EDIT: Immediately after posting, I saw person interviewed outside the arraignment. But I don't know that person so I won't associate them with this sketchy piece of writing.

Luigi's alleged actions i.e sending insurance demon straight to hell wouldnt have had as much popular support, had it not been for everyone watching ruling class commit genocide with complete nakedness & with such brazenness, peasants (atleast a segment of peasants) realized if someone delivers even a tiny fraction of justice to ruling class for their crimes (even if they are a different segment of criminal ruling class, not the ones that are committing genocide), those actions are morally right & just.

I very much doubt the alleged vigilante would have had the same support in rest of society, if sizable segments of society were not already exposed to 14 months long genocidal crimes of Western ruling class against weak in Palestine — with such impunity, in such an open manner, defying any sense of morality, with such brazenness, for so long. Few Western states (Ireland & rest), who while not even doing bare minimum, are now trying to pretend they did not support Entity, while they aided Entity for a long time & haven't yet severed all connections with Entity.

Western propaganda pipelines i.e Media, Academia, "Journalists", Thinktanks, NGOs, etc have lost so much credibility defending & carrying water for Genocidal Entity, deceiving, lying, gaslighting so openly, for so long, a good chunk of peasant population not only stopped taking them seriously, rather started defaulting to following position:

If they say X is the truth, then its likely X is not the truth.

Ruling class is used to relying upon its collaborators in the propaganda pipeline to build credibility for them for so long, they assumed they will be able to change & control the narrative around Luigi's alleged actions, but unfortunately Western propaganda pipelines lost good chunk of control (they have not lost fully, but loss is not insignificant either), the peasants who support his actions are not insignificant % of population. Their size is bigger than many minority groups in Empire & the people who would support his actions will only grow, once the trial starts.

Tho Luigi's actions are unrelated to Palestine, the psychological change Empire's ruling class brought amongst peasants with its actions in Palestine, Empire's ruling class (+ rest of Western ruling classes too) have shown how illegitimate they are to everyone. Now, sizable % of the peasant population doesn't think their ruling classes have much legitimacy & violent tactics are as much legitimate as non-violent tactics, when ruling class's crimes are massive. This % is still not majority, not even a big %, but its larger than zero — unlike how it used to be before Palestinian genocide.

@palestine @lebanon @iran @israel @syria #israel #palestine #gaza #lebanon #iran #syria #anarchy #anarchism #uspol #law #lawfedi

Dec 24, 2024, 07:29 AM

On a recent Monday in the West Bank, human rights attorney Diana Buttu found herself stuck in traffic for nine hours to drive a distance less than 10 miles. Israeli authorities had set up a temporary checkpoint on her route, creating a massive backup of cars on a busy highway in the disputed Palestinian territory. In much of the world, drivers can avoid—or at least, anticipate—these kinds of roadblocks by checking apps such as Google Maps. But for years, that’s been easier said than done in the West Bank, home to several million Palestinians.

Residents in the West Bank have long complained that missing and outdated data on Google Maps, including accurate information about road restrictions and street regulations, make the app unreliable and sometimes difficult to use. The start of the war in Gaza in October of last year, however, has made problems with the app even worse for drivers such as Buttu, a former legal adviser to Palestinian government officials. “I’ve been so irate with all of this,” she says. “You spend so much brainpower trying to maneuver.”

WIRED spoke with Buttu and four other people who have driven recently in the West Bank who say the world’s most popular navigation app sometimes leads users into traffic jams, walls, and onto restricted roads where they may have potentially dangerous encounters with Israeli authorities. These problems have prompted Palestinians to crowdsource information about congestion and other road conditions themselves on social media.

Some of the issues raised by users stem from circumstances outside of Google's control: Checkpoints have become more common and variable in wartime, and Israel has interfered with GPS readings in the area. But the users say they believe the tech giant could be doing more to make Google Maps safer and more dependable for Palestinians.

Inside Google, dozens of employees have been urging company leaders over the past year to make improvements to Google Maps that would benefit Palestinians, according to three current and former staffers involved in the advocacy or on the maps product team, who asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

One current Google employee alleges, based on internal data they’ve seen, that users in the West Bank have largely abandoned Google Maps for navigation. Google spokesperson Caroline Bourdeau declined to comment on the assertion. She says traffic jams caused by checkpoints are reflected in Google’s routing and estimated time of arrival calculations.

“Any claims of Google Maps showing bias in this region are false. We’ve updated thousands of roads, street names, place names, and postal codes in the West Bank and Gaza—and are constantly working to get accurate data to help us map this highly complex area,” Bourdeau said in a statement.

Bourdeau told WIRED that Google was proactively reaching out to organizations and data suppliers in the region to update road, street name, and place information in the West Bank.

She describes the West Bank and surrounding areas as complex to map due to constantly changing conditions on the ground and available data being inconsistent and ill-defined. Google Maps stays neutral on geopolitical issues, she says.

Last month, Google Maps launched an update to help users easily look up West Bank addresses. Bourdeau says that overall, Google Maps has added about 5,000 miles of roads in the West Bank and Gaza since 2021. Nour Nassar, a director general in the Telecommunication and Digital Economy ministry of the Palestinian Authority, which governs parts of the West Bank, tells WIRED she appreciates Google’s efforts.

Longstanding Gripes

Israel’s assault on Gaza has shone a spotlight on what some Palestinians perceive as a digital apartheid. Small groups of workers at several tech companies have protested how common services such as YouTube and Instagram are denied to Palestinians or operate less effectively for them. Google Maps, in particular, has been a source of simmering frustration for years.

In 2018, 7amleh, a Palestinian digital rights organization, published a report on mapping tools that accused Google of allegedly making design choices in its app that disadvantaged Palestinians and helped legitimize the Israeli government’s views of the contested territory.

“Google Maps, as the largest global mapping and route planning service, has the power to influence global public opinion and therefore bears the responsibility to abide by international human rights standards and to offer a service that reflects the Palestinian reality,” the report said.

Because online maps have become a primary way that billions of people understand the world around them, how tech companies like Google depict and label politically sensitive areas and territories regularly generates public backlash and philosophical debate. Some countries, including the US, India, and China, have imposed specific requirements on mapping providers over the years. But the issues in the West Bank center on a specific feature—navigation—that historically hasn’t drawn as much attention but, now as much as ever, poses real safety fears for users.

Buttu, who regularly travels to the city of Ramallah in the West Bank from her home in Haifa, Israel, for work and to visit friends, says Google Maps has led her astray many times in recent years. “I’ve been told to drive right into a wall that’s been up since 2003,” she says.

Others have encountered the same wall near the Qalandia checkpoint separating Jerusalem from the West Bank, and almost driving into it has become something of a rite of passage. “I was once trying to get to an office that was in a neighborhood in East Jerusalem, and Google Maps absolutely failed me,” says Leila, who works for a US company remotely from Ramallah and asked to use only her first name for privacy reasons. “It wanted me to go on a road that was completely cut off by the wall.”

Google’s Bourdeau tells WIRED that the company is investigating the route and will make an update if it can verify the situation against reliable data.

Even before the war, Google Maps users in the West Bank say they were accustomed to receiving potentially unsafe directions. One persistent issue they point to is the fact that Google doesn’t distinguish between unrestricted roads and ones that are only permitted to be used by Israelis, such as those leading to and from Israeli settlements where Palestinians aren’t supposed to go. On the route from Haifa to Ramallah, Google Maps once directed Buttu to a closed gate where she says Israeli soldiers approached her car with their guns pointing toward her. “I had to explain I made a mistake,” she says. Google “optimizes for going on settler roads, which for me as a Palestinian, can be very dangerous.”

Bourdeau says Google does not distinguish between Palestinian and Israeli routes, as that would require knowing personal information about users, such as their citizenship.

When Google Maps leads her into settlements, Buttu says she speaks in English in the hopes of passing as a lost foreigner. Other Palestinian users tell WIRED that when they unexpectedly end up in risky areas, they try to turn around or backtrack as quickly as possible.

In other instances, Google Maps refuses to provide directions altogether, like when navigating between cities in the West Bank, including Hebron and Ramallah. Instead, the app tells them it “could not calculate driving directions.” (WIRED was able to replicate the same result.) One of the current Google employees says that’s because Google hasn’t invested in enabling directions between the West Bank’s three administrative areas, two of which are officially more controlled by Israeli authorities. Bourdeau, the Google spokesperson, says the company is working to address the issue.

New Challenges

Despite its drawbacks, users tell WIRED they still previously found Google Maps to be helpful in the region, especially when they traveled to unfamiliar places. Since the war began, though, they feel the app has become unbearable. Soon after the fighting started, Google shut off the ability to see an overview of live traffic in the region to protect “the safety of local communities.” Users now have to input a specific location to see traffic conditions along their route, adding a potentially additional step for some of them.

Two current Google employees also say that, due to shifting conditions on the ground during the war and an uptick in spam that tends to follow conflicts, Google hasn’t acted on many of the suggested edits submitted by employees and West Bank drivers, which alert the tech giant to problems like missing streets or places. That has caused road data on the app to become outdated over the past year. Bourdeau says Google applies updates when suggestions can be verified through reliable sources.

User contributions are important because Palestinian officials regularly adjust street regulations to keep traffic flowing on the windy and narrow roads that run through dense urban neighborhoods in the West Bank. “They will turn a two-way street into a one-way or vice versa,” Buttu says, referring specifically to officials in Ramallah. “Almost every time I go, the road has changed.”

Jalal Abukhater, an advocacy manager for 7amleh who regularly visits cities in the West Bank, says he can spot drivers he assumes are using Google Maps because they are the ones heading the wrong way on a one-way street. “It’s just awkward,” he says.

Another issue is that Google Maps, like other navigation services, has struggled to identify users’ current locations at times this year because Israeli forces are interfering with GPS signals in the region to stymie Hamas fighters. “Once or twice before the war, it wouldn’t recognize where I was,” Leila says. Now, half the time Google Maps locates her in Beirut, Lebanon, or Amman, Jordan instead of the West Bank, she says. Bourdeau says Google can’t speculate on the impact of the signal jamming because it doesn’t know when or where it occurs. A spokesperson for Israel’s military declined to comment.

Leila and the other users say alternative navigation apps aren’t necessarily any better. Some tell WIRED that Apple Maps is helpful in several West Bank cities, but it’s exclusive to iPhones, which are relatively rare in the territory. Google-owned Waze is another option, but users who spoke with WIRED say they have generally shied away from the app because it was founded in Israel. Bourdeau says the Waze team is spread across the world.

Many Palestinians have turned to Telegram channels, WhatsApp chats, Facebook groups, and an independent app called Azmeh—meaning traffic jam in Arabic—where they collectively share updates about traffic problems and new checkpoint locations. That information can then be used to manually plot routes. But the unpredictable nature of traveling in the West Bank means that people still need to incorporate up to three hours of buffer time in their schedules, Abukhater says.

These workarounds still fail. In September, Leila had to spend 30 minutes on the phone with someone who knew the area well to help find a friend’s house in an unfamiliar area of Jericho in the West Bank. A Palestinian tech worker living in Israel, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of concern for their employment, says that last month a one-hour trip ended up taking five hours because a checkpoint had closed earlier than expected and Google Maps had given no indication that was the case.

Buttu, the Palestinian attorney, is dreaming of the day Google Maps develops features that feel inclusive of her community. About a month ago, she says she used the app while driving in the West Bank to locate the nearest gas station in the hopes of finding a bathroom. Buttu says the gas station denied her companion access to the facilities, allegedly because she was Palestinian.

Google Maps lets businesses label themselves as LGBTQ-friendly or women-owned. To Buttu, a similar label on the app for establishments in the West Bank to highlight themselves as Palestinian-friendly would be not only a welcomed small gesture from the tech giant, but also perhaps a vital improvement to what is already one of the most difficult places to navigate in the world.

---

Paresh Dave is a senior writer for WIRED, covering the inner workings of Big Tech companies. He writes about how apps and gadgets are built and about their impacts while giving voice to the stories of the underappreciated and disadvantaged. He was previously a reporter for Reuters and the Los Angeles Times,... Read more Senior Writer

Israel planned pager attacks in Lebanon, Syria decade ago, says former Mossad officers

Israel has 'created a pretend world' in which there is an 'incredible array of possibilities of creating foreign companies that have no way of being traced back to Israel,' ex-Mossad agent tells CBS NEWS

Muhammed Yasin Güngör  | 23.12.2024 - Update : 23.12.2024

• Israel has 'created a pretend world' in which there is an 'incredible array of possibilities of creating foreign companies that have no way of being traced back to Israel,' ex-Mossad agent tells CBS NEWS
• To ensure their 'success' and convince Hezbollah to buy, Mossad also created fake advertisements promoting pagers as durable, long-lasting, and dustproof, says another operative

ISTANBUL 

Two former Israeli intelligence agency operatives have admitted that Mossad "controlled every aspect of the operation from behind the scenes" during the attacks on Lebanon and Syria in September, primarily Hezbollah, using explosives in messaging device pagers and walkie-talkies.  

Planning for the two-day reign of terror, particularly in Lebanon, which killed 30 and injured over 3,000 on September 17 and 18, began a decade ago by weaponizing walkie-talkies, according to former Mossad officers who spoke to CBS News with their names and voices changed and faces covered.

Hezbollah and Iran immediately pointed fingers at Israel for orchestrating the terror attacks, while Tel Aviv has yet to publicly admit responsibility.

Since walkie-talkies are only used on battlefields, Mossad sought to develop a device that Hezbollah could carry at all times—pagers, according to the two operatives, who spoke with CBS News in a program broadcast on Sunday.

One of the agents, Michael, not his real name to hide his identity, claimed Mossad used "shell companies" and manipulated supply chains to sell 5,000 pagers to Hezbollah by Sept. 2024 without the Lebanon-based group realizing the devices were made in Israel.

Michael said Israel has "created a pretend world" in which there is an "incredible array of possibilities of creating foreign companies that have no way of being traced back to Israel.”

The pagers were modified to conceal explosives that detonated when specific buttons were pressed.

To ensure their "success" and convince Hezbollah to buy, Mossad also created fake advertisements promoting the pagers as durable, long-lasting, and dustproof, according to Gabriel, the second agent under the not real name.

He underlined that even if the buttons were not pressed, the devices would still explode with the trigger from Israel.

Gabriel also detailed the “operation’s precision,” claiming that the devices were tested to injure only the target while causing minimal harm to those nearby. "Even if his wife or his daughter will be just next to him, he's the only one that's going to be harmed," Gabriel added.

However, reports from the September 17 explosions contradict this, with two children among those killed.

The following day, Hezbollah members using Mossad-supplied walkie-talkies were also targeted during funerals for pager victims, causing further casualties. Gabriel admitted that the attacks did not destroy Hezbollah but claimed it disrupted their chain of command. “Those people without hands and eyes are living proof, walking in Lebanon, of 'don't mess with us,'” he said.

While Gabriel acknowledged that Hezbollah was not completely destroyed, he said the attacks put it in a "very, very difficult situation," with no chain of command and many of its members injured.

Israel has not officially confirmed or refuted the officers' statements.

