On Afghanistan, Top 2020 Democrats Offered Only One Solution: Trump’s

The cluttered field of 2020 Democrat candidates for president spent the past two days striving to distinguish themselves from President Donald Trump and each other; a feat easily achieved on issues like immigration, healthcare, and climate change.

On America’s oldest war, however, most attempted to bash President Trump’s approach to Afghanistan while offering words uncannily similar to what Trump has said as both presidential candidate and commander-in-chief.

CNN’s debate moderators spent precious little time on foreign policy, preferring instead to ask the two sets of candidates questions like “Why isn’t this sweeping plan to fight the climate crisis realistic?” and “Why are you the best candidate to heal the racial divide … stoked by the president’s racist rhetoric?”

On both nights, however, they finally mentioned the 18-year-old war in Afghanistan deep into the third hour of debate. The Afghanistan question did not make for compelling television, as if offered little room for the candidates to attack each other’s records or disagree.

The top tier candidates almost avoided the question entirely. Former Vice President Joe Biden mumbled something about opposing the surge while struggling against attacks related to his support for the Iraq War. Socialist lawmaker Bernie Sanders (I-VT), tellingly, claimed that the major difference between his foreign policy and the president’s is that “Trump is a pathological liar.” He then promised not to “denigrate” the United Nations and “bring countries together,” but did not challenge Trump’s specific policy on Afghanistan.

The lower-tier Democrats got a little more specific. Failed Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke (D-TX) promised to withdraw from Afghanistan during his first term. Moderator Jake Tapper set Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg’s deadline to withdraw at slightly sooner – his first year in office – and Buttigieg complied. Others, like Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI), implied they would withdraw from Afghanistan immediately, but did not specify whether immediately meant they would do so within their first term, year, day, or hour in office.

“We have to do the right thing, end these wasteful regime change wars, and bring our troops home,” Gabbard said, before accusing President Trump of supporting al-Qaeda.

https://www.breitbart.com/asia/2019/08/01/on-afghanistan-top-2020-democrats-offered-only-one-solution-trump/

Wars never END because ISRAEL doesn't want them to ans the US is their BITCH

Liberal Watchdog Group That Targeted Google And Devin Nunes Paid Fusion GPS $140K For Research

A liberal watchdog group that has investigated the Trump administration, companies like Google and Republican California Rep. Devin Nunes hired Fusion GPS for research last year.

The Campaign for Accountability paid Fusion GPS nearly $140,000 for research.

CfA, as the watchdog is known, filed three ethics complaints against Nunes, including one accusing the Republican of leaking information about Fusion GPS. Despite that, CfA’s executive director denies hiring Fusion GPS to go after Nunes.

A liberal watchdog group that has investigated the Trump administration, Republican lawmakers like California Rep. Devin Nunes and Google paid Fusion GPS nearly $140,000 last year, according to tax documents filed with the Internal Revenue Service.

The payment, by Campaign for Accountability (CfA), was for research on an unknown project.

Fusion GPS is best known for its work with Christopher Steele, the former British spy who authored a dossier alleging a vast conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russian government. Perkins Coie, the law firm that represented the Clinton campaign and DNC, paid Fusion GPS more than $1 million for the project. Fusion also conducts research and provides media outreach on behalf of corporate clients, law firms and activist groups such as Planned Parenthood.

CfA was formed in 2015 by several former employees of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), another liberal watchdog group. The group describes itself as a “nonpartisan, nonprofit watchdog organization that uses research, litigation, and aggressive communications to expose misconduct and malfeasance in public life.”

CfA’s $138,684 payment to Fusion GPS was for work as an independent contractor, according to CfA’s Form 990 filing. The document does not reveal the date of payment, and CfA’s donors are not disclosed.

CfA filed numerous ethics complaints and lawsuits last year, while publishing reports criticizing Google and BlackRock, the largest investment firm in the U.S. CfA has two offshoot groups dedicated to researching the two companies: the Google Transparency Project and the BlackRock Transparency Project.

Two of CfA’s main targets in the Trump administration were Alex Azar, the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, and Scott Pruitt, the former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. The watchdog filed multiple ethics complaints against the pair.

Its two biggest congressional targets are both Republicans.

Republican Idaho Sen. Mike Crapo was hit with several complaints over alleged campaign funding issues. CfA filed three ethics complaints last year against Nunes, the top Republican on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI).

