence of factors, including the fact that cannabis remains federally illegal in the United States, means that Canadian companies are in our opinion positioned to become the “multi-nationals” of cannabis – an area that as we know will rival alcohol and tobacco due to the sheer size of demand and revenues.

Within this set of Canadian cannabis producers, an even smaller subset – probably half a dozen or so companies have the capital and ongoing ability to raise funding that make them the most likely to capitalize with first-mover advantage on not just Canada’s 36 million person population, but a potential population of 500 million people or more in jurisdictions like Germany and Brazil that are also opening up to cannabis and that look to Canada’s framework and quality standards as they develop their internal regimes for production and distribution of cannabis products.

If one looks at this as a funnel:

Canada is in a special situation to potentially create the multinationals for cannabis.

Only a handful of companies in Canada are well-funded enough to scale into this.

Of these, Cannabis Wheaton, due to its streaming structure is well positioned due to the fact the company can scale quickly and diversify risk as more than a dozen different teams – its partners – build out facilities concurrently.

The combination of circumstances that have come about to give a handful of Canadian companies and possibly, specifically Cannabis Wheaton (TSX:CBW.V; OTC:KWFLF) a first-mover advantage in becoming the multinationals of cannabis.

Because Cannabis Wheaton is the only company employing the streaming model, it has far and away the best opportunity to meet scaled up capacity and deliver on this huge global market opportunity.

Cannabis Wheaton’s model is intended to maximize profits by minimizing operational expenditures.

cbw2

Just how quickly should they be able to scale up and capitalize? Well, take a look at comparisons drawn up by the company to its peers in this industry, the ‘single-crop’ producers:

cbw3

Bottom line: What Netflix is to movies and TV series, Cannabis Wheaton could be to pot. Or, what Silver Wheaton (NYSE:SLW) is to the mining industry. That company strikes a deal with a miner to purchase part of its future metal production in exchange for upfront cash. Investors love it because it gives them lower-risk and diversified exposure to the mining industry.

But this could even be better because Cannabis Wheaton finances the facility and then takes a ‘stream’ of product that comes out of the facility, but it doesn’t touch the product itself; it takes the royalty or it directs the producer to ship the product to Cannabis Wheaton’s customer.

#3 Management Play Backed by Political Heavyweights

Not only is this an idea that has the potential to take an $8-billion industry into the next phase, with brilliant timing—but it’s also being led by an experienced management team with extraordinary vision, and a track record to go along with it.

CEO Chuck Rifici is a household name in Canada’s marijuana industry. He co-founded the largest full-scale producer of government-sanctioned marijuana—Canopy Growth Corp. – and then took it public in April 2014 as its CEO. It’s still the largest public cannabis company around, and today’s it boasts a $1 billion market cap. And it’s the benchmark for success in the industry.

Not only has he led the industry’s most successful cannabis company to stardom, but he’s also sat on the board of other industry darlings, including Supreme Pharmaceuticals (SPRWF), Aurora Cannabis (ACBFF) and CannaRoyalty (CNNRF).

And it’s not just about management: Cannabis Wheaton is backed by political heavyweights, as Canadian politicians swarm onto the marijuana scene to cash in on the anticipated profits.

Rifici himself is former chief financial officer of the federal Liberal party. And the company’s strategic advisor is Rick Dykstra, former Conservative Member of Parliament and current party president in Ontario.

In June, the company added another heavy weight as president and director—industry-leading expert Hugo Alves. As a partner at Bennett Jones LLP, Alves founded and built the law firm’s Cannabis Group—the leading cannabis-focused legal advisory business in the country. He’s another highly-respected marijuana industry pioneer, who knows everything there is to know about cannabis licensing.

When it comes to regulatory affairs, Cannabis Wheaton (TSX:CBW.V; OTC:KWFLF) has it covered—and beyond—with Alves’ experience and expertise. And this knowledge could benefit all of Cannabis Wheaton’s streaming partners.

