Category Archives: Citizens Duty

Trolls and Anti-Vaccination(s) Operations

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Remember the panic Americans went through of the annual exercises called Jade Helm? It was an Obama operation where his military was practicing to impose martial law across the country so Obama would remain a forever president. Then Alex Jones bought into that notion and the message spread for months. It was a Russian troll operation, a very successful one. The Russians have made a fine art form of disinformation such that even government officials and media cannot make the distinctions.

Then of course there was/is the whole election interference operations not only in the United States but, Britain, Ukraine, France and even Mexico.

Among other disinformation campaigns is the whole vaccination thing. Well, the anti-vaccination thing set in and Americans have in countless cases refused to get their children vaccinated as any of them would or could cause autism.

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The United States was not the only target for the Russian troll operation(s). Going back as far as 2014, the fake Tweets began. Even the World Health Organization as well as the American Journal of Public Health bought into the issue and Britain paid the price. But, some savvy media types at least did the digging and research once again proved that pesky Internet Research Agency was the culprit. Russia caused a panic and it has worked. Today, there is a measles outbreak around the country due to this anti-vaccine mission. Beyond Britain, even Russia targeted Ukraine.

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We are now in a state by state policy matter over the spread of measles and some towns have quarantine programs for people without vaccines or making laws demanding vaccines be administered. Will it end with measles? Likely no. This will affect international travel and visa programs including approvals.

Russia has effectively weaponsized health systems.

A 2018 report by the American Public Health Association, titled “Weaponized Health Communication: Twitter Bots and Russian Trolls Amplify the Vaccine Debate,” came to a similar conclusion.

“Whereas bots that spread malware and unsolicited content disseminated antivaccine messages, Russian trolls promoted discord. Accounts masquerading as legitimate users create false equivalency, eroding public consensus on vaccination,” the report said.

“Health-related misconceptions, misinformation, and disinformation spread over social media, posing a threat to public health. Despite significant potential to enable dissemination of factual information, social media are frequently abused to spread harmful health content, including unverified and erroneous information about vaccines,” it continued. “This potentially reduces vaccine uptake rates and increases the risks of global pandemics, especially among the most vulnerable.”

Measles was considered eliminated in the U.S. in 2000 because of vaccines against measles, mumps, and rubella. Nevertheless, cases have increased in the U.S. Public health professionals have called the disease a leading cause of death among children.

The World Health Organization has said that fear of vaccines has become one of the top threats to global health as previously eradicated diseases make a comeback.

“Vaccine hesitancy—the reluctance or refusal to vaccinate despite the availability of vaccines—threatens to reverse progress made in tackling vaccine-preventable diseases. Vaccination is one of the most cost-effective ways of avoiding disease—it currently prevents 2-3 million deaths a year, and a further 1.5 million could be avoided if global coverage of vaccinations improved,” a World Health Organization report reads. “Measles, for example, has seen a 30% increase in cases globally.” Read more here from Newsweek.

 

When an F-35 Goes Missing

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Some panic has set in for the United States, the need to find the most expensive fighter jet ever built before enemies of the United States find it first.

Japan’s Air Self-Defense Force says the F-35A stealth jet went missing Tuesday while flying off the eastern coast of Aomori. It says the plane disappeared from radar about half an hour after taking off from the Misawa air base with three other F-35As for a flight exercise.

Defense Minister Takeshi Iwaya told reporters that a search and rescue operation was underway for the missing jet and its pilot. The cause of the mishap was not immediately known.

This could be  matter of several countries in the region doing the search.

A US Navy P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft and the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer Stethem with the Navy’s 7th Fleet are assisting the Japanese air and maritime assets dispatched to find the missing aircraft and its pilot, the Navy said in a statement Wednesday.

Japan has sent out U-125A search-and-rescue aircraft, UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters, and P-3C maritime surveillance aircraft, as well as three coast-guard vessels to search for the downed F-35, according to The Diplomat.

“We continue to hope for the safe recovery of the pilot, and our thoughts are with his family and all of our Japanese partners as they conduct this search,” United States Forces Japan said in a statement.

The F-35A was being flown by an experienced pilot with more than 3,200 flight hours, including 60 hours in the new stealth fighters. Radar contact with the aircraft was lost while it was about 85 miles east of Misawa Air Base in northern Japan. The Japan Air Self Defense Force has grounded its entire fleet of F-35s in response.

So far, only parts of the missing aircraft have been recovered. The discovery indicates that the plane crashed, most likely marking the first F-35A crash. (A US Marine Corps F-35B crashed in South Carolina in September; the pilot was able to eject.)

While both the US and Japan are committed to finding the pilot, another aspect of the search is securing the technology aboard the advanced aircraft before someone else finds it.

