RUTHFULLY YOURS

In the simplest terms, Internet of Things (IoT) is the addition of some internet connectivity to everyday objects. Security cameras, for example, previously had to be hardwired. Now they are generally WiFi-connected, allowing camera information to be transmitted to the security control system and allowing the security control system to broadcast its collected information to a remote command center or even to a tablet or smartphone. Then, if the camera has PTZ (pan, tilt, and zoom) functions, the user can redirect the camera, zoom in on an anomaly, or follow an object.

There is hardly a new product that does not try in some way to offer IoT capability. The simplest products gather information from the broader internet and relay it to the user. A “smart” refrigerator can tell you when your grapes are getting low or close to spoilage. It can order grapes for you and have them delivered, or tell you where grapes are on sale and how close to your house the sale is. A “smart” TV can search out genres of programs for you based on preferences you pre-load, or by deriving recommendations by tracking your use behavior on the internet. A “smart” TV can become a point of sale device linked to Amazon, eBay or other outlets, letting you order on impulse while watching your favorite sports or house-hunting program. (“We can deliver a pizza now!” “How about calling Joe at Friendly Realty? He can find you a great home at a terrific price.”)

As artificial intelligence (A.I.) gains ground, home and business assistants will answer your questions or even make suggestions. Alexa from Amazon already has a large user base, with Google and Apple coming along. “Would you like me to turn on the lights downstairs as it is past 9PM?” “Can I recommend a really great restaurant that just opened near you? I can make a reservation for you; just tell me when you would like to try it.” Or “Keep in mind that you need to take into account local taxes when figuring prices for your latest product. Do you want me to calculate that for you?”

Intelligent assistants will start doing a lot of the work that paid help once provided, will do it 24×7 without complaint, with minimal overhead, and will not only be cost-effective, but can also be a profit center. For example, a really great sales digital assistant will not only call customers, but be capable of managing a conversation, promoting new offers, providing technical help, and even asking for customer opinions and integrating findings into a master package for the company. These go far beyond current-day answering systems. (“Press 1 if you want to speak to a nurse, 2 to make an appointment, or 3 to collect the dead body.”)

This is an environment wide open to mischief, and the mischief is starting. Suppose I turn on your smart TV camera (yes, you have one) and record activity without your knowledge. Suppose I misdirect your GPS and send you off in the wrong direction or to the wrong destination. Suppose I create a fake traffic jam ahead (this has already been done) and make you take a dead-end detour. Suppose I order products you did not buy. Or deliver a pizza, an Uber, or a new car to your front door.

A former Ohio State student has pleaded guilty to support for al-Qaeda and trying to hire a hitman to kidnap and kill the judge who was overseeing his terror case.

Yahya Farooq Mohammad, 39, is an Indian citizen who came to the U.S. to study engineering in 2002. In 2008, he married an American citizen. He was indicted with his brothers, Ibrahim Mohammad, Asif Ahmed Salim and Sultane Room Salim, all of whom have pleaded not guilty, in September 2015.

A year after he was wed, Mohammed traveled to Yemen to give $22,000 that he and associates had raised to Anwar Al-Awlaki, the New Mexico-born al-Qaeda recruiter killed in a 2011 drone strike.

While being held in the Lucas County Corrections Center in Toledo, Ohio, on the pending terror charges, Mohammed, according to the indictment, told another inmate that he wanted to kill the judge in his case, U.S. District Judge Jack Zouhary. The inmate introduced Mohammed to a hitman who was actually working undercover for the FBI.

The undercover operative told Mohammed it would cost $15,000 to kidnap and murder the judge, with a $1,000 down payment. The terror suspect said he could sent the money through a courier or the “hitman” could meet his wife in Chicago to collect. “The sooner would be good, you know,” Mohammed told the FBI operative of the timing.

Mohammed called his wife, who arranged to meet the would-be hitman at a post office in Bolingbrook, Ill., on May 3, 2016, and gave him $1,000 cash in a white envelope. Mohammed told the undercover agent May 11, 2016, that the balance of payment would be coming from Dubai, routed through Texas.

