HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Accelerating Innovation, Security, & Education in the Digital Age: Chuck Brooks

Posted By on August 25th, 2023

https://www.digitalfirstmagazine.com/accelerating-innovation-security-education-in-the-digital-age/

Chuck Brooks, President of Brooks Consulting International, is a globally recognized thought leader and subject matter expert Cybersecurity and Emerging Technologies. LinkedIn named Chuck as one of “The Top 5 Tech People to Follow on LinkedIn.” He was named as “Cybersecurity Person of the Year by Cyber Express, as one of the world’s “10 Best Cyber Security and Technology Experts” by Best Rated. Chuck received two senior Presidential appointments, including as Legislative Director of The Science & Technology Directorate at the Department of Homeland Security and as Special Assistant to the Director of Voice of America. He has also served in executive roles for Fortune 500 companies. Chuck has an MA in International relations from the University of Chicago and a BA in Political Science from DePauw University.

Recently, in an exclusive interview with Digital First Magazine, Chuck shared his insights on the future of cybersecurity landscape, his career trajectory, what sets Brooks Consulting International apart from other market competitors, the key qualities required to be a successful security leader, future plans, pearls of wisdom, and much more. The following excerpts are taken from the interview.

What are your thoughts on where the cybersecurity industry is heading?

The Cybersecurity industry is heading toward the right paths and it along many divergent paths. First, there is more focus by the C-Suite on the importance pf protecting digital assets. It is being taken more seriously in budgets, responsibilities and in planning. Compliance and policy recommendations from The US Security Exchange Commission (SEC) and The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s CISA, and in the EU, the GDPR have reinforced the need for enhanced cybersecurity and privacy. Private/public cooperation is expanding as is global cooperation. Also, emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and early quantum computing algorithms are impacting the landscape in terms of automation, threat detection, and analytics. The Cloud is becoming more competitive and secure, and managed cybersecurity providers are helping close gaps for small and medium businesses that do not have the resources to hire expertise and procure top of the line solutions. However, having said all that, it is still a game of catch up as internet connectivity continues to expand. In addition, the sophistication of criminal hackers (also employing AI and ML tech) that are often abetted by nation states is becoming more brazen and successful with ransomware and DDoS attacks. Cybersecurity is in a state of flux and there will always be gaps to fill but the challenges and opportunities for the cybersecurity industry certainly have not been lessened.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Biden Clan’s Con Is Coming to an End Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on August 25th, 2023

https://victorhanson.com/the-biden-clans-con-is-coming-to-an-end/

Despite years of Biden family and media disinformation, we are finally learning that Joe Biden really did fire Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin for looking into state corruption involving the oil company Burisma and Hunter Biden—and ultimately Joe Biden himself.

As Vice President, Biden, in his own words, bragged that he had threatened to cancel the deliverance of American foreign aid to Ukraine unless Shokin was dismissed.

So what is the Congress to do now—un-impeach and exonerate an innocent impeached Donald Trump, and instead impeach a guilty Biden for essentially the same allegations?

After all, the Left redefined the impeachment bar in 2019 as leveraging foreign aid to Ukraine to benefit one’s political career.

And that is exactly what Joe Biden did to ensure his son could continue to raise millions for the Biden family with foreign governments, while being shielded from political consequences.

An impeached Trump also was accused of using the power of government to go after his likely 2020 presidential rival by suggesting that Joe Biden and his family were corrupt, and should be investigated by Ukrainian officials for fraud and bribery.

Despite Joe Biden’s denials, Trump was right: there was plenty of evidence to link Ukrainian unwarranted payoffs going into Biden family coffers.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Like Mercenaries throughout History, Prigozhin Became a Threat to the Man Who Hired Him With Dictators like Vladimir Putin, You Only Get One Try; Charles Lipson

Posted By on August 25th, 2023

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/08/24/mercenary-chief-prigozhin-dead-wagner-boss-plane-putin/

“Never strike a king,” Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “unless you are sure you shall kill him.” Good advice, but it comes too late for Yevgeny Prigozhin, Russian leader of the Wagner mercenary army.

Vladimir Putin, that old KGB man, already knew Emerson’s message, deep in his guts. He also knew the unstated part: if you try to kill the king and you fail, you will be the dead one.

And so Prigozhin was.
 