One of the complaints, filed on Jan. 25, 2018 with the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE), accused Nunes of leaking confidential information about Fusion GPS and its founders’ testimony before HPSCI.

https://dailycaller.com/2019/08/01/liberal-watchdog-fusion-gps-trump/

Russian embassy in Syria back online after Twitter ban

Russia’s embassy in Damascus is back on Twitter, after it had its account temporarily suspended. The reasoning behind the short-lived ban is still unclear.

The embassy celebrated the reinstatement of tweeting rights on Wednesday evening, with staff thanking supporters for raising awareness about the ban. “Stay with us and encourage your friends to join,” the account tweeted, “as further on in such surcumstances (sic) we'll need much stronger backup.”

Earlier, the embassy’s account was abruptly suspended, with Twitter giving no explanation, save for a note that it “suspends accounts which violate the Twitter Rules.” The suspension did, however, come after the embassy posted a video criticizing the controversial ‘White Helmets,’ a Syrian civil-defense organization supposedly linked to jihadist rebels and terror organizations like Al-Qaeda.

Russia’s embassy in South Africa blasted Twitter’s “thought police” for the ban, while the Russian Foreign Ministry called the action “an act of censorship and a flagrant violation of freedom of speech.”

Meanwhile, the US embassy in Damascus still enjoys its verified status and all the blue-checkmark privileges that come with it, despite not occupying a physical building since 2012.

https://www.rt.com/news/465507-russian-embassy-syria-back-online/

Michael Moore: America Needs ‘Street Fighter’ Michelle Obama to Run and ‘Crush’ Trump

Left-wing activist and documentary filmmaker Michael Moore has urged former First Lady Michelle Obama to run for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, describing her as a “street fighter” who could “crush” President Donald Trump.

“Let’s get out the Democratic base of young people, women, and people of color.” Moore said in a post-Democratic debate interview on MSNBC on Wednesday. “The worst thing to do is to moderate, to go to the center, and to think that’s how we’re going to win. This is how we’re going to lose.”

“And it will happen again if we don’t run the right candidate,” the Oscar-winner continued. “A beloved American who’s not an inside-the-beltway politician type person, but somebody who’s going to be a street fighter and fight for that 70 percent majority that’s going to take us back into the White House.”

When pressed on who that candidate could be, Moore was clear about who he thinks is best placed to win back the White House in 2020.

“Who can crush Trump? Who is the street fighter? We saw it in Bernie last night. Who is the street fighter that can crush Trump?” he said. “And frankly, I think there’s a person that could do this, if the election were held today, there is one person that would crush Trump. And she hasn’t announced yet. And her last name rhymes with Obama.”

“In fact, it is Obama. Michelle Obama. Everybody watching this right now knows she is a beloved American and she would go in there and she would beat him,” Moore said. “She would beat him in the debates, he wouldn’t be able to bully her, he wouldn’t be able to nickname her and she is beloved.”

https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2019/08/01/michael-moore-america-needs-street-fighter-michelle-obama-to-run-and-crush-trump/

Twilight of the Eco-Loons. Environmentalism Has Reached Peak Absurdity and Hypocrisy

This was the week when the global environmental movement reached peak hypocrisy, peak lunacy, peak absurdity.

Consider the evidence:

Dozens of Hollywood A-listers, pop stars and royalty including Leonardo Di Caprio, Katy Perry and Prince Harry raise awareness of global warming by flying to Sicily in 114 private jets to attend a Google Camp on the theme of climate change. Did they think – what? – that we wouldn’t notice the irony here?

Prince Harry confides that he is only going to have two children by his current wife – ex-Suits actress and Vogue editor Meghan Markle – because any more would apparently be bad for the planet. (This is the same Meghan Markle – aka the Duchess of Sussex – who flew home by private jet earlier this year after travelling to New York for a baby shower)

Barefoot Prince Harry Warns World: Climate Change Must Be Addressed https://t.co/9q7Zkbfqau

— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) August 1, 2019

Three eco-warriors plucked from Extinction Rebellion’s street protests to model for Stella McCartney’s new fashion campaign are revealed by the Mail on Sunday to have racked up 135,000 air miles between them in recent years on their vital mission to save the planet.

Pig-tailed activist Greta Thunberg announces she is to cross the Atlantic in the most eco-friendly way possible: on a yacht built of environmentally toxic carbon-fibre at the height of the hurricane season.