He pleaded guilty today to one count of conspiracy to provide and conceal material support or resources to terrorists and one count of solicitation to commit a crime of violence.

Under the terms of his plea agreement, Mohammed is expected to serve 27.5 years in prison then be deported at the conclusion of his term.

“This defendant conspired to attack our service members abroad as well as a judge in Toledo,” Acting U.S. Attorney David A. Sierleja said in a statement. “He threatened the hallmarks of our democracy. He is a dangerous criminal who deserves a long prison sentence.”

Fake statistics die as hard as fake news.

This is especially true when statistics are used to reinforce entrenched positions during highly charged political debates.

One particular false statistic — even under the most charitable reading of the data, it’s highly misleading — is trotted out after virtually every major terrorist attack in order to claim that Islamic terrorism is a big nothingburger.

I’ve had to deal with various incarnations of this here before:

It goes something like this:

94% of all terror attacks are committed by non-Muslims

Another version:

Only 6% of terror attacks in the U.S. are by Muslims

And yet another (one that is flatly false, because the data cited is never broken out by sex or race) says:

94% of terror attacks are committed by white men

The data behind this statistic comes from the FBI’s Terrorism 2002-2005 report. You can find it on the FBI’s website here.

First thing to consider when you see this statistic bandied about: realize the data is more than a decade old.

Including the data from 2006-present will give very different results (results that purveyors of these claims may not like), but since this is the data set they choose to use, I will use their preferred source.

Second, note that this statistic is counting “incidents.” The data ends up being portrayed like this:The problem with using this standard of measure is that it is basically useless. An ecoterrorist mailbox bomb that doesn’t injure or kill anyone is given the exact same weight as the Oklahoma City bombing or the 9/11 attacks. So how does measuring terrorism in this way tell you anything important?

Chuck Brooks serves as vice president for government relations and marketing for Sutherland Government Solutions and as chairman of the CompTIA New and Emerging Technologies Committee.

David Logsdon is the senior director of public advocacy for CompTIA.

The General Services Administration recently announced its plans to accept quotes from companies for implementing blockchain and other automated machine-learning technologies to enhance GSA’s Multiple Award Schedules FASt Lane program. The program focus is to speed up the process review time for adding products and services to contract vehicles.

The RFQ states, “GSA seeks to intelligently automate the current MAS FASt Lane contract proposal review processes by utilizing distributed ledger technology, automated machine learning, and/or artificial intelligence based technologies.”

Also, on July 18, the U.S. Federal Blockchain Forum, a program of GSA’s Emerging Citizen Technology program, organized in partnership with the Secretary of State’s Office of Global Partnerships and GSA’s Office of Information Technology Category, will be hosting a ground-breaking event. The event will:

Develop, share and discuss practical use cases for blockchain technology among federal government missions.
Identify resource, policy and compliance needs for the effective and efficient evaluation and implementation of blockchain technology in the federal government.
Develop a U.S. Federal Blockchain Atlas and road map for the next six months on how agencies can collaborate to achieve our goals and support the creation of shared services for blockchain technology.

What is Blockchain?

In a nutshell, blockchain is a technology and process for managing data and digital assets. It can be characterized as a public decentralized and distributed ledger technology that records historical transactions of any asset or currency. It functions as a peer-to-peer community network via a consensus-driven process. It is the technology behind cryptocurrencies.

Blockchain acts both as the information and the conduit. It also creates an audit trail that makes it appealing for reconciliation purposes of historical records, transactions and regulations that will impact a whole host of future government functions and services.

Most importantly, blockchain can offer government transparency and better efficiency.

A new white paper, “Realizing the Potential of Blockchain,” published by the World Economic Forum provides a good overview of the implications of blockchain for both the public and private sectors. The paper states that “blockchain appears likely to transform a number of important industries that supply or rely upon third-party assurance. It could prove to be a broader force for transparency and integrity in society, including in the fight against bribery and corruption. It could also lead to extensive changes in supply chains and governmental functions.”