Prigozhin, once Putin’s ally, should have known the limits of their ties

The leader of the Russia’s most effective mercenary force had once been Putin’s chef and ally. He had the Kremlin’s support when he formed Wagner. He had it, too, when he led his soldiers in the grinding, brutal battle for the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, where Wagner lost tens of thousands of soldiers in the house-to-house fighting. As the fighting wore on, however, Prigozhin learned the limits of Putin’s support.

The Kremlin’s fear was that, if Prigozhin and his mercenaries got credit for this prominent victory in Bakhmut, Wagner’s success would undermine the prestige of the regular Russian army and ultimately threaten Putin’s own power.

Preventing that erosion is why the regular military’s two leaders, Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu and military chief of staff Gen. Valery Gerasimov, ultimately denied Wagner the ammunition and supplies they needed to complete their victory. Then Shoigu and Gerasimov, presumably at Putin’s direction, tried to deny Wagner credit for taking the city.

Prigozhin’s Fatal Decision to March on Moscow
 
Prigozhin was furious at this betrayal and said so repeatedly on his widely-circulated social-media posts. When his PR campaign failed, Prigozhin took much more drastic—and ultimately fatal–action. He mobilized his troops to march on Moscow.

ISRAEL, MEDIA Comments turned off

The Washington Post’s ‘Good’ Terrorists by Bassam Tawil

Posted By on August 24th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19920/washington-post-good-terrorists

The attacks by the Fatah-affiliated terrorists came days after The Washington Post published a story from Balata Refugee Camp, near Nablus, in which its correspondents romanticized members of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, even documenting them as they visit their barber for a haircut.

The “fighters” The Washington Post is referring to are the terrorists responsible for a series of shooting, stabbing and car-ramming attacks against Jewish civilians and soldiers in the Nablus area and Israel over the past few months. Notably, these terrorists do not hide their involvement in the wave of attacks. In fact, they often boast of the attacks and post videos and posters documenting their role.

What the newspaper fails to mention is that this terrorist [who “bought his M16 [rifle] for $20,000 with the money he earned working in construction in Tel Aviv”] is one of tens of thousands of Palestinians who were granted permits (by Israel) to come and work in Israel as part of an effort to boost the Palestinian economy and improve the living conditions of the Palestinians in the West Bank.

The terrorist did not seek work in the Palestinian Authority-controlled territories because he knew he would have earned much less…. The terrorist was able to save $20,000 from his work in Israel, but instead of using the money to build a new house or improve his living condition, we are told that he chose to establish “the Balata cell of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.”

The correspondents are apparently impressed by the fact that another terrorist, Ammar, paid 20 shekels (six dollars) to buy them coffee. Ammar had been shot multiple times by Israeli soldiers while attempting to murder Jews near Nablus in April. He managed to escape, but two of his fellow gunmen were killed.

The correspondents go on to claim, falsely, that “there are no sports teams” in Balata Refugee Camp.

The truth is that the camp has a soccer club that was established in 1954. It is called The Balata Youth Center and states that it “aspires to be the main supporter of all sports, cultural, social, and scouting activities…It also aspires to have a special playground for all sports, such as football (soccer), basketball, handball, volleyball, table tennis, and other individual and group games.” The local soccer team has even won several championships.

The terrorists could have joined the soccer team, but preferred to form a terror group to attack Jews.

Instead of highlighting that many of the terrorists are involved in intimidation and extortion of the local community, The Washington Post attempts to depict them as honest law-enforcers.

“The [Balata] Camp has been hijacked by an armed group that is terrorizing and threatening to kill residents who dare to speak out,” the Fatah Office of Information and Culture itself said back in 2015. It accused the gunmen of extorting money from wealthy businessmen from Nablus and running a big market for weapons and drugs.

“A recent report by the Post provided what was essentially free advertising for a US-designated terrorist group,” noted Sean Durns, a senior researcher analyst for the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America. “Worse still, the Post’s foray is part of an ongoing trend in Western news outlets being used by terrorist organizations to promote their propaganda.”

After the recent murder of the Jewish woman near Hebron, one might wonder whether The Washington Post is planning to send its correspondents back to spend time with the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terrorists to hear, first-hand, how proud they are that they murdered an innocent kindergarten teacher in cold blood.

How would the newspaper’s readers have reacted had it sent its correspondents to spend time with Al-Qaeda or Islamic State (ISIS) terrorists to hear their pride in having committed atrocities against American citizens?

