#farm protest cyber attack

[brookstonalmanac]

Holidays 8.26

Holidays

Alice Doesn’t Day

Animal Farm Day

Battle of Manzikert Anniversary Day (Turkey)

Congressional Startup Day

826 Day

First Thnork of the Year (Fairy)

Herero Day (a.k.a. Red Flag Day; Namibia)

Heroes’ Day (Namibia)

Horseshoe Day

International Content Creators Day

International Cosplay Day

International Day Against Dengue

International Hausa Day

Jamaat-e-Islami Foundation Day

Jay Report Anniversary Day (UK)

Kantanka Day (Ghana)

Kneel in Protest Day

Liquorice Day (French Republic)

Make Your Own Luck Day

Musical Yoga Day

National Black Family Business Day

Namibia Day (a.k.a. Heroes’ Day; UN)

National Day of Solidarity (Argentina)

National Dog Day

National Got Checked Day

National Honey Bee Awareness Day

National Kelly Day

National Logan Day

National MINI Wave to Friends (WTF) Day

National Ranboo Day

National Toilet Paper Day

National WebMistress Day

Our Lady of Czestochowa (Poland)

Paul Anka Day (Ottawa, Canada)

Pieta Day

Repentance Day (Papua New Guinea)

Slash Day

Spark the World Day

StartUp Day

Toilet Paper Day

Tvimanuor (Double Month; Iceland)

Typewriter Day

Winter Heliotrope Day

Women's Equality Day

World Painted Dog Day

WTF (Wave to Friends) Day (Mini USA)

Food & Drink Celebrations

Cherry Popsicle Day

Eat Dessert First Day

424 Day (Oklahoma)

National McChicken Day

Independence & Related Days

!9th Amendment Certified (Giving Women the Right to Vote; US; 1920)

Official Recognition Day (Abkhazia)

4th & Last Monday in August

Araw ng mga Bayani (National Heroes’ Day; Philippines) [Last Monday]

August/Summer Bank Holiday (UK) [Last Monday]

International Day of Cyber Attack Ceasefire [Last Monday]

Liberation Day (Hong Kong) [Last Monday]

Meatless Monday [Last Monday of Each Month]

Meditation Monday [Every Monday]

Mellow Monday [4th Monday of Each Month]

Monday Musings [Every Monday]

Moody Monday [Last Monday of Each Month]

Motivation Monday [Every Monday]

Motorist Consideration Monday [Monday of Be Kind to Humankind Week]

Mushroom Monday [4th Monday of Each Month]

National Heroes’ Day (Philippines) [Last Monday]

Notting Hill Carnival (UK) [Last Monday & day before]

Ould Lammas Fair (Ireland) [Last Mondday]

Social Justice Day (Antarctica) [4th Monday]

Weekly Holidays beginning August 26 (4th Full Week of August)

National Composites Week (thru 8.30)

National Safe at Home Week (thru 8.30)

Festivals Beginning August 26, 2024

Alaska’s Midnight Sun Great Pumpkin Weigh-Off (Palmer, Alaska)

Leeds West Indian Carnival (Leeds, United Kingdom)

Odense International Film Festival (Odense, Denmark) [thru 9.1]

US Open Tennis Championships (New York, United States) [thru 9.8]

Feast Days

Adrian and Natalia of Nicomedia (Eastern Orthodox Church)

Adrian of Nicomedia (Greek Feast Day) [brewers]

Alexander of Bergamo (Roman Catholic Church)

Bernardino Poccetti (Artology)

Brant Parker (Artology)

Ceferino Namuncurá (Christian; Saint)

Christopher Isherwood (Writerism)

David Lewis (Christian; Blessed)

Dichetul Do Chennaib (Celtic Book of Days)

Elizabeth Bichier des Ages (Christian; Saint & Virgin)

Feast of Our Lady of Czestochowa (Poland)

The First Thnork of the Year (Shamanism)

Gelasinus (Christian; Saint)

Genesius of Arles (Christian; Saint)

Genesius the Comedian (Christian; Saint)

Guillaume Apollinaire (Writerism)

Ilmater (Finnish Goddess of the Water Mother)

Jeanne-Elisabeth Bichier des Ages (Christian; Saint)

John Buchan (Writerism)

Julio Cortázar (Writerism)

Kirby and Jeffy (Muppetism)

Krishna Rebirth Midnight Mass (Hindu; Everyday Wicca)

Lizzie Borden Day (Church of the SubGenius; Saint)

Mariam Baouardy (Melkite Greek Catholic Church)

Martha Darley Mutrie (Artology)

Melchizedek (Christian; Saint)

Ninian (Christian; Saint)

Our Lady of Częstochowa (Christian; Saint)

Robert Vickrey (Artology)

Rufino Tamayo (Artology)

Simplicius, Constantius and Victorinus (Christian; Saints)

Teresa Jornet Ibars (Christian; Saint)

Teresa of Ávila (Christian; Saint)

Usuki Stone Buddhas Fire Festival (Japan)

Vancanson (Positivist; Saint)

Women’s Equality Day (Pastafarian)

Yoshida no Hi Matsuri (End of Mt. Fuji climbing season; Japan)

Zephyrinus, Pope (Christian; Martyr)

Lucky & Unlucky Days

Lucky Day (Philippines) [47 of 71]

Taian (大安 Japan) [Lucky all day.]

Premieres

An American in Paris (Film; 1951)

Bodyguard (BBC TV Series; 2018)

The Bookworm and the Raven (MGM Cartoon; 1939)

Bosko’s Picture Show (WB LT Cartoon; 1933)

Boy in Darkness, by Mervyn Peake (Novella; 1956) [Gormenghast #5]

Colombiana (Film; 2011)

Crossing Delancey (Film; 1988)

Cup of Gold, by John Steinbeck (Novel; 1929)

Detouring America (WB MM Cartoon; 1939)

Dog Gone South (WB MM Cartoon; 1950)

Elijah, by Felix Mendelssohn (Oratorio; 1846)

Eragon, by Christopher Paolini (Novel; 2002)

Fire and Ice (Animated Film; 1983)

Flying Fists (MGM Cartoon; 1930)

Hey Jude, by The Beatles (Song; 1968)

Lamb in His Bosom, by Caroline Miller (Novel; 1933)

Leisure, by Blur (Album; 1991)

Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (Film; 1983)

Natural Born Killers (Film; 1994)

The New Mutants (Film; 2020)

Our Idiot Brother (Film; 2011)

The Reckless Driver (Woody Woodpecker Cartoon; 1946)

7th Heaven (TV Series; 1996)

Strange Brew (Film; 1983)

String Bean Jack (Terrytoons Cartoon; 1938)

Sunshine Superman, by Donovan (Album; 1966)

Tennis Racquet (Disney Cartoon; 1949)

Those Were the Days, by Mary Hopkin (Song; 1968)

Three Thousand Years of Longing (Film; 2022)

To Catch a Woodpecker (Woody Woodpecker Cartoon; 1957)

We’re in the Money (WB MM Cartoon; 1933)

Your Name (Anime Film; 2016)

Today’s Name Days

Gregor, Margareta, Mirian, Teresa (Austria)

Adrian, Adriana, Adriyan, Adriyana, Natali, Nataliya (Bulgaria)

Aleksandar, Branimir, Melkisedek (Croatia)

Luděk (Czech Republic)

Ienæus (Denmark)

Hilma, Ilma, Ilmatar, Ilme, Ilmi (Estonia)

Ilma, Ilmatar, Ilmi (Finland)

Natacha (France)

Margarita, Miriam, Patricia, Teresa (Germany)

Adrianos, Natalia (Greece)

Izsó (Hungary)

Alessandro, Oronzo (Italy)

Broņislava, Broņislavs, Glauda, Natālija, Nate (Latvia)

Aleksandras, Algintė, Gailius, Zefirinas (Lithuania)

Eivind, Even, Øyvind (Norway)

Dobroniega, Joanna, Konstanty, Maksym, Maria, Wiktorian, Zefir, Zefiryn, Zefiryna (Poland)

Samuel (Slovakia)

Teresa (Spain)

Östen (Sweden)

Andrian, Andriana, Natalia (Ukraine)

Percival, Percy, Travis, Trevis, Trevon, Trevor (USA)

Today is Also…

Day of Year: Day 239 of 2024; 127 days remaining in the year

ISO: Day 1 of Week 35 of 2024

Celtic Tree Calendar: Coll (Hazel) [Day 24 of 28]

Chinese: Month 7 (Ren-Shen), Day 23 (Ren-Xu)

Chinese Year of the: Dragon 4722 (until January 29, 2025) [Wu-Chen]

Hebrew: 22 Av 5784

Islamic: 20 Safar 1446

J Cal: 29 Purple; Eighthday [29 of 30]

Julian: 13 August 2024

Moon: 50%: 3rd Quarter

Positivist: 14 Gutenberg (9th Month) [Vaucanson]

Runic Half Month: Rad (Motion) [Day 4 of 15]

Season: Summer (Day 68 of 94)

Week: 4th Full Week of August

Zodiac: Virgo (Day 5 of 32)

