RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.forbes.com/sites/cognitiveworld/2020/04/28/3-digital-realities-arising-from-the-covid19-pandemic/#14c1c8e634dc

The Covid19 pandemic has brought misery to most of the world. Unlike the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic we do have a better ability to surveil the virus ecosystem and process lessons learned through our digital technologies. There are many lessons still to learn, but three digital realities can guide our future outlook.  

Hospitals And Healthcare Facilities Are Critical Assets That Need To Be Cyber Protected

During the Covid19 Hospitals and healthcare providers have demonstrated the critical importance to our economy and lives. While doctors, nurses and health workers are in the front lines fighting for patients survival, their medical facilities have been bombarded with cyber-attacks, including phishing emails, malicious malware and ransomware. Recently ransomware took down the website of the Champaign-Urbana Public Health District in Illinois, USA. NRC Health, a company that supplies software to healthcare organizations was also hit by a ransomware attack.

The reality is that hospitals are logical hacker targets. Medical care has become more networked and interconnected via computers and devices, and the digital landscape of health administrators, hospitals, and patients, has become increasingly vulnerable. Hospitals are  susceptible to cyber threats because of the large data flows many points of vulnerability throughout their various systems. It is not only the enterprise networks, medical devices such as ventilators, monitors, pumps, electrocardiographs, lasers, medical apps, infusion pumps, and diagnostic imaging systems are also hacker targets.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/04/kori-ali-muhammad-guilty-multiple-murders-lloyd-billingsley/

A jury in Fresno, California, has found Kori Ali Muhammad, 42, guilty of murdering Zackary David Randalls, 34, Mark James Gassett, 37, and David Martin Jackson, 58, on April 18,  2017. A week before, Muhammad murdered Carl Williams, who was only 25.

Muhammad encountered Williams at a Fresno Motel 6 and felt “disrespected,” so he killed the man, whom he did not know and had not previously met. When police sought him for the shooting, Muhammad planned to “kill as many white men” as he could before being caught. So he drove through downtown Fresno firing at his targets of choice.

When he walked up to a truck, Muhammad said in his confession, “I saw a Mexican driver and a white guy. I didn’t want to target the driver because he was Mexican, so I shot the white dude.” The “white dude” was Zachary Randalls, whom Muhammad did not know and, as with all four victims, targeted solely because of his skin shade.

Muhammad encountered Mark James Gassett emerging from a Catholic Charities USA building and gunned him down with a .357 magnum revolver, shooting the victim again after he fell to the ground. Gassett was the father of two boys, Layten, 9, and Troy, 14.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/04/taliban-imams-mosque-promotes-books-calling-joe-kaufman/

Masjid Jamaat Al-Mu’mineen (MJAM) is a radical mosque, located in Margate, Florida, infamous for having an imam that was charged by the FBI with helping to finance the Taliban. Surfing the mosque’s website, one is able to access a web library of downloadable Islamic texts. The amount of bigotry and violence found in the books is alarming, especially in their attacks against members of the Jewish and Christian faiths.

This past decade, MJAM has been working hard to expand construction beyond the mosque to include a children’s school, a conference center and more. As Phase II of MJAM’s Islamic Center expansion project was underway, the mosque’s imam, Izhar Khan, was behind bars. In May 2011, Khan was arrested and spent the next 20 months in a Miami federal detention center for his alleged participation in a terror financing scheme to ship $50 thousand to the Pakistani Taliban for the specific goal of murdering American troops overseas.

As stated in the US Justice Department indictment against him and his family, “Izhar is a Pakistani Taliban sympathizer who worked with [his father Hafiz] and others to collect and deliver money for the Pakistani Taliban… Izhar… provided and attempted to provide material support and resources… knowing and intending that they be used in preparation for and in carrying out… a conspiracy to murder, kidnap, and maim persons in a foreign country.”

https://pjmedia.com/trending/tennessee-muslim-stabs-three-women-to-death-at-truck-stop-motive-unclear/

Idris Abdus-Salaam, 33, a truck driver from Durham, North Carolina, on Tuesday pulled into the Pilot Travel Center on Strawberry Plains Pike in Knoxville, Tennessee, got out of his truck, pulled out a knife, and went on a stabbing spree. He stabbed three women to death and injured a fourth. When confronted by police, Abdus-Salaam refused to drop his weapon and was shot dead. According to Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) spokeswoman Leslie Earhart, authorities are still trying to determine his motive. But will they miss an obvious clue that is right in front of their faces?