The Post piece leaves one with the distinct impression that there is such a thing as a good terrorist: one who targets Jews.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Actually, Joe, All Your ‘Objectives’ Were Failures Here’s a list of what he should actually apologize for By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on August 24th, 2023

https://amgreatness.com/2023/08/21/actually-joe-all-your-objectives-were-failures/

“Name me a single objective we’ve ever set out to accomplish that we’ve failed on. Name me one, in all of our history. Not one!”

-President Joe Biden, August 16, 2023 

Joe Biden in one of his now accustomed angry “get off my grass” moods dared the press to find just one of his policies/objectives that has not worked. Silence followed.

Perhaps it was polite to say nothing, given even the media knows almost every enacted Biden policy has failed.

Here is a summation of what he should instead apologize for.

Biden in late summer 2021 sought a 20th anniversary celebration of 9/11 and the 2001 subsequent invasion of Afghanistan. He wished to be the landmark president that yanked everyone out of Afghanistan after 20 years in country. But the result was the greatest military humiliation of the United States since the flight from Vietnam in 1975.

Consider the ripples of Biden’s disaster. U.S. deterrence was crippled worldwide. China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea almost immediately began to bluster or return to their chronic harassment of U.S. and allied ships and planes. We left thousands of allied Afghans to face Taliban retribution, along with some Western contractors.

Biden abandoned a $1 billion embassy, and a $300 million remodeled Bagram airbase strategically located not far from China and Russia, and easily defensible. Perhaps $50 billion in U.S. weaponry and supplies were abandoned and now find their way into the international terrorist mart.

All our pride flags, our multimillion gender studies programs at Kabul University, and our George Floyd murals did not just come to naught, but were replaced by the Taliban’s anti-homosexual campaigns, burkas, and detestation of any trace of American popular culture.

Vladimir Putin sized up the skedaddle. He collated it with Biden’s unhinged quip that he would not get too excited if Putin just staged a “minor” invasion of Ukraine. He remembered Biden’s earlier request to Putin to modulate Russian hacking to exempt a few humanitarian American institutions. Then Russia concluded of our shaky Commander-in-Chief that he either did not care or could do nothing about another Russian invasion.

The result so far is more than 500,000 dead and wounded in the war, a Verdun-stand-off along with fortified lines, the steady depletion of our munitions and weapon stocks, and a new China/Russia/Iran/North Korean axis, with wink and nod assistance from NATO Turkey.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Some thoughts, all cynical and sour, about the Republican debate By Andrea Widburg ******

Posted By on August 24th, 2023

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/08/some_thoughts_all_cynical_and_sour_about_the_republican_debate.html

So, I sat through all two hours of the debate amongst the Republican primary candidates, although I was very irked by Larry Elder’s absence. Having said that, he didn’t miss much. It was like watching a junior high school debate, complete with the cool kids asking stupid questions and the geeks fighting on the stage. I hated every minute of it, thought it was embarrassing for all involved, and found it insulting to the American voters.

If you want details about questions and answers, you’ll find them elsewhere. These are just my impressions.

As is the case every election cycle, the format is appalling. It caters to the media’s assumption that voters cannot hold anything in their brains for more than a minute or two. They think we’re stupid, and the format is set up to cater to that. It’s cruel to legitimate candidates to force them to address complex issues in one-minute soundbites, and it deprives the American people of important information. It’s such a degradation of real political debate.

Within that appalling format, I couldn’t be less impressed with Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum. Their questions were shallow and, considering that it was their format, they had no control over the candidates. I also disliked that they thought it was smart to open with a question that saw them playing Oliver Anthony’s “Rich Men North of Richmond.” Yes, I understand that the song has resonated with Americans. However, if each candidate gets only one minute, don’t waste time on a song.

Regarding the candidates, I came away thinking that Vivek, DeSantis, and what’s-his-name from North Dakota managed to look the same or better by evening’s end. The fact that I can’t remember what’s-his-name’s name, though, is a reminder that, while he had a couple of good answers, he’s fundamentally a nonentity who just looked better in comparison to some of the others on the stage.

Nikki Haley is a shrill, establishment harridan who kept playing the woman card. Speaking as a woman, I was not impressed. When she ridiculed Vivek Ramaswamy’s lack of foreign policy chops, all I could think of was that she’s someone who supports Biden’s foreign policy. What’s that say about her chops?