[brookston]

Holidays 8.26

Holidays

Alice Doesn’t Day

Animal Farm Day

Battle of Manzikert Anniversary Day (Turkey)

Congressional Startup Day

826 Day

First Thnork of the Year (Fairy)

Herero Day (a.k.a. Red Flag Day; Namibia)

Heroes’ Day (Namibia)

Horseshoe Day

International Content Creators Day

International Cosplay Day

International Day Against Dengue

International Hausa Day

Jamaat-e-Islami Foundation Day

Jay Report Anniversary Day (UK)

Kantanka Day (Ghana)

Kneel in Protest Day

Liquorice Day (French Republic)

Make Your Own Luck Day

Musical Yoga Day

National Black Family Business Day

Namibia Day (a.k.a. Heroes’ Day; UN)

National Day of Solidarity (Argentina)

National Dog Day

National Got Checked Day

National Honey Bee Awareness Day

National Kelly Day

National Logan Day

National MINI Wave to Friends (WTF) Day

National Ranboo Day

National Toilet Paper Day

National WebMistress Day

Our Lady of Czestochowa (Poland)

Paul Anka Day (Ottawa, Canada)

Pieta Day

Repentance Day (Papua New Guinea)

Slash Day

Spark the World Day

StartUp Day

Toilet Paper Day

Tvimanuor (Double Month; Iceland)

Typewriter Day

Winter Heliotrope Day

Women's Equality Day

World Painted Dog Day

WTF (Wave to Friends) Day (Mini USA)

Food & Drink Celebrations

Cherry Popsicle Day

Eat Dessert First Day

424 Day (Oklahoma)

National McChicken Day

Independence & Related Days

!9th Amendment Certified (Giving Women the Right to Vote; US; 1920)

Official Recognition Day (Abkhazia)

4th & Last Monday in August

Araw ng mga Bayani (National Heroes’ Day; Philippines) [Last Monday]

August/Summer Bank Holiday (UK) [Last Monday]

International Day of Cyber Attack Ceasefire [Last Monday]

Liberation Day (Hong Kong) [Last Monday]

Meatless Monday [Last Monday of Each Month]

Meditation Monday [Every Monday]

Mellow Monday [4th Monday of Each Month]

Monday Musings [Every Monday]

Moody Monday [Last Monday of Each Month]

Motivation Monday [Every Monday]

Motorist Consideration Monday [Monday of Be Kind to Humankind Week]

Mushroom Monday [4th Monday of Each Month]

National Heroes’ Day (Philippines) [Last Monday]

Notting Hill Carnival (UK) [Last Monday & day before]

Ould Lammas Fair (Ireland) [Last Mondday]

Social Justice Day (Antarctica) [4th Monday]

Weekly Holidays beginning August 26 (4th Full Week of August)

National Composites Week (thru 8.30)

National Safe at Home Week (thru 8.30)

Festivals Beginning August 26, 2024

Alaska’s Midnight Sun Great Pumpkin Weigh-Off (Palmer, Alaska)

Leeds West Indian Carnival (Leeds, United Kingdom)

Odense International Film Festival (Odense, Denmark) [thru 9.1]

US Open Tennis Championships (New York, United States) [thru 9.8]

Feast Days

Adrian and Natalia of Nicomedia (Eastern Orthodox Church)

Adrian of Nicomedia (Greek Feast Day) [brewers]

Alexander of Bergamo (Roman Catholic Church)

Bernardino Poccetti (Artology)

Brant Parker (Artology)

Ceferino Namuncurá (Christian; Saint)

Christopher Isherwood (Writerism)

David Lewis (Christian; Blessed)

Dichetul Do Chennaib (Celtic Book of Days)

Elizabeth Bichier des Ages (Christian; Saint & Virgin)

Feast of Our Lady of Czestochowa (Poland)

The First Thnork of the Year (Shamanism)

Gelasinus (Christian; Saint)

Genesius of Arles (Christian; Saint)

Genesius the Comedian (Christian; Saint)

Guillaume Apollinaire (Writerism)

Ilmater (Finnish Goddess of the Water Mother)

Jeanne-Elisabeth Bichier des Ages (Christian; Saint)

John Buchan (Writerism)

Julio Cortázar (Writerism)

Kirby and Jeffy (Muppetism)

Krishna Rebirth Midnight Mass (Hindu; Everyday Wicca)

Lizzie Borden Day (Church of the SubGenius; Saint)

Mariam Baouardy (Melkite Greek Catholic Church)

Martha Darley Mutrie (Artology)

Melchizedek (Christian; Saint)

Ninian (Christian; Saint)

Our Lady of Częstochowa (Christian; Saint)

Robert Vickrey (Artology)

Rufino Tamayo (Artology)

Simplicius, Constantius and Victorinus (Christian; Saints)

Teresa Jornet Ibars (Christian; Saint)

Teresa of Ávila (Christian; Saint)

Usuki Stone Buddhas Fire Festival (Japan)

Vancanson (Positivist; Saint)

Women’s Equality Day (Pastafarian)

Yoshida no Hi Matsuri (End of Mt. Fuji climbing season; Japan)

Zephyrinus, Pope (Christian; Martyr)

Lucky & Unlucky Days

Lucky Day (Philippines) [47 of 71]

Taian (大安 Japan) [Lucky all day.]

Premieres

An American in Paris (Film; 1951)

Bodyguard (BBC TV Series; 2018)

The Bookworm and the Raven (MGM Cartoon; 1939)

Bosko’s Picture Show (WB LT Cartoon; 1933)

Boy in Darkness, by Mervyn Peake (Novella; 1956) [Gormenghast #5]

Colombiana (Film; 2011)

Crossing Delancey (Film; 1988)

Cup of Gold, by John Steinbeck (Novel; 1929)

Detouring America (WB MM Cartoon; 1939)

Dog Gone South (WB MM Cartoon; 1950)

Elijah, by Felix Mendelssohn (Oratorio; 1846)

Eragon, by Christopher Paolini (Novel; 2002)

Fire and Ice (Animated Film; 1983)

Flying Fists (MGM Cartoon; 1930)

Hey Jude, by The Beatles (Song; 1968)

Lamb in His Bosom, by Caroline Miller (Novel; 1933)

Leisure, by Blur (Album; 1991)

Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (Film; 1983)

Natural Born Killers (Film; 1994)

The New Mutants (Film; 2020)

Our Idiot Brother (Film; 2011)

The Reckless Driver (Woody Woodpecker Cartoon; 1946)

7th Heaven (TV Series; 1996)

Strange Brew (Film; 1983)

String Bean Jack (Terrytoons Cartoon; 1938)

Sunshine Superman, by Donovan (Album; 1966)

Tennis Racquet (Disney Cartoon; 1949)

Those Were the Days, by Mary Hopkin (Song; 1968)

Three Thousand Years of Longing (Film; 2022)

To Catch a Woodpecker (Woody Woodpecker Cartoon; 1957)

We’re in the Money (WB MM Cartoon; 1933)

Your Name (Anime Film; 2016)

Today’s Name Days

Gregor, Margareta, Mirian, Teresa (Austria)

Adrian, Adriana, Adriyan, Adriyana, Natali, Nataliya (Bulgaria)

Aleksandar, Branimir, Melkisedek (Croatia)

Luděk (Czech Republic)

Ienæus (Denmark)

Hilma, Ilma, Ilmatar, Ilme, Ilmi (Estonia)

Ilma, Ilmatar, Ilmi (Finland)

Natacha (France)

Margarita, Miriam, Patricia, Teresa (Germany)

Adrianos, Natalia (Greece)

Izsó (Hungary)

Alessandro, Oronzo (Italy)

Broņislava, Broņislavs, Glauda, Natālija, Nate (Latvia)

Aleksandras, Algintė, Gailius, Zefirinas (Lithuania)

Eivind, Even, Øyvind (Norway)

Dobroniega, Joanna, Konstanty, Maksym, Maria, Wiktorian, Zefir, Zefiryn, Zefiryna (Poland)

Samuel (Slovakia)

Teresa (Spain)

Östen (Sweden)

Andrian, Andriana, Natalia (Ukraine)

Percival, Percy, Travis, Trevis, Trevon, Trevor (USA)

Today is Also…

Day of Year: Day 239 of 2024; 127 days remaining in the year

ISO: Day 1 of Week 35 of 2024

Celtic Tree Calendar: Coll (Hazel) [Day 24 of 28]

Chinese: Month 7 (Ren-Shen), Day 23 (Ren-Xu)

Chinese Year of the: Dragon 4722 (until January 29, 2025) [Wu-Chen]

Hebrew: 22 Av 5784

Islamic: 20 Safar 1446

J Cal: 29 Purple; Eighthday [29 of 30]

Julian: 13 August 2024

Moon: 50%: 3rd Quarter

Positivist: 14 Gutenberg (9th Month) [Vaucanson]

Runic Half Month: Rad (Motion) [Day 4 of 15]

Season: Summer (Day 68 of 94)

Week: 4th Full Week of August

Zodiac: Virgo (Day 5 of 32)

[thestickypost]

Farmers' Protests Activists Reportedly Using Ransomware to Demand Justice

Farmers’ Protests Activists Reportedly Using Ransomware to Demand Justice

Farmers’ protests activists are reportedly using a ransomware-style cyber attack in a bid to raise more voices towards the cause of the protesting farmers in India. In light of the ongoing farmer protests against the newly instated Farm Bills 2020, Quick Heal, an Indian cyber security organisation, has claimed to have found proof of a cyber attack campaign by a group seemingly called ‘Khalsa…

[newstfionline]

Wednesday, June 2, 2021

Meat Is Latest Cyber Victim as Hackers Hit Top Supplier JBS (Bloomberg) The world’s biggest meat supplier has become the latest casualty of a cybersecurity attack. JBS SA shut its North American and Australian computer networks after an organized assault on Sunday on some of its servers, the company said by email. The attack sidelined two shifts and halted processing at one of Canada’s largest meatpacking plants, while the company canceled all beef and lamb kills across Australia, industry website Beef Central said. Some kill and fabrication shifts have also been canceled in the U.S. Hackers now have the commodities industry in their crosshairs with the JBS attack coming just three weeks after the operator of the biggest U.S. gasoline pipeline was targeted. It’s also happened as the global meat industry battles lingering Covid-19 absenteeism after recovering from mass outbreaks last year that saw plants shut and supplies disrupted.