The three women Abdus-Salaam killed were all employees of the Pilot Travel Center. The fourth victim, who is in the hospital fighting to recover from the wounds Abdus-Salaam gave her, was a customer. If Abdus-Salaam knew any of them personally, the fact has not been reported. It may emerge that he did, but as of this writing, this looks like a random act of violence.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/feds-charge-man-who-intentionally-deraile

LOS ANGELES — Prosecutors charged a locomotive engineer who worked at the Port of Los Angeles with intentionally derailing a train at full speed near the Navy hospital ship Mercy because of suspicions over its activities surrounding COVID-19, according to a federal criminal complaint.

Eduardo Moreno, 44, of San Pedro, California, was charged with one count under a little-known train-wrecking statute that carries a maximum sentence of up to 20 years in the incident Tuesday, according to the 10-page criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.

Moreno, who was held overnight, was turned over to FBI agents Wednesday morning. He was expected to make an initial appearance in federal court Wednesday afternoon.

Prosecutors claim Moreno ran the train off the tracks. It crashed through a series of barriers before coming to rest more than 250 yards from the Mercy in an incident that was captured on video.

Although the train leaked fuel oil, which required cleanup by firefighters and other hazardous materials personnel, no one was hurt.

A California Highway Patrol officer who witnessed the crash and took Moreno into custody told authorities that he saw the train, which is used to haul shipping cargo, smash through a barrier at the end of the tracks before it drove through several obstacles, including a steel barrier and a chain-link fence. It slid through one parking lot and another filled with gravel and smashed into a second chain-link fence, according to the affidavit.

The complaint alleges that when the officer approached him, Moreno said: “You only get this chance once. The whole world is watching. I had to. People don’t know what’s going on here. Now they will.”

The affidavit said Moreno, who waived his right to speak to an attorney before being interviewed by investigators, admitted in two post-arrest interviews that he intentionally ran the train off the track because he wanted to bring attention to the government’s activities regarding COVID-19 and was suspicious of the Mercy.

In his first interview with Los Angeles port police, Moreno acknowledged that he “did it,” saying he was suspicious of the Mercy and believed it had an alternative purpose related to COVID-19 or a government takeover, the affidavit states.

Moreno also told investigators that he acted alone and had not planned the attempted attack, according to the affidavit. He said he knew that derailing and crashing the train would bring media attention and that “people could see for themselves,” referring to the Mercy, according to the affidavit.

In a second interview with FBI agents, Moreno said “he did it out of the desire to ‘wake people up,'” according to the affidavit. “Moreno stated that he thought that the U.S.N.S. Mercy was suspicious and did not believe ‘the ship is what they say it’s for,'” it said.

https://www.aol.com/article/news/2020/04/02/georgia-man-pleads-guilty-for-plotting-to-attack-white-house/23968016/

A Georgia man accused of plotting to attack the White House and other landmarks pleaded guilty Wednesday, according to federal prosecutors and court documents.

Hasher Jallal Taheb, 23, had been the subject of an undercover investigation that lasted for more than a year and was arrested in January 2019 as he arrived to pick up what he expected to be semi-automatic rifles, explosives and an anti-tank weapon, authorities said.

He pleaded guilty to attempting to destroy, by fire or an explosive, a building owned by or leased to the United States, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia said in a statement. 

Taheb was arrested after he met with undercover agents at a Buford, Georgia, parking lot where the deal for the weapons was supposed to occur, according to a criminal complaint. The rifles, the explosives and the anti-armor weapon, an AT-4, were all inert.

As part of a plea agreement, prosecutors agreed to recommend a sentence of 15 years, according to court documents. Sentencing is scheduled for June 23.

Taheb wanted to attack the White House and the Statue of Liberty, but later broadened the targets to include the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial, prosecutors said.

Investigators believe Taheb was working on his own, an FBI official said at the time of his arrest.

The investigation began after a community member sent in a tip in March 2018 that Taheb had become “radicalized” and made plans to travel abroad, according to the complaint. When he was unable to travel abroad because of passport issues, he allegedly began planning an attack in the U.S.

An e-mailed request for comment from a federal public defender listed as representing Taheb was not immediately returned early Thursday.