Thursday, May 31, 2018

world news update



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5-29-18  
-Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fighters on their way to Raqqa, Syria June 6, 2017.  REUTERS/Rodi Said
 
Baghdad (IraqiNews.com)   The Syrian Democratic Forces have announced heading toward Islamic State’s stronghold, south of Hasaka, to liberate the region from the militants.

  In remarks to the Russian Sputnik News agency, Lilwa al-Abdallah, the spokesperson for the Operation al-Jazeera Storm, said the operation “is ongoing to eliminate presence of IS in eastern Euphrates and south of Hasaka.  Our troops are heading toward al-Desheisha, located south of Hasaka to liberate it completely from the militants until reaching to the Iraqi borders.”

  The operations to free Desheisha, according to Abdallah, are carried out “in cooperation with Iraqi troops at the joint task forces to eliminate IS from the region and prevent the militants infiltration to Iraqi and Syrian regions.”
  After freeing Desheisha or Badiya region, according to Abdallah, “we will head toward Hegeen, which is considered the last and biggest strongholds of IS.”  https://www.iraqinews.com/arab-world-news/sdf-says-to-head-toward-islamic-state-south-of-hasaka-reaching-to-iraqi-borders/
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5-31-18  Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has warned US-backed Kurdish forces he would not hesitate to use force to retake the third of the country they control.

  "The only problem left in Syria is the SDF," Assad told Russia Today in an interview aired Thursday, referring to the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forceswhich has spearheaded battles against Islamic State group jihadists.  "We're going to deal with it by two options," he said.
  "The first one:  we started now opening doors for negotiations.  Because the majority of them are Syrians, supposedly they like their country, they don't like to be puppets to any foreigners," Assad said in English.      http://www.france24.com/en/20180531-syria-assad-kurds-us-military-threat-force
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5-31-18     Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Pyongyang on Thursday invited North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to visit Russia, Moscow said, during the first meeting between the head of the reclusive state and a Russian official.
  "Come to Russia, we'll be very happy to see you," Lavrov told Kim in remarks released by the Russian foreign ministry.  Lavrov passed greetings from Russian President Vladimir Putin to Kim, saying he wished him success in the "major undertakings that have been initiated on the Korean peninsula", the ministry said in a statement.undertakings that have been initiated on the Korean peninsula", the ministry said in a statement.  http://www.france24.com/en/20180531-north-korea-russia-lavrov-invitation-kim
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On Feb. 13, 2018, detectives of Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) brought embezzlement charges in absentia against
Odesa Mayor Hennadii Trukhanov and three officials of the mayor's office.  https://en.censor.net.ua/news/3050252/odesa_mayor_trukhanov_three_mayors_office_officials_indicted_on_embezzlement_charges_nabu

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4-7-`8   "Mr Trukhanov, are you corrupt?" - Odesa Mayor's guards attack BBC reporter after tough questions on official's secret investments overseas. VIDEO

BBC reporter Andy Verity wanted to ask Odesa Mayor Hennadii Trukhanov whether he had been using London to hide dirty money when the official's security hustled him out of the place and kicked him in the groin.  