 

“There is no price too high in this world for China and Russia to pay to get Japan’s missing F-35, if they can,” Tom Moore, a former senior professional staff member with the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, tweeted Tuesday. “Big deal.”

“If one of Japan’s F-35s is sitting at the bottom of the Pacific, we are probably about to see one of the biggest underwater espionage and counter-espionage ops since the Cold War,” Tyler Rogoway, the editor of the respected defense publication The War Zone, tweeted.

The stealth fighter was specifically built to give the US advantages in high-end conflict against great-power rivals. Neither Russia nor China has been able to field a comparable fifth-generation aircraft. More here.

*** Update: Iwaya said that the pilot sent a signal to abort the mission, according to the broadcaster. Shortly after the signal, all communications with the fighter jet were lost. Parts of the jet have been located.

The Japanese defense ministry said the male pilot, who’s in his 40s, remains missing.

The fighter jet went off the radar while flying off the eastern coast of Aomori, just about half an hour after taking off the Misawa air base with three other F-35As.

All F-35’s based in Japan have been grounded.

The Chinese Spy at Mar-a-Lago

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It was not so much about the lies she told to get on the grounds and through the first layer of security at Mar-a-Lago, or about the spy stuff she had on her at the time she was arrested at Trump’s club but there was some interesting things in her hotel room. How about $8000 in cash, an unknown amount of Chinese currency, a signal detector, additional cell phones, a dozen or so credit cards, 9 USB cards, 5 SIM cards and 9 thumb drives that immediately began corrupting files in a test (cold)computer.

The 10 page criminal complaint is found here.

MiamiHerald: Yujing Zhang — the Chinese woman arrested Saturday after allegedly trying to bring an unusual number of electronic devices into President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club — identified herself at a court hearing earlier this week as an investor and a consultant for a Shanghai private-equity firm who appears to have amassed considerable wealth.

Image result for Yujing Zhang in court

Speaking through a Mandarin interpreter, Zhang told a magistrate judge that she owns a $1.3 million house in China and drives a BMW, according to an audio recording of her first appearance at the federal courthouse in West Palm Beach.

A federal prosecutor at the hearing said Zhang poses an “extreme risk of flight” from the United States if she is released from custody.

“She has no ties to the United States in general or to the Southern District of Florida in particular,” said the prosecutor, John McMillan.

McMillan also claimed there were “security implications” that should prevent Zhang from making phone calls while detained.

The FBI is investigating whether Zhang — who told U.S. Secret Service agents she had traveled to Mar-a-Lago from Shanghai to attend a social event — was working as a Chinese intelligence operative, sources familiar with the inquiry told the Miami Herald. Her arrest at the president’s private club revitalized a wider ongoing federal investigation, first reported by the Herald, that had for several months examined potential Chinese espionage activities in South Florida. An affidavit attached to a criminal complaint said she was carrying four cellphones, a laptop, an external hard drive and a thumb drive containing “malicious malware.” Details of the hearing were first reported by CNN.

Zhang is charged with lying to a federal officer and entering restricted property. She has not been charged with any counts related to espionage. Chinese diplomatic officials in the United States say they are aware of Zhang’s arrest and offering assistance.

During the April 1 hearing, Zhang asked sophisticated questions about how her case would proceed in terms of securing bond and hiring an attorney, which were relayed to the judge by her interpreter.

“You’re obviously very intelligent because your questions are excellent for a defendant in this situation,” remarked the judge, William Matthewman, who added that the hour-and-15-minute initial appearance was probably the longest that had ever taken place before him.

While Zhang requested an interpreter at the hearing, the Secret Service noted that she had exhibited a “detailed knowledge of, and ability to converse in and understand even subtle nuances of … the English language” during her interactions with agents at Mar-a-Lago.

The affidavit submitted by a Secret Service agent stated that Zhang read a document out loud in English and would “question agents about the context of certain words throughout the form.”

At the court hearing, Zhang named her employer as Shanghai Zhirong Asset Management, a private-equity firm, but said she was paid on a “per project” basis and had made no money in 2019. She said she travels to the United States for business frequently enough to maintain a U.S. bank account but believed the account did not hold more than $5,000 and said she often brings cash on her trips. She said she had arrived in the country a short time before her arrest.

“My savings are mainly in China,” Zhang told the court.

Zhang will remain in custody pending a detention hearing Monday, but Matthewman ruled she should be allowed to make domestic telephone calls to seek a private attorney. She ultimately chose to be represented by a federal public defender.

She told the court that her family lives in China and said she would like to make international calls and use the Internet to contact relatives and friends, something the magistrate judge denied. She said that she opened the Wells Fargo bank account because she was looking for a “business partner” in the United States but nothing had panned out.

Zhang showed up at Trump’s Palm Beach club around noon on Saturday asking to use the pool and was allowed through an initial Secret Service checkpoint, according to the criminal complaint.