The paper further says blockchain’s ability to generate unprecedented opportunities to create and trade value in society will lead to a generational shift from an internet of information to a new-generation internet of value.

This past weekend, a Muslim activist who helped organize the “Women’s March” this past January actually called for Muslims to engage in a “jihad” against President Donald Trump.”

“I hope that we — when we stand up to those who oppress our communities — that Allah accepts from us that as a form of jihad,” Linda Sarsour, executive director of the Arab American Association of New York, declared in a speech at the annual Islamic Society of North America convention over the weekend.

“We are struggling against tyrants and rulers not only abroad in the Middle East or on the other side of the world but here in these United States of America, where you have fascists and white supremacists and Islamophobes reigning in the White House,” the activist added.

Sarsour argued that if Muslims did not wage a kind of jihad against Trump, they would be effectively siding with the “oppression” of every liberal group.

“If you sit back idly in the face of oppression, if you maintain the current status quo that not only oppresses Muslims but oppresses black people inside our community and outside our community, undocumented people, other minority groups and oppressed groups, then you — my dear sisters and brothers — are then identified with the oppressor,” Sarsour declared.

“If you are neutral in the face of oppression in this country, you are not a patriot, you are aiding and abetting the oppressors in these United States of America.”

Sarsour mentioned “jihad” more than once, and explained what she meant by the term. She quoted the prophet Mohammed’s response to the question of “what is the best form of jihad or struggle,” saying that “a word of truth in front of a tyrant ruler or leader, that is the best form of jihad.”

This liberal activist was not calling for violent attacks on Trump, his administration, or Republicans in general. But if their policies constitute “oppression,” and if no patriot can support those policies, and if a Muslim calls for jihad against the president, it stands to reason that violence is, to some degree, implied.

Mere weeks after the politically motivated shooting of Congressman Steve Scalise, who remains in the hospital today, this Muslim activist behind the Women’s March called for jihad against the “oppressive,” “tyrant,” “fascist,” and “white supremacist” Trump. Talk about turning politics into a religion and demonizing your opponents.

Sarsour has supported a political enshrinement of sharia (Islamic law), has ties to the terrorist organization Hamas … and lectures Westerners about women’s rights, after she tweeted that Brigitte Gabriel and Ayaan Hirsi Ali “don’t deserve to be women” and should have their vaginas taken away. But if you sit idly back in the face of what she considers injustice, no peace be upon you.

Western Civilization is extraordinarily complex. From Greece to Rome to Europe and America, a long, multifaceted, and rich line of thought has dominated. In 1909 Harvard (oh, the irony) published a series called the “Harvard Classics” that began a major emphasis on what we now call “the great books”. Many universities nationally and worldwide used this book list as the basis of understanding who we were and how the West had come to be what it was. It was a list worthy of teaching each generation. In today’s jaded academic world, these courses barely exist.

This was the epitome of Western thought. From Plato, the Judeo/Christian writings, Epictetus, Augustine, Shakespeare, Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, and many more, and with such depth, the list was genuinely incredible. I remember asking a professor why we didn’t study more contemporary books, rather than these stuffy old tomes. He replied, “Because they have stood the test of time.” Checkmate. You could say that they once formed the basis of thought for both liberals and conservatives in the country, that they helped make America great. Post-World War II, most boomers studied the great books.

Enter the deconstruction. It had begun prior to the 1930s. It was the critical theory of the Frankfurt School that began our slow death march. Our academics fell for this critique of Western thought. Howard Zinn and the current group of “historians” all put their stamp on calling these books as the progeny of “dead white men.” The left, being who they are, readily accepted this new history. It was not necessary to debate or discuss actual historical ideas. It was more important to call them old, dead, and white. The democrat party may as well call its platform the epitome of the deconstruction of the West.