China’s future gateway to Latin America is a mega-port in Peru (America Economia) Despite local opposition, Chinese investors are pumping billions into the Chancay project, a massive port complex north of Lima that will boost trade between China and Latin America as a whole, reports Gonzalo Torrico in business magazine America Economia. The Chancay port complex, with an initial investment of $1.3 billion, will turn this fishing and farming town into a regional hub that could redefine shipping lines in the entire southern Pacific. Since 2019, the project’s main stakeholder is the Chinese state firm Cosco Shipping Ports (60%). Cosco is a partner in 52 port projects worldwide. But in the Americas, Chancay is the first being built with Chinese capital. The complex is expected to be fully functional by 2024, helping consolidate China’s influence in South America, and in Peru especially. In the last decade, this country has become the regional crux of China’s economic and geopolitical interests. So far, Chinese firms have invested more than $30 billion in Peru, a figure exceeded only by money spent in Brazil. The principal sector is mining, which has absorbed more than half all these investments and has proven to be an excellent source for the mineral materials China needs to keep its industrial sector humming. One of those materials is copper, which Peru produces in great quantity.

More boats on canals and rivers than in 18th century as thousands opt for life afloat (Guardian) Little more than six months ago, Paul and Anthony Smith-Storey were still living in a three-bedroom semi-detached house near St Helens in Merseyside. But now the couple—and their dog, Dexter—have traded it all in for a life afloat in a two-metre-wide narrowboat on Peak Forest Canal in Derbyshire. “We took the equity out of the house, bought the boat and thought we’d enjoy it while we were still alive,” said Anthony, 48, an NHS sonographer. They are not the only ones. Record numbers are spending time on Britain’s rivers and canals, according to the Canal and River Trust. Such is their popularity that the charity, which manages 2,000 miles of waterways across England and Wales, says: “There are more boats on our canals now than at the height of the industrial revolution.” The Inland Waterways Association (IWA) said there are about 80,000 powered boats across the waterways of England, Scotland and Wales. Boat builders and sellers put the surge in interest down to the pandemic.

NSA spying row: US and Denmark pressed over allegations (BBC) European powers have pressed the US and Denmark over reports the two worked together to spy on top European politicians, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Danish broadcaster DR said Denmark’s Defence Intelligence Service (FE) collaborated with the US National Security Agency (NSA) to gather information from 2012 to 2014. Mrs Merkel is among those demanding answers. “This is not acceptable between allies, and even less between allies and European partners,” said French President Emmanuel Macron, after speaking with Mrs Merkel.

The Taliban Say They’ve Changed. On the Ground, They’re Just as Brutal. (WSJ) During a recent trip, Kamaluddin visited a barbershop to obtain the illicit pleasures of clean-shaven cheeks and a fashionable mustache. But the shopkeeper, 25 years old, planned to let it regrow before heading home, wary of incurring the Taliban’s wrath. His father and brother were caught last month using smartphones in their home district of Arghistan, an area effectively ruled by the movement. The insurgents confiscated the devices, which could be used for supposedly un-Islamic behavior such as playing music and videos, and forced the men to swallow their SIM cards. Kamaluddin recounted the incident as he waited to return from Kandahar, the government-controlled provincial capital. “They will put me in prison if they see me like this,” he said. “If the Taliban come back, they will bring darkness.” The Taliban, ousted from power by a U.S.-led invasion 20 years ago, are poised to expand their influence as American forces leave the country. The group has sought in recent months to present themselves as a responsible state actor to regional powers and the West. Indeed, some of their most-violent punishments, such as amputations for accused thieves, are used less frequently than in the 1990s as they seek to avoid alienating Afghans. Yet accounts from Kamaluddin and others living under Taliban rule, as well as insurgents themselves, suggest that the group’s governance is as ruthless as ever.

Delhi Reopens a Crack (NYT) The Indian capital, which just weeks ago suffered the devastating force of the coronavirus, with tens of thousands of new infections daily and funeral pyres that burned day and night, is taking its first steps back toward normalcy. Officials on Monday reopened manufacturing and construction activity, allowing workers in those industries to return to their jobs after six weeks of staying at home to avoid infection. The move came after a sharp drop in new infections, at least by the official numbers, and as hospital wards emptied and the strain on medicine and supplies has eased. Life on the streets of Delhi is not expected to return to normal immediately. Schools and most businesses are still closed. The Delhi Metro system, which reopened after last year’s nationwide lockdown, has suspended service again. But the city government’s easing of restrictions will allow people to begin returning to work—and, more broadly, to start to repair India’s ailing, pandemic-struck economy.

Myanmar carries out air strikes after militia attacks (Reuters) Myanmar’s military used artillery and helicopters on Monday against anti-junta militias in the country’s east, witnesses and rebels said, forcing residents to flee and join thousands of others displaced by recent fighting in the region. Residents of Kayah state bordering Thailand said the military was firing artillery from positions inside the state capital Loikaw into Demoso, about 14.5 km (9 miles) away, where a People’s Defence Force said it had attacked troops and was coming under heavy fire. Myanmar’s military is fighting on multiple fronts and struggling to impose order since its Feb. 1 coup against Aung San Suu Kyi and her elected government, sparking nationwide protests and paralysing strikes. Decades-old conflicts between the military and ethnic minority armies have also reignited, while militias allied with a shadow government have stepped up attacks on the army, which has responded with heavy weapons and air strikes, forcing thousands to flee.

North Korea’s missile warning (Foreign Policy) North Korea warned the United States on Monday that relaxing South Korea’s missile limits could lead to an “acute and instable situation” in the region. “The termination step is a stark reminder of the U.S. hostile policy toward (North Korea) and its shameful double-dealing,” said Kim Myong Chol, an unofficial mouthpiece for Pyongyang, in a statement issued by North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency. The United States recently lifted a 500-mile range restriction on South Korea’s missile program, in place since 1979. South Korea’s industrial ability to ramp up new missile production “could lead to an arms race with devastating implications,” Donald Kirk wrote last week in Foreign Policy.

Australian court upholds ban on most international travel (AP) An Australian court on Tuesday rejected a challenge to the federal government’s draconian power to prevent most citizens from leaving the country so that they don’t bring COVID-19 home. Australia is alone among developed democracies in preventing its citizens and permanent residents from leaving the country except in “exceptional circumstances” where they can demonstrate a “compelling reason.” Most Australians have been stranded in their island nation since March 2020 under a government emergency order made under the powerful Biosecurity Act. Surveys suggest most Australians applaud their government’s drastic border controls. The Australian newspaper published a survey last month that found 73% of respondents said the international border should remain closed until at least the middle of next year.

Lebanon’s economic crisis (Foreign Policy) Lebanon’s economic collapse could rank within the top 3 “most severe crises episodes globally since the mid-nineteenth century,” according to a new report issued by the World Bank. The report cites the “brutal and rapid” contraction of Lebanon’s GDP, which dropped from $55 billion in 2018 to $33 billion in 2020. “The social impact of the crisis, which is already dire, could rapidly become catastrophic,” the report notes, as more than half of Lebanon’s population is already living below the poverty line.

Congo killings (Foreign Policy) At least 55 people were killed in overnight attacks near two villages in eastern Congo, close to the border with Uganda. Congolese officials blamed the attack on the Allied Democratic Forces, an Islamist insurgent group that in March was deemed a foreign terrorist organization by the United States. The group killed more than 850 people in 2020, according to the United Nations. At the beginning of May, President Félix Tshisekedi declared a state of siege across the affected regions, surging troops in a bid to quell violence.

