Failing upward? After botched Venezuelan regime-change, Elliott Abrams picked as Iran rep

The US is putting Iran on regime-change notice, appointing Iran-Contra convict Elliott Abrams as Special Representative for Iran in addition to his duties as Special Representative for Venezuela, a State Department release shows.

Abrams, who oversaw a series of failed coups in Venezuela both in the past year and during the botched 2002 coup against then-President Hugo Chavez, will take over from Brian Hook, who has “decided to step down,” according to a press release from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Pompeo lauded Hook’s efforts in the statement, declaring he had “achieved historic results countering the Iranian regime.” The outgoing official oversaw the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Tehran, leveling sanction upon sanction against the Islamic Republic after withdrawing the US from the JCPOA nuclear deal in 2018. Hook praised his own record to the New York Times on Thursday, declaring that “by almost every metric, the regime and its terrorist proxies are weaker than three and a half years ago.”

“We have been very successful,” he said.

Tensions between the two countries nearly spiraled into war in January after a US airstrike killed Quds Force leader Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, provoking a barrage of missiles from Iran targeting two coalition bases in Iraq. The US has also flooded the Persian Gulf with military assets and placed bounties on Iranian ships and other military assets.

Abrams has been a ubiquitous presence in the US’ regime-change efforts in Latin America, helping to replace left-leaning governments with right-wing dictatorships in El Salvador and Guatemala and attempting similar makeovers in Nicaragua and Venezuela. In 1991, he pleaded guilty to two minor criminal counts regarding the Iran-Contra scandal, in which the CIA illegally funneled weapons to the Nicaraguan Contras. However, he was subsequently pardoned by then-President George HW Bush and went on to continue undermining democratically-elected governments under George W. Bush and Donald Trump.

The promotion comes ahead of a hotly-anticipated UN Security Council vote on extending the arms embargo on Iran. If the measure does not pass, the US has threatened to trigger “snapback” sanctions agreed upon as part of the 2015 nuclear deal - despite having pulled out of the deal years ago and therefore lacking an ability to enforce its provisions as a “participating nation.”

https://www.rt.com/news/497301-elliott-abrams-iran-representative/

THIS IS CRIMINAL: Facebook Bans Committee to Defend Trump From Running Ads UNTIL NOVEMBER 1 — Two Days Before Election!

It’s no secret that Facebook, Twitter, Google, YouTube etc. are censoring and banning conservative content.

We have written about this numerous times at The Gateway Pundit.

In September 2018 The Gateway Pundit’s Jim Hoft testified before Congress on Facebook targeting.

Facebook has flattened conservative content since January 2017. Most of the top pro-Trump Facebook pages from 2016 were put out of business by Facebook.

But the tech giants continue to censor and ban conservative content without any fear of retribution.

On Thursday Facebook announced it was banning the Committee to Defend Trump from running ANY FACEBOOK ADS until November 1, 2020 — or two days before the election.

Via the far left Daily Beast:

So far this election cycle the Committee to Defend Trump PAC has spent over $7.5 million in defense of President Trump.

Now they will no longer be able to post ads on Facebook!

The company took action against the account for the Committee to Defend the President, a political action committee which began in 2013 as an anti-Hillary Clinton group but which has since changed its focus to pro-Trump activism.

“As a result of the Committee to Defend the President’s repeated sharing of content determined by third-party fact-checkers to be false, they will not be permitted to advertise for a period of time,” Facebook said in a statement.

The committee has spent roughly $325,000 on ads supporting President Trump and conservative causes between May 2018 and August 2020, according to Facebook’s ad database. Its founders have spent nearly $10 million in support of President Trump and his reelection in 2020 according to campaign finance records.

It is clear this is electioneering by Facebook.

Republicans need to stop this assault on our First Amendment rights before it’s too late.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/08/criminal-facebook-bans-committee-defend-trump-running-ads-november-1-two-days-election/

Capital One Bank Hit With $80 Million Fine Over Cybersecurity Issues, Hacking Incident

Capital One will also have to upgrade its cybersecurity defenses

Paige A. Thompson, a former employee of Amazon Web Services, broke through Capital One’s firewall to access private data

That hack affected more than 106 million people in the U.S. and Canada

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) said on Thursday that it slapped an $80 million fine against Capital One Bank related to a data breach incident from 2019 that impacted more than 100 million people.

The fine was assessed over the bank’s failure to establish “effective risk assessment processes prior to migrating significant information technology operations to the public cloud environment” as well as the bank's “failure to correct the deficiencies in a timely manner.”

OCC is an independent bureau within the U.S. Department of the Treasury.

OCC noted that while it “encourages responsible innovation” in all the banks it supervises, “sound risk management and internal controls are critical to ensuring bank operations remain safe and sound and adequately protect their customers.”

Capital One will also have to upgrade its cybersecurity defenses and offer a plan to the Federal Reserve within 90 days detailing such measures.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the fine relates to a hack that caused a massive data breach at Capital One in 2019.

But the bank said it has already made changes to its cybersecurity structures.

“The controls we put in place before last year’s [hacking] incident enabled us to secure our data before any customer information could be used or disseminated and helped authorities quickly arrest the hacker,” the bank stated. “In the year since the incident, we have invested significant additional resources into further strengthening our cyberdefenses, and have made substantial progress in addressing the requirements of these orders.”

Prosecutors said a woman named Paige A. Thompson, a former employee of Amazon Web Services, broke through Capital One’s firewall to access data it stored on Amazon’s cloud service. That hack exposed information including addresses, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, credit scores and incomes of individuals and small business owners who had applied for Capital One credit cards between 2005 and early 2019.

Fox News reported that hack affected more than 106 million people in the U.S. and Canada, making it one of the biggest data breaches in history.

Thompson has since pleaded not guilty to charges of wire fraud, computer fraud and abuse. Her trial is slated to commence next year.

https://www.ibtimes.com/capital-one-bank-hit-80-million-fine-over-cybersecurity-issues-hacking-incident-3024082