Alves was the first big firm lawyer in Canada to take what he calls a ‘big firm’ approach to pot. He ended up acting for 12 of the leading license producers and some 60 license producer applicants, not to mention another 50 ancillary businesses in the cannabis space. He’s got high-level contacts at every vertical in this industry.

#4 Exploiting a Huge Industry Gap with Looming Supply Shortages

Canada has over 150,000 medical marijuana patients, and that number is expected to grow to 500,000 by 2021, according to Canaccord Genuity. Yet, existing patients already bemoan supply shortages. To meet projected demand by 2021 just for medicinal purposes, Canada will need 150,000 kilograms of pot—with a sale value of $1.8 billion.

When this goes recreational, supply will be in real trouble. Canaccord Genuity estimates that by 2021 there will be an additional 3.8 million recreational users consuming 420,000 kilograms of pot (that’s worth around $6 billion).

To put this into perspective, Canada only has 40 licensed producers right now and last year, they grew only 31,000 kilograms—in other words, 5 percent of anticipated demand, according to the Financial Post.

But shortages are where things get lucrative, and the Canadian government is also keen to make sure supply meets demand. That’s why they moved to make the licensing process a lot easier in May last year.

For Cannabis Wheaton, it’s all about helping the streaming partners being the most dominant partners they can be, as Alves says.

The gap Cannabis Wheaton (TSX:CBW.V; OTC:KWFLF) is exploiting is a huge one: “There is a segment of the marketplace where people are trying to get their facilities built and they don’t have access to capital at all,” Alves told us.

Finding money to build facilities when you have no assets is tricky. That’s where the evolutionary genius of Cannabis Wheaton comes in, financing the producer at an aspirational valuation but letting the producer keep control, while Cannabis Wheaton takes an allocation of their production yield.

#5 First-Mover, and Only-Mover Advantage

Cannabis Wheaton has ‘only-move advantage’ because it’s the pioneering force behind the “financing by streaming” of the Canadian pot industry.
It’s the first company to bring the streaming business model to this market, and its business model makes it easier for investors to get in on this burgeoning market with lower-risk exposure to diversified licensed producers.

With producers under pressure to increase production by 10 times in order to keep pace with legalization for recreational use, Cannabis Wheaton has seen the gap in capital and is taking swift advantage of that. It has already signed deals with 15 partners, and counting. It’s a win-win for everyone: The producers get to keep control of their production, they get to leverage Cannabis Wheaton’s broad capital, regulatory, licensing and cultivation expertise, and Cannabis Wheaton and its investors get a nice stream of product or proceeds royalties.

We’re always looking for pioneers in new market spaces, and when it’s an estimated $8-billion market with a dearth of supply and a voracious demand, the company that has the best chance of fundamentally changing this space usually wins. We’ve found this in Cannabis Wheaton, and the fact that it’s led by industry leaders and backed by political heavyweights from all spectrums doesn’t hurt at all.

Cannabis Wheaton (TSX:CBW.V; OTC:KWFLF)  is one most nimble participants and the company is set up uniquely to scale fastest into a market that, if it goes global, is poised to be dominated by Canadian companies with first-mover advantage and an eye on establishing footholds internationally.

Categories: USA, WORLD NEWS Tags:

Report: Standing Up to Pee Gives Boys an Unfair Advantage in Physics

September 19, 2017 Leave a comment

John Ellis

Yes, you read the headline correctly. In the latest example of identity politics taken to its absurd end, three Australian college professors believe that “playful urination practices – from seeing how high you can pee to games such as Peeball (where men compete using their urine to destroy a ball placed in a urinal) – may give boys an advantage over girls when it comes to physics.”

The three professors didn’t publish their thoughts on a satirical website like The Onion. Instead, they published on Tes, a website that provides “educational materials, jobs, news, and courses from the world’s best community of teachers and school leaders.” In the article, Anna Wilson, Kate Wilson, and David Low argue with a straight face that peeing standing up provides an advantage for boys over girls in learning physics.