[ebhenah]

Chapters: 8/8 Fandom: Voltron: Legendary Defender Rating: Mature Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Lance/Shiro (Voltron), Acxa/Veronica (Voltron), James Griffin/Keith (Voltron), Hunk/Shay (Voltron), Lance & Voltron Paladins, Lance & Lance's Family (Voltron), MFE Pilots & Voltron Paladins, Lance & OCs, Lance & Kosmo, Lance & Krolia, Lance & Ezor, Acxa & Lance (Voltron), James Griffin & Lance (Voltron), Coran & Voltron Paladins, Minor or Background Relationship(s) Characters: Shiro (Voltron), Lance (Voltron), Veronica (Voltron), Coran (Voltron), Romelle (Voltron), Hunk (Voltron), Pidge | Katie Holt, James Griffin (Voltron), Keith (Voltron), Keith's Wolf (Voltron), Assorted OCs, Ezor (Voltron), Acxa (Voltron), Krolia - Character Additional Tags: Shance Love Bang 2020, shance, serious injury, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Canon, Amputation, Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Hospitals, Atlas - Freeform, Emotional Roller Coaster, Surgery, Recovery, extended hospitalization, Moving On, New Job, Mutual Pining, oblivious Shiro, Getting Together, Sharing a Bed, Shiro (Voltron) Has PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Protective Shiro (Voltron), Gay Shiro (Voltron), Bisexual Lance (Voltron), Hurt Lance (Voltron), Cuban Lance (Voltron), Oblivious Lance (Voltron), Pining Shiro (Voltron), Trauma, Slow Burn, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, cyber-leg, Panic Attacks, Scars, Shiro didn't retire, Lance and Veronica are close, Loss of Limbs, Discussion of Grief and Mourning, Found Family, POV Lance (Voltron), life on the atlas, Lesbian Veronica (Voltron), background veracxa, background zezor, background hunay, background jaith, Domestic Bliss, Family Feels, Adoption, wedding mentioned, Yearning, responsible alcohol use, responsible medication use, Allura's gift, Allura discussed, Adam discussed, loss of Shiro's arm explained, Friends to Lovers Summary:

Years after Allura's death and Lance's return to the farm, he finally accepts Coran's offer of becoming an official Ambassador for Altea He and Shiro have gotten closer after Allura's death and he joins Shiro, and his sister Veronica on the Atlas as a non-combatant Coalition Delegate, where the three of them spend a lot of time together off-duty.

While he is on the Atlas, they get called in to intervene in a conflict on a Coalition planet with a lingering splinter cell of Zarkon loyalists. Non-combatant he may well be, but Lance cannot stand by and let people die when he could be helping! Dspite protests, he gears up and hops into a shuttle to provide cover fire. During the fighting he is seriously injured, needing intensive medical intervention.

While he recovers, he and Shiro grow even closer until they realize that what they have is so much more than friendship.

CW- this fic deals with Lance's recovery from extensive injuries and is told from his point of view. There is a lot of medical content, intense emotions, and depiction of processing trauma- some of which predates the incidents in the story.

[dispatchesfrom2020]

2020

What stories was I sleeping on?

So, what stories did I definitely miss before this project? Well, Atlantic Hurricanes and the Belarussian protests, for sure. Here are some of the other news I skipped out on during the year - or my recaps.

Ben Curtis/AP

1. Locusts Swarm 

An unusually wet 2019 led to swampy conditions across the Horn of Africa and western Asia - giving rise to a nearly biblical swarm of locusts. There are photographs where they literally seem to black-out the sun. The culprit? Climate change. The warming waters of the Indian ocean led to stormier weather - essentially more and bigger cyclones. It’s the worst outbreak of the crop-devouring pests in a quarter-century and it threatens food security across the region. The pandemic grinds international trade to a stop - obstructing many countries efforts to buy pesticides, equipment or bring in expert help to curb the infestation. Throughout the year, these swarms ballooned in size, stretching deep into Asia and across the Pacific ocean to Argentina and Brazil. An estimated 20 million people could face hunger and starvation and the UN’s World Food Program estimates that recovery could cost upwards of $9b USD in Africa alone.

Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

2. The Tigray War

For three decades the Tigray people held the balance of political and economic power in the country, tightly controlled through the Tigray People Liberation Front (TPLF), a Tigray nationalist party. In 2018 the Ethiopian election People's Revolutionary Democratic Front, led by Oromo Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali, won control of the country’s government.

Animosities boiled over when the Tigray province persisted with the 2020 election, despite government orders to postpone voting until 2021 due to the coronavirus. Prime Minister Abiy cut off funding to Tigray, incising local leadership. In November 2020, youth militias affiliated with the TPLF killed six hundred villagers in the border town of Mai Kadra - and allegedly attacked Ethiopian military bases. 

The government responded by shelling the Tigray capital of Mekelle. Ethiopia’s armed forces quickly took control of the city and surrounding towns, with the militias retreating into the mountains where skirmishes have continued. 

With Tigrayan people facing violent retaliation - they have faced furloughs from jobs, had bank accounts suspended, faced arbitrary raids on their homes, and been refused permission to board airplanes or travel overseas. Many have faced direct violence, especially from non-Tigray militias.

The conflict has seen incursions from Eritrean forces. Abiy was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for his work mending the relationship with Ethiopia’s former colony-turned-neighbour. They share a common enemy now - Tigray. Eritrean forces slaughtered church-goers at a religious festival in early December, killing children and elders indiscriminately. These shadow forces of Fano militias and Eritrean soldiers have committed war crimes - including extrajudicial killings and rape. They even looted the church that allegedly houses the Ark of the Covenant.

The Tigrayan refugees have only one option: Sudan. One journalist writes: “Several [Tigrayan refugees] told me that they saw dozens of bodies along the route as they fled their shops, homes and farms and took to the long road to the border... in stifling heat.”

The New York Times series on Tigray was helpful in understanding more about the conflict and its historical and ethnic contexts. But I have to say - I feel unclear about what comes next. Will guerilla warfare between the Tigray militias and Eritrean-Ethiopian forces continue? Will the country face international consequences for their move towards genocide? I guess 2021 will decide.

A SolarWinds banner hangs outside the New York Stock Exchange on the company’s IPO day in 2018 - Brendan McDermid/Reuters

3. The SolarWinds hack

I chose to write about icebergs rather than this story for a reason. I wholly do NOT understand cyber security. Like, at all. My eyes glaze over when somebody tries to explain Wikileaks to me. I tried. I really did - I read like three articles trying to parse the details and make sense of anything and here’s what I got:

Hackers - almost certainly Russian - got into the US government secure networks. For a lot of departments. For months. It’s really, really bad. The government has a pretty blasé response to the disaster. Trump blames China. Agencies are turning directly to Microsoft for answers rather than their own cyber security people. It’s a blazing hot mess.

I’m going to continue to not understand this one, sorry.

Juan Carlos Ulate/Reuters

4. Civil Rights in 2020

The expansion of civil rights in Central/South America, with the legalization of abortion in Argentina in December and the introduction of gay marriage in Costa Rica in May, gave us something to celebrate in 2020. These new rights are the result of years - and decades - of organizing by activists in these two countries. 

Costa Rica is the sixth Latin-American country to legalize gay marriage. Argentina joins a short list of places in Latin America where abortion is fully legal - just Cuba, Guyana, Uruguay, and two Mexican states.

Some couples rushed to wed on the stroke of midnight - magistrates stayed up late into the night to marry couples. Marcos Castillo (L) and Rodrigo Campos (R) waited until the following morning - and celebrated with a masked kiss after their ceremony. 

Other notable moments in civil rights? New Zealand officially revoked their antiquated anti-abortion laws (which they’d been effectively ignoring for years anyway), Bhutan decriminalized homosexuality, Switzerland passed legislation that will allow people to change the gender on their government IDs, and Croatia struck down laws forbidding gay couples from fostering children. Albania banned gay conversion therapy - as did the Yukon, actually - and Barbados made discrimination on the basis of sexuality illegal.

Nicky Kuautonga/The Guardian

5. Oceania crushed the pandemic

Virtually all of the countries reported to be COVID-free during 2020 were Oceanic nations and island territories. Turkmenistan says they didn’t have any cases but they’re lyin’. -Tuvalu Kiribati, Nauru, Tonga, and Palau all ended the year with no cases, while Samoa and the Solomon Islands reported a few isolated cases in quarantine facilities as they re-opened the border to repatriate their citizens abroad. 

Some combination of strict travel restrictions, new hygiene rules, curfews, and early lockdowns kept most of these countries relatively untouched. While New Zealand and Australia experienced several flare-ups throughout the year, their targeted lockdowns helped eradicate community spread quickly each time, returning them to schools, workplaces and boozy brunches quickly.

Honourable mentions to Vietnam and Thailand - with 100 million and 70 million citizens apiece both have charted under 100 deaths to COVID - and Taiwan with only nine casualties.

Gulalay Amiri, a pomegranate farmer, surveys his slim haul. Fighting as worsened in many parts of Afghanistan after the United States announced they would withdraw from the country in 2021 - Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

6. War in Afghanistan

In March the United States signed a peace-deal with the Taliban, promising to withdraw troops by May of 2021. The War in Afghanistan has lasted 19 years - the longest war in American history and the majority of my lifetime.

I don’t know how to feel about it.

