Category Archives: Citizens Duty

Head and Neck Cancers High Risk due to Daily use of Cannabis

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NEW YORK — Using marijuana daily for years may raise the overall risk of head and neck cancers three- to five-fold, according to a new study that analyzed millions of medical records.

“Our research shows that people who use cannabis, particularly those with a cannabis use disorder, are significantly more likely to develop head and neck cancers compared to those who do not use cannabis,” said senior study author Dr. Niels Kokot, a professor of clinical otolaryngology-head and neck surgery at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

Cannabis use disorder is diagnosed when a person has two or more of such symptoms as craving weed, becoming tolerant to its effects, using more than intended, using marijuana even though it causes problems in life, using it in high-risk situations, experiencing withdrawal and being unable to quit, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“While our study did not differentiate between methods of cannabis consumption, cannabis is most commonly consumed by smoking,” Kokot said in an email. “The association we found likely pertains mainly to smoked cannabis.”

Some 69% of people with a diagnosis of oral or throat cancer will survive five years or longer after their diagnosis, according to the National Cancer Institute. If the cancer metastasizes, however, that rate drops to 14%. About 61% of people diagnosed with cancer of the larynx will be alive five years later – a rate that drops to 16% if the cancer spreads.Take Your Cannabis Daily for Good Health - Weedist

The study used insurance data to look at the association of cannabis use disorder with head and neck cancers, said Dr. Joseph Califano, the Iris and Matthew Strauss Chancellor’s Endowed Chair in Head and Neck Surgery at the University of California, San Diego. He was not involved in the study.

“The researchers used a huge, huge dataset, which is really extraordinary, and there is enormous power in looking at numbers this large when we typically only see small studies,” said Califano, who is also the director of UC San Diego’s Hanna and Mark Gleiberman Head and Neck Cancer Center.

“On average, people with cannabis use disorder smoke about a joint a day and do so for at least a couple years, if not longer,” said Califano, who coauthored an editorial published Thursday in JAMA Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery in conjunction with the new study.

However, he added, the study does not find an association between “the occasional recreational use of marijuana and head and neck cancer.”

Causes of head and neck cancers

In the United States, head and neck cancers make up 4% of all cancers, with more than 71,000 new cases and more than 16,000 deaths expected in 2024, according to the National Foundation for Cancer Research.

Tobacco use, which includes smoking cigarettes, cigars, pipes and smokeless tobacco, and the use of alcohol are the two most common causes of head and neck cancers, experts say. Other risk factors include poor oral hygiene; gastroesophageal reflux disease, or GERD; a weakened immune system; and a diet low in fruits and vegetables. Occupational risk factors include exposure to asbestos and wood dust.

A growing number of head and neck cancers are due to infection with the human papillomavirus or HPV, or the Epstein-Barr virus, or EBV, which are DNA viruses that affect genes, making them susceptible to malignancies.

Epstein-Barr virus is linked to infectious mononucleosis, also called the “kissing disease,” as well as various cancers. Researchers estimate that 90% of the world’s population is infected with EBV. A vaccine is available for HPV, which is linked to a high risk of developing cervical cancer and some non-Hodgkin lymphomas.

It’s possible to be infected with both viruses at once, and that combination is responsible for 38% of all virus-associated cancers, according to research.

How might cannabis cause cancers?

The study, published Thursday in JAMA Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery, analyzed a database of 4 million electronic health records and found more than 116,000 diagnoses of cannabis use disorder among people with head and neck cancers. Those men and women, whose average age was 46, were then matched with people who also had head and neck cancers but were not diagnosed with cannabis use disorder.

The analysis showed that people with cannabis use disorder were about 2.5 times more likely to develop an oral cancer; nearly five times more likely to develop oropharyngeal cancer, which is cancer of the soft palate, tonsils and back of the throat; and over eight times more likely to develop cancer of the larynx. The findings held true for all age groups, according to the study.

Associated reading/study from 2019

DHS in Non-Compliance of DNA collection of Unlawful Immigrants

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IMPORTANT UPDATE: Whistleblowers feel heard and validated by the overwhelming support on

@X

. Whistleblowers report “radio silence” from

@CBP
@DHSgov

leadership. They say they feel “uneasy” about further retaliation. That said, whistleblowers remain committed to ensuring the DNA law is fully complied with and the public is not endangered.

@CBP

has disputed their retaliation claims. In response to the investigation, I can report immediate outreach from a house committee with oversight.

