“This “groundbreaking” exposé from The Guardian, in Britain, uncovered an Israeli firm hacking elections”.

February 25, 2023

Election-Rigging from Abroad? I Am Shocked, Shocked!

By Mike Konrad at American Thinker

Forget about the stories about the Israeli judicial reforms. Its critics are exaggerating, but now we have another exaggeration about Israel floating up to the top of the news.

Some Israelis – supposedly affiliated with a firm called Team Jorge – have been caught rigging elections.

My first reaction to that was to remember that line in Casablanca where Captain Renault tells Rick, “I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here,” just as a waiter comes up to the captain, and says, “Your winnings, sir.”

This “groundbreaking” exposé from The Guardian, in Britain, uncovered an Israeli firm hacking elections.

Three journalists – Gur Megiddo of TheMarker, Frédéric Métézeau of Radio France, and Omer Benjakob of Haaretz – had been on the tails of Jorge for more than six months, posing as consultants working on behalf of a businessman who wanted to delay an election in a large and unstable country in Africa. — The Guardian

I have no doubt that something was going on. But the fact that it was exposed leads me to believe that the firm was not that competent, or it would not have been exposed.

When it comes to hacking, it is a signature of teenage hackers to brag about their exploits.

The student from Montreal’s West Island … was caught because he boasted about his hacking in Internet chat groups. – The Globe and Mail

Bragging! And this firm made the same mistake.

According to the video, the firm’s director says that the team engaged in …

Thirty-three presidential level campaigns, we have completed. Twenty seven of them which were successful – The Guardian (video)

I don’t doubt that hacking elections is a common occurrence. It might explain how President Trump got ten million more voters in 2020 than he did in 2016, and still lost his re-election.

But the idiocy of this exposé was making such a hacking enterprise look expensive and professional. The firm claimed to run 30,000 bots.

But is that really impressive?

For example, Team Jorge said it can generate false faces. 

Big deal. You can do that online for free at: https://this-person-does-not-exist.com/en

True, generating 30,000 fake faces would take time, but some inexpensive software could get it done fast. 

And there are websites with pricing packages. See this site: https://www.unite.ai/random-face-generators/   (Some on this list are free)

If you know Linux (which is free), you can get an MIT tool, such as this one: https://snapcraft.io/random-face-generator

An average 15-year-old techie could master that.

Hootsuite helps you to manage Twitter accounts. There are other packages.

A simple VPN service (some of which can be free) can hide your IP. They’ll think you are posting from Brazil.

Now, the exposé does mention that the firm is using a “secret” tool called AIMS, but rather than being secret, AIMS is a commercial software package designed to make media access easy and manageable. It operates on Microsoft’s Azure Cloud Platform.

Azure is a public cloud computing platform—with solutions including Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS) that can be used for services such as analytics, virtual computing, storage, networking, and much more. It can be used to replace or supplement your on-premise servers. — CCBTechnology

A lightbulb should go on in someone’s head.

Do you seriously believe that a truly covert operation wants its data on any cloud server managed by Microsoft?

No true covert professional – or 15-year-old techie for that matter – would touch it. They would operate under the assumption that any all-in-one-easy-to-use software is put out by the CIA, MI5, FBI, Mossad, etc. in order to spy on hackers. Real professionals would use a lot of open-source software, which could be erased and altered regularly.

And they certainly would not trust a Microsoft platform.

But what about the multilayered bots, which masquerade as real people with accounts on social media? You can buy fake accounts on the Dark Web. Pay for it with BitCoin. Some come cheap.

And none of this is news.

Elon Musk Wants to Rid Twitter of ‘Spam Bots.’ Nearly Half His Followers Are Fake — Time

None of this should be done in an office, though. Such firms would run out of laptops.

You meet the company president in a coffee shop. The CEO should be wearing eyeglasses. If you really want to save money, instead of paying $400,000 for such services, you could find a competent high school junior.

The techie should be running a slightly older laptop – which he bought on Craigslist, so it can’t be traced. The laptop should be running on Linux, with a kill switch, and which he reformats to re-install a different distro of Linux regularly. His database should be on a USB stick, not the cloud.

He should be accessing the internet in libraries, malls, and anywhere with open hot spots. The gold mine is when he accesses the internet in a pizza shop, but the signal is coming from the adjacent barbershop. He logs on to his VPN – which is either free or paid for via BitCoin – to make it look like he is logging in from Nigeria. Then he begins to work.

No rent. No overhead. Most of the software is freeware on Linux, which is itself free. If he is really good, he can use the terminal to write his own code.

But what about the timed automation? Those tweets have to be spaced out.