Explaining what prompted their conclusion about the advantages peeing standing up gives boys, the professors write, “The gender gap in physics, and other related subjects including engineering, has long been a cause for concern. … Therefore we have to ask: why don’t young women perform as well in physics?”

That seems like a semi-reasonable question, I think. Except Professors Wilson, Wilson, and Low live and ask questions in the land of identity politics.

After casually going through a list of possible explanations for why young women might not perform as well in physics as do young men — things like lack of female physics teachers, cultural pressure and expectations, and gender bias in the teaching materials — they conclude: “there may be another reason, too.”

After noting that girls lag in areas of physics that deal with projectile motion, the article reveals: “Like many parents of small (and not-so-small) boys, two of us (KW and DL) have observed the great delight young males take in urination, a process by which they produce and direct a visible projectile arc.”

Laying further groundwork for the assertion that standing up to pee aids in learning physics, the three detail the ways in which peeing standing up is a central yet fun part of the male life:

The fact that boys (and men) play with their ability to projectile pee is hardly contentious. Boys are trained to pee into toilet bowls with floating targets, a huge variety of which can be bought on Amazon; Amsterdam Airport Schiphol famously cleaned up its urinals by encouraging men to hit flies etched next to the drain; and Peeball is now a worldwide phenomenon.

Meanwhile, YouTube videos explain how to write your name in the snow with your pee; and the post-match celebration peeing antics of sportsmen are widely reported in the media. Indeed, the very notion of a pissing contest – furthest, highest, most precisely aimed – is a deeply embedded part of some cultures. Alexander Pope includes a pissing contest in his narrative poem, the Dunciad. Our own children describe a stepped wall behind their primary school that’s used by male pupils for competitive target practice. And a colleague who grew up in the Canadian arctic describes boys competing to see who could perfect the trajectory so that what ascended as liquid fell as ice crystals.

All this is experienced up to five times a day, so by 14, boys have had the opportunity to play with projectile motion around 10,000 times. And 14 is when many children meet formalised physics in the form of projectile motion and Newton’s equations of motion for the first time.

Ergo, according to the three esteemed college professors, peeing standing up gives boys an advantage over girls in physics. To their credit, I guess, they do acknowledge that “there is no simple way to provide girls with the same opportunities for exploring projectile motion that boys have in playing with pee.”

While the authors of the article don’t propose it, in today’s world it may not be a stretch to assume that the next step for progressives will be to make it illegal for men to pee standing up.

Categories: WORLD NEWS Tags:

Rex Tillerson says U.S. considering closing Embassy in Cuba

September 19, 2017 Leave a comment

Camila DeChalus

The Trump administration is considering closing down the U.S. Embassy in Havana after several American diplomats in Cuba suffered acoustic attacks, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Sunday.

“We have it under evaluation,” Tillerson said. “It’s a very serious issue with respect to the harm that certain individuals have suffered. We’ve brought some of those people home. It’s under review.”

The attacks occurred over a span of one year at multiple times, according to the State Department.

At least 21 people experienced permanent hearing loss, concussions, headaches and ear-ringing from the “sonic attacks.”

The State Department has launched an investigation into the incidents.

August 10, 2017 07:59 AM EDT

Senior State Department officials announced Friday that the acoustic attacks on US diplomats in Havana, Cuba, continued until as recently as last month. The American diplomats suffered from a variety of medical symptoms, including hearing damage.

Officials said the employees were not affected at the same place or time, but have been suffering a variety of physical symptoms since late 2016. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in a statement on Friday that 19 Americans are now confirmed to have been affected, according to The Washington Post.

“We can confirm another incident which occurred last month and is now part of the investigation,” Nauert said.

The American Foreign Service Association said it has met or spoken with 10 victims since the incidents were reported in August.

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in August that they have not determined exactly what happened, but that the departments believes the assailants used sonic devices to attack embassy members at different times and places.