The deconstructionists have been winning. Our universities have literally gone insane, teaching every new critique about our culture that pops up. Just look at any liberal arts college course list. Most are pretty sick, intent on salting the mental constructs of their students so they can be good leftist role models. They want students spouting the aphorisms of ignorant live professors who forgot how alive the classics are, if they ever knew. If you want to know the fruit of this teaching, just look at what the universities have instituted in recent years: safe rooms, therapy dogs, crying sessions, counselling. They are still melting down. A generation lost in space, in the mentally “safe”, and very demented spaces of the professoriate.

C.S. Lewis saw this budding phenomenon back in the 1930s. In his writings, professors spouting the deconstruction theories were the villains, universities were the vehicles, bureaucracies were the model for Hellishness, and leftist politicians rounded out the whole bad barrel of apples.

In his novel, That Hideous Strength, there are powerful scenes where his hero, Ransom, battles a professor/politician who has given himself over to these new forces. Ransom watches as the professor deteriorates mentally and morally, finally realizing what this new philosophy leads to. He sees the formerly brilliant professor becoming sotted with viciousness, self-indulgence, and foolishness. Ransom finally understands he has to fight this man, and his philosophy, to the death. Literally.

These scenes are powerful foreshadowing of what has happened in our deconstructed country. C.S. Lewis and his good friend Tolkien envisioned the great earthly battles to come, writing fiction about the courage of those who would fight against deconstructionist enemies.

Donald Trump this week gave a speech in Poland lauding Western values, stating our vulnerabilities, and wondering if the West has the will to survive. He is encouraging those in the West who have the mettle to rise up and reclaim our heritage. He is engaging the battle against those who would tear it down. Trump knows the stakes. When he talks about making America great again, it’s likely because he understood the courses of great books, and knew the greatness of what was once handed to us.

Pope John Paul II gave some great speeches about what he called “the culture of death. How fitting that Trump would give his latest call to arms in Poland. How fitting that Poland, so historically war-torn, sees the battle clearly. How fitting that they are already in the fight to preserve the West, one of the few European countries to do so.

In his book titled Daniel Patrick Moynihan: A Portrait in Letters of an American Visionary, editor Steven R. Weisman cites an October 5, 1973 letter of Moynihan’s affirming that

[Norman] Podhoretz is at the height of his form. He has it. He knows what has been going on in America since 1932 when Edmund Wilson, becoming Marxist, exulting in the Depression, pronounced that ‘we now have a chance to take our country away from the businessmen who took it from us.’ A score from Walden time, now to be settled, because the normal sources of strength of the republic had been shaken. A fantasy of power. So the 1960s. The radicalization of the intellectual community was not a response to a new perception of evils of bourgeois society, but a response to a new fantasy of power . . . .

The issues of ‘poverty,’ ‘war,’ ‘racism,’ were manipulated by intellectuals to establish their new politics. He is right. The main political values of the American intellectual community are anti-democratic or non-democratic [.] The armies of youth of the 1960s were commanded.

Fast forward 44 years later and Matthew Vadum explains how sharia-supremacists collaborate with Leftists to destroy the United States. He lays out the information in Volume 10 of the Civilization Jihad Reader Series from the Center for Security Policy.

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., President and CEO of the Center writes in the foreword that “the jihadists’ success… owe much to the decades-long march of cultural Marxism through the key pillars of American society: academia, faith communities, government (especially national security), law enforcement, and media.”

It is clear that Hollywood leftists have long displayed intentional ignorance of the crimes of Communist and Muslim regimes, as noted by Norman Berdichevsky in his 2013 article at the New English Review.

How is it, though, that two seemingly opposing groups could come together? It is because “communists, leftists and progressive operatives see Judeo-Christian principles as a force for ill in the world” and want them eliminated. Likewise, jihadists have vowed to destroy Western civilization. Consequently, “this shared antipathy to the traditional religious values that inspired and nurtured Western civilization, allow Islam and the left to make common cause.”