He could stay a few hours in the local library. They almost always have wi-fi. Or he could rent a server at a colocation office, paid for by BitCoin.

What do you bet this student could produce similar results for say … a tenth of the price, which is just what he needs to pay his car insurance, and next semester’s tuition?

The idiocy of the report is that what the Guardian exposed is news. It is last decade’s news. This has been going on since the internet started.  And I seriously wonder if what Team Jorge did was illegal. Spreading election disinformation has been going on since the printing press was invented.

But supposedly, this team had connections to Western power brokers, such as Roger Noriega, who worked for George W. Bush. Doesn’t that mean anything?

A biography of Hanan [Team Jorge’s group leader] had appeared on Visión Américas, Noriega’s Washington DC consulting firm, which also listed him as an associate. — The Guardian

This means nothing!  Noriega denied any knowledge of hacking. This wouldn’t be the first time that Washington was taken in by flim-flam men. Name-dropping in D.C. is as common as in Hollywood.

I suspect Team Jorge thought they had a sucker they could overcharge for minimal services, and were pretending to be experts. And the news fell for it. Had the services of Team Jorge been engaged, they would have farmed out the work to some teenagers – and that would have been the real story.

I’ve been getting spam from Nigeria for decades alerting me to the millions of dollars left to me in the bank. Now, if the Guardian would track down those Nigerians who are holding my money, that would be impressive.

Mike Konrad is a full-stack web developer.

(“Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia. Never,” President Biden said in Poland on February 21.)

February 25, 2023

Biden Denies the Russians a Choice

By James Soriano at American Thinker:

It is said that President John F. Kennedy gave the most important speech of his presidency before the graduating class at the American University in Washington, D.C., in June 1963.  The occasion was five months before his death and eight months after he had confronted Russian premier Nikita Khrushchev over the deployment of Russian nuclear missiles in Cuba.  The Cuban Missile Crisis would later be seen as a defining moment in U.S.-Russian relations.  It was the closest approach of the two Cold War antagonists to a nuclear confrontation.

After the crisis subsided, Kennedy thought deeply about how to avoid a situation like that again and how the two great nuclear powers could find a way to live together.  He wanted to say something about it publicly.  In his speech, Kennedy signaled U.S. readiness to join with Russia in banning the future tests of nuclear weapons and he opened the prospect for peaceful coexistence.  The speech is admired for Kennedy’s eloquence and for the initiative he took in conceiving it, but there is a passage in it that is relevant today as we look at the war unfolding in Ukraine. 

Nuclear powers, Kennedy said, “must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy — or of a collective death-wish for the world.”

Kennedy was 47 years old when he passed along that wise counsel to those who would manage America’s future relations with other nuclear powers.  Today it is not taken as a maxim for guiding current American policy towards Russia.  President Biden refutes Kennedy. His foreign policy team would hold that Kennedy raised a false dichotomy, and that it is not the case that the only alternatives in an American confrontation with another nuclear-armed power is either a “humiliating retreat” or nuclear war.  Rather, they would say, it is possible to calibrate a vigorous response within a range of policy options short of approaching a nuclear show down.  This is the great game the United States and its NATO allies are now playing with Russia.  It is a game where the bid is being continually raised. 

“Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia. Never,” President Biden said in Poland on February 21.  The words are confrontational and far removed from the spirit in Kennedy’s speech.  They are part of a long record of American words and deeds showing that Washington is willing to risk a direct military confrontation with Russia.  Today’s policy hawks would have to admit that Kennedy got the part about avoiding humiliating another nuclear power wrong.  They are not shy about talking about humiliating Russia.  Humiliation is seen as an aspect of policy.  That stems partly from the West’s sense of maddened outrage over Russia’s behavior and partly from deliberate calculation.  Humiliating Russia is built into the logic NATO’s military response on the battlefield.

NATO wants to keep the Ukrainian army up and fighting.  Its escalatory moves are aimed at raising the costs Russia must pay while denying it tangible gains.  The fight in Ukraine goes on but neither the United States nor its allies have made an explicit announcement about their war aims.  In fact, there are no concrete war aims, apart from the abstract notion of victory itself, which is presumably defined as a battlefield check on Russian military advance, brought about by a combination of NATO weaponry and Ukrainian manpower.  Victory is the war aim, and not something else. When it’s achieved, it would be evident to all parties; we would know it when we see it.  It might be accompanied by a Russian change of heart, an acknowledgment of war guilt, and offers to make amends.  Swapping out a whole new set of leaders in Moscow, which has long been a policy hawk dream, would be in the cards.  Sum up these things and the logic of NATO’s battlefield gambits amounts to a “humiliating retreat” for Russia.