I also disagreed profoundly when she said that Ukraine is our friend. As far as I’m concerned, Ukraine, one of the most corrupt nations in the world, is a friend only to politicians and defense contractors (a point Vivek made). And when Pence went on a rant about Putin entering NATO countries, I wanted to yell at him that it’s America that ignored a promise never to push NATO right up to Putin’s doorstep. I’m not defending Putin or Russia. This is a war that would be best ended if both countries lost. What I don’t want to see is America get sucked in.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Georgia’s Trump Indictment: Partisan Political Hit Job Malicious – and absurd – overreach. by Philip Holloway

Posted By on August 24th, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/georgias-trump-indictment-partisan-political-hit-job/

How is it a criminal enterprise to challenge the results of a razor-thin election?

How is it a criminal enterprise if the first amendment protects it?

The sweeping 98-page document charges Former President Trump and nineteen others with various felony charges for actions that occurred in the frenetic time immediately following the 2020 Presidential Election, an election Trump officially lost by the slimmest of margins: 0.23% and 11,779 votes.

For those of us who live here in Georgia, there was a palpable feeling that something was wrong. This was the first election where we had ballot drop-off boxes spread all over with nobody keeping an eye on them. There were daily reports of ballot harvesting in nursing homes. There were mysterious water leaks where the votes were being counted, poll watchers were reporting a lack of access to the count, and the counting seemed to stop and start for no apparent reason. Cynics suspected the pauses were meant to figure out how many votes Joe Bide still needed to carry Georgia.

Once Georgia was officially called for Joe Biden, President Trump, and his team immediately cried foul and began looking for ways to challenge and even overturn the election. There did not seem to be a coherent legal strategy to get into court and challenge the election. However, one lawsuit filed in Fulton County sought to challenge 147,000 absentee ballots to see if any were illegitimate. The plaintiff was not Donald Trump. This suit alleged evidence of fraudulent ballots and improper ballot counting in Fulton County. Nine Georgia voters filed it. These voters never had their day in court because the judge dismissed the case without hearing the Plaintiff’s evidence on the grounds that they “lacked standing.”

Trump appealed to Georgia’s Secretary of State by calling and imploring him to take action to correct the perceived fraud given the razor-thin margin of defeat. In addition, Trump listened to advice and counsel from a variety of lawyers, including Attorney General Bill Barr, Rudy Giuliani, and John Eastman, to name a few.

Bill Barr reportedly told Trump the election was clean, and he lost fair and square. It remains a mystery how Barr came to this conclusion without investigating Trump’s claims of fraud. Meanwhile, Eastman and others reportedly advised Trump that it was plausible to contest the election by imploring Vice President Pence to disregard the slate of electors from Georgia (and other places) in favor of an alternate slate of Trump electors when counting the electoral college votes. For this strategy to prevail, any alternate electors would need to have their names submitted by the constitutional deadline of the 4th Wednesday in December 2020. So, in Georgia and other states, Trump supporters presented themselves as alternate electors on the theory that if any of the fraud claims could be sufficiently proven, the Vice President would be able to count the Trump Electors.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Why D.E.I. Needs to Die A phenomenon diametrically opposed to our Constitution. by Bruce Thornton

Posted By on August 24th, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/why-d-e-i-needs-to-die/

The Reign of the Woke is starting to totter. The excesses of the tyranny of the tiny trans minority is getting significant pushback, from consumers boycotting woke corporate fellow-travelers like Bud Light and Disney, to parents challenging schools that attempt to usurp their authority over their children.

More significant in the long run, some state universities’ governors are rejecting requirements for faculty and scholars to sign loyalty pledges to the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion ideology.

The latest grove of academe to end this noxious practice is the Arizona system comprising five campuses with 142,000 students. In addition, the Foundation for Individual Freedom in Education has filed suit against California’s community college system on behalf of six professors to stop the state’s imposition of regulations that require allegiance to highly contested political ideologies, virtually cancelling both academic freedom and the First Amendment.