“We don’t have any definitive answers about the source or the cause of what we consider to be incidents,” Nauert said. “We can tell you that on May 23rd, the State Department took further action. We asked two officials who were accredited at the Embassy of Cuba in the United States to depart the United States. Those two individuals have departed the United States.”

The State Department has launched an investigation and expelled two Cuban diplomats from the United States. The Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs has denied the State Department’s claims in a statement released on Wednesday and said that the decision to expel Cuban diplomats was “unjustified and unfounded.”

“The Ministry categorically emphasizes that Cuba has never, nor would it ever, allow that the Cuban territory be used for any action against accredited diplomatic agents or their families, without exception. Moreover, it reiterates its willingness to cooperate in the clarification of this situation,” the statement said.

Categories: WORLD NEWS Tags:

Thousands of Haitian immigrants flee to Canada from the U.S.

September 19, 2017 Leave a comment

Camila DeChalus

Thousands of Haitian immigrants are fleeing from the United States to Canada, fearing deportation back to Haiti as their future uncertain under the Trump administration.

Approximately 58,000 Haitian with Temporary Protected Status (TPS) reside in the United States. TPS was enacted after a massive earthquake struck their country in 2010 and allows TPS recipients to legally work and live in the United States without fear of deportation.

In May, the Department of Homeland Security suggested that the program will end in January and recommended that TPS recipients make travel arrangement to go back to Haiti before the deadline.

“The Department of Homeland Security urges Haitian TPS recipients who do not have another immigration status to use the time before Jan. 22, 2018 to prepare for and arrange their departure from the United States,” the press release said.

Tammy Lin, an immigration attorney based in San Diego, California, says that most of her clients on TPS are scared.

“Many of the clients I work with are trying to figure out what to do next,” she said, “Its hard for my clients because many of them have built their lives over again in the states.”

Most of Lin’s clients are trying to put their paperwork together and apply for asylum before the January deadline.

“If the Trump administration decides to end this program, the immigrants who came to the U.S. illegally or legally that are under this program will be deported unless they have asylum in the states or are married to a U.S. citizen,” she said.

Lt Alto is among the thousands of Haitian TPS recipients that have spent years rebuilding their lives in the United States. Alto, who lives in the New York area, says she lost everything in the 2010 earthquake.

“My mother and nephew died in the earthquake. I decided to go to the United States to pursue an education and do something with my life,” she said.

ADVERTISEMENT

Alto, 39, has lived in the U.S. for almost ten years and works as a certified nursing assistant. Alto says if the program ends she will only have two options, flee to Canada with the others or stay in New York illegally.

“There is nothing left for me there,” she said. “I don’t know what to do…I am so stressed.”

Erique Gasse, a spokesperson with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police told Circa, said that “there was an notable increase in July but the influx of immigrants coming to Québec for the month of September is going down.”Canadian immigration officials weren’t able to say how many of the refugees crossing the border into Quebec are Haitian.

However, Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre estimated 2,500 refugees from the U.S. arrived in July due to President Donald Trump’s tough stance on immigration.

Brian Concannon Jr., Executive Director of Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, told Circa that eliminating the TPS program will cause more harm than good.

“It will be disastrous for both the U.S. and for Haiti,” he said. “Haiti does not have the infrastructure in place to take in these newcomers because they are still dealing with the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake and recent Hurricane Matthew.”

“If the Trump administration stops the program more TPS recipients will try to stay here illegal and will not pay taxes and contribute to our economy,” he added.

Concannon Jr. has studied Haiti and its economy for years and says that extending the program for 18 more months will give the government of Haiti more time to prepare for the TPS recipients.

ADVERTISEMENT

“Extending the program will be good for Haiti and the TPS recipients because it gives them more time to plan and prepare,” he said.

“If they end this program it will only cause more problems for the U.S. government,” he added.