The accused CEO killer looked less like an Ivy League college graduate on Monday, and more like federal inmate Number 52503-511.

Michael Daly

Published Dec. 23 2024 9:44PM EST 

The effects of four days in the dreaded Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) were immediately apparent when Luigi Mangione was led into a 13th floor courtroom in Manhattan Supreme Court on Monday morning.

The 26-year-old had been clean shaven and freshly barbered on Thursday when he stepped onto a downtown Manhattan helipad from an NYPD helicopter. The orange prison uniform he had been issued after his arrest in Pennsylvania had made him distinct and memorable, meme-able amid a mass of cops and officials. His look had turned collegiate when he arrived in federal court later that day in a quarter zip sweater, white dress shirt and Khakis.

The only difference in his attire on Monday was that he now wore a maroon crew neck sweater. But his formerly smooth cheeks were stubbled and there was a darkening around his eyes. He was looking less like an Ivy League college graduate and much more like federal inmate Number 52503-511.

1. Is this a biologist or a journalist? His understanding of hair growth is unsurpassed.
2. I like how this guy really leans on the idea that incarceration isn't really for rich people

Several of the two dozen women and six men who filled the two spectator benches at the back wore masks in solidarity with the man accused of gunning down UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on a Manhattan sidewalk on December 4.

WOMEN

Groups of WOMEN

Sounds wicked, doesn't it?

At the time, Thompson had been walking along to an annual investor meeting as if nobody had any reason to bear him ill will. But his death triggered a remarkable online eruption of anger toward health insurers, Thompson’s company in particular. The killer left behind shell casings bearing the words deny, and defend and depose, an apparent nod to common health insurance tactics_._ UnitedHealthcare leads the industry in denials and many people theorized that the gunman was one of the millions of people who had suffered a loss as a result.

After police identified the fugitive behind the mask as Mangione, it appeared that he had no personal grievance with UnitiedHealthcare. But his good looks and what was widely viewed as a good cause contributed to a second online eruption, this time in support of someone accused of fatally shooting an unarmed and unsuspecting father of two in the back. It appeared that for some, handsome is as handsome does, whatever it does.

^^^ When your gf is more interested in looking at pictures of a murderer than talking to you.

All eyes in the courtroom were on Mangione Monday as he was escorted down the aisle of one of the least dingy courtrooms in the building. He was scrutinized in such detail that some observers noted his fingernails were short. There was discussion whether they were bitten down nearly to the nub or just clipped—but there was no discussion about whether one of those fingers had pulled the trigger. That seemed to have already been widely decided.

But as with any arraignment, Mangione retained the presumption of innocence when he was directed to a seat at the defense table with his lead attorney, Karen Friedman Agnifilo. She was also wearing a white shirt and a maroon sweater. Her husband, attorney Marc Agnifilo, took a seat at the end of the table.

Mangione entered the same plea he had in federal court on Friday, where charges related to the same killing carry a possible death penalty.

“Not guilty,” he said.

I bet you didn't guess we'd go down this path:

The judge was Gregory Carro. He is the son of legendary jurist John Carro, the first Puerto Rican on the New York State Court of Appeals. The elder Carro started as a probation officer in the Bronx and handled a case involving 13-year-old Lee Harvey Oswald.

After the 1963 Kennedy assassin, John Carro testified before the Warren Commission that the teenaged Oswald had been a friendless chronic truant being raised by a mother who seemed overwhelmed after the death of his father two years before. Oswald had missed 47 days of school between October and January.

“This boy was in a potentially dangerous situation in so far as he was only 13 years of age, and he was not attending school at all,” John Carro said. “All he wanted to do was just remain home and watch television. He would begin watching television from nine o’clock in the morning till about four o’clock in the afternoon. And to me, this seemed unnatural and abnormal and that he was really not speaking to anybody. He was just actually living in a world of fantasy or just an illusory world.”