As reported by Censor.NET, a BBC investigation has revealed how an organised crime gang secretly invested millions of pounds in the UK.
The journalists discovered that the Ukrainian gangsters bought luxury properties in central London.  This is what happened when reporter Andy Verity tried to question the Mayor of Odesa, suspected of involvement:  https://en.censor.net.ua/video_news/3063160/mr_trukhanov_are_you_corrupt_odesa_mayors_guards_attack_bbc_reporter_after_tough_questions_on_officials
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5-31-18       On Friday, June 1, President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko will make a working trip to Odesa region, where he will open a bridge on Odesa-Reni highway.
  The head of state said this at the opening ceremony of a new line of the cement plant in the village of Yamnytsia, Ivano-Frankivsk region, an Ukrinform correspondent reports. "Tomorrow I will go to Odesa region.  We will open a bridge on Odesa-Reni highway," Poroshenko said.  In addition, Poroshenko plans to meet with German Federal Foreign Minister Heiko Maas on Thursday at 9 pm.  They will discuss the deployment of a UN peacekeeping mission in Donbas.  https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-polytics/2471504-poroshenko-to-meet-with-german-foreign-minister-in-evening-to-visit-odesa-on-friday.html
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409.  One need not expend energy twice if the blow has been properly prepared.    -Leaves of Morya's Garden  1924
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III, ii, 17.  A command to my warriors is not spoken twice.  Let us build better our ways, marking the possibilities.  Let us not be afraid if at first glance these possibilities appear too scattered.  Grass does not grow instantaneously.  But fortunately I see youthful heads worthy to be entrusted with the loosened threads. (of purpose).  
III, iii, 5.  Do not be displeased except with yourself.   Do not let others do what you can do for yourself, and in this way you will abolish the thralldom of servants.  Do not say twice what needs to be said once.  Do not retread the same path, for even a stone threshold will wear away . Do not swim where one has to fly.  Do not turn back where one should make haste.  Do not distort your mouth in ill-speech where you should pass in silence.  When the steel of achievement is needed do not cover yourself with rays.  No need for a saddle where wings are growing.  Not the fist but the hammer drives in the nail.  Not the bow but the arrow reaches the mark.  Not by my God, but by thine.  Do not be bounded by a fence but by the fire of thought.       -Leaves of Morya's Garden 1925
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81.  It is better to say "Yesterday is past; let us learn how to meet a new dawn."  We all grow, and our works are expanding with us.  After twenty-seven years no one is a youth, and we all can then understand the achievement of service. It is unworthy to rummage in yesterday's dust; henceforth let us establish a new step.  Let us begin to labor surrounding ourselves with a thousand eyes; let us acquire purity of thought and co-measurement of actions.  Thus let us fill our days; let us become used to mobility and decisiveness.     
  Likewise let us not forget that there is nothing on Earth higher than the given plan for the common good; let us manifest understanding of the Teachings of life....Ponder how the boundaries of cosmos have touched you.  Recall the steps of wondrous tensions not in a book but in life.  Reflect that so much has not been taken up and absorbed and yet you stand in your place.  Therefore be not disheartened by mistakes but ascend by the Hierarchy of the Teaching.   
148.  On the path let us not be finicky.     -M:  Community 1926
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442.  An orderly life is not something shameful, for one must carefully protect the apparatus built through the ages.      -M:  Agni Yoga 1929
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248.  Each ploughman will say that he wants the plough that makes the largest and deepest furrow.  Indeed why cross the field twice and why not reach the fertile strata?  Let the depth of the furrow be reverence to Hierarchy and the width of the furrow be steadfastness of motion.  Let us watch where there is a lack of reverence for Hierarchy and where non-fulfillment of commands.  Let us notice where there is readiness to retreat.  Each harm must be eradicated.  Rising in spirit one should watch where are unprotected spots.      -M:  Hierarchy 1931
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254.  No one requires that a telephone call or a telegram be repeated twice before he will believe it, but it works out otherwise in the matter of information from the finer energy plane.  For some reason people invariably insist upon repetition of manifestations, as if they could be convinced only through repetition--in such a manner much energy is wasted.  Conditions have already become altered, but man wishes to turn backward---much is made difficult by such retrogression.      
(by Schmiechen, 1882)
                                        -Morya:  Brotherhood  1937

Wednesday, May 30, 2018

if the errors of humanity were given precedence over the justice of God

    You were born to win, and I say this to counter the lie that man was "born to lose."  And if you will make this statement I AM born to win! as an act of supreme faith it will overcome the world's consciousness of failure--a deadly weight of sin if there ever was one.  It doe not matter what problems you have faced, for even the most dire situations will yield to the mighty forcefield of God-potency that will be built up through your practice of spiritual alchemy.      
(by Gordon Ross, 1941)
         -Saint Germain:  Pearls of Wisdom 13:14
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   How is it that the wise men of the nations seem unable to discern the effects of eye-pictures upon their children and themselves?  Do they not perceive in the misuse of the sacred fire through crude and unnecessary displays of sex and the infiltration of horror, murder and fear in advertising and entertainment that men are lowering the consciousness of the entire world?  Do they not have eyes to see that some men are making merchandise of them?...In fact much if not all of the violence that humanity is facing today is the result of a deliberate manipulation of the minds of the people by those who are drunk with power.      
             -Archeia Mary:  Pearls of Wisdom 13:23
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    And in freedom's name if humanity would really end all wars they must do so by an unequivocal acceptance of the golden rule of the Prince of Peace.....I am concerned that honesty of heart be proclaimed a a means of adjudicating all human differences.  Let the malcontents be ignored wherever possible....The omnipotence of God could never be sustained if the errors of humanity were given precedence over the justice of God.      -Alexander Gaylord:  Pearls of Wisdom 13:26  
-eye chakra

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    I watch as the men-stealers corrupt the minds of those who have waited long for rebirth and reorientation in the world of form, and I say to those men and women of goodwill whose hearts have been touched by the divine afflatus, whose consciences are not seared by the meanness of mortal men and mortal mind:  respond to perfection if for no other reason than for the beauty of example.      
                      -Maha Chohan:  Pearls of Wisdom 13:28
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    Won't you let go of the clash of opposing ideas in your world, of your fear that something you might do will keep you out of the light?  Won't you understand that in this life and even in pat lives many of your mistake have been made in good faith?  The Eternal God, your own Mighty I AM Presence, is no tyrant.   God desires not to exert pressure upon your life nor even to force it to become better--for deep within your life is already manifesting the divine nature--but instead He gives to you the opportunity of invoking into action by your own freewill the great reality-tides of your Presence.          
                            -Helios:  Pearls of Wisdom 13:30

Tuesday, May 29, 2018

global positioning system receivers, laser rangefinders, unmanned aerial vehicles, inertial navigation systems.

11-28-17    According to an indictment unsealed today, in Pennsylvania, Wu Yingzhuo, Dong Hao and Xia Lei, all owners or employees at Guangzhou Bo Yu Information Technology Co., Ltd. ("Bo Yu"), have been engaged in hacking, theft of trade secrets, conspiracy and identity theft directed at Moody’s Analytics, Siemens AG and Trimble Inc., between 2011 and May 2017.
  The most sensitive information stolen appears to be from Trimble Inc., a Sunnyvale, California based company that makes global positioning system receivers, laser rangefinders, unmanned aerial vehicles and inertial navigation systems.
  According to the indictment, the co-conspirators stole at least 275 megabytes of data related to global navigation satellite systems technology designed to improve the accuracy of location data on mobile devices, which could assist Trimble competitors.  https://www.chinamoneynetwork.com/2017/11/28/us-charges-three-chinese-hackers-hacking-three-corporations-commercial-advantage 
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5-21-17    “cyber-enabled economic warfare” is essentially the use of cyber attacks against a country “with the intent to weaken its economy and thereby reduce its political and military power,” Ravich says.
  China’s use of the practice first began to strain relations with the U.S. in the early 2000s.  By 2011, the scope of Chinese theft forced the issue into the limelight.  In 2014, marking the first instance of attaching criminal charges to state hackers, the U.S. Justice Department obtained indictments for five Chinese military officers for stealing trade secrets, such as technical data, and intelligence on trade negotiations.
  The calls for action against Chinese economic espionage within the U.S. prompted denial from Beijing, but the tone changed after the U.S. threatened sanctions against China the following year.  While this could have been prompted by alleged Chinese political espionage against the Office of Personnel Management, where hackers siphoned off 22 million files on past and present federal employees, the backdrop of longstanding economic espionage was still on the minds of U.S. officials. Public condemnation intensified after a series of NSA presentation slides were leaked to the press shortly after the Office of Personnel Management incident, where hackers siphoned off 22 million files, showing a U.S. map littered with red dots identifying over 600 corporate and government victims of Chinese cyber espionage during a five-year period beginning in 2009….
  not all espionage against private industry is necessarily for economic gain.  Last month Chinese hackers targeted South Korean companies involved in the deployment of a U.S. missile defense system in anticipation of continued North Korean ballistic missile tests.  As Hultquist points out, “Many of their products have military applications, so even with an agreement to stop economic espionage, they could find themselves straddling that line between political and economic value.”  https://www.thecipherbrief.com/chinese-industrial-spies-cast-a-wider-net
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12-13-16  Chinese operatives can now approach engineers, military officers, administrators and attorneys from a wide range of different countries and companies in search of access to military technology. Indeed, the very act of communication between all these different actors creates opportunities for cyber-espionage.
The United States cannot have it both ways.  It cannot enjoy the benefits (political, financial, and technological) of an open, dispersed defense industry, while also maintaining tight control over the innovations that industry produces.  https://thediplomat.com/2016/12/just-how-wide-reaching-are-chinas-economic-espionage-efforts/
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6-23-16  Recently, after scooping up a small and unprofitable aerospace company from California, one of the lead suppliers of military aircraft for China, Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) is now in talks to acquire a UK-based aerospace and military company that could prove useful for stealth and drone development.  http://www.businessinsider.com/china-acquiring-military-secrets-2016-6
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12-21-17    The question every company should be asking themselves:  Do I have a product that might be useful to the populous of China?  Do I have a Chinese competitor?  Do I make a widget or provide a service used in any country’s defense industrial sector?  Answer “yes” to any of these and the odds of finding yourself on the Chinese five-fingered-discount shopping list rises exponentially….
  China announced its plan to invest $360 billion into renewable energies between 2017 and 2020, an amount that certainly caught the attention of many.  One way to make those dollars stretch is by reducing R&D costs by using the technologies of others, either through licenses, joint ventures or theft.  Each of which provides enterprise information security teams with an appropriate challenge to keep their trade secrets just that: secret.
  Siemens AG of Germany saw one of its trusted insiders working within the smart energy group apprehended by Dutch authorities on his way to China with a boatload of proprietary trade secrets and intellectual property in April 2017.  This was not the first time Siemens energy found itself in the crosshairs of China’s economic espionage efforts.
  We learned in late November through the U.S. Department of Justice indictment of Dong Hao, executive director and manager of “purported China-based Internet security firm Guangzhou Bo Yu Information Technology Company Limited (a/k/a ‘Boyusec’)” which successfully penetrated Siemens’ networks.
  In 2014, Boyusec conducted a reconnaissance and harvesting of access credentials.  Then in 2015, revisited to complete the harvest, when Hao and his colleagues at Boyusec stole approximately 407GB of proprietary commercial data pertaining to Siemens’s energy, technology and transportation businesses, according to the Department of Justice.