Categories: WORLD NEWS Tags:

China Moves On New World Order: Will Buy Oil With Gold-Backed Currency—Bypassing US Petrodollar

September 19, 2017 Leave a comment

AnonHQ

(Truth Theory) In a direct challenge to U.S. imperialism, China’s yuan-denominated contracts – backed by gold -will let oil exporting countries bypass using the U.S. petrodollar.

Beijing, China – In an effort to hedge against U.S. hegemony, and what could be a global game-changer, the world’s top oil importer, China, is preparing to denominate crude oil futures contracts in Chinese yuan to be convertible into gold. The move would allow oil exporting countries to bypass benchmarks denominated in U.S. petrodollars — creating what will almost certainly be the most critical Asian oil benchmark, according to a report by Nikkei Asian Review.

Typically, crude oil is priced in relation to Brent or West Texas Intermediate futures, both denominated in U.S. dollars.

The move by the Chinese will allow oil exporting countries such as Iran and Russia to bypass U.S. sanctions by trading in yuan instead of U.S. dollars. The move is a direct result of the U.S. proclivity to use the dollar as a weapon against countries that refuse to bend to the imperial will of the United States. To make the yuan denominated contracts more appealing, China intends to make the yuan fully convertible to gold on the Shanghai and Hong Kong exchanges.

“The rules of the global oil game may begin to change enormously,”said Luke Gromen, founder of U.S.-based macroeconomic research company FFTT.

According to a report by OilPrice.com:

Last month, the Shanghai Futures Exchange and its subsidiary Shanghai International Energy Exchange, INE, successfully completed four tests in production environment for the crude oil futures, and the exchange continues with preparatory works for the listing of crude oil futures, aiming for the launch by the end of this year.

Yuan-backed oil and gold futures mean that users can be paid in physical gold, said Alasdair Macleod, head of research at Goldmoney, a gold-based financial services company based in Toronto.

While some potential foreign traders have expressed reservations that the contract would be priced in yuan, according to analysts who spoke to Nikkei Asian Review, backing the yuan-priced futures with gold would be appealing to oil exporters — especially to those that would rather avoid U.S. dollars in trade.

“It is a mechanism which is likely to appeal to oil producers that prefer to avoid using dollars, and are not ready to accept that being paid in yuan for oil sales to China is a good idea either,” Macleod said.

These recent moves by the Chinese are part of a larger de-dollarization strategy by other world powers intent on creating a more multipolar global framework.

As we reported in July, the formation of a BRICS gold marketplace, which could bypass the U.S. Petrodollar in bilateral trade, continues to take shape as Russia’s largest bank, state-owned Sberbank, announced that its Swiss subsidiary had begun trading in gold on the Shanghai Gold Exchange.

Russian officials have repeatedly signaled that they plan to conduct transactions with China using gold as a means of marginalizing the power of the dollar in bilateral trade between the geopolitically powerful nations. This latest movement is quite simply the manifestation of a larger geopolitical game afoot between great powers.

A report by the Centre for Research on Globalization clarifies the implications of these most recent moves by the Russians and the Chinese in an ongoing drive to replace the US petrodollar as the global reserve currency:

Fast forward to March 2017; the Russian Central Bank opened its first overseas office in Beijing as an early step in phasing in a gold-backed standard of trade. This would be done by finalizing the issuance of the first federal loan bonds denominated in Chinese yuan and to allow gold imports from Russia.

The Chinese government wishes to internationalize the yuan, and conduct trade in yuan as it has been doing, and is beginning to increase trade with Russia. They’ve been taking these steps with bilateral trading, native trading systems and so on. However, when Russia and China agreed on their bilateral US$400 billion pipeline deal, China wished to, and did, pay for the pipeline with yuan treasury bonds, and then later for Russian oil in yuan.

This evasion of, and unprecedented breakaway from, the reign of the US dollar monetary system is taking many forms, but one of the most threatening is the Russians trading Chinese yuan for gold. The Russians are already taking Chinese yuan, made from the sales of their oil to China, back to the Shanghai Gold Exchange to then buy gold with yuan-denominated gold futures contracts – basically a barter system or trade.

