Tuesday, August 31, 2021

Fwd: NPR Investigation: China has now stolen all the personal identifiable information of about 80% of Americans



---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: V
Date: Mon, Aug 30, 2021 at 8:07 PM
Subject: NPR Investigation: China has now stolen all the personal identifiable information of about 80% of Americans
To: 


If you look, just look at the Equifax breach alone, which I consider one of the greatest counterintelligence successes by the Chinese Communist Party, they have all the financial data for every single American adult," said William Evanina, former director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center. "The Chinese have more data than we have on ourselves."

China's appetite for America's private data has been one of the biggest open secrets of modern intelligence. Intelligence officials estimate that China has now stolen all the personal identifiable information of about 80% of Americans, and it has a good start on collecting information on the remaining 20%. And while the individual breaches and numbers are worrying, the real issue is how all this information can be woven together to build on itself.

--

Monday, August 30, 2021

Quick notes: Bagram airbase | Delete Chrome...

  • Who Abandoned Bagram Air Base? Biden essentially blamed his generals. “They concluded—the military—that Bagram was not much value added, that it was much wiser to focus on Kabul. And so, I followed that recommendation.”

    - Black Hawks and Humvees - Taliban's military gains. . Biometric devices containing fingerprints, eye scans and personal details of Afghan allies.


  • Can China tap Afghanistan’s lithium treasure? An internal U.S Department of Defense memo in 2010 described Afghanistan as "the Saudi Arabia of lithium" .


  • Delete Chrome: “Chrome is the only major browser that does not offer meaningful protection against cross-site tracking... and will continue to leave users unprotected.” Having promised to ditch tracking cookies, Google changed its mind. “If you use Chrome, you give up your privacy”.

    Google “has trackers installed on 75% of the top million websites,” several times as many as Facebook. Similarly, just look at the recent reports suggesting Google will pay Apple some $15 billion this year to be the default search engine on its devices.


  • Light pollution from street lamps linked to insect loss: Artificial street lights disrupt the behaviour of nocturnal moths, reducing caterpillars numbers by half. Modern LED streetlights appeared to have the biggest impact.


  • Online gaming: China restricts kids’ online gaming to three hours a week

    - Exhausted: Youth in China, Japan and South Korea are 'lying flat' because they're exhausted and without hope

    - China blasts '996' excessive work culture: Chinese labor law already prohibits employees from working that long. Jack Ma called 996 culture a "huge blessing."


  • ब्रह्मज्ञानावलीमाला: Sung by Swami Brahmananda, Chinmaya Mission



  • Taliban 2.0: Swapped Kalashnikovs for Twitter, cricket gear and selfies with children. But they never bothered addressing human rights or women’s rights concerns. When pushed, the Taliban adopted a “women’s rights within an Islamic framework” fudge.


  • Sharia hasn't changed:


  • India gets the refugees: While Pakistan gets celebrating Jihadis


Afghanistan: 5 Faces to Watch out For

Wednesday, August 25, 2021

Quick notes: Space station | High-speed rail...

  • China’s ISS rival: While the future of International Space Station remains uncertain after 2024, China's Tiangong station will be up and running by next year.


  • High-speed miracle: How China built the best high-speed rail ever



  • ASML: The most important company you've never heard of.


  • ‘We defeated ourselves’: Trump’s national security adviser H. R. McMaster says Pompeo signed ‘surrender agreement’ with Taliban that led to the current catastrophe.



  • Ungrateful ELM:


  • No place in the Ummah? Afghan girls boarding school temporarily relocates to Rwanda


  • Afghan MP: Uncertain if Sikhs, Hindus will have any rights under Taliban: Afghan MP




  • From Kannada medium school to NASA's doorsteps: Karnataka village thrilled by the feat of local lad whose entire schooling was in rural areas in Kannada medium.


  • Why People Who Brush Still Get Cavities: It is a microbiome problem


  • Women persecuted for suspected witchcraft: Raipur-based doctor and rationalist, who has been relentlessly raising his voice against the practice of women being beaten ruthlessly and socially boycotted for suspected witchcraft, was thanked by the victims a day after Raksha Bandhan.

Saturday, August 21, 2021

Is America's War Lobby Trying to Skewer Biden Over Afghan Pullout Blunder?

Has Biden's unplanned and botched pullout from Afghanistan then provided an opportunity / impetus for America's war lobby to now rally pressure on him to put the troops back in, possibly indefinitely? The usually sycophantic American press have very suddenly & conspicuously turned against Biden.





Friday, August 20, 2021

Quick notes: US weaponry | Booster shots...

Wednesday, August 18, 2021

Quick notes: Woke justice | Electric scooter...

  • Reject this overreach, reject it outright: SC orders Army to allow women take NDA exams. . . . . Save national security from woke judiciary.