Iran’s Mint Sandstorm, are you a Victim?

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So, a senior official in the Trump campaign was the victim of an email phishing trick and it worked….countless emails were hacked/stolen and began to be distributed. Microsoft has confirmed this and several Iranian cyber signatures from previous hack are providing some pretty good attributions to Iran as the hackers. But no worries, the FBI, likely the Pittsburgh office as agreed t investigate.

Just last night after some recent promoting the SPACES event hosted by Donald Trump and Elon Musk was delayed for an estimated 45 minutes due to a DDOS hit. Again, that too had the signature tactics of Iran. Mint Sandstorm Campaign's Targeted Cyber Attacks on Middle Eastern Experts source

Per CSOOnline in part:

The hackers allegedly obtained sensitive data as a result of a successful phishing campaign against Trump officials. Cheung cited the Microsoft report which said in June 2024, Mint Sandstorm, a group run by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC) intelligence unit, sent a spear-phishing email to a high-ranking official of a presidential campaign from a compromised email account of a former senior advisor.

“On Friday, a new report from Microsoft found that Iranian hackers broke into the account of a ‘high ranking official’ on the US presidential campaign in June 2024, which coincides with the close timing of President Trump’s selection of a vice-presidential nominee,” Cheung added. More here.

In part:

Threat actor Mint Sandstorm, believed to be linked to Iran, has been observed using bespoke phishing lures to attack high-profile targets while leveraging a new custom backdoor called MediaPI.

In a Jan. 17 blog post, Microsoft Threat Intelligence said the attacks were on individuals working at a high level on Middle Eastern affairs at universities and research organizations in Belgium, France, Gaza, Israel, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

The Microsoft researchers said Mint Sandstorm — also known as APT35 and APT42 — used legitimate, yet compromised accounts to send phishing lures. The researchers said Mint Sandstorm continues to improve and modify the tooling used in targets’ environments, activity that might help the group persist in a compromised environment and better evade detection.

“Based on the identities of the targets observed in this campaign and the use of lures related to the Israel-Hamas war, it’s possible this campaign is an attempt to gather perspectives on events related to the war from individuals across the ideological spectrum,” wrote the researchers.

Mint Sandstorm operates as a state-sponsored actor from Iran and, as a result, serves government agency and potential military objectives, explained Balazs Greksza, threat response lead at Ontinue. Greksza said the group employs tactics such as watering hole attacks and phishing emails, to target governments, NGOs, private entities, and academia for espionage. They often pose as journalists, government officials, or academics on social media and their primary objective is to get hold of sensitive information.

“Actors like APT35 have primary goals around geopolitics, national security, counter-intelligence,” said Greksza. “As openly shared by different intelligence agencies in the past, intelligence goals may shift rapidly based on the needs of national interests, current political and military leadership and their decision and intelligence needs.”

Ngoc Bui, cybersecurity expert at Menlo Security, added that the deployment of the custom backdoor MediaPI, along with the use of other tools like MischiefTut, indicates a shift in the operational tactics of Mint Sandstorm, marking an evolution in their cyber espionage capabilities.

***

This all begs the question, just exactly what is being done to not only protect a political campaign and election, but every website or American out there from Iran, Russia, China or North Korea and their team of hackers?

CSOOnline goes on to read –>

Iran, found extremely capable in the past of conducting cyberattacks against its foes in the Middle East, earlier in 2022 had threatened to avenge the killing of General Qassem Soleimani by the United States in a drone strike ordered by the Trump administration.

During this time, among many other efforts, Mandiant reported that the news site EvenPolitics, a Tehran-controlled disinformation site, had published articles covering the 2022 US midterm elections. An inauthentic amplification network promoting the site was taken down by the X platform that same year, yet EvenPolitics continues to operate, releasing approximately ten articles per week.

Microsoft, in its report, added that Iranian cyber-enabled influence operations “have been a consistent feature of at least the last three US election cycles”.

Iran’s mission to the United Nations, in response to inquiries about the Trump campaign’s allegations, denied any involvement. Speaking to The Associated Press, the mission stated, “We dismiss these reports entirely. The Iranian government has neither the capability nor the intention to interfere in the United States presidential election.”

Have you Met John Mark Dougan, a Former Florida Deputy Sheriff?