In the affidavit, a Secret Service agent wrote that “due to a potential language barrier issue,” Mar-a-Lago security believed Zhang was related to a club member with the same surname. But a receptionist soon realized she was not an approved guest. At that point, Zhang said she had been invited to attend a “United Nations Friendship Event” between China and the United States. While there was no function by that name on the social calendar, a Chinese-based group called the United Nations Chinese Friendship Association had promoted an event on that same day.

The function was one of two events originally scheduled to take place Saturday and promoted online by Cindy Yang, a South Florida massage parlor owner who also ran a business that promised Chinese business executives face time and photographs with Donald Trump. Both events had been canceled after the Herald published a selfie Yang took with Trump. Zhang apparently never got the message that the events were off.

The arrest at Mar-a-Lago is causing consternation in Congress. U.S. House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings, D-Md., said Thursday that he plans to have the Secret Service brief him and Rep. Jim Jordan, the committee’s ranking Republican, over security protocols at the president’s club.

“The two main questions are how secure is it with regard to safety of the president and his family, and then we want to know about security with regard to communications. It seems like anybody can kind of mosey up and bring communications equipment,” Cummings said.

“You cannot play around with the safety of the president and the first family,” he said. “You just can’t do it.”

The Vatican, KINO and our Southern Border Incursions

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Primer: Callista Gingrich is the U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican. Given the crisis at our Southern border and the relationship Newt has with the Trump White House, imagine the conversations regarding the Pope’s constant call for no walls and global Catholic charities working against U.S. law enforcement. Yikes… and….it seems the Catholic Church in the United States has no use for Callista, Newt or President Trump. If you need some proof on that, click here.

The other part of the Primer:

President Obama’s Executive Action: In November, the Jesuits of the United States, Jesuit Refugee Services/USA, and the Kino Border Initiative issued a statement welcoming President Obama’s executive action to end the legislative gridlock and place pressure on Congress to make immigration reform a priority. The President’s order will provide temporary stays of deportation to as many as five million undocumented migrants who live in fear of discovery and separation from their families, but there are another 6 million undocumented immigrants whose situations are unaddressed by the order. To read the complete statement from the Jesuits of the United States, JRS/USA, and the KBI, please see: http://www.jesuit.org/news-detail?TN=NEWS-20141121032132.

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But KINO? Yes…and add in Georgetown University. Really? uh huh….just last year…

A collaboration between Campus Ministry and the Alternative Breaks Program of the Center for Social Justice Research, Teaching, and Service at Georgetown University, MAGIS: Kino Border Immersion is a weeklong trip during which participants will focus on building relationships of solidarity with the poor, growing in awareness of social justice issues, appreciating the convergence of learning, faith, and justice, and developing skills of reflection on one’s experience at the US/Mexico border.

Magis: Kino Border Immersion (KBI) strives to build participants’ understanding of immigration and the surrounding issues. Through interactions with a wide range of stakeholders in the Arizona border region, participants will learn about the structures that shape migration and gain a firsthand look at different sides and stages of the issue. By engaging in dialogue with migrants, faith leaders, workers, service providers, and law enforcement, we will attempt to humanize the issue and escape limiting stereotypes and misconceptions. The Jesuit values of interreligious understanding, faith and justice, community in diversity, and contemplation in action will guide our efforts to understand the motivations for migration, the experience of migration, and the challenges faced by migrants in the United States. Ultimately, KBI aims to facilitate a sustained commitment to education, activism, and solidarity with the migrant justice movement in our communities on the Hilltop, in DC, and around the country.

During our stay in and around Tucson, we will:

*Meet and live with families from San Miguel Cristo Rey High School, which serves many immigrant families in the economically depressed south side of Tucson
*Join the members of the Jesuit-run Kino Border Initiative as they serve migrants on the border
*Engage with various groups working with Migrants and Border related issues, including the Sierra Club
*Meet members of the border patrol and local law enforcement
*Visit with churches and faith-based communities committed to serving undocumented migrants at the border

Created in 2008, the Kino mission is to ‘break down barriers, provide direct assistance to migrants and dictate conditions for refugees with an annual budget of $700,000 per year but that does not include all chapters, other Catholic organizations or money from the Vatican.

And now for the Kino Border Initiative:

Based on both sides of the border in Nogales, Arizona and Nogales, Sonora, Mexico, KBI accompanies migrants to travel north to reach the United States. There was recently a dinner where a migrant named Sevilla shared his success story from Honduras to the United States merely escaping gang violence.

Sevilla first greeted the audience in broken English then recounted his journey in Spanish allowing a translator to fill in the gaps for those who needed it. He expressed gratitude for being able to leave Honduras and that God helped him on the journey through Mexico where he underwent “many nights without sleeping, many days without eating, but thanks to God everything turned out OK,” he said. He did encounter some volunteers who gave him food along the way, however.