Environmental activists from a group called Reclaim the Power chain themselves to what they imagine to be the London headquarters of power station Drax… only to discover, belatedly, that the building in fact now belongs to one of Europe’s leading renewable energy companies.

Truly environmental stupidity is the gift that goes on giving…

Meanwhile, in the real world, the climate stubbornly refuses to do what the greenies would like it to do – so they have to fabricate the evidence instead.

In Germany, what was reported as an all time record temperature high during last week’s heat wave, turned out to come from a weather station so badly sited that one expert estimated that the Urban Heat Island effect could be exaggerating its temperature recordings by as much as 3 degrees centigrade.

In Cambridge in the UK, similarly record-breaking highs trumpeted by the BBC, turned out to come from a similarly encroached urban site “too compromised to do anything more than supply approximate figures, rather than scientifically valid ones to tenths of a degree.”

Climate Wunderkind Greta Slammed for Wearing Far-Left Extremist Antifa Shirt https://t.co/rOTNhr2PaR

— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) July 31, 2019

A study by Nicola Scafetta estimates that as much as half of the 0.8 degrees C warming in China since the 1940s could be the result of urbanisation rather than ‘climate change.’

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/08/01/twilight-of-the-eco-loons-environmental-activism-jumps-the-shark/

Irish Central Bank Says Country Needs More Migrants to Keep Wages Down

The Central Bank of Ireland believes that not enough migrants are arriving to have a “wage-dampening effect”, and that “if wages are not downwardly flexible” it could become a “concern”.

The Irish central bank, roughly equivalent to the Bank of England in the United Kingdom or the Federal Reserve in the United States but less independent insofar as it is subject to the European System of Central Banks, under the broad purview of the European Central Bank (ECB), insisted that the country is “is likely to require significant inflows of workers from abroad over the coming years, provided the economy remains on a favourable growth trajectory”.

Reports published by the Bank recall that mass immigration “was a major feature of the Irish labour market during the period from 2004 to 2007” — before the financial crash — but that while net migration “increased to 34,000 in 2018, the third consecutive year of strong gains”, the inflow now skews towards more highly-skilled migrants, allowing wages to rise.

“As the supply of labour is scarce relative to demand, workers’ bargaining power increases and the price of labour increases,” the report notes, claiming that that “sustained increases in net inward migration will be needed in the coming years to ensure that growth will be not impeded by labour supply constraints.”

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2019/08/01/irish-central-bank-country-needs-more-migrants-keep-pay-down-despite-housing-shortage/

Germany Demands Italy Open Ports as NGO Picks up More Migrants

German interior minister Horst Seehofer has requested Italy re-open ports to migrant transport vessels as NGOs ramp up operations off the coast of Libya.

The German minister had asked Italian populist interior minister Matteo Salvini what the point of closing ports was when many migrants have eventually ended up in Italy, Il Giornale reports.

“I want to avoid the same pattern being repeated every time, with a ship with migrants waiting for eight or 14 days in front of Italy’s coasts and Salvini who does not want them to go ashore. But it always ends up docking anyway, either because migrants collapse, get sick, or there are pregnant women,” Seehofer said.

Seehofer’s words come as the Italian coastguard vessel, the Gregoretti, spent five days with migrants on board before a deal was reached Wednesday afternoon to have the migrants distributed to six different countries including Germany and France.

Matteo Salvini responded to his German counterpart’s comments, saying: “We are not opening anything, the ports remain closed.”

“We are not the refugee camp in Europe,” Mr Salvini added.

The response echoes similar comments made by Salvini last week in response to French President Emmanuel Macron who slammed the Italian minister for not attending a conference on migration in Paris.

“Italy will not be your refugee camp… There is the port of Marseille, don’t come and put pressure on us. If you expect us to sign a document where ships arrive in Italy, you are wrong. Italians are no longer going to be anyone’s slaves,” Salvini said.

Despite ongoing court cases against several NGOs and their captains, such as German NGO Sea Watch’s Carola Rackette and Pia Klemp, NGO activity has increased off the Libyan coast.

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2019/08/01/germany-demands-italy-open-ports-ngo-picks-up-more-migrants/

Apple iMessage Flaw Allows Remote Attackers to Read iPhone Messages

Remote exploitation can be achieved with no user interaction.