We should all celebrate these pushbacks, since the politicized dogma of “woke,” as well as the requirement of fealty to it, violates the very core of the university’s traditional mission and purpose: “to know the best that has been known and thought in the world,” as Matthew Arnold defined it, “irrespectively of practice, politics, and everything of the kind; and to value knowledge and thought as they approach this best, without the intrusion of any other consideration whatsoever,” and “through this knowledge, turning a stream of fresh and free thought upon our stock notions and habits, which we now follow staunchly but mechanically.”

The pseudo-concepts of “diversity,” “equity,” and “inclusion” have long been “stock notions” that our “woke” commissars “follow staunchly and mechanically.” Typical of all tyrannies, these words have been warped into propaganda advertising an illiberal political program of expanding the political power of one faction of citizens at the expense of others’ freedom–­–the cost being paid by our unalienable rights to freely think, and freely speak in the public square our opinions and beliefs.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

1.5 Degrees Of Climate Fabrication

Posted By on August 24th, 2023

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/08/24/1-5-degrees-of-climate-fabrication/

Ghoulish scold John Kerry, the White House’s climate hobgoblin, has repeatedly warned that the world is not on track to contain a 1.5-degree Celsius increase in global temperature above the pre-industrial level, and this means disaster is looming. Others have made the same point, and the media just goes along for the ride. Their predictions are worthless, though. We know this because the United Nations told us so.

The rock-solid, undeniable fact is that it’s impossible to make long-term climate predictions, because our climate is ever changing and volatile. It says so in the Third Assessment Report from the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change:

“The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”

And it has said this since 2001, when that report was put together.

Yet Kerry and his ilk, and we use that term with with greatest contempt we can muster, continue to tell us they can predict the global temperature of the future and it’s going to burn us all.

The alarmists point to the sentence that follows, which says, “Rather the focus must be upon the prediction of the probability distribution of the system’s future possible states by the generation of ensembles of model solutions.” They then claim that damning passage is taken out of context.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The ABC of Wokery Nicholas T. Parsons

Posted By on August 23rd, 2023

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2023/07/an-abc-of-woke/

Originating as black American parlance for resisting racial and social inequality, Woke has morphed into a generic term for radically left-wing social and political awareness. According to Perry Bacon Jr. of the Washington Post it represents the following doctrines for the American Left: rejection of American exceptionalism; a claim that the United States has never been a true democracy; a claim that non-white people (“people of colour”) are victims of systemic and institutional racism; that white Americans enjoy “white privilege”; that African Americans deserve reparations for slavery and post-enslavement discrimination; that disparities among racial groups are explained by discrimination; that US law enforcement agencies are designed to discriminate against people of colour and so should be defunded, disbanded or at least heavily reformed; that women suffer from systemic sexism; that individuals should be able to identify with any gender or none; that US capitalism is deeply flawed.

Bacon’s list is not definitive, but the common subtext of Wokeism is invariably victimhood. This is a psychologically determined attitude, considered by Wokeists to transcend any contrary empirical evidence. Professor Jean-François Braunstein of the Sorbonne has remarked that Wokeism offers theories of knowledge that validate feelings over facts. Sometimes celebrities empathise with victimhood by claiming it for themselves. Prince Harry wanted us to believe that he had been “cut off” financially by his father, despite having been able to buy a multi-million-dollar Californian mansion; he also claims to “want his family back” and an apology from it, picturing himself as the injured party after insulting the royal family repeatedly in public.

Victimhood is now also becoming an excuse for violence by fringe groups with a dubious and anti-science agenda, for example “trans-activists”. Generational victimhood relating to climate change holds white civilisation responsible for creating global warming in the industrial revolution and exporting climate-damaging technology to the rest of the world, which is not therefore responsible for climate damage and should be paid reparations. Little or no mention is made of the astonishing benefits to mankind yielded by the industrial revolution, or of the self-critical culture of free countries that made them the first to urge action against climate change (as also against slavery).

Although European countries have quite different political and social features from America, they have imported Woke ideology pretty much wholesale. Even France, arguably the country least susceptible to Wokeism due to its “universalist” tradition, which in principle is blind to people’s colour and origin, has now got an incipiently woke Minister of Education. Pap Ndiaye told Le Monde that he did not experience racism growing up in France and only “realised that [he] was black” when he was twenty-five and studying in the United States. Indeed, importation to Europe happens chiefly through academia, where mediocre scholars have weaponised Woke ideology as a way of advancing their power by targeting individuals and institutions that can be presented as insufficiently conformist to Woke assumptions.