This Red-Green axis was strengthened as America’s Intelligence Community’s ability to “protect against propaganda whether of the communist or taqiyya varieties” has been severely weakened.

The real story of Russian influence into our world is routinely overlooked. Yet the “ties between Western leftists and jihadists who were recruited, trained and, in some cases… managed by the Soviet Union and the KGB has led to a decades-long collaboration that for too long operated mostly in the shadows.” Declassified information like the Mitrokhin Archive and the Venona Papers have “illuminated how communist agents stoked the flames of Islamic terrorism and infiltrated deeply inside the ranks of the U.S. government.”

Thus, America finds itself confronting “cultural Marxists and jihadis now working hand-in-hand to demean our culture, destroy the nuclear family, trash the nation’s heritage and undermine non-Muslim religious communities.” And this is being underwritten by the “left’s wealthy donors and foundations.” Their “shared loathing for America” and the Constitution has resulted in millions of dollars going towards weakening America.

Specifically, Matthew Vadum highlights the following by which the Red-Green Axis works to weaken American resolve.

Is YouTube a training site for terrorists? Gordon Rayner, political editor for the UK Daily Telegraph has discovered that British “counter-terrorism officers secretly recorded an alleged ISIL-inspired terror cell . . . discussing how to use YouTube to plot a van and knife attack in London.”

In June 2017, Ruthie Blum at Gatestone Institute asserts that both “YouTube and Google, are effectively being accessories to murder. They are also inviting class-action lawsuits from families and individuals victimized by terrorism. They need to be held criminally liable for aiding and abetting mass murder.” And while Google announced that it would “fight terrorism online,” Blum asserts that Google and YouTube are “getting away with promoting jihad for a profit while disingenuously hiding behind the banner of free speech.”

In 2015, The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) “researched and flagged YouTube videos of support for jihadi fighters and ‘martyrs’ and ‘martyrdom,’ to test the platform’s ‘Promotes Terrorism’ flaggng feature.” As a result of the research, “by mid March 2017, major companies began halting or reducing advertising deals with YouTube owner Google because Google had allowed their brands to become intertwined with terrorist and extremist content on YouTube. These companies have, so far, included AT&T, Verizon, Johnson & Johnson, the car rental company Enterprise Holdings, and drug manufacturer GSK. According to media reports, ordinary ads have been appearing alongside user-uploaded YouTube videos promoting hatred and extremism.” Nonetheless, Steve Stalinsky, Executive Director of MEMRI explains that “You Tube’s removal of jihadi content is spotty” and inconsistent. In fact, “. . . , 69 out of 115 videos remain active, highlighting the failure of YouTube’s flagging system.”

In 2016, npr.org asserted that “Zuckerberg didn’t sign up to head a media company — . . . that has to make editorial judgments.” Thus, “[h]e and his team have made a very complex set of contradictory rules — a bias toward restricted speech for regular users, and toward free speech for ‘news’ (real or fake).”

At Foreign Policy, author Nanjala Nyabola in October 2016 maintained that “. . . there’s a dark side to [Facebook’s] Free Basics that has the potential to do more harm than good [.] The app is . . . a version of the internet that gives Facebook — and by extension the corporations and governments that partner with Facebook — total control over what its users can access.” It is important to note that “in many African countries, traditional media has been co-opted by the state [.]” Thus, Nyabola asserts that “this record of collaborating with governments should make us wary of Free Basics. The app is only worth the gamble if one believes that governments where it’s been rolled out have the best interests of their citizens at heart — a presumption that is unwarranted in much of Africa.”

In November 2016 Aaron M. Renn wrote that “[i]t’s long been known that social-media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube (owned by Google) delete significant amounts of user-posted content. Some of what gets removed is in clear violation of legitimate standards governing pornography and pirated content. But a lot of what gets pulled down is neither offensive nor illegal. Rather, it is content whose message these platforms disagree with.”