Five bugs in Apple’s iMessage service for the iPhone have been uncovered that require no user interaction to exploit, including one that would allow remote attackers to access content stored on iOS devices.

First discovered by Google Project Zero security researcher Natalie Silvanovich, Apple has fully patched four of the flaws as part of the 12.4 iOS update.

CVE-2019-8646 is the bug that allows an attacker to read files off a remote device with no user interaction. An exploit could leak the SMS database, binary files like images and more. Silvanovich has made a proof-of-concept public for the flaw.

In the bug description, the researcher explained where the issue lies: “The class _NSDataFileBackedFuture can be deserialized even if secure encoding is enabled. This class is a file-backed NSData object that loads a local file into memory when the [NSData bytes] selector is called.”

This presents two problems, she added: opening up access to local files if the code deserializing the buffer ever shares it; and, it allows an NSData object to be created with a length that is different than the length of its byte array.

In the latter case, “this violates a very basic property that should always be true of NSData objects,” Silvanovich explained. “This can allow out-of-bounds reads, and could also potentially lead to out-of-bounds writes, as it is now possible to create NSData objects with very large sizes that would not be possible if the buffer was backed.”

Since the potential for information exfiltration is significant, iOS users should take care to upgrade to the latest version as soon as possible.

“Apple publishes less granular details about the distribution of iOS versions than Google does for Android,” OneSpan senior product marketing manager Sam Bakken told Threatpost in an email interview. “Apple data from May 2019 reports that 85 percent of all devices use iOS 12. But, depending on what minor version of iOS 12 they are on (12.0, 12.1, 12.2, 12.3, etc.) a lot of those users will be vulnerable to this seemingly very dangerous vulnerability.”

Other Bugs

As for the other issues, CVE-2019-8647 is a remote, interactionless use-after-free vulnerability that can crash SpringBoard, the standard application that manages the iOS home screen, with no user interaction.

Silvanovich explained in the bug description that when deserializing a class with initWithCoder, subclasses can also be deserialized “so long as they do not override initWithCoder and implement all methods that require a concrete implementation.”

When_PFArray, which is a subclass of NSArray, is deserialized that way, it eventually calls [_PFArray initWithObjects:count:].

“This method initializes the array with the objects provided by the NSKeyedUnarchiver, but does not retain references to these objects, so when the NSKeyedUnarchiver is released, the objects in the array will also be released, even though the user of the deserialized objects could still be using them,” she explained.

https://threatpost.com/apple-imessage-remote-attackersread-iphone-messages/146789/

Facebook strives to read your mind, human testing now underway

Facebook announced two years ago that the company would be working on designing a futuristic headband that can read your thoughts and integrate them with computers allowing the user to type some 100 words per minute.

Now in 2019, the technology is becoming more of a reality and is curently being tested vigorously on human test subjects who have volunteered to be guinea pigs.

According to MIT Technology Review: “… some of that research was described in a scientific paper from the University of California, San Francisco, where researchers have been developing “speech decoders” able to determine what people are trying to say by analyzing their brain signals.”

Although the technology sounds enticing it can also be dangerous.

Keep in mind once the product is developed the tech giant will be just one step closer to actually reading your mind while you are online.

https://www.intellihub.com/facebook-strives-to-read-your-mind-human-testing-now-underway/

Russia Ignores Neocon Regime-Change Losers, Plans Major Investments in Venezuela

Venezuela has faded from the news since Guaido's [read: the US'] failed coup.

But although Venezuela is out of the limelight, Russia has not forgotten her ally…

Transcription:

Russian companies will expand their presence in Venezuela, said the Russian Deputy Foreign Minister, Sergei Ryabkov, following his meeting with the Vice President of Venezuela, Delcy Rodríguez. We're talking about trading, engineering, pharmaceuticals, and mining. The meeting came in the framework of the ministerial meeting of the Coordination Bureau of the Non-Aligned Movement.

Ryabkov also met with Venezuelan President, Nicolás Maduro. He described the talks as "positive." He stressed that Russia considered the incumbent government as the only legitimate and supported Venezuela's right for non-interference in its domestic affairs.

