90 Miles From Tyranny

Thursday, August 16, 2018

Chinese hackers targeted U.S. firms, government after trade mission: researchers

WASHINGTON/LONDON (Reuters) - Hackers operating from an elite Chinese university probed American companies and government departments for espionage opportunities following a U.S. trade delegation visit to China earlier this year, security researchers told Reuters.

Cybersecurity firm Recorded Future said the group used computers at China’s Tsinghua University to target U.S. energy and communications companies, and the Alaskan state government, in the weeks before and after Alaska’s trade mission to China. Led by Governor Bill Walker, companies and economic development agencies spent a week in China in May.

Organizations involved in the trade mission were subject to focused attention from Chinese hackers, underscoring the tensions around an escalating tit-for-tat trade war between Washington and Beijing.

China was Alaska’s largest foreign trading partner in 2017 with over $1.32 billion in exports.

Recorded Future said in a report to be released later on Thursday that the websites of Alaskan internet service providers and government offices were closely inspected in May by university computers searching for security flaws, which can be used by hackers to break into normally locked and confidential systems.

The Alaskan government was again scanned for software vulnerabilities in June, just 24 hours after Walker said he would raise concerns in Washington about the economic damage caused by the U.S.-China trade dispute.

A Tsinghua University official, reached by telephone, said the allegations were false.

“This is baseless. I’ve never heard of this, so I have no way to give a response,” said the official, who declined to give his name.

Tsinghua University, known as “China’s MIT,” is closely connected to Tsinghua Holdings, a state-backed company focused on the development of various technologies, including artificial intelligence and...

Dozens of daily newspapers are banding together to publish the same basic tirade against the chief executive's criticism of the presss

“Unprecedented” has become one of those terms grossly overused by the national news media in its nearly endless negative coverage of President Donald Trump. This week, however, it is accurate, not as it applies to the president, but rather to the media itself.

Scores of newspapers have agreed to make a preplanned attack on the White House Thursday under the guise of ‘coordinated response’ all using the same talking points. It’s certainly unprecedented in my lifetime to see groupthink take over more than 100 newspapers all at once.

The issue is the president’s ongoing war with the press and his recent comments referring to “fake news” as the “enemy of the people,” I agree with their anger and resentment at being labeled as such but aren’t these papers, including The New York Times, Washington Post and Detroit Free Press, underscoring exactly what is wrong with the institution in the first place?

I mean reciting chapter and verse from the very same anti-Trump hymnal and regurgitating nearly identical talking points underscores one of the very criticisms people have of the media today, which is they only care about destroying Trump, no matter what it takes.

Remember, these are many of the same papers that targeted Sinclair Broadcasting because that company sent talking points to it’s local affiliates to read concerning its news guidelines to ensure balanced coverage of stories and for dealing with ‘fake news.’

During its coverage of that story, the Washington Post described Sinclair as ‘the most insidious force in local news’ but this week will join more than 100 other papers in a mass display of groupthink and strangely will not believe it hypocritical at all.

Is the press the enemy of the people? Maybe not but having scores of newspapers duplicate nearly identical talking points for all isn’t exactly making you a champion of the people either. Where is this ‘independent press’ anyway?Many of these same papers have been the worst offenders when it comes to...

You have come across a mystery box. But what is inside?

It could be literally anything from the serene to the horrific,

from the beautiful to the repugnant,

from the mysterious to the familiar.

If you decide to open it, you could be disappointed,

you could be inspired, you could be appalled.

This is not for the faint of heart or the easily offended.

You have been warned.

Wednesday, August 15, 2018

8/15/18: White House Press Briefing

Girls With Guns

HISTORY: In 2017 A Photographer Captured The Moment An ANTIFA Member Captured An Actual FASCIST...

Who Is The Fascist?

The Fascist Roots of the American Left

Fascist Georgia Teacher Orders Students To Leave For Wearing Trump Shirts

Nigel Farage: Those that scream the word 'fascist' have now become the fascists themselves.

How To Know When You Are A Fascist...

The Big Lie: Conservatives Opposing the Fascist Left are the Real Anti-Fascists

Toronto Shooting: Politically Correct Cover-Up?