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7/27/17
  Beijing's leaders -- especially General Liu, sources say -- have grown acutely aware of this in recent years as they have come to see their nation as America's potential rival in the 21st century. They realize they badly need this technology to move from their cold-war-era strategic posture. That was predicated on defending against a Soviet invasion, with antiquated weapons and its "human wave" army of 3 million men; now the Chinese have the more ambitious goal of becoming the dominant power in Asia.  
  It is a strategy that could someday bring China into conflict with the major power in the region, the United States. The irony is this: under a dramatic liberalization of high-tech exports begun during Clinton's first term, the Chinese are purchasing many of the technologies they need to accomplish this goal from U.S. companies.  And very often they are doing it legally. U.S. defense firms are forbidden to sell weapons to China, thanks to an embargo in place since the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. But in an era when much of the best defense technology comes from the commercial market -- like computers, avionics software and other dual-use components -- there is a great deal the Chinese are permitted to buy.  As a result, thousands of Chinese businesses have crowded into the U.S. market in recent years, quietly gobbling up everything from optical tubes (which can be used for night-vision scopes on tanks) to oscilloscopes (which can aid in nuclear-weapons simulation).  Ostensibly for civilian consumption -- the purchase contracts, under U.S. export rules, usually must say so -- these dual-use items often end up in the hands of PLA-affiliated factories.
  Among the technology already acquired is telecommunications equipment that can build up the PLA's command and control of forces, and advanced software for battle simulation and coordination.  China has also obtained satellites and sophisticated jet engines for cruise missiles to provide "over the horizon" force capability, and supercomputers that can be used for miniaturizing and targeting nuclear warheads.  Often U.S. exporters do not know who the ultimate end user is. In 1994, for instance, Allied Signal sold China jet engines that later turned up in Chinese and Pakistani military training aircraft; intelligence analysts suspect they were also intended for Beijing's aggressive cruise-missile-development program.
  THE CHINESE STRATEGY GOES back at least to the late 1980s.  That's when the FBI first identified China as "the most active foreign power engaged in the illegal acquisition of American technology.”  But Beijing has sharply stepped up its efforts in the last few years.  "It was Desert Storm that really woke them up," says Bates Gill, a U.S. authority on Chinese arms acquisitions. Chinese leaders watched, aghast, as U.S. "smart" weapons fired from miles away found their way down stovepipes in Iraq.  "They saw the kind of technologies the Americans were able to use with impunity against the fifth or sixth largest army in the world -- which was armed with Russian and Chinese technologies," says Gill. Today Silicon Valley has become Beijing's East Berlin, its gateway to the best Western technology.  About half of the 900 tech-transfer cases investigated annually on the West Coast involve the Chinese, says Nicholas Eftimiades, a Defense Intelligence Agency analyst.  "They have hundreds of front companies," says a Western military attache in Beijing.  "They have hundreds of people in those companies."
  But the era of largely open-ended tech transfer may be ending.  Stung by a perception of vulnerability toward China in the wake of Asiagate, the Clinton administration is toughening up export restrictions -- and pushing for a new, more hardheaded brand of "constructive engagement" with Beijing.  In coming weeks, NEWSWEEK has learned, several names of Chinese end users -- customers, in other words -- will be added to a Department of Commerce list of dubious purchasers of dual-use technology suspected of involvement in weapons proliferation.  This means that any company seeking to sell to these customers will probably be forced to get a government export license first.  Already U.S. companies are feeling the heat -- and Beijing is upset (story). Says William Reich, the U.S. under secretary for export controls, "Our denial rate [of licenses for China exports] probably has tripled in the last year, and is more than three times the denial rate of any other country."  Last month the Commerce Department called in federal prosecutors to investigate one of America's showcase exporters, Silicon Graphics, for selling supercomputers to China's Academy of Sciences, a sometime military subcontractor, and to a Russian nuclear weapons lab.
  Commerce has also begun a review of all computer sales abroad, with a particular focus on China and Russia, Reich says. At the same time the State Department is hurrying efforts to gain concessions from Beijing on an anti-weapons-proliferation pact in time for the first of two summits between Clinton and Chinese President Jiang Zemin planned for the fall.  Such an accord would impose an export-control-and-monitoring regime on Chinese factories, and on controversial exports to countries like Iran and Pakistan.
  The administration's tougher line represents a step back from a long period of trade liberalization with China.  The problem the president faces is peculiar to the post-cold-war era, when free trade has become the norm and technology is far more ambiguous and universal.  During the cold war, military-related trade was closely monitored, and usually it was just a matter of planes, missiles and other big-ticket items.  The enemy was clear. The Western allies barred dual-use technologies to communist countries through Cocom, the Paris-based Coordinating Committee on Multilateral Export Controls.  Cocom required export licenses for any sensitive tech transfers.
 But the 1990s have seen much of this old consensus unravel. To a great extent, this was the doing of William Perry, Clinton's recently retired defense secretary.  In 1994, Perry decided it was all but impossible to halt the flow of many dual-use technologies abroad.  Cocom was dissolved that same year, and Perry threw open the door to sales of most computer and telecom equipment without export licenses.  As a result, the number of licenses required for potentially dual-use technology abroad dropped from a high of 120,000 per year under the Reagan administration to fewer than 9,000 cases last year.  U.S. companies are now, for the most part, working on an honor system; if they decide themselves that a customer isn't military-related, they can sell without notifying the government.
  THE PERRY STRATEGY MET WITH a willing audience at Commerce, which under Ron Brown, who was then secretary, began trumpeting export promotion.  U.S. exporters, of course, relished this policy.  Under intense corporate lobbying -- often by big Democratic donors and high-tech exporters like AT&T, Loral and United Technologies -- more and more sophisticated equipment was sold abroad.  Much of it dovetailed nicely with Beijing's high-tech wish list.
  Beijing, meanwhile, has done a masterful job of encouraging these openings.  In trade and contract negotiations, China has blackmailed U.S. industry, in effect, into lobbying for export liberalization by threatening to withhold its 1.2 billion-consumer market.  This played right into the Commerce Department's policy. For example, in 1994 Hughes Electronics chairman Michael Armstrong warned Clinton that sanctions against China could prompt Beijing to buy European satellites.  Last October the administration finally moved exports of communications satellites, once highly restricted, to a fast-track approval process.
  The same pressure has been applied to the Europeans, who are anxious about their ailing defense industries. Beijing today is lobbying the European Union hard -- and successfully, it seems -- to break its own tenuous post-Tiananmen weapons ban.  The British, for instance, have made a deal to sell China a radar-and-communications system that could help give Beijing over-the-horizon capability.  Last week French Defense Minister Charles Millon, on a visit to Beijing, also expressed impatience over the ban.  Most strikingly, Russia has gotten into the game with a slew of direct arms sales to China.  Moscow, its military-industrial complex in disarray, has been selling fighter jets, submarines, cruisers and possibly long-range-missile parts to Beijing in the last few years.  It is a policy that Clinton has done little to stop, concentrating Russia policy instead on winning grudging acceptance for NATO expansion in Europe.

  Today the real issue for U.S. national interests -- one that will long outlast the Clinton administration -- is whether Washington has been effectively played for a fool by Beijing.  By opening the lanes of business so far and so fast, is America helping to transform what is still just a developing nation into a 21st-century superpower -- one that it will, ironically, someday have to contain? Far from being a well-considered policy, Clinton's critics say, "constructive engagement" has mainly become a free-for-all in which dealmaking is the ruling principle.  And for that they blame a Clinton foreign policy that has put economics at the top of the agenda.  "Our policy on China is pretty much being dictated by corporate America and its influence in the White House," says Gary Milhollin, director of the Wisconsin Project, a Washington, D.C.-based outfit that tracks arms flow around the world.  "We deregulated too much too fast without thinking about the consequences.”  Some within the government agree.  "It used to be that anything one step over a PC was licensable.  Now they're letting supercomputers go without licenses," one chagrined U.S. Customs official told NEWSWEEK.  "Commerce has shrunk the protected list down to practically nothing.  Customs has turned into a trade-facilitation agency."
  There is evidence that the administration has been at least somewhat naive about Beijing's designs.  Perry, for example, not only opened up trade in high-tech goods; he also made a concerted effort to facilitate exports to China. In 1994 the Pentagon chief joined hands with Lt. Gen. Ding Henggao, then head of Costind (Committee of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense), to form the hopefully named Defense Conversion Commission. The U.S. defense secretary thought this would be a vehicle for shifting China's military industries into peaceful pursuits.  "It was a stupid thing to do," says one U.S. official now, acknowledging that Perry's effort only helped China's military modernization.  One U.S. intelligence official calls Costind "the central clearing-house that identifies what technologies are critical [for defense] and decides how to get them.”  Costind is also the guiding force behind China's effort to build a nuclear submarine and longer-range-missile program.  Perry, in an interview, admitted that the conversion effort failed.  "Their interest was primarily in defense-technology sharing.  So we had different views, and we dropped it after a year."
  ADMINISTRATION OFFICIALS, despite their new, tougher line, still argue that stemming technology flow is nearly impossible.  "In the post-Cocom era there's no way to stop this from happening," says former assistant defense secretary Joseph Nye.  "This technology is broadly shared, and the sense of threat [about China] isn't broadly shared."  Perry says efforts to curb risky tech transfers fell flat in Clinton's first term.  "There was a consistent effort during the whole time I was in government to reach agreement with Western countries on a unified approach," he says.  "We did not have much success.”  Administration sources also point out that the government did replace Cocom with something called the Wassenaar Arrangement, a less stringent accord among Western countries affecting weapons and dual-use goods.
  Nonetheless, criticism over the administration's engagement policy, once confined to the far right, is spreading in Washington. Last week, in a remarkably frank assessment, the Pentagon issued a report concluding that "China's long-term goal is to become one of the world's great powers," and it will "probably build its military power to the point where it can engage and defeat any potential enemy within the region" as well as deter any threat worldwide.  Beijing's most urgent military focus is probably Taiwan, especially since a tense standoff last year, when Washington ordered aircraft carriers to the Taiwan Strait in response to threatening moves by China against Taipei.  "A lot of the military technologies they are developing are directly linked to solving the problem of the U.S. Navy and an attack on Taiwan," says a policy analyst on the Committee on National Security in the U.S. House of Representatives, which ordered the report. "The administration's policy is premised upon its conclusion that we can have some sort of strategic partnership with the Chinese," he says.  "But if that's so, then why do they characterize us to be the enemy, and why are they developing technologies not strictly required for defending their borders?  How do you square that circle?"
  A LL THIS FEAR AND SUSPICION has been compounded by Asiagate.  It's unclear whether Beijing's technological ambitions are linked to the campaign-financing scandal . In all likelihood, China's eagerness to curry favor on Capitol Hill and in the White House was a response to Taiwan's diplomatic successes, especially President Lee Teng-hui's visit to America in 1995. Nonetheless, Beijing's longer-term desire for U.S. technology may help to explain why some names have popped up in the scandal's cast of characters.  Often, like Liu Chao-ying, Chinese business people wear two hats, civilian and military, with interests in both worlds that are difficult to distinguish.  Take Wang Jun, who's become notorious as the "arms dealer" introduced to Clinton at a White House coffee last year. Wang's far more important role is president of CITIC, the China International Trade and Investment Corp., Beijing's premier export vehicle.  But Wang, another princeling, is also chairman of a weapons company affiliated with the PLA, China Poly Group.  One of Poly's strategic objectives is "to buy whatever they can get their hands on from the open market.  They hit on every company with technology they meet," says a U.S. intelligence official….
     In the end, argues the U.S. administration, Washington is wedged between two irreconcilable interests.  About half of the $ 12 billion in U.S. exports to China last year was in high-technology goods. America is now running a growing deficit with China, so the idea of restricting exports runs headlong into the administration's trade policy.  And some suggest that the current demonization of China will do more damage to U.S. interests in the long run than tech flows.  "Let's be blunt about it," says Commerce's Reich.  "There are people in Congress, the media and academia who believe the president's policy of engagement is wrong and we should be pursuing a policy of containment.  We don't agree . . . The president believes very much that exports are a vital part of our national health and, in a larger sense, our economic security.“

http://www.newsweek.com/chinese-military-power-us-might-643022


Si Chen arrested!; Chinese pirating methods

5-24-17    A 2017 report by the bipartisan nongovernmental Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property described the nation of 1.3 billion as the "world's principal IP infringer." Purloined trade secrets - in combination with more quantifiable thefts, like counterfeit goods and pirated software - cost the U.S. at least $225 billion per year, and possibly as much as $600 billion.    https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Seven-arrested-in-international-scheme-to-steal-11170902.php
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5-25-17   Also on Tuesday, Si “Cathy” Chen was arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations in Pomona California, and is now charged with shipping sensitive technology with military applications back to her native mainland China for over two years.  Under the  International Emergency Economic Powers Act, many kinds of high-tech American devices may not be sent to China for fear they can be reverse engineered and used to bolster their military effectiveness.
  In this case, Chen is alleged to have shipped dozens of cutting-edge radio transmission and digital-to-analog conversion components with potential use in military guidance and radio jamming application.  Chinese firms operating in the United States would purchase the components explicitly for use within the United States.  They would then send them to Chen in Pomona, who would in turn ship them to Hong Kong or mainland China, listing them in customs documents as low-value uncontrolled electronics. In return, money from China was wired to Chen’s accounts in the United States.   http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/05/25/sessions-doj-cracking-down-on-chinese-corporate-spies/
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5-23-17  
Si Chen (SHOWN) also is accused of smuggling devices typically used in space communications applications, and falsifying the paperwork used in shipping those items to list them as worth $500, rather than their true value of more than $100,000.  The exports in question date from March 2013 to December 2015. 
  In addition to various export-related offenses, Chen is charged with conspiracy, money laundering, making false statements on an immigration application and using a forged passport, according to the Justice Department.  https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-smuggling-china-idUSKBN18J2ZH
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May 26, 2018:  In April 2018 two Chinese-born men (Shan Shi and Gang Liu) were indicted for conspiring to commit economic espionage in the United States.  It was also revealed that the two men (one of them an American citizen and the other a permanent resident) and four others were also indicted in July 2017 for conspiring to steal trade secrets.  http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htintel/articles/20180526.aspx
 (A very in-depth, comprehensive article on Chinese economic espionage!)   
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Love! Discern! Strike evil!