Sergei Ryabkov, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister: "Russia and the Non-Aligned Movement share the view that, given the cultural and civilizational variety in the modern world, every state has the right to choose independently the way of its development according to its goals and principles."

https://russia-insider.com/en/russia-ignores-neocon-regime-change-losers-plans-major-investments-venezuela-russian-tv-news/ri27500

Saudi Arabia, UAE are loyal servants of US imperialism: Scholar

The simple fact is that no matter who rules in Washington, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are loyal servants of US imperialism and serve as its surrogates in the Persian Gulf region, according to Dennis Etler, an American political analyst who has a decades-long interest in international affairs.

Etler, a former professor of Anthropology at Cabrillo College in Aptos, California, made the remarks in an interview with Press TV on Wednesday after the US Senate failed in its latest bid to block the controversial sale of $8.1bn worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia.

The US Senate on Monday fell short of the two-thirds majority needed to override President Donald Trump’s veto earlier in the month of three congressional resolutions aimed at blocking the country’s arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

However, a first vote on trying to overturn one veto on a measure passed by Congress to block the sale of certain weapons to the Saudi kingdom was backed by 45 senators against 40. The Senate’s Republicans shunned the bid en masse, with only five supporting the vote. Fifteen senators, meanwhile, withheld their votes.

“Although the Democrat-led House and the Democrats in the Senate voted in favor of overriding Trump's veto of a bill stopping arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, how sincere are they really in wanting to end the Saudi intervention in Yemen?” Professor Etler said.

“The humanitarian crisis in Yemen brought on by the war led by the Saudi coalition and supported by the US was inherited by the Trump administration as was the war in Syrian. It is rather disingenuous for Democrats to now feign concern for the Yemeni people, as it was under their watch that the crisis began,” he stated.

“No, the only reason that Democrats have become humanitarians is to politically challenge the White House in the upcoming presidential campaign,” he noted.

“Nonetheless, anti-imperialists and friends of the Yemeni, Syrian and Iranian people must support all efforts to curtail arm sales to Saudi Arabia even if it means holding ones nose while supporting Congressional Democrats. It must be cautioned however that the US will remain an enemy of the world’s people no matter who resides in the White House or which party controls Congress. It's a matter of playing both sides against the middle to ones advantage while recognizing that neither side is your friend or ally,” he concluded.

https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2019/07/31/602353/Saudi-Arabia-and-UAE-are-loyal-servants-of-US-imperialism

Merck’s former LEAD Supervisor for Vaccine Safety NEVER vaccinates his own children due to sterility concerns

Science is founded on and thrives from critical thinkers asking tough questions, but that’s the last thing Merck scientists want any vaccine recipients doing. You can’t make this stuff up. Scientist Jorge Araujo says that quality controls and all-important safety practices are simply not there at Merck pharmaceuticals, one of the “Pharma Five” that dominates the vaccine producing industry. This scientist may not work at Merck right now, but when he did, there simply were not any signs of “robust science” to be found, and that’s why he refuses to stick needles full of genetically mutated viruses, foreign animal proteins and mercury into his children’s muscle tissue.

Araujo’s wife is a nurse and she completely agreed that it’s simply not safe. In fact, vaccines are very dangerous and experimental, but still the CDC pushes them all on the country full of naïve “patients for life” with the big slogan LIE that claims they’re all always “safe and effective.”

The former producer of “The Doctors” TV talk show and producer of the film “Vaxxed,” Del Bigtree, recently interviewed Merck’s former vaccine scientist, who blew the whistle on Merck’s total lack of vaccine sterile qualities in the lab. The more questions you ask about vaccine safety and quality control, the faster the industry will label you “anti-vax” and a conspiracy theorist, but the truth hurts, and so does dirty medicine.

Here’s the video of the interview. Check it out before YouTube bans it, like they do when anyone exposes the truth about America’s dirty medicine racket.

The truth hurts, but not as much as dirty medicine

The question isn’t whether vaccines are safe, but just how DIRTY are they? The former lead supervisor of quality control, sterility and safety at Merck has never had any of his children injected with dirty medicine, and some of those kids are teenagers and young adults now, and they’re perfectly healthy. That makes sense.

We should all take that advice, as it comes from a scientist who worked for years at the very place where the vaccines are concocted. It takes courage to be a whistle-blower, especially when you’re exposing the multi-billion-dollar vaccine criminals.