  • Ola Electric Scooter: 3.97 KWH battery. 180 km range. Ola building the world's largest two-wheeler factory and an ancillary park at Hosur.


  • Naveen Patnaik: “This bronze medal may have been won by us as players, but in truth, it equally belongs to India, a gift from the honourable Shri Naveen Patnaikji whose vision and constant encouragement helped us achieve our dream”: Hockey captain Manpreet Singh.


  • Pledging state assets: Andhra Pradesh govt availed Rs 56076 crore loans from various banks since 2019


  • Ominous sign: 20 Indian companies now account for over 90 per cent of profits (up from 30 per cent a decade ago).


  • Woke and Woker: Netflix wants you to believe that we are living in some ‘Hindu dystopia’.


  • The zero-power sewage plant inspired by cows: Bengaluru startup ECOSTP Technologies designs biomimicry STP (sewage treatment plant) .
  • Chennai zoo lions saved from Covid-19: Doctors and animal keepers spent 50 sleepless nights to save the lions that tested positive for the novel coronavirus.


  • Raga Gaud Malhar: Ayaan Ali Bangash



  • Japan sees peril in U.S. chip hub to counter China: Japan is worried that U.S. plans to pour billions of dollars into chip manufacturing to fend off China could finish off what's left of a Japanese semiconductor industry that once dominated the world.

    China chips: Chinese Semi shipments hit record 31.6 Billion chips in July

    Han games: Huawei stealing trade secrets, spying in Pakistan

    Trick or treat? Eastern Europe turns cautious on Chinese "corrosive capital" investment.


  • Navjot Sawhney's hand-cranked washer-dryers: Manual washer and dryer designed to be "robust, simple to use and easily repairable".


Thursday, August 12, 2021

Quick notes: Chip manufacturing | Open streets...

Vivek Ramaswamy: Corporations Owe an Implicit Debt to Society

Sunday, August 08, 2021

chellaney on the #wuhavirus coverup

disaster in afghanistan: the fall of kunduz

#taliban take #kunduz. the CIA allowing an airlift of taliban (actually pak army/ISI) from kunduz was the biggest mistake of the US occupation. it prevented a #northernalliance defeat of the taliban. my piece from nov 2001: rediff.com/news/2001/nov/ it baffled me they'd allow pak to do it. that was the turning point of the war.

Tweet from Hardik Rajgor (@Hardism)

Hardik Rajgor (@Hardism) tweeted at 7:09 PM on Sat, Aug 07, 2021:
Dare I say, the most ridiculous performance by an Indian Olympian at Tokyo 2021 was from Aditi Ashok. To be the world number 200. To do it over 4 rounds and 4 days. To do it over 72 holes. To stand shoulder to shoulder with the best in the world. It is a stunning performance.
(https://twitter.com/Hardism/status/1424002230458355715?s=03

the ethics issue in RCTs: this may have invalidated mRNA vaccine trials

there is always an ethical dilemma with RCTs that you can't deny the placebo-takers the real thing if the real thing turns out to be effective. in fact i have heard of  trials being abandoned on account of this.

the interesting thing here is that the mRNA vaccine trials appear NOT to have been abandoned; their statistically useless results have been included in the 'data' that allegedly 'showed' high efficacy on the part of pfizer and modern.

to me, this appears like fraud, one more example of bad behavior by bigpharma.

'

Sunday, August 01, 2021

Is China Myopic On Afghanistan and CPEC?

 Brahma Chellaney writes about how China is opportunistically rushing in to fill the void following America's withdrawal from Afghanistan:

https://chellaney.net/2021/07/30/china-moves-swiftly-to-exploit-the-void-in-afghanistan/

With the U.S. in retreat, China is likely to increase its strategic footprint in Afghanistan by leveraging its strategic relationship with the Taliban’s main backer, Pakistan, and its own long-standing ties with that militia.

To co-opt the Taliban, China has already dangled the prospect of providing the militia the two things it needs to govern Afghanistan in whole or in part — acquiescence to its rule, if not formal recognition, and much-needed infrastructure and economic development assistance. And the Taliban, rising to the bait, is going out of its way to assuage China’s concerns. Clearly, a Taliban-dominated Afghanistan will not only be under Pakistan’s sway but also greatly aid China’s designs.


But it needs to be asked - given the importance of the success of the Belt & Road Initiative to China, and given how BRI & CPEC could be destabilized by Pakistani adventurism towards India and resulting flare-up in Indo-Pakistani tensions, then how does China intend to manage such challenges? Or does China  imagine it can just strangle India by building large dams to choke its water, and thus put India in a state of meek submission? I don't think that kind of exisential threat is going to do anything but provoke India to fight back even more ferociously, thus putting BRI in even greater jeopardy. Xi doesn't seem to know other countries as well as he imagines.



Gravitas Plus: Does George Soros Manipulate the Global Order?