During peace talks the Taliban refused to commit to recognizing the country’s elected government, disavowing Al-Qaeda or protecting women’s rights. They support limited education for girls - only up to the sixth grade.

I listened to a few podcasts by the Daily on the ground in Afghanistan with the current government’s security forces. Many of the young soldiers they interviewed were so young they’d never lived in a country governed by the Taliban - and they fiercely oppose the idea. It also appears that the Afghan government were often excluded from peace talks, finding out details of the American meetings with the Taliban through international news reports and Taliban statements on social media. 

Since the Taliban’s deal with the United States, Taliban bombings and attacks have continued, targeting both security forces and civilians. The Afghan government has pointed the finger at the Taliban for mass shooting at a maternity ward in Kabul that killed 24 women and infants. “They came for the mothers”, said horrified eyewitnesses.

For almost two decades, the western world has supported the ‘new’ Afghanistan - but it feels very fragile. Will a withdrawal lead those people that assisted coalition forces vulnerable to retaliation? It feels likely. The fighting between the Taliban and the Afghan government has been fierce - and come with high civilian casualties. The year is punctuated, nearly monthly, with news of new attacks in Afghanistan.

It reminds me of the end of the Vietnam war. America withdrew and two years later the south was retaken by the North. In the final days of the Vietnam war the United States evacuated around 150,000 civilians who had worked with American on the ground. Nearly a million others left the country by boat, seeking asylum at refugee camps in Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. Hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese people who had collaborated with the US-backed South were sent to re-education camps where they were sometimes tortured or starved. Is this what Afghanistan will look like? 

There’s no 'good’ solution - and for now the future of the war in Afgahnistan feels very opaque. I think I under-reported stories in the region as a result - it feels too complex to boil down into daily recaps.

Bobi Wine, 38, was detained by police for allegedly breaking COVID-19 restrictions while campaigning in Uganda’s upcoming presidential election - Abubaker Lubowa/Reuters

8. Ugandan election protests

Western media doesn’t seem to place a lot of importance on reporting in Africa - but what little attention they had for the continent focused on the anti-SARS protests in Nigeria throughout the fall. The attention on police violence in America raised the profile of these demonstrations - and the brutality of the government’s response, shooting at dozens of peaceful marchers gathered at the Lekki toll bridge.

But they were far from the only protests in Africa.

As Uganda prepared for an election early in 2021, the government forcefully cracked down on youthful dissidents - like presidential hopefuls Bobi Wine and Patrick Amuriat who were detained by police during the final campaign pushes in November. 

Wine, a young musician, has been arrested numerous times since he announced his candidacy. One occasion police beat Wine so badly he temporarily lost his vision - they also killed his driver. They raided his offices, confiscating election materials, and arrested supporters. His bodyguard will later be killed after being struck by a military truck while helping an injured reporter escape tear-gas during December protests.

Police record 56 casualties as they violently put down the large-scale protests - though human rights group have suggested the real number could be dramatically higher. 

Ariana Quesada holds a photo of her father, Benito. He died after an outbreak at the Cargill meat-packing plant where he worked. She filed a complaint with the RCMP, asking them to investigate conditions at the plant - Justin Pennell/CBC

9. Meat packing plants become coronavirus hotspots

Meat processing plants become super-spreaders - these often rurally-located factories see massive outbreaks across the United States and Canada. Their floors are crowded with employees working elbow-to-elbow, forced to shout over the loud din of machinery. The refrigeration - necessary for keeping the meat unspoiled - may allow the virus to live longer in the air.

By September of 2020, nearly 500 meat-processing plants had reported at least one case of COVID in the United States. And 203 had died. 

At a Tyson Foods factory in Waterloo, Iowa, staff allege that management placed bets on how many workers would become sick - and die. Supervisors began avoiding the floor, relegating their responsibilities to untrained workers. 

The plant reluctantly closed - by the time they re-opened two weeks later over a third of their 2,800 workforce had tested positive. Five workers died - including Isidro Fernandez, whose family is leading a lawsuit against the company.

In Canada, Cargill faces a similar lawsuit after an enormous outbreak in their High River facility that resulted in three deaths - two employees and one staffer’s 71-year-old father. They were: Hiep Bui, Armando Sallegue, and Benito Quesada. The company offered a $500 “responsibility” bonus for workers who didn’t miss any shifts - and discouraged employees from reporting any flu-like symptoms. Many of the factory’s workers are temporary foreign workers or new Canadians. 

10. The Nazca Lines

I forgot about this and am shoehorning it in now, but Peruvian archaeologists discovered another ancient line drawing in the desert outside of Lima - this time in the shape of a kitty cat.

Of all the archaeology finds this year - remains at Pompeii, a mammoth graveyard in Mexico, and a wealth of sarcophagi in Egypt - this is my favourite.

[libertariantaoist]

News Roundup 7/13/20

by Kyle Anzalone

US News

Trump commutes Roger Stone’s prison sentence. [Link]

Bail reforms that promote algorithms and risk matrices do not correct for racial disparities. [Link]

A Super PAC with ties to John Bolton has spent over $300,000 in a congressional race in Maine. The PAC is attempting to defeat Eric Brakey. Brakey has a history of calling for a less interventionist foreign policy. [Link]

The US Army maintains a Twitch channel with an esports team playing Call of Duty. Users who mentioned the Mai Lai Massacre or Kunduz Hospital Bombing were banned from the channel. [Link]

Police

Police militarization is a subsidy for the defense industry. [Link]

Police agencies used Dataminr to help monitor BLM protests. [Link]

Defense Spending

Some Senators are working to create the Office of Joint Cyber planning. The office may be created by the 2021 NDAA and would have $15 million in funding. [Link]

The Air Force is looking to award a $10 million contract for flying car design. [Link]

The Pentagon is using the Defense Production Act to give $84 million to small defense contractors. The bailout focused on drone manufacturers. [Link]

The New Cold War

China says it will not engage in arms control talks with the US because the US invitations lack sincerity. [Link]

Trump announced the US carried out a cyberattack against the Russian-based Internet Research Agency in 2018. [Link]

The US deploys Reaper drones to Estonia for the first time. [Link]

Middle East

Evidence is surfacing Israel carried out a sophisticated cyberattack on an Iranian nuclear facility. [Link]

China and Iran are close to finishing a deal that will increase their military and economic ties. [Link]

Turkey sends 25 military vehicles into Idlib, Syria, to reinforce several observation posts maintained by the Turkish Army. [Link]

Saudi and UAE backed Yemeni militants started fighting each other in a southern city. [Link]

Read More

[officialleehadan]

Down the River Boat

The first town Adrienne discovered was a trading town, set into the curve of a lake. A river fed into, and out of, the lake on the far side, and the town hosted a busy port, where caravans form the mountains met with ships to take their goods up and down the continent. Fields and farms surrounded the town, but as Adrienne walked in through the gate, she discovered that the town, which was also the layover for several major quests, was significantly quieter than it generally was in-game.

So much for meeting up with others who had been sucked into the game too. This looked just like the little towns of her childhood, except significantly more fantasy-shaped. Stalls lined the road, and the marked hummed with activity. The roofs were mostly thatch, but they were sloped to deal with the winter snows, and the walls were crisply whitewashed. The smells of cooking meat and woodsmoke filled the air as she passed several inns and decided to wait a bit before getting a hot lunch.

The people were a fine mix of races, colors, and creeds. Here and there, she saw the ogre-people, who were often trouble but who also brought the very best lumber from the mountains. A trio of dwarves were hawking their steel and arging with two elves at the top of their lungs. And then of course, there were humans. This was primarily a human town, but as a trade-town, caravans brought glass, steel, and spices north, and returned with fine lumber, bone, and furs. There was also a rich sapphire mine even farther north, but that was part of a new expansion, and Adrienne hadn’t explored it yet.

On a whim, Adrienne followed the market though to a specific stall. She had been playing in this art of the world recently, and she was curious to see if the shopkeeper she saved in her last session was here. If he was, he could probably give her some sorely-needed information.

He was.

“Lady Dria!” he cried upon seeing her, and Adrienne jumped before remembering that he couldn’t possibly know her ‘real’ name. After all, in this world, she was Dria Shalla, an adventurer and hero, not Adrienne, the university student. “Welcome! How good to see you again!”

“Hi Gembis,” she said, glad she had just done this quest and knew who he was. He wasn’t all that distinctive compared to the other shopkeepers, but his mounds of spices were, and so was his hanging banner, proclaiming him a merchant of the great cities farther south. “You made it here okay?”

“I did indeed. And on the road, I found this! I insist you take it, with my thanks!”

He pressed a pouch of gold into her hands, along with a pendant made of crystal. It was carved in the shape of a feather, and hung on a silver chain.

Gembis, this is far too much,” Adrienne protested. She hadn’t really done that much for him. Just chased off some monsters and made sure he got to the town alright. Still, this at least was a little familiar. Quests like this always gave you a trinket and a little gold for your trouble.

Of course, Adrienne had just been chasing a completion-based achievement, but Gembis probably didn’t need to know that.