Araujo also attests that several other scientists who work or worked for Merck are also NOT vaccinating their own children. Can you imagine if your own doctor prescribed you medicine that he or she wouldn’t dare take themselves or give to their own children, for fear of permanent brain damage and auto-immune disorder?

https://www.naturalnews.com/2019-07-31-mercks-former-lead-supervisor-for-vaccine-safety-never-vaccinates-his-own-children.html

Heads Up! US Issues Hacking Security Alert for Small Planes

The Department of Homeland Security issued a security alert Tuesday for small planes, warning that modern flight systems are vulnerable to hacking if someone manages to gain physical access to the aircraft.

An alert from the DHS critical infrastructure computer emergency response team recommends that plane owners ensure they restrict unauthorized physical access to their aircraft until the industry develops safeguards to address the issue, which was discovered by a Boston-based cybersecurity company and reported to the federal government.

Most airports have security in place to restrict unauthorized access and there is no evidence that anyone has exploited the vulnerability. But a DHS official told The Associated Press that the agency independently confirmed the security flaw with outside partners and a national research laboratory, and decided it was necessary to issue the warning.

The cybersecurity firm, Rapid7, found that an attacker could potentially disrupt electronic messages transmitted across a small plane’s network, for example by attaching a small device to its wiring, that would affect aircraft systems.

Engine readings, compass data, altitude and other readings “could all be manipulated to provide false measurements to the pilot,” according to the DHS alert.

The warning reflects the fact that aircraft systems are increasingly reliant on networked communications systems, much like modern cars. The auto industry has already taken steps to address similar concerns after researchers exposed vulnerabilities.

The Rapid7 report focused only on small aircraft because their systems are easier for researchers to acquire. Large aircraft frequently use more complex systems and must meet additional security requirements. The DHS alert does not apply to older small planes with mechanical control systems.

But Patrick Kiley, Rapid7′s lead researcher on the issue, said an attacker could exploit the vulnerability with access to a plane or by bypassing airport security.

“Someone with five minutes and a set of lock picks can gain access (or) there’s easily access through the engine compartment,” Kiley said.

Jeffrey Troy, president of the Aviation Information Sharing and Analysis Center, an industry organization for cybersecurity information, said there is a need to improve the security in networked operating systems but emphasized that the hack depends on bypassing physical security controls mandated by law.

With access, “you have hundreds of possibilities to disrupt any system or part of an aircraft,” Troy said.

The Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement that a scenario where someone has unrestricted physical access is unlikely, but the report is also “an important reminder to remain vigilant” about physical and cybersecurity aircraft procedures.

Aviation cybersecurity has been an issue of growing concern around the world.

https://www.apnews.com/6219f26c3ea145b6b29b5e69115504a9

https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/heads-up-us-issues-hacking-security-alert-for-small-planes/

ACLU says biological male athletes who identify as females won't 'end' women's sports: 'Trans women are WOMEN'

The American Civil Liberties Union has launched a campaign in support of transgender student-athletes, saying it's "pure discrimination" to prevent them from competition.

But while the organization backs transgender boys and girls, it's specifically pointing out that "girls who are transgender are girls. Period."

The campaign, which people can sign, is using Terry Miller and Andraya Yearwood — a pair of biological males who identify as females and who've dominated girls' high school sprint evens in Connecticut — as flashpoints.

Here's a clip of Miller winning the 2018 Connecticut high school girls' 100-meter dash in a meet-record time of 11.72 seconds with Yearwood coming in second:

Terry Miller of Bulkeley wins the 100m girls dash i. 11.72 (meet record). Andraya Yearwood of Cromwell 2nd, RHAM’s Bridget Lalonde 3rd #cttrack pic.twitter.com/4GmLRyicDI

— GameTimeCT (@GameTimeCT) June 4, 2018

"But as champions on the track, they face harmful attacks rather than the accolades they deserve," the ACLU campaign says. "While Andraya and Terry's teammates and coaches support them, some cisgender athletes want to keep them out of girls' sports."

More from the campaign:

The marginalization of trans student-athletes is rooted in the same kind of gender discrimination and stereotyping that has held back cisgender women athletes. Transgender girls are often told that they are not girls (and conversely transgender boys are told they are not really boys) based on inaccurate stereotypes about biology, athleticism, and gender. As a result, transgender athletes – particularly Black transgender women – face systemic barriers to participation in athletics and all aspects of public life. This exclusion contributes to the high rates of homelessness, suicidality and violence that Black trans women and girls face.

Selina Soule, a biological female athlete from Connecticut, isn't down with Miller and Yearwood competing against her and other biological girls, saying "we are not physically able to be competitive against" them.