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I continue to see friends on Facebook and a few other social media sites claiming that Ukraine’s President Zelensky and his wife are using millions if not billions of U.S. aid money to buy fancy cars and mansions….ehhh….c’mon people do that work please and stop getting punked by a former Marine and sheriff deputy from Florida that too fled to Russia….yes…fled and he is loving his deep fake life there and you are helping him win the bot/disinformation/propaganda war…and many members of Congress have bought into all this….but save yourself the humiliation and read on…

***

It is not just here in the United States by the way…Europe is getting pummeled too:

The article looks real enough, though petrolheads may note the misspelling of Tourbillon. It even cites as evidence a video recorded by a dealership employee describing the supposed sale, and a picture of a Bugatti invoice for €4.5 million made out to Mrs. Olena Zelenska. If you were under any doubt, the site’s name should lay your fears to rest: Verite Cachee or, in English, hidden truth.

In fact, the video is a deepfake, the invoice is falsified, and the entire site is part of a Kremlin-linked influence operation, using AI-generated content to deliver a payload of Russian talking points. The false attack on Zelenska was designed, it seems, to hint at corruption.

Veritecachee.fr is one of two sites set up less than two weeks after French president Emmanuel Macron announced a surprise election, the other called France en Colere (Angry France). The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) and the Tow Center have connected both to a network of websites linked to John Dougan, an American former police officer now living in Moscow and known for spreading Kremlin-backed disinformation. This network was first identified by researchers at Clemson University in December last year.

Even as this Dougan-affiliated network has targeted the French election, another Russia-linked disinformation operation, unmasked by French authorities earlier this year, has ramped up its activity in Europe. In June, the “Portal Kombat” network launched ten new sites, mostly aimed at Europe. Another five targeting Eastern Europe were set up in April and May. Read it all here for further context. Zelensky just bought a brand new $4.5 Million Dollar Bugatti for his ...

*** In part below:

It starts with a NewsGuard analyst happening upon what appeared to be a fledgling Washington D.C.-based news site promoting Russian propaganda. Unbeknownst to her, this was six months after her boss and his family had been threatened in a YouTube video that included an aerial shot of his home and calls to his unlisted phone number by a Russian disinformation operative working from a studio in Moscow. It turns out that this D.C. website, those threats to NewsGuard’s co-CEO, and what NewsGuard discovered were dozens of similar hostile information operations — including a “documentary” that the Russians used as an excuse to invade Ukraine — were all orchestrated by the same man — John Mark Dougan, a former Florida deputy sheriff who fled to Moscow after being investigated for computer hacking and extortion.

As of this writing, NewsGuard has discovered 167 Russian disinformation websites that appear to be part of Dougan’s network of websites masquerading as independent local news publishers in the U.S. and 15 films on Dougan’s since-removed YouTube channel. Ranging from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky siphoning off money meant to aid the war against Russia so he could buy an estate in England owned by King Charles, to a non-existent U.S. bioweapons lab in Ukraine being the reason the Russians had to invade that country, these concocted stories have been amplified on social media accounts to reach a broad global audience of more than 37 million views—including 1,300,000 views of just the narrative about Zelensky buying the king’s estate.

As a journalist based in Washington who scrutinizes the credibility of news outlets as a profession, I was familiar with the landscape of trusted local publications in the area. DCWeekly did not appear to be one of them.

I first noticed the site when it published an article reporting that the Ukrainian Azov Battalion was recruiting in France. It carried the byline “Jessica Devlin,” who was described as a “distinguished and highly acclaimed journalist.” Another scoop: The U.S. had bought a mansion for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Vero Beach, Florida.

Everything about the website and these articles was a red flag: The site presented itself as a credible new local news source yet was propagating fabricated narratives that smelled of Russian influence.

It turned out that “DCWeekly” is not actually based in the nation’s capital. Nor is “Jessica Delvin” a real person. As uncovered by researchers at Clemson University, the site operates from Moscow, hosted on an IP address belonging to John Mark Dougan.

His is a name I would come to know well over the coming months.

In further briefings, I learned that Dougan, a former marine, had been an officer in the Sheriff’s Department in Palm Beach County, Florida, until 2016, when he fled to Russia and was granted asylum after being targeted in a computer hacking scheme. Since then, I was told, he had become well known to the FBI and, as they put it, “our sister security agencies” as a Russian operative who specialized in producing some of the Russians’ most elaborate disinformation campaigns and narrating them as if he were an independent American journalist. 

Relatedly, it appeared that the aerial video of my home in Dougan’s video was not a simple Google satellite shot. Instead, it had probably been taken by a drone that someone had hired. [Dougan denies this; see below.] I was also told that those same sister agencies reported that Dougan was still in Russia. “So he poses no imminent threat to you,” the lead agent on the case said.