French president Emmanuel Macron sometimes says things that put him at odds with the more hawkish voices in Europe.  Apparently wanting to have it both ways, he said a few days ago that Russia must be “defeated” in Ukraine, but not “crushed.”  That may sound like a distinction without a difference, but Macron was signaling his opposition to allowing the desire to humiliate Russia from commandeering the course of NATO war policy.  He has also ruled out “regime change” in Russia.

Kennedy’s caution against humiliating another nuclear-armed power in a dispute does not exactly equate to the U.S. and its allies finding an “off-ramp” for Russia.  The expression “off-ramp” pops up in talk about Ukraine.  Typically, the speaker means that Russia is in over its head, it’s looking for a way out, and the collective West ought to respond with an accommodative gesture.  Kennedy’s intent was different.  From the context of the speech, he puts the burden on American behavior before a crisis arises, and not merely on creatively helping our opponent find a way out during the heat of a crisis.  Kennedy meant that restraint should be the proscriptive guide to policy-making, and not merely an expedient for defusing tension.  From this it would follow that the United States should never follow a course where temporary and imperfect solutions are removed from the table, leaving behind the residual choice of humiliation or nuclear war. The U.S. has done exactly that in Ukraine. Looking at the chain of events in the run-up to the war, it is hard to see how restraint shaped America’s whole-hearted support for NATO’s bold expansion right up to Russia’s fence; nor is it evident how restraint plays in the gambler’s game of war by proxy.

If the reader wants a take-away from this dismal state of affairs, then let him take some comfort in the thought that Divine Providence foreordained from all eternity that not one of the practitioners of American policy towards Russia today was in the White House cabinet room when John Kennedy drafted his responses to Nikita Khrushchev sixty-one years ago.

JAMES SORIANO is a retired foreign service officer.  He has previously written for the American Thinker on the war in Ukraine.

What’s Happening To The Human Animal TODAY?

FEBRUARY 24, 2023 BY JOHN HINDERAKER at Power Line:

THE SEX-CHANGE LAWSUITS BEGIN

Survey data indicate that a high percentage of people who underwent sex-change operations when they were young eventually regret it. The data also suggest that most minors who express gender dysphoria have a multitude of problems, including, in many cases, autism. Yet sex-change clinics around the world frequently hustle disturbed minors into permanent, life-altering chemical regimes and brutally invasive surgery.

Most people, if asked, don’t support sex change operations on minors. But, of course, they aren’t being asked. The bizarre and scientifically illiterate “gender is anyone’s choice” train barrels down the track. Can anything stop it?

Maybe lawsuits can. From the Daily Caller News Foundation:

Chloe Cole, a young woman who once identified as transgender, is suing the medical professionals and hospital that administered sex change procedures to her as a child which she now regrets, according to a complaint her attorneys published Thursday.

What is being done to confused children is appalling:

The Center for American Liberty, Dhillon Law Group and LiMandri and Jonna are suing Kaiser Foundation Hospitals, the Permanente Medical Group and several doctors on Cole’s behalf for their involvement in Cole’s transition, which included puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and a double mastectomy between the ages of 13 and 17….

Pause on that for a moment: a double mastectomy between the ages of 13 and 17, not on account of cancer, but on account of social media-driven hysteria. Was there no one to stick up for this poor girl?

Cole had numerous mental health issues when she first began identifying as transgender at age 13, but despite these co-morbidities, medical professionals immediately affirmed her transgender identity and put her on the path to irreversible cross-sex procedures, the complaint alleges.
***
Cole struggled with anxiety, depression, speech difficulties, autism spectrum symptoms, body image issues and confusion about her gender, according to the complaint. She adopted a transgender identity after watching transgender influencers on social media, and when her parents brought her to Kaiser, medical professionals made no attempts to treat her coexisting mental health issues or understand what had led her to identify as transgender, but instead put her on the immediate path to gender transition, the complaint alleges.

I don’t know anything about this case, but what the complaint describes happens often. In England, the Tavistock Clinic, which similarly rushed vulnerable children into irreversible sex change surgery, has been closed down and its methods have been repudiated. Here in the U.S., genital mutilation of minors is still being carried out, at great cost to troubled children and great profit to the hospitals and doctors who participate.

Many, many more lawsuits from detransitioning victims will be filed in years to come. I hope that litigation may bring the current mania for sex changes to a screeching halt, although that is likely too optimistic. I have no idea how strong this particular plaintiff’s claims are. She was a minor, so the surgery presumably was authorized by one or both of her parents. An obvious issue is informed consent: did the medical professionals adequately disclose to the parents the full risks entailed by administration of drugs, followed by sex change operations? It is hard to imagine that they did. Other issues will of course be presented, as well.