More broadly, the ACLU came out in favor of transgender women competing against biological women, saying it wouldn't "end" women's sports — and declaring that "trans women are WOMEN":

https://postnewsd2.blogspot.com/2019/08/aclu-says-biological-male-athletes-who.html

DOJ and FBI Show No Signs of Correcting Past Untruths in Their New Attacks on Encryption

Last week, Attorney General William Barr and FBI Director Christopher Wray chose to spend some of their time giving speeches demonizing encryption and calling for the creation of backdoors to allow the government access to encrypted data. You should not spend any of your time listening to them.

Don’t be mistaken; the threat to encryption remains high. Australia and the United Kingdom already have laws in place that can enable those governments to undermine encryption, while other countries may follow. And it’s definitely dangerous when senior U.S. law enforcement officials talk about encryption the way Barr and Wray did.

The reason to ignore these speeches is that DOJ and FBI have not proven themselves credible on this issue. Instead, they have a long track record of exaggeration and even false statements in support of their position. That should be a bar to convincing anyone—especially Congress—that government backdoors are a good idea.

Barr expressed confidence in the tech sector’s “ingenuity” to design a backdoor for law enforcement that will stand up to any unauthorized access, paying no mind to the broad technical and academic consensus in the field that this risk is unavoidable. As the prominent cryptographer and Johns Hopkins University computer science professor Matt Green pointed out on Twitter, the Attorney General made sweeping, impossible-to-support claims that digital security would be largely unaffected by introducing new backdoors. Although Barr paid the barest lip service to the benefits of encryption—two sentences in a 4,000 word speech—he ignored numerous ways encryption protects us all, including preserving not just digital but physical security for the most vulnerable users.

For all of Barr and Wray’s insistence that encryption poses a challenge to law enforcement, you might expect that that would be the one area where they’d have hard facts and statistics to back up their claims, but you’d be wrong. Both officials asserted it’s a massive problem, but they largely relied on impossible-to-fact-check stories and counterfactuals. If the problem is truly as big as they say, why can’t they provide more evidence? One answer is that prior attempts at proof just haven’t held up.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/07/doj-and-fbi-show-no-signs-correcting-past-untruths-their-new-attacks-encryption

Bayer’s hidden Frankenstein workshop in the US Caribbean

What is Monsanto doing in Puerto Rico?

Alternative health leaders erased from the Internet

What is Monsanto doing in Puerto Rico?

As you can imagine, it’s not good and it’s hurting the residents there.

The blades of the windmills revolve over crops of genetically modified plantations of soybean and corn, plantain and farms that have been crushed by the extended use of concrete. The Caribbean Sea appears, with green areas to the left, and to the right an exit leading to an occupied territory: multinational seed corporations, such as Monsanto, control 31% of the land with the greatest potential for agriculture in the municipality of Juana Díaz. It is the transgenic epicenter of Puerto Rico.

From north to south, from east to west, seed corporations already dominate about 9,712 public and private acres in the island. The area controlled by these corporations is equivalent to the area destined in 2016 for the cultivation of plantains, which the territory’s Department of Agriculture identifies as the most important crop in the country, economically speaking.

No one knew of the silent boom of agrochemical and transgenic corporations on the island’s finest farms, until the Center for Investigative Journalism (CPI, for its Spanish acronym) completed an inventory of the properties after field visits and consultations with public documents, and then analyzed the area with digital geographic information provided by the Planning Board. With the advance of seed corporations in Puerto Rico, the Island became, between 2006 and 2015, the locality with more permits to do experiments with transgenics in the United States and its territories.

https://www.brasscheck.com/video/bayers-hidden-frankenstein-workshop-in-the-us-caribbean/?omhide=true

CNN was manually abusing youtube’s copyright system to order take downs of commentators covering last night’s DNC debate (resulting in 90 day livestream bans for those channels).

One of CNN’s VPs suggested that fair use of such content, for the purposes of news reporting or commentary, was “piracy”.

I’ve seen CNN do some pretty shady things over the years, including telling their viewers it was illegal for anyone but the news media to read wikileaks source documents, which were easily obtainable online, cutting off an interview with a member of congress (using a seeming fake “technical problem”) when that representative mentioned wikileaks and the Clinton campaign emails, or threatening to doxx a reddit user unless the indvidual agreed to abide by conditions laid out by the news outlet.