“I insist,” he told her firmly, and waved at his stall, which specialized in spices. “I could sell it, Lady, but you saved my life and business. It will bring you good luck.”

Trying to refuse again seemed rude, so Adrienne tucked the feather into her pocket and patted his shoulder. He was a good sort, as she recalled. A devoted family man who was trying to make a better life for his children.

“Gembis, you take the riverboats back down to Forest Hall, right?” she asked thoughtfully, and pulled out her map. There were ways to fast-travel in this world, but she didn’t know if they would work or not. A boat, however, was probably reliable. “Is there one leaving today that I could catch a ride on?”

“All the way to Forest Hall?” he repeated, and tapped a finger against his lips as he thought. “Not today, but I’ll be taking one myself tomorrow at dawn. I could certainly secure a cabin for you.”

“I wouldn’t want to put anyone out.”

“Oh no, this leg of the journey is light on passengers, and you are Dria Shalla. Who here would refuse you?”

Well, okay. She did spend a fortune building up her reputation as one of the good guys. Not everyone did that, but she discovered that a higher reputation score meant lower equipment costs later, and thought it was worth the cash. Apparently, she was more right than she planned. Now it would save her days of walking.

“I’ll pay, and I’ll protect the boat on the trip,” she compromised with her conscience. He went to refuse and she held up a hand. “I insist, Gembis. It’s the least I can do.’

He wavered, and then cracked a smile. “a hero to the bone, and a fine lass to boot. Alright, Lady Dria. I won’t lie, there have been attacks on the riverboats lately. Your steel might very well mean safety we couldn’t count on before.”

“It’s settled,” Adrienne said, and looked at his spices again. “Now, I’ll bet you know all the best inns in this town. Who’s got the best cook?”

+++

Cybersecurity 101

Adrienne is one of her server’s top players, but the game is more than a game, and she will have to face love, and betrayal, to survive.

Cyber Finals

For the Experience

A Quest Never Completed

Reorienting Home (Subscriber Only!)

Skills Already Known (Subscriber Only!)

Finish Them! (Free on Patreon!)

+++

MORE STORIES!

+++

[fumpkins]

Farmers and activists both casualties of cyber 'war' over animal welfare

Published May 29, 2019 12: 02: 06

Photo: Producers have been confronted with abuse on social media over their livestock practices. (ABC Rural: Jo Prendergast)

Australian farmers and animal activists alike are being targeted in an online battleground, with dangers of violence and death provided by means of popular social networks platforms, an ABC examination has actually discovered.

The online world professional and author of Giant Searching, Ginger Gorman, has actually explained the disgusting abuse and identity theft focused on farmers as office harassment.

“We need to understand that the sort of cyberhate farmers are getting is effectively a new kind of workplace bullying,” she stated.

CAUTION: This story consists of examples of online abuse.

The cutting edge of a cyber war

Beef manufacturer Sue Francis has actually explained life on her Brand-new South Wales farm in posts on her Facebook page.

She stated the feedback had actually primarily been favorable, however 18 months ago she published a picture of a “cull” cow — one that would be sent out to the abattoir — and composed that the animal would experience her “one less than perfect day”.

Photo: Sue Francis was shocked by the vitriol she found on her Facebook page.

A flood of violent remarks followed.

“I’d probably describe Sues (sic) day of death as ‘one beautifully perfect day’.”

“On behalf of that amazing cow … burn in hell!”

A week later on, when Ms Francis published an image of 4 livestock eliminated by lightning, the nasty commentary intensified.

“You are a sick f***ing pervert animal abuser”.

“You rape and kill animals, wake the f*** up moron”.

“I’ve been called a rapist, murderer, paedophile, psychotic,” Ms Francis stated.

“Every insult they can throw at you they will.”

Pictures were likewise drawn from her page and re-posted on another, with an invite to “give her heaps”.

She has actually obstructed more than 200 users.

“I no longer engage with the very hard-core vegans There is no point engaging with them,” she stated.

Photo: Some farmers say they’ve seen online abuse ramp up following recent animal activist protests. (ABC: Anna Levy)

Agent bodies at a loss

Tara Lee, a livestock farmer from wilderness Queensland, has likewise had a barrage of despiteful discuss her Instagram account, which is dedicated to station life.

“It has got to a point where I am afraid to put a photo up,” Ms Lee stated.

“I used to retaliate, but it would egg them on.”

If you or anybody you understand requirements assist:

One opponent took her images and identity from her social networks accounts, and utilized them to establish phony accounts to bully and attack other farmers.

“That was the thing that scared me most of all, just how far he would go to make me look and feel bad,” Ms Lee stated.

Farmers stated they had actually not felt supported by their representative bodies, such as Meat and Animals Australia (MLA) and the National Farmers’ Federation.

“For the past nine years, producers have been asking bodies to either be more proactive in educating the public or be more proactive in refuting some of the rubbish that gets out there about industries,” Ms Francis stated.

Asked if his organisation was doing enough to fight the abuse, MLA handling director Jason Strong stated:

“It’s a tough concern about doing enough, and when you handle individuals who are typically illogical and emotive it is rather difficult to understand what enough is.

“What we need to do is be more proactive around red meat production, around its dietary advantages, around its advantages as part of a diet plan.”

Animal activists in the shooting line

It is not simply farmers being targeted. Animal activists are copping similarly disgusting online abuse.

Chris Delforce, manufacturer of the Rule movie and the Aussie Farms map, which recognizes farm areas throughout Australia, has actually gotten hundreds of aggressive, threatening e-mails and social networks remarks directed at him and his fans.

“We are coming for you. We are equipped and awaiting your return. Attempt and trespass on any personal property — you pass away.”

“Sleep tight, I think you are going to get a go to.”

“C***, I hope somebody punches you hard enough in the throat that you choke to death”.

“I have actually seen actually thousands of disgusting aggressive threatening messages sent out to activists, sent out to myself, that are far even worse than any remarks that I have actually seen directed at farmers,” Mr Delforce stated.

Photo: Chris Delforce moderates the Dominion and Aussie Farms Facebook pages. (Facebook: Aussie Farms)

Ms Gorman stated an online “disinhibition effect” empowered so-called keyboard warriors to state whatever they liked.

“Social media companies don’t help you, law enforcement doesn’t help you, so the structures that keep us safe in offline life are not actually there online,” she stated.

It implies victims typically snap in retaliation due to the fact that they see it as their only choice.

Ms Gorman stated social networks platforms, especially Facebook, benefited economically from these online “wars”.

Photo: Animal activists have also copped abuse online, receiving threatening messages privately and in public forums. (ABC: Anna Levy)

“If you have a cyberhate event, where you have farmers piled onto by extreme vegans and then farmers fighting back, there is this kind of war going on online, and it’s very vicious and damaging and sustained,” she stated.

“What that does is increase the users of those social media platforms and essentially increase their revenue, so it’s not in their best interest to stop cyberhate.”

See this story on ABC TELEVISION’s Landline this Sunday at 12: 30pm or on iview.

Subjects:

social-media,

internet-culture,

information-and-communication,

rural,

livestock,

animal-welfare,

law-crime-and-justice,

psychology,

nsw,

australia,

qld,

melbourne-3000,

vic

New post published on: https://www.livescience.tech/2019/05/29/farmers-and-activists-both-casualties-of-cyber-war-over-animal-welfare/

[bountyofbeads]

DHS warns of Russian interference plans for 2020

https://news.yahoo.com/dhs-warns-russia-influence-2020-elections-170005501.html

I'm curious to know if there's a Russian fingerprint involved in protests and discontent that are taking place around the world. One thing is for sure, Russia and Putin thrive and gain strength when there is chaos in countries from Syria to Venezuela to Africa, Putin can swoop in to provide stability and strength while extorting them for their valuable natural resources. This is the NEW COLD World. Also remember these countries are rich in oil and metals.

DHS WARNS OF RUSSIAN INTERFERENCE PLANS IN 2020 ELECTION, AS WASHINGTON FOCUSES ON UKRAINE

By Martin de Bourmont, Jana Winter | Published October 24, 1:00 PM ET | Yahoo News | Posted October 24, 2019 | VIDEO| View DHS Document on Scrib |

WASHINGTON — U.S. government efforts to prevent Russia from conducting influence operations directed at American audiences have largely failed, and Moscow is continuing its attempts to influence the American political system by exacerbating social divisions, with a particular focus on the upcoming 2020 presidential elections, according to an unclassified intelligence assessment obtained by Yahoo News.

“Russian influence actors almost certainly will continue to target U.S. audiences with influence activities that seek to advance Russian interests, and probably view the 2020 presidential election as a key opportunity to do so,” says a recent intelligence assessment from the Department of Homeland Security’s Cyber Mission Center.

The intelligence assessment, which cites DHS monitoring, classified reporting and open source information, says that Russia has continued through this year to “to engage in influence activities intended to cultivate relationships with U.S. social media users, despite consequences of sanctions, social media account take-downs, and diplomatic overtures…”

The DHS assessment, which was coordinated with the FBI, the CIA, the NSA and other intelligence agencies, comes at a time when fears about disinformation and foreign influence operations are politically charged. President Trump is currently embroiled in an impeachment inquiry examining his alleged efforts to pressure Ukraine to interfere in the U.S. election process, and his former Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton recently claimed that Democratic primary candidate Tulsi Gabbard “is a favorite of the Russians,” asserting that that Russia “has a bunch of sites and bots and other ways of supporting her so far.”

Yet beyond the partisan battles, the recent DHS report, dated Sept. 12, 2019, and marked “for official use only,” shows that government officials behind the scenes are continuing to sound the alarm about the type of Russian electoral interference that took place in 2016. It’s an alarm, however, that experts say few in Washington seem to be heeding.

“The big problem in the U.S. is that there has been no high-level political attention to this,” says Alina Polyakova, founding director of the Project on Global Democracy and Emerging Technology at the Brookings Institution. “Congress has not passed one single legislative bill to at least try to curb the spread of disinformation online.”

But as Washington remains mired in partisan battles over disinformation and foreign influence, Russia appears to be moving forward with its own plans.

The report reveals that the DHS monitored “a small sample of 22 social media accounts suspected of being controlled by Russian influence actors on social media platforms from early September 2018 to early January 2019,” and found they “amplified divisive narratives, including content critical of US and allied foreign policy, racial discrimination and tensions, US politics and political figures, climate change, and environmentalism.”

Those Russian-controlled accounts also targeted specific U.S. communities, the report says.

“Russian influence actors’ efforts on social media continued through at least early January 2019,” says the report, “to focus on themes including aggravating social and racial tensions, undermining trust in US authorities, stoking political resentment in racial minority communities, and criticizing perceived anti-Russia politicians, based on DHS observation of these accounts’ activity.”

The DHS did not respond to a request for comment about the report, but the conclusions in its assessment appear to be backed up by recent public reports as well. Earlier this week, Facebook revealed that Instagram accounts originating in Russia are already active, with some posing as swing state residents. The company’s announcement just two weeks after the Senate Intelligence Committee released a report providing more details about how Russia targeted American voters with a disinformation campaign designed to help Donald Trump win the 2016 presidential election against Hillary Clinton using a combination of targeted advertising, fake news and content that exploited divisive social issues.

That interference, however, is morphing and posing new threats for the upcoming presidential election. In the 2016 elections, the Internet Research Agency, a St. Petersburg-based company, ran online “troll farms” that posted inflammatory political rhetoric, but its focus is now on “amplifying content rather than relying on fake accounts to create new content,” says the report.

That’s a strategy that outside researchers see as well.

“Eliminating the risk of building an audience by just commandeering an audience that’s already there is the absolute most rational thing for anyone running one of these campaigns to do,” says Renée DiResta, a 2019 Mozilla Fellow in Media, Misinformation, and Trust who has advised Congress and the State Department. “People on the internet tell you who they are; if you want to go and find people it takes all of five minutes to go to Facebook and identify the biggest or most active meme groups and just start putting your content in there.”

DiResta cited the example of a network of pro-police Blue Lives Matter pages that were uncovered by Stanford Internet Observatory researchers before being taken down by Facebook. The nine pages with 312,000 followers, which drew visitors by promoting pro-Trump, pro-police content, were produced out of Kosovo for financial gain.

Researchers observed that users in Kosovo were creating fake content, “and then they posted the content from the fake pages into real groups,” says DiResta. “And that is how they did the work of generating their audience.”

While the threat may not be entirely new the problem, says experts, is that the U.S. government has done little to stop this sort of disinformation since the 2016 election.

“Russia is doubling down on information operations, yes, they’re trying to sow discord and animosity, that’s their primary M.O.,” says Michael Carpenter, senior director of the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement. “They’re running rampant.”

Yet there is no legal or regulatory framework in place to counter those operations, according to Carpenter.

“If a Russian NGO that is masked behind several layers of shell companies in the U.S., has an American sounding name, is contributing a couple thousand bucks to some alt-right website, it’s not even illegal,” he says, “nor is it traceable, nor does that website have any obligation to disclose its donors to the FEC or anyone else.”

Polyakova of Brookings agrees that some sort of regulation is required, because the private sector alone isn’t equipped to take on the problem. “Social media companies have been self-governing, but that self-governing has to come to an end because it’s not solving the problem,” she says.

One of the things that could be done, says Polyakova, is the creation of an agency for social media companies that “set things like standard terms of use and service,” similar to what takes place in the financial and banking sector for money laundering. “This independent regulator could do something like that,” she says.

In addition to a well-coordinated government response, a coherent narrative is also essential to the success of any counter-influence campaign, says Nina Jankowicz, a fellow at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. “I think the effective responses that we've seen in Europe have been ones that name the problem explicitly and name the actors involved and put the whole force of the government behind solving it.”

Jankowicz points to the U.K.’s response to the attempted assassination of Russian double-agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter as a model for fighting back against Moscow’s disinformation. The U.K., in response to Moscow’s efforts, launched its own information campaign of its own, setting up, for instance, a communications team to publicly release information about Russian intelligence officers responsible for the attack.

In the U.S., on the other hand, says Jankowicz, a similar effort is limited by the politicization of debate around Russian disinformation. “In order for all these cogs to move together, someone needs to press the button,” says Jankowicz.

While the enforcement landscape today is much better today than it was before the 2016 elections, it remains limited in its capacity to disrupt influence campaigns, says Alex Stamos, former chief security officer at Facebook and now an adjunct professor at Stanford University.

“In the run-up to the 2018 midterms, DHS created their task force, the FBI created a foreign influence task force, NSA spun up a group whose job it was to watch and pay attention to foreign disinformation actors, not just transnational operational cyber actors, [and] that’s been great,” he says.

Still, Stamos says structural issues continue to hamper an effective response to the problem.

“The FBI and DHS are limited to even monitor for domestic misinformation and our foreign adversaries know that. The FBI can only investigate things if there’s a possible predicate of a law being broken,” he says. “There’s huge classes of things that foreign adversaries can do.”

Even with that progress, there are limits to what private companies and government agencies can do. “The companies know very little about what lies behind different entities. Facebook can’t serve or subpoena to find out how some super-PAC was funded. The FBI can do that but the FBI doesn’t have access to the content data, except when they have individualized suspicion,” he says. “The different groups who are watching all have very different views of the data but no one has access to all of it.”

On an even more basic level, says Elina Treyger, a political scientist at Rand Corp., the U.S. must decide what its objectives are in combating influence operations. “We talk about countering what the Russians are doing, but there is rarely a clear goal behind the countermeasures,” she says. “What is it that we want to accomplish?”

If the goal is trying to protect the public from foreign influence operations, then the U.S. is failing, she says.

Treyger contrasts the United States with Finland, which has incorporated courses on disinformation, fact checking and voter literacy into its educational system. Noting that such programs work better in countries with higher trust in institutions and a more uniformly educated population, Treyger says Americans remain vulnerable to disinformation.

“This is a problem that’s obviously bigger than Russia,” she says. “[It’s] one of the defining problems of our current political moment.”

*********

[ramrodd]

Why do so many liberals pretend the deep state does not exist?

COMMENTARY:

The structure of this question suggests that Steve Wetzel is Conservative in a crypto-Nazi agitator kind of way: it is constructed to misdirect attention away from the GOP Deep State.

There is both a Democrat Deep State and the GOP Deep State.

The Democrat Deep State is horizontal and is a broad coalition of philosophically aligned interests that Howard Dean was able to mobilize in 2008 with his 50 State Strategy to elect Obama. Rahm Emanuel took more credit for it’s performance than comes close to reality and he, Emanueal, squandered Obama’s first two years lining up his next political career like Andrew Cuomo did when he was running HUD for Clinton. His people, Emanuel’s, are Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez most virulent opponents and includes Obama.

The Democrat Deep State is a shadow of the Democrat machine LBJ left for Herbert Humphrey, which almost won thanks to George Wallace, and more or less totally disintegrated with McGovern. With the exception of Carter’s administration, the Democrats haven’t had a coherent or sustained domestic program since Watergate. Obama’s election proved that the Democrats don’t need an FDR-LBJ deep state political machine to place quality people in office and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez represents a re-boot of the Nixon-Carter “Affirmative Action” process that was transforming the Military Industrial Complex to an Aerospace-Entrepreneurial Matrix that is a legacy of the Democratic Socialism of Eisenhower’s 1956 Presidential Platform that Reagan inherited and the crypto-Nazis around him began replacing with the predatory Tory Socialism of Reaganomics that created the 2008 economic crises and promises to do the same as a result of the 2017 Tax Reforms. Tory Socialism is the core economic paradigm that Obama and Clinton share with Trump, McConnell, Ryan and the House Freedom Caucus, the singular difference being that Obama/Clinton structure their policy around “altruism” as defined by Ayn Rand and Trump/McConnellRyan/Freedom Caucus structure their policy around Ayn Rand’s “Virtue of Selfishness”.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Democratic Socialism is based on the economics of Jesus. That’s why it’s radical.

