Friday, February 7, 2020
The 90 Miles Mystery Video: Nyctophilia Edition #192
Before You Click On The "Read More" Link,
Please Only Do So If You Are Over 21 Years Old.
If You are Easily Upset, Triggered Or Offended, This Is Not The Place For You.
Please Leave Silently Into The Night......
The 90 Miles Mystery Box: Episode #890
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.
Thursday, February 6, 2020
Top U.S. Officials To Spotlight Chinese Spy Operations, Pursuit Of American Secrets
In 2019 alone, public records show U.S. authorities arrested and expelled two Chinese diplomats who allegedly drove onto a military base in Virginia. They also caught and jailed former CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency officials on espionage charges linked to China.
On Thursday, U.S. Attorney General William Barr, FBI director Christopher Wray and U.S. counterintelligence chief William Evanina will address a Washington conference on U.S. efforts to counter Chinese “economic malfeasance” involving espionage and the theft of U.S. technological and scientific secrets.
China’s efforts to steal unclassified American technology, ranging from military secrets to medical research, have long been thought to be extensive and aggressive, but U.S. officials only launched a broad effort to stop alleged Chinese espionage in the United States in 2018.
“The theft of American trade secrets by China costs our nation anywhere from $300 to $600 billion in a year,” Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, said in advance of Thursday’s conference.
The Chinese embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Of 137 publicly reported instances of Chinese-linked espionage against the United States since 2000, 73% took place in the last decade, according to the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
The think-tank’s data, which excludes cases of intellectual property litigation and attempts to smuggle munitions or controlled technologies, shows that military and commercial technologies are the most common targets for theft.
In the area of medical research, of 180 investigations into misuse of National Institutes of Health funds, diversion of research intellectual property and inappropriate sharing of confidential information, more than 90% of the cases have links to China, according to an NIH spokeswoman.
One main reason Chinese espionage, including extensive hacking in cyberspace, has expanded is that “China depends on Western technology and as licit avenues are closed, they turn to espionage to get...
Islam's Hidden Role in the Transatlantic Slave Trade
From its inception, Islam's history with the West has been one of unwavering antagonism and seismic clashes, often initiated by the former. By the standards of history, nothing between the two civilizations is as well documented as this long war. Accordingly, for more than a millennium, both educated and not so educated Europeans knew — the latter perhaps instinctively — that Islam was a militant creed that for centuries attacked and committed atrocities in their homelands, all in the name of "holy war," or jihad.
These facts have been radically "updated" in recent times. According to the dominant narrative — as upheld by mainstream media and Hollywood, pundits and politicians, academics and "experts" of all stripes — Islam was historically progressive and peaceful, whereas premodern Europe was fanatical and predatory.
Whatever else can be said about such topsy-turvy claims — and there is much — they raise the question: if such a formerly well known, well documented, and bloody history could be revised in a manner that presents its antithesis as the truth — with little objection or challenge — what then of Islam's more subtle but also negative influences on history, the sort that, unlike the aforementioned centuries of violence, are not copiously documented or readily obvious but require serious historical investigation?
Take Islam's role in facilitating the transatlantic slave trade — which is otherwise almost always presented as an exclusively European enterprise.
Slavery is, of course, as old as humanity. Centuries before the coming of Islam, Europeans — Athenians, Spartans, Romans — were fully engaged in the slave trade. With the coming of Christianity, and as it spread all throughout the Roman and post-Roman empire (circa fourth–seventh centuries), the institution of slavery was on its way to becoming extinct.
Then Islam came. While hardly the first to exploit human flesh, it was the most effective to perfect and thrive on it in the post classical, medieval, premodern, and even modern eras — with untold millions of non-Muslims enslaved throughout the centuries (one source indicates that 15 million Europeans alone were enslaved).
As usual, it was only natural for those near and in constant contact with Islam to be infected by the same vice of dehumanizing — and taking advantage of — the "other." After all, the few instances of Christians in Europe buying and selling slaves are largely limited to the long war with Islam. Malta's Knights of Saint John, for instance, responded to Islamic slave raids by enslaving the raiders and other Muslims. Similarly, those Europeans who first became involved in the African slave trade, the Spanish and Portuguese, were also the ones who for centuries lived side by side with — often in violence and themselves enslaved to — Muslims (those of al-Andalus).
Islamic slave raids into Africa began in the mid- to late seventh century. Then, according to Muslim records, astronomical numbers of Africans — in the millions — were enslaved in the name of jihad. By the time seafaring Europeans reached the coasts of West Africa, the Islamic slave trade was bustling.
While most Western historians are aware that it was African "tribesmen" who captured and sold enemy tribesmen to Europeans, left unmentioned is that the "tribal" differences often revolved around who was and was...
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