Hospitals and doctors, and their insurance companies, will erect every possible legal obstacle to these lawsuits. But sooner or later, some plaintiffs will surmount those barriers and take their cases to juries. If that happens–when it happens–the true scandal flowing from today’s idiotic gender ideology may stand revealed. I hope that massive jury verdicts will bring the “carve them up” era to an end.

A footnote: when Scott and I started writing together in approximately 1990, and when we founded this site in 2002, sex–or gender, the same thing–was the farthest thing from our minds. We never imagined that someday, we would have to write about sex-change operations and mastectomies carried out on 13-year-old girls. Frankly, I am much more comfortable writing about economic data and the like. But unfortunately, the Left has mounted a campaign against America’s youth that it is impossible to ignore. Here, as elsewhere, the Left’s policies are not just misguided but evil, and while we might prefer to avert our eyes, we have no choice but to oppose them, in hopes that some lives can be saved.

Remembering Yesterdays

February 25, 2023

Children deserve to be taught accurate, unbiased history

By Helen Louise Herndon at American Thinker:

Across America, parents and educators express concern about how schools are teaching the history of slavery in America, whether it’s via The 1619 Project or Critical Race Theory. The obsessive focus on the fact that it was Blacks in America who were slaves (after failed experiments enslaving the Irish and Native Americans) has obscured the totality of the slave experience in America, which saw people of all races participate in a practice as old as humanity itself.

Though the slaves were Black, from Africa to America, the slave owners, traders, and escaped slave bounty hunters were Blacks, Arabs, Native Americans, and Whites put the lie to the left’s insistence that only Whites are culpable. Teaching such inaccurate facts and falsehoods, whether intentional or not, encourages White children to be ashamed of their race and Blacks to perceive themselves as permanently victimized. Teaching history selectively omits substantial historical facts, which balance and temper politically-driven historical narratives.

Black slaves originated in Black Africa, when Blacks from other tribes captured, enslaved, and sold them to Muslim slave traders. It was a profitable commerce for many African tribal leaders. Not only were millions sold to be sent to the Americas or Europe, but millions more were also sold to be sent to the Middle East. In fact, the latter continued into the 20th century.

In America’s South, there were literally thousands of Black slave owners—over 3,000 in New Orleans alone and many in the Carolinas. Some became quite wealthy, such as an alleged Black slave owner in Louisiana reported to be the wealthiest person with the most slaves.

Image: Muslim slave traders in 19th-century Africa. Public domain.

According to some Black historians and scholars, those Blacks who owned slaves treated them every bit as badly as White slave owners treated their slaves. Besides slave owners, Blacks were also slave traders and bounty hunters of escaped slaves.

Five Native American tribes also owned Black slaves: Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole. Three tribes refused to emancipate their slaves following the Civil War and later had to be forced to when signing a treaty with the United States. Today, many Black descendants of Cherokee slaves that became known as Freedmen have fought for equal status in the Cherokee nation because they can benefit from that connection.

None of the above facts deny or dismiss that America was a White-majority nation that, in some regions, legalized slavery. What must be considered, however, is races are not monolithic. In other words, not everyone in any given race is good or bad, oppressed or oppressor. To paint any entire race and every individual in that race as evil or oppressor is a grave error, both historically and racially.

The above facts simply and truthfully balance America’s history with ancient and world histories wherein evil is present in all nations and all races historically. Look at Africa, for instance. Slavery and the slave trade remained legal well into the mid-twentieth century (and are still practiced covertly). Slavery remains legal in much of the Islamic Middle East. Look at Asia and some of the historic horrors against various ethnic groups that are well recorded. America’s history is a mixed bag of good and evil, as is the history of most nations and most people groups.

Importantly, children should never be taught to be ashamed of their color. How can we forget Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s eloquent words relating to “content of character” mattering most? As a nation that proclaims equality and has steadily worked toward ensuring it, we should not inculcate or indoctrinate children with false histories that abet and foment racial divisions, causing animosity or ill will. We can assume that Black or Native American children would be shamed to learn that people sharing their race oppressed others. Why do we impose that shame only on White children?

As mature and fair American adults, are we not responsible to teach children that good and evil come in different colors as they did in history? Teaching accurate and balanced history will go a long way in ensuring children grow up to be united Americans, which is a worthy goal for us all.

Saturday Morning Beauty

Sent by Mark Waldeland.