The Chinese are hoping that by starting to assimilate the yuan futures contract for oil, facilitating the payment of oil in yuan, the hedging of which will be done in Shanghai, it will allow the yuan to be perceived as a primary currency for trading oil. The world’s top importer (China) and exporter (Russia) are taking steps to convert payments into gold. This is known. So, who would be the greatest asset to lure into trading oil for yuan? The Saudis, of course.

All the Chinese need is for the Saudis to sell China oil in exchange for yuan. If the House of Saud decides to pursue that exchange, the Gulf petro-monarchies will follow suit, and then Nigeria, and so on. This will fundamentally threaten the petrodollar.

“In 2014 Russia and China signed two mammoth 30-year contracts for Russian gas to China. The contracts specified that the exchange would be done in Renminbi [yuan] and Russian rubles, not in dollars. That was the beginning of an accelerating process of de-dollarization that is underway today,” according to strategic risk consultant F. William Engdahl.

Russia and China are now creating a new paradigm for the world economy and paving the way for a global de-dollarization.

“A Russian-Chinese alternative to the dollar in the form of a gold-backed ruble and gold-backed Renminbi or yuan, could start a snowball exit from the US dollar, and with it, a severe decline in America’s ability to use the reserve dollar role to finance her wars with other peoples’ money,” Engdahl concludes.

Categories: New World Order, WORLD NEWS Tags:

Here’s How Apple Has Been Spying On You Through Your iPhone

September 19, 2017 Leave a comment

(Truth Theory) There is a growing concern that our privacy is being threatened in unprecedented ways. The current nature of online services, apps and smartphone technologies, puts an emphasis on the free flow of information. This provides few mechanisms for individuals to have oversight and control of what they put into the digital realms.

It goes without saying that Apple Inc. are leading the technology revolution. However, with each new generation of the iPhone, there is a new threat to our privacy. Over the last six years, Apple have designed and implemented convenient, yet compromising features, such as voice recognition and fingerprint technology. Their latest model, the iPhone X, was recently unveiled and is equipped with facial recognition.

iPhone 4S: Siri, 2011

In 2011, Apple introduced the iPhone 4S with their implementation of the digital assistant Siri. The questions users ask Siri are recorded and stored (for a while). This aids the virtual helper, who uses the information to guess what users want before they even ask.

iPhone 5S: Touch ID, 2013

The iPhone 5S is revealed. It comes with a new fingerprint recognition feature – Touch ID. Many users register their fingerprint, trading their biometric data for convenience. This fingerprint scanner sparked privacy worries and many people were asking where this data being stored.

iPhone 6S: “Hey Siri,” 2015

By 2015, Apple has unveiled a new ‘Hey Siri’ feature which is built-into the iPhone 6S. This feature enables users to activate Siri at any time by saying the phrase “Hey Siri.” This raises questions surrounding surveillance as it means that the microphone has to be on at all times. An always-on microphone was a concern as it meant that the device could potentially listen to you and others nearby.

iPhone X: Face ID, 2017

The new iPhone X has rendered the home button obsolete. In its place is a built-in fingerprint reader in favour of a new biometric – called Face ID. In order to enrol the biometric, the interface asks users to tilt and turn their head. It takes 3D scans of the users face from multiple angles and uses the information to authenticate and unlock the device.

It is important to note that identifying features such as voice recordings, fingerprint scan, retina scan and facial features are key markers used in surveillance. Given the fact that these physical elements cannot be altered in the same way as a traditional password, it’s worrying when this data is put on a mobile device. Apple is the first company to have a facial recognition system with millions of profiles. As a result, they could be targeted by the Government and subject to a new type of mass surveillance order. In this instance, Apple may be required to hand over their database of facial profiles, which the Government can use to track the location of specific targets.