Anybody who heard that got a clue to how Oswald grew up to kill President Kennedy. It remains a mystery how the popular academic superachiever Mnagione ended up before the younger Judge Carro charged with murder in the first degree. He is said to have loving parents, many friends, and appears to be widely read. And while he has written online about painful back problems, the operation appears to have been largely successful. Notably, he was not enrolled in UnitedHealthcare, according to police.

But Mangione is reported to have gone dark some months ago, disappearing from friends and family. His mother finally filed a missing person report on him in San Francisco on Nov. 18, two weeks and two days before a masked man identified as Magione gunned down Thompson.

More important information:

Often, big time accused killers are known by their middle as well as first and last names; John Wilkes Booth, John Wayne Gacy, Mark David Chapman and, of course, Lee Harvey Oswald. But nobody in the younger Judge Carro’s courtroom on Monday was speaking about Luigi Nathan Mangione.

After her client pleaded not guilty, Friedman Agnifilo expressed that her client’s right to a fair trial has been jeopardized by what she described as a tug of war between city and federal officials.

“He’s a young man and he is being treated like a human ping pong ball between two warring jurisdictions here,” she said, placing her right hand ton Mangiano’s left shoulder.

She went on, “They’re literally treating him like he’s some sort of political fodder, like some sort of spectacle. He was on display for everyone to see in the biggest staged perp walk I’ve ever seen in my career. “

She was speaking of Mangionme’s staged welcome at the helipad on Thursday.

“There was no reason for the NYPD and everybody to have these big assault rifles that frankly, I had no idea it was in their arsenal. That, and to have all of the press there, the media there, it was like perfectly choreographed.”

When you really need word count:

She was not done.

“And what was the New York City mayor doing at this press conference? Your Honor, that just made it utterly political.”

She observed that the courts had ruled perp walks unrelated to legitimate law enforcement purposes to be unconstitutional.

“I submit there was zero law enforcement objective to do that sort of perp walk,” she continued, “And frankly, your Honor, the mayor should know more than anyone of the presumption of innocence that he too is afforded when he is dealing with his own issues.”

She was clearly referring to Adams’ indictment for bribery and campaign finance violations.

In fact, on the same day as Mangione’s massive perp walk, Adams’ closest advisor, Ingrid Lewis-Martin, was herself charged with bribery.

“I submit that he was just trying to detract from those issues by making a spectacle of Mr. Mangione,” Friedman Agniiflo continued.

She cited Adams’ stated reason for being there.

“He said, ‘I wanted to send a strong message with the police commissioner that we’re leading from the front. I’m not gonna just allow him to come into our city. I wanted to look him in the eye and state. You carried out this terrorist act in my city, the City of New York that I love.’”

She noted that one word the mayor did not use was “alleged.” She signaled that she is going all in for her client.

“We’re going to fight these charges, whether it’s in the state or federal, to the fullest extent,” she declared.

For whatever reasons, nobody in Managione’s large family—he has 36 first cousins—seems to have been in the courtroom. But the judge had allowed a camera into the proceedings and if they watched the footage, they had reason to feel he has the right lead counsel.

The time came to schedule the next hearing, and the judge suggested Monday, Feb. 10.

“My co-counsel is going to have a trial and has Fridays off,” Friedman Agnifilo said.

Marc Agnifilo represents Sean “Diddy” Combs, who is scheduled to be on trial in Manhattan federal court on sex trafficking and racketeering charges. Carro set the hearing date for Friday, Feb. 21.

At one point on Monday when he was signing some papers, Mangione began to smile as he had in a fateful surveillance video in an uptown hostel that police say led to his identification and capture. But this grin was of much lower wattage and it immediately faded into a visage that on Friday still had some of the flush of a youth full of possibility.

For the accused killer known online simply as Luigi, the holidays are expected to mark his transfer from the dreaded federal MDC to the dreaded city-run Rikers Island.

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