The Hussain "family statement" was not written by the murderer's parents at all, but rather by Mohammed Hashim, a professional activist connected with the National Council of Canadian Muslims. Its American parent organization, as stated in its own documents, is CAIR, designated as a terrorist entity by the United Arab Emirates.
Contrary to what Hashim purportedly wrote in the statement, there is no evidence that Hussain was diagnosed with or treated for a mental illness, even after one of his high-school teachers reported to the police 10 years ago that Hussain had said "I want to kill someone... I just feel it would be really cool to kill somebody."
Given the global climate, to which Canada most certainly has not been immune -- as well as Hussain's dubious connections -- the attempt by the government and the media to dismiss potential links to terrorist groups or inspiration from jihadist ideologies, is both premature and politically transparent.

On July 22, two youngsters -- 18-year-old Reese Fallon and 10-year-old Julianna Kozis -- were killed, and another 13 people, ranging in age from 17 to 59, were wounded in a brutal shooting attack at a number of restaurants on Danforth Avenue, in Toronto's popular Greektown neighborhood. The perpetrator, who was later identified as Faisal Hussain, killed himself after exchanging gunfire with police.

Hussain's firing stance and ability to reload his 40-caliber Smith and Wessonhandgun while on the move suggested that he had experience with firearms.

The following morning, the Toronto Police Service issued a statement that indicated they had already identified the shooter, yet did not release his name until later that afternoon. Meanwhile, a statement allegedly from the Hussain family made the rounds in a number of news outlets.

The statement read, in part:

...We are utterly devastated by the incomprehensible news that our son was responsible for the senseless violence and loss of life that took place on the Danforth.

Our son had severe mental health challenges, struggling with psychosis and depression his entire life.

The interventions of professionals were unsuccessful. Medications and therapy were unable to treat him.

While we did our best to seek help for him throughout his life of struggle and pain, we could never imagine that this would be his devastating and destructive end...

Much of the media, led by the CBC and the Toronto Star, accepted this version of the tragedy, and asserted that the mass shooting had not been a terrorist attack, while blaming a breakdown in the mental-health-care system for Hussain's actions and calling for stricter gun-control regulations.

Canadian Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said of Hussain, "There is no connection between that individual and national security."

It emerged, however, that the so-called Hussain "family statement" had not been written by the murderer's parents at all, but rather by Mohammed Hashim, a professional activist who served as chairman of the "Stronger Together" program of the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM, formerly the Council of American Islamic Relations Canada or CAIR CAN). Its American parent organization, as stated in its own documents, is CAIR, designated as a terrorist entity by the United Arab Emirates.

CAIR was also identified as an unindicted co-conspirator in an American terrorism-funding trial whose judge determined it to be one of many organizations involved in funding Hamas.

In 2016, Hashim was instrumental in getting the Toronto Star to stop using the term "Islamic State" and refer to the terrorist group only as "Daesh," presumably to dissociate Islam from terrorism.

In 2017, Hashim was a speaker at an event held at the ISNA Islamic Centre of Canada facility in Toronto. (Three years earlier, the ISNA Development Foundation lost its status as a charity on the grounds that it had been funding terrorism.)

In addition, contrary to what Hashim purportedly wrote in the statement, there is no evidence that Hussain was diagnosed with or treated for a mental illness, even after one of his high-school teachers reported to the police 10 years ago that Hussain had said "I want to kill someone... I just feel it would be really cool to kill somebody." Although he was apprehended at the time under the Mental Health Act, he was released and deemed as not an immediate threat.

As for Faisal Hussain's actual family: Faisal has a brother, Fahad, who -- while awaiting trial for crack-dealing -- overdosed last summer on a cocktail of cocaine and heroin, leaving him in a vegetative state. Both Faisal and Fahad were friends with 33-year-old Maisum Ansari, who, according to the Toronto Sun, "was charged last September with possessing 53 kilograms of carfentanil, an analog of fentanyl and 100 times stronger than the painkiller and notoriously deadly street narcotic... the largest such seizure of the synthetic opioid in Canadian history."

During the investigation into Ansari's drug operations, police discovered a weapons cache in the basement of his rented-out house. This is possibly an example of the intersection of the drug trade and terrorism. Furthermore, carfentanil, specifically, has been of concern to the US government as a...