07/10/21

Egyptian TV allows Muslim student to condemn abusers who mocked her with “Are you a Christian?”

By: Dr. Ashraf Ramelah | Voice of the Copts

In Egypt, Islamic religious differences always remain internal and out of the public eye. That is why the recent mainstream news coverage of Habiba Tarik’s religious “bullying” is so astounding. A university student, she is furious after suffering a public humiliation over a personal, religious decision. Her complaint is receiving a lot of attention across the country. She is irate, which is not kindly regarded. Submission is her proper role. So why is she now allowed to tell her story on national TV?

Egypt is a country ruled silently by Muslim religious decrees. Islamic religious traditions serve to pressure individuals in ways that often turn one believer against another. Habiba wore a modern but modest dress during her final exams at the university, but officials did not approve. Apparently, their personal religious preferences and defense of Islam took priority over their administrative duties – an ordinary ordeal in Egypt. So why the publicity?

Discrimination and coercion are egregious violations of democratic, constitutional principles

In the West, discrimination and coercion are egregious violations of democratic, constitutional principles and condemned as unacceptable.

That is why over the past year we have witnessed horrified citizen journalists around the world pointing out scenes of informal Covid enforcement consisting of misguided citizens (motivated by “virtue,” fear, and misinformation) turning against neighbors for not complying.

However, in a nation where Islamic legalism governs society – dictates public and private affairs – there is no need to call it out. Clashes over levels of religious service and obedience to Sharia are a regular part of life and go on without regard for public institutions or their taxpayers. It is routine and perfectly acceptable.

The conflict involves individuals favoring a more comprehensive and stricter form of worship, others for a more liberal life. Disagreements normally stay between the two. For Habiba to take her plea for fairness to the public through the national state-controlled broadcasts was inconceivable until now. Will her story ultimately be marginalized as a sensational rant and Habiba discredited, and, if so, is it an intentional sacrifice on her part in order to achieve westernization and an end to conformity to Islamic legalism?

On June 22, Habiba Tarik, a student at the public university campus, was harassed by faculty about her attire. Habiba was in her second year-end exams of the Faculty of Arts of Tanta University (93 KM north of Cairo) when observers from the committee of the faculty for the end-year exams “bullied” and “ridiculed” her because her dress was inappropriate for a Muslim woman.

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07/10/21

Factoid: The Biden Admin’s NSA Unmasked Tucker Carlson

By: Denise Simon } Founders Code

So, who exactly ordered the NSA to unmask Tucker Carlson’s emails and leak them is unclear but there is at least one common name that did the same thing against General Flynn…Susan Rice… ahhh, but read on. (Remember former AG Barr called it spying.)

Axios:

Tucker Carlson was talking to U.S.-based Kremlin intermediaries about setting up an interview with Vladimir Putin shortly before the Fox News host accused the National Security Agency of spying on him, sources familiar with the conversations tell Axios.

Why it matters: Those sources said U.S. government officials learned about Carlson’s efforts to secure the Putin interview. Carlson learned that the government was aware of his outreach — and that’s the basis of his extraordinary accusation, followed by a rare public denial by the NSA that he had been targeted.

Axios has not confirmed whether any communications from Carlson have been intercepted, and if so, why.

The big picture: Carlson’s charges instantly became a cause célèbre on the right, which feasted on the allegation that one of America’s most prominent conservatives might have been monitored by the U.S. intelligence community.

The backstory: Carlson told his roughly 3 million viewers on June 28 that the day before, he had heard “from a whistleblower within the U.S. government who reached out to warn us that the NSA … is monitoring our electronic communications and is planning to leak them in an attempt to take this show off the air.”

Carlson said his source, “who is in a position to know, repeated back to us information about a story that we are working on that could have only come directly from my texts and emails.”
“It’s illegal for the NSA to spy on American citizens,” Carlson added. “Things like that should not happen in America. But unfortunately, they do happen. And in this case, they did happen.”
The NSA said in a tweet the next night, as Carlson’s show went on the air, that his “allegation is untrue.”
“Tucker Carlson has never been an intelligence target of the Agency and the NSA has never had any plans to try to take his program off the air,” the statement said.

A Fox News spokesperson gave this response to our reporting: “We support any of our hosts pursuing interviews and stories free of government interference.”

And Carlson gave this statement: “As I’ve said repeatedly, because it’s true, the NSA read my emails, and then leaked their contents. That’s an outrage, as well as illegal.”

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07/10/21

REvil, the Ransomware Hackers System Identified

By: Denise Simon | Founders Code

Ahead of the three-day Fourth of July weekend, the REvil gang is suspected to be behind a new ransomware attack that occurred Friday and affected at least 200 companies in the U.S.

REvil, based in Russia, was likely behind the JBS Meat Packing attack in May, according to the FBI. The Flashpoint Intelligence Platform has suggested that former REvil members were involved in the recent Colonial Pipeline attack earlier this year as well, allegedly done by the DarkSide ransomware group. More here from Newsweek.

Per the FBI’s most recent statement:

Updated July 4, 2021:

If you feel your systems have been compromised as a result of the Kaseya ransomware incident, we encourage you to employ all recommended mitigations, follow guidance from Kaseya and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to shut down your VSA servers immediately and report your compromise to the FBI at ic3.gov. Please include as much information as possible to assist the FBI and CISA in determining prioritization for victim outreach. Due to the potential scale of this incident, the FBI and CISA may be unable to respond to each victim individually, but all information we receive will be useful in countering this threat.

Original statement:

The FBI is investigating this situation and working with Kaseya, in coordination with CISA, to conduct outreach to possibly impacted victims. We encourage all who might be affected to employ the recommended mitigations and for users to follow Kaseya’s guidance to shut down VSA servers immediately. As always, we stand ready to assist any impacted entities.

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