Another hardship: a ride on the famous “Beast” train through Mexico due to the presence of the cartels in that country and having no other choice of transportation. Riding on this network of trains has proved to be very dangerous to migrants. When he arrived in Nogales, Sevilla said he was very dirty and “really tired,” breaking into English which evoked laughter from the audience and might also have released some tension.

“But I here, now,” said Sevilla, with the audience breaking into applause.

When in Nogales, Sevilla heard from a friend of the KBI dining room, called the “Comedor” and he went there very tired and hungry. “But they gave me hope, which was very important for me,” said Sevilla through the translator.

KBI assisted Sevilla in his process of seeking asylum in the United States with legal help, a bond payment and a sponsor family. He stated the KBI is not just a group in Mexico but “it’s all of you,” referring to the attendees. “Thank you for saving life,” said Sevilla in broken English and then in Spanish.

Lisa and David Grant were his “life savers.” They sponsored Sevilla, then 24, during his asylum process into the United States.

“He has been such a blessing to our lives. He’s really taught us a lot about, honestly our faith,” Lisa said.

She pointed out an example that when Sevilla won his asylum case to legally stay in the U.S., she said the he was so lucky. Sevilla dismissed the notion of luck, instead pointing upward.

Also during the evening, four members of the Missionary Sisters of the Eucharist were presented with the Pope Francis award from the organization, for their dedicated service to the people served by the initiative.

“I see what they’re carrying, I see what’s inside them. I see the fear that they’re experiencing as they flee,” reflected KBI’s executive director Jesuit Father Sean Carroll during the dinner. “I see the hunger and the thirst that they’ve experienced along the way. I see their uncertainty about what’s next about the asylum process, about whether they can find safety and support.

Fr. Fred Adamson, vicar general of the diocese, spoke of the human effort just to meet basic needs such as food, clothing and shelter.

“At the heart of it, the Kino Border Initiative is to be the face of Christ, to really be the compassion, the care, the love in a real way at the border,” said Fr. Adamson. More here.

 

 

 

Russian Military Stuff in Venezuela, Concerns for U.S.

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For context:

  • In 2007, Chavez and President Hu Jintao of China signed a deal for operating credit. The deal was loans for oil .
  • In 2014, the China Development Bank provided Venezuela another $30 billion in more oil back loans including mining, refining, pipelines and power stations. Maduro failed on parts of the deal and China is working diligently to protect the loans, investments and the deals.
  • Russia in 2015, stepped in a provided $6.5 billion in new funds through Rosneft while in previous years, Venezuela bought $4 billion in Russian arms and military equipment. Now both China and Russia are facing defaults by Venezuela.
  • Russia flew in 2 bombers containing more military equipment last month and an estimate 100-200 Russian troops. Russia has explained the troops were there for maintenance. However, as a cover, Russia immediately opened a helicopter training center via Rostec. The helicopters included are Mi-35M gunships and troop transports.  At least 2 factories are under construction in Venezuela building Kalashnikov rifles and ammunition. Furthermore, Russia provides military tactic advice and training to Venezuela.
  • Russia has supplied Venezuela with fighter jets, tanks and an air defense system(s).
  • The worst part of the relationship between Russia and Venezuela consists of at least 5000 MANPADS. The stockpile in Venezuela is the largest in Latin America are of a shoulder fired variation. Known to be SA-24 or Igla-S, having a range of 500-6,000m and an altitude up to 3,500m. More details here.

Venezuela is home to a vibrant illegal weapons trade and smuggling operation(s). Weapons include long guns, machine guns, grenades and other military grade items.

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While U.S. operatives are working to locate and understand all military equipment in Venezuela, theft of the MANPADS is most concerning including investigations into trade on the Black market.

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Venezuela maintains an inventory of MSTA self-propelled howitzers, TOR0M1 mobile SAMS and T-72 tanks.

It is thought that stockpile is located near the coast in fears of a U.S. attack which Russia is accusing the U.S. of planning. With those stockpiles are 1,500 launchers and grip stocks fundamental to MANPAD operations. These MANPADS were purchased by Chavez in 2010 as part of a $4 billion weapons purchase with Russia. In 2009, Sweden had confirmed that at least 3 MANPADS were found in a FARC guerrilla camp in Columbia. Sweden had actually sold them to Venezuela in the late 1980’s.

Both Obama and John Kerry negotiated a deal with Columbia to disband FARC. The deal happened in early 2016 in Cuba. FARC is a Marxist guerrilla group and was on the U.S. State Department terror list for years. The talks took place in Cuba, yet FARC remains a major concern as to where members are today, likely joined up with other militant organizations in the region.

All of the items above play into the equation of decisions made by the United States, The LIMA Group and the Organization of American States. Not to be left out is the China trade negotiations and matters with Russia.