This wanton display of disregard for the public forum, however, is perhaps the most damning reflection of the danger “news” outlets such as CNN pose to this Republic. While some of their reporting may well be news, their corporate structure induces them to turn our system of democracy into a tool for profit (something which should be resisted at all costs).

This is also not to say that other news networks do not have equally as sordid pasts (Fox News was initially conceived when Roger Alies was in the Nixon administration as a wing of the GOP), but CNN has taken corporate greed to a level I don’t imagine even Ailes thought possible. Monetizing democracy itself, while demanding the public not provide any commentary on that process, is a disgusting abdication of the principles of equality which define this Republic. Shame on CNN for issuing those take-down notices for primary debates of interest to all Americans (not just those that can afford a subscription to corporate news channels), and shame on youtube for indulging such sordid practices in the context of the political system.

https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/cnn-was-manually-abusing-youtubes-copyright-system-to-order-take-downs-of-commentators-covering-last-nights-dnc-debate-resulting-in-90-day-livestream-bans-for-those-channels/

Pentagon: new laser tech can make people hear voice commands

Zappy Brain

The Pentagon is working on a weapon that uses lasers and plasma to transmit sound files, even human speech, directly to individual people at great distances.

That’s according to a story by the Military Times newspaper, which reports that military researchers are working on ways to use lasers and plasma to control crowds. The story is short on technical details — but, at the same time, a troubling glimpse of the military’s desire to control people using next-gen tech.

Frikkin Lasers

It’s not clear how the tech works.

And for now, the Military Times reports that the Pentagon’s scientists haven’t yet built a speech-transmitting laser capable of passing through a wall — though officials believe it could be ready to deploy in as little as five years.

Hearing Voices

But, as the tech progresses, Live Science reports that the lasers could be beamed down from military planes or other vehicles to issue instructions or disperse crowds of protestors or otherwise disgruntled people in the area.

“Now I can put it anywhere. Range doesn’t make any difference,” chief scientist Dave Law told Military Times. “Put plasma at a target, modulate it and it can create a voice.”

https://www.blacklistednews.com/article/74070/pentagon-new-laser-tech-can-make-people-hear-voice.html

The Pentagon Spent Millions on Vulnerable Chinese Tech in 2018, Watchdog Says

The procurements, which could expose the department and its contractors to espionage and cyberattacks, highlight significant gaps in the Pentagon’s supply chain security policies.

The Pentagon last year purchased thousands of Chinese tech products that contained known cybersecurity vulnerabilities, and officials have yet to enact policies to stop it from happening again, an internal watchdog found.

In 2018, the department bought more than 9,500 commercial printers, computers and cameras despite warnings that adversaries could use the products to infiltrate networks and spy on personnel, according to an inspector general audit. The procurements, which totaled roughly $33 million, expose significant shortcomings in the department’s supply chain security policies that persist to this day, auditors said in a redacted report published Tuesday.

Specifically, the Army and Air Force purchased more than 8,000 printers from Lexmark and 1,500 computers from Lenovo, two Chinese companies that national security officials previously linked to the Communist Party’s espionage operations.

The Lexmark printers contained multiple vulnerabilities that could allow bad actors to infiltrate Pentagon networks and launch attacks against military contractors, auditors said, and national security officials have repeatedly flagged Lenovo products as threats. The State Department banned Lenovo computers on its classified networks in 2006, and both the Homeland Security Department and Joint Chiefs of Staff have warned the company’s tech contains spyware and other vulnerabilities, the IG said.

According to the report, the services also bought more than 100 GoPro cameras that contained known cybersecurity weaknesses.

“If the [department] continues to purchase and use [commercial IT] items without identifying, assessing and mitigating the known vulnerabilities … missions critical to national security could be compromised,” auditors said.

Commercial off-the-shelf technologies offer the government a cheap and efficient way to improve their IT infrastructure, but as agencies rely more on commercial tech, they’re also taking on more potential risks. Unless agencies take steps to lock down their supply chain and prioritize security-minded vendors, the government could find itself buying products that are vulnerable to attack.

https://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2019/07/pentagon-spent-millions-vulnerable-chinese-tech-2018-watchdog-says/158840/

A Joint Review of Law Enforcement Cooperation on the Southwest Border between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Homeland Security Investigations

https://oig.justice.gov/reports/2019/e1903.pdf#page=2