Babchenko, 41,  had been scathingly critical of the Kremlin in recent years.  He left Russia in February 2017, saying he was receiving threats and concerned he might be jailed.  In the fall Babchenko moved to Kiev where he worked as a host for the Crimean Tatar TV station, ATR.   (Shot 3 times in the back in the stairway of his building, he died.)   https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/29/russian-journalist-arkady-babchenko-shot-dead-in-kiev
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53.  Manifold wonders have we to reveal to you, manifestations on the happy ascent to Tibet heights.  Think and strive, transforming airy castles into fortresses of achievement.  Give rest to your spirit, fatigue it not too much with books, and love--surging like a sparkling torrent--will reveal to you the splendor of M.'s flowers.
89.  A blessed guide is given to each of you for your happiness.  Turn to him alone with all the strength of your spirit, else will the door be left ajar and the currents confused.  Invoke the blessed guide not with questions but by affirmation.  If I send a message through your guide the current will be direct.  Hearken not to those who approach when you are not alert.  A window open to darkness is also open to the voices of the night.  But a call of love will bring response from the Beloved.  Love those who have chosen you.  Realize the ties that bind you to your guide and naught unworthy will come near to you.  Love!  Discern!  Strike evil!  My blessings are with you.     -Leaves of Morya's Garden 1924
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III, ii, 11.  You already know about two commanders of Akbar--let us add something about a third.  This one asked:  "Why are tardiness and prematurity equally condemned?"  Akbar replied:  "My friend, there are no equal values.  Hence if  prematurity embraces resourcefulness its merit is the greater, because tardiness is linked only with death.  Prematurity is to be adjudged, but tardiness is already condemned."
III, iv, 4.  Surrounded and threatened, Akbar addressed his commanders:  "The less agitated is the substance the more clear is the reflection of the summits."     -Leaves of Morya's Garden 1925

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230.  It is necessary to study attentively the cases of so-called 
split-personality.  At its worst it is a form of possession.  At its best it is a reliving of a former incarnation.  Sometimes the spirit is so close to a former incarnation that he relives it.  It is necessary to observe carefully a person with this condition which has nothing to do with the present incarnation's consciousness.  One should not trouble him with questioning.  But here also the yogi can be useful--he can give the command not to touch the past.  You notice that we do not touch upon past incarnations except when absolutely necessary so as not to evoke emanations of the past from akasha.      

                                             -M:  Agni Yoga 1929
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50.  Before him the weaver has his warp without which the most skilled craftsman cannot reveal his creative thought.  For creativeness of thought the cosmic Thoughtform is also 
necessary; for thus we name the primary substance from which fiery thought strikes the spark of creation. This same work can be performed by experienced thinkers and also by a child if it is kindled by an unalterable desire.  Without knowing the degree and quality of their thoughts one can judge neither hermit nor ascetic, nor can one judge the singer or poet without knowing what thought-creativeness they emanate.  Gradually we are becoming accustomed not to condemn, because only thought-creativeness is the creator's co-worker.      -M:  Heart 1932
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108.  Let us examine the laboratory of eyes, which differ in size and expression.   Some are already awakened and full of luster and others are half-closed; some remind one of Eastern eyes whereas others are the eyes of the North.  One can see how thought creates inexorably out of the treasures of akasha [akaha:  (Ssnskrit, from the root kas, to be visible, to shine brightly, to see clearly) primary substance, the subtlest, ethereal essence which fills the whole of space, etheric energy vibrating at a certain frequency so as to record or absorb all the impressions of life.  Akashic records/recordings comprise all impressions of life in the matter universes and can be read by those very highly attuned.] and supplies the needs of the worlds.      -M:  Supermundane 1, 1938 
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     God gave to us --as we fought the battle of worlds on Mercury--that energy, that power only because we were willing to balance the threefold flame, to pursue wisdom and wisdom’s might, to intensify such love in every cell and in the flame of every cell so that our auras were so saturated with love that there was no possibility for misqualification of one erg of God’s power through any form of tyranny whatsoever. …
  As we saw the challenge and as we were taught by God Mercury, we knew that unflinching devotion to the will of God, drawing within to the diamond-point of the Self, wielding of the sword of blue flame and mastery of action of fohatic keys would result in the victory.  Fohatic keys, blessed ones, are molecular formulae that are used for a particular release of chakra energies. These energies when coded in certain manifestations can bring to pass in the matter plane any form of manifestation, any intensity of the seven rays for a specific action or challenge.  You will note that the black magicians have perverted these keys and set their perverted keys to music, played that rhythm and music and thereby caused enormous quantities of energy to be drained from the children of God….
  Some of the fallen ones became aligned with laggard evolutions which eventually embodied on Earth.  Some of the sons and daughters of God journeyed to Venus and later accompanied Sanat Kumara to Earth.  Thus we see today on Earth the battle of forces being waged between those of ancient tie--fallen ones who created the Mercurial robot and sons of God who were the challengers of them and of their creation….It was in that experience on Mercury that some of you who are present here with me tonight learned the art of dealing with the Luciferians according to their terms of war and the warfare of worlds….
  Chelas of the will of God, I fling to you the challenge in this hour!--that challenge is to make yourself one and thereby be eligible for the lowering of the electrode through Elohim Apollo…I have come to speak to you of some of the intricacies of the Law regarding the revolution (upward into light).  All rests upon the dedication of the few which one day on Earth will become the victory of the many.  I trust, beloved hearts, that you will take this morsel, assimilate it and become it so that I may return with part two       -Morya:  10-7-1977 at Pasadena via Messenger E C Prophet
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192.  essential analysis is at a standstill in the absence of observation.  Investigation has gone along a channel of usualness, and for overzealous investigators somewhere a bonfire is already prepared.  You may be sure that the spirit of the Inquisition is still not very far away; the difference will be in the garb and in the means of eradicating new quests.       -Morya:  Community 1926
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-Canadian-American who illustrated Prince Valiant comic strips from 1937-71;
above is self-portrait



-a sea-rover chieftain






Monday, May 28, 2018

rationalizing Chinee hacking at the top of American government

9-18-15
-2nd Artillery Corps, PLA  http://printarchive.epochtimes.com/a1/en/us/dal/2015/09-Sept/18/a3_Final.pdf
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Do not hesitate to join the PLA's Second Artillery Corps and defend our motherland.  http://blog.chinadaily.com.cn/thread-1441946-1-1.html
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autumn 2015, he DoD estimated China of having approximately 20 DF-5  liquid-fueled ICBMs, with 10 of them being DF-5B variants containing MIRVs (3 to 8 warheads per missile).  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DF-5    http://asian-defence-news.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/plas-new-df-5b-liquid-fuel-icbm.html
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                rationalizing Chinee hacking at the top of American government:
halloween 2017     J. Michael Daniel, who served as Obama's White House cybersecurity coordinator. After all, despite the nagging exceptions, as much as 90 percent of Chinese hacking incidents targeting the US private sector did disappear following the agreement, according to numbers from both FireEye and security firm Crowdstrike. "I think it continues to be a success.  It did what it was intended to do: It shifted Chinese thinking and behavior."
And as for the remaining cases of US corporate penetrations that FireEye and other cybersecurity companies continue to point to?  "There's an understanding that you’re not going to reduce intrusions into private companies to zero," Daniel says.  "We never expected that every single instance of stealing intellectual property or trade secrets for commercial gain would go away."
Daniel argues the few cases in which China has continued to hack American companies could be false flags or misattributions, where non-Chinese activity has been mistakenly pinned on Chinese.  They could be traditional espionage, using companies as footholds to get into governmental targets.  Or they could be rogue Chinese hacker groups moonlighting for private interests, conducting corporate espionage without the government's involvement.
"The Chinese government doesn’t have complete and total control over all these Chinese hacker groups," Daniel says.  "Some of that activity may not be the Chinese government, but the companies that it would benefit, hiring those hackers to conduct these operations."
But playing down violations of the agreement could be shrewd pragmatism as much as a lack of a smoking gun, says Robert Knake, a director of cybersecurity policy in the Obama administration who served until early 2015, before the US-China agreement was made.  "It’s not always a bright-line bureaucratic decision," Knake says.   "Will you get the outcome you want by declaring someone in violation? Or do you get it by validating the agreement and then quietly pushing them?"
Knake notes it's possible the Trump administration is focused on its escalating conflict with North Korea, and doesn't want to ruffle its relationship with a key ally in the region.  "The thinking could be, 'let’s not start a fight with China too, we need them on North Korea,'" Knake says.  https://www.wired.com/story/china-tests-limits-of-us-hacking-truce/
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4-11-18   It’s reportedly been happening since before Trump targeted tariffs at the nation.
Backstory: China is responsible for as much as 80 percent of all intellectual-property theft against US companies, according to the US Commission on Intellectual Property Theft. In 2015, China agreed to stop hacking the US for trade secrets. Until then, IP theft cost the US economy $300 billion a year. More recently, Trump placed tariffs on many imports to punish China for stealing American tech know-how.
The news:  Axios reports that new security research shows China expanded state-sanctioned hacking for US patents and other trade secrets throughout 2017, targeting tech companies, law firms, and medical manufacturers, among others.
https://www.technologyreview.com/the-download/610850/china-has-been-hacking-american-ip-again/
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11-30-17  Prosecutors in the United States this week quietly outed what appears to be a Chinese state-linked hacking ring, an escalation in Washington’s campaign to pressure China over its trade practices and efforts to steal intellectual property from U.S. firms. 
In an indictment unsealed on Monday, federal prosecutors in Pittsburgh allege that a trio of Chinese nationals and their cybersecurity firm Boyusec hacked three companies — industrial giant Siemens, the economic analysis firm Moody’s, and the GPS navigation company Trimble — and made off with sensitive company documents.  http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/11/30/feds-quietly-reveal-chinese-state-backed-hacking-operation/
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JANUARY 31, 2016 
Over the next two years, hackers stole some 630,000 files from Boeing related to the C-17, the third most expensive plane that the Pentagon has ever developed, with research and development costs of $3.4 billion. They obtained detailed drawings; measurements of the wings and fuselage, and other parts; outlines of the pipeline and electric wiring systems; and flight test data – a gold mine for any criminal looking to sell information on the black market. But the hackers, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, already had a buyer: Su Bin, a Chinese national and aerospace professional living in Canada.   https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2016/0131/Why-China-hacks-the-world

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