After 13% of the voting public migrated out of the Democrat Deep State with George Wallace, they began to drift into the GOP Deep State, attracted to the enthusiastic racial bigotry 0f Nixon’s cultural warfare being generated by people like Pat Buchanan, who was obviously influenced by George Lincoln Rockwell during the protests at Glen Echo Park in 1954 and the success of McCarthy-Cohn in creating a lynch mob, and G. Gordon Liddy, who was an example of the crypto-Nazi element in J. E. Hoover’s FBI and all the other plumbers and 43 future felons. And, in 1972, with the rise of the Corleone family values in the collective ethos of the Harvard Business School, most of the rising generation of crime families began to migrate into GOP politics and Wall Street. And this migration was preceeded by the 1971 Powell Memo that outlined the operational agenda of the GOP Deep State, which was preceeded by the 1960 Sharon Statement, which is William F. Buckley’s crypto-Nazi manifesto establishing the modern Conservative movement and organizing the Young Americans for Freedom, which is a farm system for developing corporate crypto-Nazi career activists distributed generally through business schools and political activism at the grass roots.

And all this was in place when the crypto-Nazis that came to town with Reagan and before the GOP Deep State, as it now exists (that Steve Wetzel’s question attempts to shift attention to the Democrat Deep State) began to coalesce around Donald T. Regan as Secretary of Treasury, who was manipulating markets as SecTreasury and put it on steriods as Reagan’s Chief of Staff until Nancy recognized his treachery against her husband and America, and fired his ass.

But she couldn’t destroy the GOP Deep State that Regan left in place. Hedrich Smith’s “Who Stole The American Dream” interview captures the important elements of his book and fills in my outline of the formation of the GOP Deep State after 1971.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26HKiCR_VJA&t=8s

Noiw, elements of the GOP Deep State are identical to the Democrat Deep State and are legitimate structures of a democratic process in the context of the Hegelian synthesis of the US Constitution (the fact that the Framers anticipate Hegel reflects the especial qualities of that instrument and how Trump is trying to sabotage it for his narrow personal benefit should not be lost in the gabble of the crypto-Nazi disinformation I associate with the NRA’s version of the 2nd Amendment). Newt Gingrich copied the tactics of the Trotsky insurgency process the SDS was using as a Conservative community organizer to create GOPAC and hijack Congress with the Contract with America, which was modeled on Marx’s Communist Manifesto. Newy brags about it and GOPAC is just as legitimate as moveon.org.

But beneath these benign structures, the people behind Roger Stone, Gover Norquist, Steve Bannon and even behind Robert Murdoch and Steve Koch, are the elements which manage and distribute the Dark Money made possible by Citizens United and the enormous cash flows of the Pro-Life/Creationists Evangelical Calvinists who share John Piper’s business model and has become an essential conduit for the money laundering of Eurodollars moving to Wall Street hedge funds which employ the fiction of algorithms to hide the sources of their above average performance and cash distributions. And, at this Dark Money level, the conspiracy between the Russian criminal elements that are conducting the cyber-attack that the late election exposed hooks into the GOP Deep State. This is a transnational agenda that is engaged in destabilizing constitutional authority all over the world to create the social collapse Steve Bannon thinks is neat and John Galt makes the $ign of the Dollar over.

And this is another one of those things Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez disrupts with her cash free primary victory: Democrats have never had to rely on the big money advertising-communication strategy that the Conservatives have, because their agenda is to enrich the culture and not to polarize it, but the Democrat leadership, the Obamas and Clintons and all the down-ballot old boys, have gotten a bit too cozy with this dark money cash flow and that’s why Ocasio is considered a radical: she isn’t on the payroll and all the major players are fully vested in the status quo.

Personally, as an Eisenhower Republican, I am all in for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez specifically because of the progressive Democratic Socialism of Eisenhower’s 1956 Presidential Platform, where he doubles-down on the New Deal,

The fact that Obama and Clinton don’t recognize this is far more important than any Democrat collusion to ignore the Democrat Deep State. From what I know of the intellectual pretensions of Democrats over the year, I can believe they don’t know any better, but the fact that Steve Wetzel is trying to misdirect the conversation away from the GOP Deep State is connected to Trump’s “witch hunt” attempt to suborn Mueller’s investigation.

The good news is that Steve Wetzel probably isn’t a Russian bot.

[fumpkins]

Farmers and activists both casualties of cyber 'war' over animal welfare

Posted May 29, 2019 12:02:06

Photo: Producers have been confronted with abuse on social media over their livestock practices. (ABC Rural: Jo Prendergast)

Australian farmers and animal activists alike are being targeted in an online battlefield, with threats of violence and death delivered via popular social media platforms, an ABC investigation has found.

Cyberspace expert and author of Troll Hunting, Ginger Gorman, has described the vile abuse and identity theft aimed at farmers as workplace harassment.

“We need to understand that the sort of cyberhate farmers are getting is effectively a new kind of workplace bullying,” she said.

WARNING: This story contains examples of online abuse.

The front lines of a cyber war

Beef producer Sue Francis has described life on her New South Wales farm in posts on her Facebook page.

She said the feedback had mostly been positive, but 18 months ago she posted a photograph of a “cull” cow — one that would be sent to the abattoir — and wrote that the animal would experience her “one less than perfect day”.

Photo: Sue Francis was shocked by the vitriol she found on her Facebook page.

A flood of abusive comments followed.

“I’d probably describe Sues (sic) day of death as ‘one beautifully perfect day’.”

“On behalf of that amazing cow … burn in hell!”

A week later, when Ms Francis posted a picture of four cattle killed by lightning, the nasty commentary escalated.

“You are a sick f***ing pervert animal abuser”.

“You rape and kill animals, wake the f*** up moron”.

“I’ve been called a rapist, murderer, paedophile, psychotic,” Ms Francis said.

“Every insult they can throw at you they will.”

Photos were also taken from her page and re-posted on another, with an invitation to “give her heaps”.

She has blocked more than 200 users.

“I no longer engage with the very hard-core vegans There is no point engaging with them,” she said.

Photo: Some farmers say they’ve seen online abuse ramp up following recent animal activist protests. (ABC: Anna Levy)

Representative bodies at a loss

Tara Lee, a cattle farmer from outback Queensland, has also had a barrage of hateful comments on her Instagram account, which is devoted to station life.

“It has got to a point where I am afraid to put a photo up,” Ms Lee said.

“I used to retaliate, but it would egg them on.”

If you or anyone you know needs help:

One attacker stole her photos and identity from her social media accounts, and used them to set up fake accounts to bully and attack other farmers.

“That was the thing that scared me most of all, just how far he would go to make me look and feel bad,” Ms Lee said.

Farmers said they had not felt supported by their representative bodies, such as Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA) and the National Farmers’ Federation.

“For the past nine years, producers have been asking bodies to either be more proactive in educating the public or be more proactive in refuting some of the rubbish that gets out there about industries,” Ms Francis said.

Asked if his organisation was doing enough to combat the abuse, MLA managing director Jason Strong said:

“It’s a difficult question about doing enough, and when you deal with people who are often irrational and emotive it is quite hard to know what enough is.

“What we have to do is be more proactive around red meat production, around its nutritional benefits, around its benefits as part of a diet.”

Animal activists in the firing line

It is not just farmers being targeted. Animal activists are copping equally vile online abuse.

Chris Delforce, producer of the Dominion film and the Aussie Farms map, which identifies farm locations across Australia, has received hundreds of aggressive, threatening emails and social media comments directed at him and his supporters.

“We are coming for you. We are armed and waiting for your return. Try and trespass on any private property — you die.”

“Sleep tight, I believe you are going to get a visit.”

“C***, I pray someone punches you hard enough in the throat that you choke to death”.

“I’ve seen literally thousands of vile aggressive threatening messages sent to activists, sent to myself, that are far worse than any comments that I’ve seen directed at farmers,” Mr Delforce said.

Photo: Chris Delforce moderates the Dominion and Aussie Farms Facebook pages. (Facebook: Aussie Farms)

Ms Gorman said an online “disinhibition effect” empowered so-called keyboard warriors to say whatever they liked.

“Social media companies don’t help you, law enforcement doesn’t help you, so the structures that keep us safe in offline life are not actually there online,” she said.

It means victims often lash out in retaliation because they see it as their only option.

Ms Gorman said social media platforms, particularly Facebook, benefited financially from these online “wars”.

Photo: Animal activists have also copped abuse online, receiving threatening messages privately and in public forums. (ABC: Anna Levy)

“If you have a cyberhate event, where you have farmers piled onto by extreme vegans and then farmers fighting back, there is this kind of war going on online, and it’s very vicious and damaging and sustained,” she said.

“What that does is increase the users of those social media platforms and essentially increase their revenue, so it’s not in their best interest to stop cyberhate.”

Watch this story on ABC TV’s Landline this Sunday at 12:30pm or on iview.

Topics:

social-media,

internet-culture,

information-and-communication,

rural,

livestock,

animal-welfare,

law-crime-and-justice,

psychology,

nsw,

australia,

qld,

melbourne-3000,

vic

New post published on: https://www.livescience.tech/2019/05/29/farmers-and-activists-both-casualties-of-cyber-war-over-animal-welfare/