But he knows where I live and the Russians must have people all over the United States, I said. And he must have followers here on his YouTube channel that could act on their own. The FBI agents agreed. This was more serious than a few random crank emails. In a meeting a few days later with three agents and my wife sitting at our dining room table, we agreed on a multifaceted security plan to be implemented by a private security company.

I now live in a home surrounded by twelve motion-detecting security cameras, monitored remotely by the security service, and filled with dead-bolt window and door locks and other reminders of Dougan’s video—which produced multiple new death threats.

***

Related reading from the BBC 

RUSSIA’S BOT FARM OPERATES ON X, US AND ITS ALLIES WARN

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In full disclosure, years ago I did a radio interview with Pierluigi…due to his long validated resume….I continue to trust his work…as a result this is fair warning to validate information at with at least 3 unique sources.

(Officially shut down –> you be the judge)

Russia has officially made one dystopian prediction about artificial intelligence (AI) come true: it used AI to lie better, faster, and more believably. Last week, the U.S. Department of Justice, along with counterparts in Canada and the Netherlands, disrupted a Russian bot farm that was spreading pro-Russian propaganda. The FBI director and deputy attorney general in a press release highlighted the use of AI to create the bot farm as a disturbing new development. What they did not say, however, is that the West is unprepared to defend itself against this new threat.

This capability enables quick reactions on a huge scale to highly divisive world events. For example, the Russian operation could choose to spread divisive messages about the assassination attempt on former president Trump. In the past, this would have been a labor-intensive task of crafting a variety of credible messages designed to outrage both ends of the political spectrum, then iterating until a divisive note hit a nerve. Now, AI can craft the message, alter it for different audiences, and distribute it rapidly. Russia could enter the chat almost immediately.

***Yandex's Russian AI Bot Shows Promise in Rivalry with US-Based ChatGPT .... Additional reading here

The US and its allies disrupted an AI-powered Russia-linked bot farm on the social media platform X relying on the Meliorator AI software.

The U.S. FBI and Cyber National Mission Force, along with Dutch and Canadian intelligence and security agencies, warned social media companies about Russian state-sponsored actors using covert AI software, Meliorator, in disinformation campaigns. Affiliates of Russia’s media organization RT used Meliorator to create fake online personas to spread disinformation on X. The campaigns targeted various countries, including the U.S., Poland, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Ukraine, and Israel.

“Although the tool was only identified on X, the authoring organizations’ analysis of Meliorator indicated the developers intended to expand its functionality to other social media platforms.” reads the report. “The authoring organizations’ analysis also indicated the tool is capable of the following:

  • Creating authentic appearing social media personas en masse;
  • Deploying content similar to typical social media users;
  • Mirroring disinformation of other bot personas;
  • Perpetuating the use of pre-existing false narratives to amplify malign foreign influence; and
  • Formulating messages, to include the topic and framing, based on the specific archetype of the bot.”

As early as 2022, RT had access to the AI-powered bot farm generation and management software Meliorator. By June 2024, it was operational only on X (formerly Twitter), with plans to expand to other platforms. The software includes an admin panel called “Brigadir” and a seeding tool named “Taras,” and is accessed via a virtual network computing (VNC) connection. Developers managed Meliorator using Redmine software, hosted at dtxt.mlrtr[.]com.

The identities (also called “souls”) of these bots are determined by selecting specific parameters or archetypes. The experts said that any unselected fields are auto-generated. Bot archetypes group ideologically aligned bots through an algorithm that constructs each bot’s persona, including location, political ideologies, and biographical data. Taras creates these identities and the AI software registers them on social media platforms. The identities are stored in a MongoDB, enabling ad hoc queries, indexing, load-balancing, aggregation, and server-side JavaScript execution.

Meliorator manages automated scenarios or actions for a soul or group of souls through the “thoughts” tab. The software can instruct personas to like, share, repost, and comment on others’ posts, including videos or links. It also allows for maintenance tasks, creating new registrations, and logging into existing profiles.

“The creators of the Meliorator tool considered a number of barriers to detection and attempted to mitigate those barriers by coding within the tool the ability to obfuscate their IP, bypass dual factor authentication, and change the user agent string.” continues the joint advisory. “Operators avoid detection by using a backend code designed to auto-assign a proxy IP address to the AI generated persona based on their assumed location.”

The report also provides the infrastructure associated with the bot farm and mitigations.