In the last ten years, facial recognition software has become increasingly popular. One in two American adults are already enrolled in a law enforcement facial recognition network. In addition, at least one in four police departments have the ability to run face recognition searches. Australia has also constructed a tool called “The Capability” which gives police the power to pick out faces from millions of photos. Furthermore, in the UK, police used a mass scan method to identify the faces of thousands of party-goers at this years Notting Hill Carnival.

We are clearly living in a surveillance state. In London alone there are an estimated 500,000 CCTV cameras. To make matters worse, there are already face detection CCTV cameras in use. They have the ability to scan people, identify cars, animals and bags automatically. Once we couple this technology with Apple’s new Face ID, we could see mass surveillance take on a whole new meaning. The database of iPhone users Face ID used in conjunction with the CCTV facial recognition technology, means that you could be tracked 24/7.

If you think the current landscape is frightening, don’t think too much about what’s coming next. Tech companies will get even better at filtering information, predicting our behaviour and serving us what we want to buy and finding new ways to share information.

Unfortunately, the legal system is lagging behind the pace of innovation, with regulators evidently struggling to keep up with the pace of technology and the enforcement of privacy rules. It is clear that many online services and smartphone technologies are not being scrutinised enough. There is something disconcerting about products, such as Apple iPhones, that elicit so much personal information from us – all in the name of ‘convenience’.

Categories: spying, WORLD NEWS Tags:

Floyd Mayweather Jr. Defends Trump, Slams Leftists, Ungrateful Immigrants

September 19, 2017 Leave a comment

And that’s probably why you’re only just now hearing about it

The following interview didn’t receive much fanare in the mainstream media, and it’s no wonder why.

Truth Revolt

 

Boxing champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. gave a lengthy interview Monday to Hollywood Unlocked. While much of what Mayweather spoke about concerned boxing, he also took time to share his views on President Trump — namely that people have judged him unfairly.

A portion of the interview is featured above (warning: strong language) and the The Daily Wire summarized other pertinent parts of the boxer’s interview:

I think a lot, within this world, like I said, racism still exists. You never heard anything about Donald Trump being racist until he ran for president and won. Before that, everyone was like, “Oh, he on WWE. He on different shows.” Everybody, they liked Donald Trump. As soon as he ran for president, because, people don’t like the truth.

Mayweather also dismissed news media apoplexy over the released Access Hollywood (“grab her by the p****”) tape:

He speak like a real man spoke. Real man speak, like, “Man, she had a fat a**. Did you see that a**? I had to squeeze her a**. I had to grab that fat a**.” Right?

So, he talkin’ locker room talk. You know what I’m sayin’? “I’m the man. You know me, I grabbed her by the p****. And?”

I feel people shy away from realness. This man didn’t do nothin’. Hey, listen. If y’all didn’t want the man in the White House, y’all should’ve voted the other way. He didn’t rob, he done his homework. He done what he had to do and he got there. I’m not here to knock nobody.

With regard to other policies Trump critics are protesting, Mayweather’s advice is simple: focus on yourself. All the time you spend protesting could be spent coming up with ideas for a business! Amen:

So at the end of the day, I don’t know why everybody keeps bitching about, and keeps picketing, and holding, they walking, “We don’t want!”; protesting, “We don’t want this happening!” My man, all that time you spend protesting, you keep be at home writing down ideas, coming up with a business.

Another portion of the interview that might draw some chuckles concerned the topic of taxes, which Mayweather said impacts him (as a multi-millionaire) far more than anyone else needs to worry about:

​”My man, you ain’t makin’, if you ain’t makin’ four, five, six hundred million dollars, man, it’s not gonna affect you no f***in’ way. So, it’s only gonna affect somebody like me. I’m the motherf***** that should be trippin’, payin’ thirty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six million dollars. I should be trippin’.”

While his language is colorful, Mayweather also offers a common sense view most celebrities shy away from. We can see why his interview, worth watching through until the end, has received little attention.

Categories: US News, USA, WORLD NEWS Tags: , ,
%d bloggers like this: