Tuesday, October 31, 2017

The MOVE bombing, 1985

The MOVE bombing, 1985
October 31, 2017

Forget about the JFK Files. 

We need to investigate and examine events leading up to, enabling and contributing to the systemic violence against Blacks. 

The story starts in 1979 with the trial of John Africa (Vincent Leaphart) 

It ends with him being murdered by a corrupt police department run by Mayor Frank Rizzo. 

30 years later, and we hear stories daily of police  targeting, and killing unarmed Blacks. 

We cant allow the current administration to rewrite history so I'm reminding you of an event that received very little press coverage. 

Want to tackle police brutality? This seems like a good place start. 



The MOVE bombing, 1985

Police helicopter drops a bomb on the MOVE house
Historical information about the police bombing of the predominantly black radical lifestlye grouping MOVE, which killed eleven people and left hundreds homeless.
Introduction
MOVE is an organisation formed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1972 by John Africa and Donald Glassey - a loose-knit, mostly black group whose members all adopted the surname Africa, advocated a back-to-nature lifestyle and preached against technology.
On May 13, 1985, in a failed attempt to serve arrest warrants on four members of the group, Philadelphia police became engaged in a gun battle at MOVE's communal residence. 61 houses burned to the ground and six adults and five children in the MOVE house were killed.
While we do not agree with this article in its entirety we reproduce it here as a reference for these important events.
libcom
A Basic History of the 1985 MOVE Bombing: Rogue Police and Weak Leadership
Some of the largest public outrages against the police came through the tragic mishandling of events. These events, which include the fatal shooting of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton in Chicago and the later bombing of MOVE headquarters in Philadelphia disproportionately involve African-Americans. This is not merely coincidence but rather shows a sad fact of policing, one that is described by "Black (1980)…[who] found that encounters between police and African Americans were more likely than encounters between police and White Americans to result in formal or legally based decisions (398)." Consequently, the amount of publicity these events get is nowhere near the amount given to negative portrayals of African-American individuals, and with each year that passes fewer and fewer individuals recall the events that transpired.
Where racial antagonism between "predominantly white police forces and expanding black communities" may have offered an explanation for police racism in policing in Hahn and Feagin's 1970, the approach loses robustness with the increasing prevalence of African-American police officers. This tendency to disproportionately affect African-American individuals (whether it be through arrest or force) has not changed in light of more diverse police; cases including those of Rodney King (1991), Abner Louima (1997) and Amadou Diallo (1999) show that this problem is as prevalent as ever.
MOVE started as the American Christian Movement by Vincent Leaphart, a former dog-walker. The group began gaining converts when Leaphart's (now John Africa's) musings on a variety of subjects were transcribed and put into a book form by graduate student Donald Glassey (Maddox 1995, 30). These teachings held that all living life is sacred, that all matter should be "cycled" (recycled), and that childbirth should be a natural happening, without drugs. Couple these beliefs with a revolutionary strain of thought, that human law was not to be followed due to it not equally affecting individuals (through loopholes) and that "all living things instinctively defend themselves", and one has a dogma that brought in a number of individuals to a communal house in Powelton Village (MOVE 2005). Powelton Village at the time was a heavily-black neighborhood that was fending off the gentrification advances of Drexel and the University of Pennsylvania; it was with this obvious intrusion against the MOVE belief that "all living things, beings that move, are equally important" that MOVE began to agitate for change. This agitation would eventually bring a bomb down upon MOVE, in a typical bout of police over-action that killed 11 citizens of the United States in 1985.
For a short period after moving into the Powelton village house, things were relatively quiet as MOVE kept to themselves. MOVE soon started agitating through constant tirades using a bullhorn and by actively leading protests, a move which finally lead to the creation of a data-collecting team by the Philadelphia Police Department (PPD) (Maddox 1995, 38; Assefa and Wahrhaftig 1988, 22). After being arrested for non-violent protests at high-publicity places (the Philadelphia Zoo, the Board of Education), MOVE actively committed offenses that would force police to put them in the criminal justice system. Ramona Africa, the only MOVE member that survived the 1985 bombing, would later say in a radio interview: "You want to arrest MOVE people? You want to put us in the court system? OK, but you're going to have to do it consistently. And we were going in and out of jail so much that we racked up so many cases that it clogged the court system. (Sanchez, 1996)"
Cycling members through the court system was admittedly not something to raise the ire of police; at some level, they were making money for each time a MOVE member was sent off to jail regardless of the offense. The event that escalated MOVE-PPD tensions occurred in March 1976, when MOVE and Philadelphia police members skirmished, leaving a number of individuals on both sides injured (Assefa and Wahrhaftig 1988, 23). One of these individuals was Life Africa, an infant that was killed (or that MOVE claimed to be killed) in these attacks. This death was so heinous that it brought John Africa to move to a more Black Panther-esque type of armed resistance; that "MOVE would counter with violence if attacked. (24)"
It was this change in philosophy that ultimately led to the Philadelphia police bombing of MOVE's house in 1985; what had originally been perceived as institutional racism by MOVE was turned into a set of individuals that actively disobeyed Mayor Goode in pursuing their anti-MOVE agendas. It is this individual action that is supported in theory concerning structural racism in policing. Scholars like J.M. Floyd-Thomas would explain the interest in the operations of MOVE by the Philadelphia Police Department was "due to the MOVE family's racial composition, counter-cultural lifestyle, radical politics, and unorthodox religiosity made them fair game to receive the full brunt of police oppression (16)." Furthermore, the lack of faith in the criminal justice system by African-Americans is not something that is only present in the more radical and fringe groups. Countless studies, including those by Engel (2005), Hagan and Albonetti (1982) and Wiley (2002) have shown that African-American individuals feel that they are treated worse by police both in terms of treatment and ultimate outcome (what punishment they are given, if any). Studies may show that there is a psychological difference in the way African-Americans and whites see their treatment by police, but there are some cold, hard facts that inform these outlooks on the world.
MOVE may have felt (whether rightly or wrongly) that they were being unduly persecuted because of their race; after so many arrests and complaints on their group, it is really no surprise that MOVE would gradually grow into something that was completely different from the non-violent, naturalist group that was founded by John Africa in 1973. Scholars including Waddington (2004) and Weitzer (2000) describe the real-life circumstances of racially-biased policing as a sort of self-fulfilling prophesy. This means that disproportionate amounts of African-Americans are confronted or placed in the criminal justice system because they are visibly acting in a way that is contrary with the law and the norms of society.
Labeling theory works in MOVE's context because the group was originally acting in a way that they felt was legal under their beliefs during the non-violence actions at places like the Philadelphia Zoo. When group members were labeled troublemakers and put into the criminal justice system for action they thought was legal, they began to act more like troublemakers. This is shown by the press release of MOVE during the lead-up to the shootout, which said that "We are prepared to hit reservoirs, empty hotels, and apartment houses, close factories and tie up major cities of Europe (Floyd-Thomas 2002)."
More police intervention brought behaviors that were even farther outside the norms of society. This downward spiral of action culminated in two events: MOVE's outside patrolling of their house with weapons and the later 1978 shoot-out, which led to "one death, several woundings, and deepened distrust that would lead to worse violence in the future (Assefa and Wahrhaftig 1988, 27, 37).
It is important to see that at each step there was an escalation of the police presence that dealt with the problem that MOVE created. This escalation began as arrests during the non-violent actions in the early seventies and only ended with a bombing that killed "11 people (all MOVE members), 61 homes completely destroyed, and 250 persons left homeless (Persons 251)."
This escalation further supports the "rogue police" explanation of the disproportionate number of African-Americans that are pulled over or otherwise acted upon by the police put forth by individuals like Tomaskovic-Devey et al (2004). This theory concedes that there are these disproportionate amounts of African-Americans being arrested or affected by the police, but that these actions are done by individuals that are racist or have some problem with the group in question. Coupled onto the higher number of African-Americans placed through the criminal justice system is a beefed-up set of circumstances that could lead to apprehension, with the most visible precursor "offense" being what is colloquially called "driving while black". After getting pulled over, African-American individuals are more often assessed a fine or arrested for matters that would normally just be a warning for white individuals (broken taillight, moving violation). However, this line of theory is under fire by theorists like D'Alessio and Stolzenberg (2003), who say that it is not necessarily the race of the offender but rather other factors (if the crime is done to a friend or committed alongside other crimes) that determine arrest-ability.
The "rogue police" explanation, regardless of the other explanatory theories, is the best fit in trying to understand the lead up of tension that would eventually lead to the 1985 bombing of MOVE headquarters. Where the patience of individual police may have been tried by the number of times they were called out to MOVE headquarters for noise violations or smaller complaints, the defining event in the changing of police attitudes occurred with the murder of Officer James Ramp during the May 1978 standoff. While the forensics expert at the later MOVE Commission would absolve MOVE from any murder charges (the bullet entered from the back of Officer Ramp, instead of the front), the hostility of the police officers that were part of this standoff was so great that the then-Mayor stopped all officers from being present at the 1985 siege.
Instead of following the orders of the Mayor, who "in July of 1984…met with two former MOVE members…[who] implored Mayor Goode to release MOVE members from jail in order to diffuse the escalating tensions between neighbors, police and MOVE.", the police came to the MOVE house in the early morning of May 13th, 1985 and proceeded to shoot 10,000 rounds of ammunition into the house and drop a 3.5 pound bomb on its roof (Assefa and Wahrhaftig 1988, Maddox 1995, 99). Both the components of the bomb and a gun used in the attack were of a military-grade quality that was expressly banned by the leaders of the Philadelphia police department (Floyd-Thomas, 2002). How could the 1985 bombing have been avoided? The behavior of the Philadelphia Police Department in dealing with MOVE was retributive instead of restorative in this case.
A shift in the behavior of the corrections and police departments of Philadelphia along the same lines as the Mayor's department would have defused the situation before it lead to the deaths of 11 in 1985. First off, lesser penalties for the MOVE 9 would have kept the demands of the rest of MOVE reasonable; each of the members was given 30 years for murder, even though only one bullet hit Officer Ramp. Secondly, a greater amount of sensitivity training should have been given to the Philadelphia police force, as put forth by Huisman et al in their "explaining commonalities" between races (2005). This move might have led to a greater empathy for the situation by leaders like Police Chief Gregore Sambor, who (aside from blocking the Fire Department Chief from putting out the fire on the MOVE house caused by the bomb), stoked more tension when he yelled out "attention MOVE, this is America (Maddox 1995, 85)." Finally, the continual arresting of MOVE members might have not transformed MOVE's mission from something resembling Martin Luther King's non-violent theories to Malcolm X's armed resistance if there was a deferment program in place, tied to a greater following of Philadelphia law for all who lived in the MOVE house. Tie this continual arresting in with the fact that MOVE had gotten wind that a video tape showing one of their members, Delbert Africa, was being shown to the Philadelphia Police Department trainees as a training exercise, and a condition was created in which both sides, MOVE and the PPD were ready to fight (Sanchez, 1996). If the mindset of individuals like Chief Sambor was that MOVE and groups like MOVE needed to be stopped at all costs, why was there not a greater review of the literature available to them regarding the best course of action in removing individuals and groups from authority? The attack on Fred Hampton in Chicago had only occurred a decade before, and the outrage from that case brought more trouble to all involved than any Black Panther rally could ever bring. The original plan put forth by the Mayor, Fire and Police Chiefs, and the Mayor's aide was to first knock off the bunker on MOVE headquarters by water cannon (to ensure that there would not be as many shots fired from an advantageous position) and eventually wear MOVE down to the point where it could then apprehend Ramona Africa, who was then leader of the organization. The plan was declared a failure after six hours; compare that to the 1978 siege, which lasted two months (Assefa and Wahrhaftig 1988). MOVE had guns in 1978 just as they had guns in 1985; what had changed so much to offer such a rapid change in plans and such a lack of patience?
This change could be seen as developing through a set of circumstances that in only the most tangential sense involved MOVE. Mayor Goode, the city's first African-American mayor was elected on the backs of white liberals and middle-class African-Americans to oust Frank Rizzo, who was attempting to change election law to run for another term (Parsons, 1987). Those who lived in the same Osage Avenue district were essentially those that allowed Goode to be elected, and those constituents were growing tired of MOVE's antics. By this time, MOVE has moved from directly protesting government locations and put the impetus of change on those individuals they lived near; when Osage Avenue residents complained about the bullhorn spewing such niceties as "MF Santy Claus", MOVE told the residents to tell their politicians that "the reason MOVE is doing it is because they want their people home." The reasons our people were doing this is because they couldn't get Wilson Goode to listen (Assefa and Wahrhaftig 1988, 108)."
Aside from the pressure being enacted on Mayor Goode by the residents of Osage Avenue, MOVE exacerbated the situation by fortifying their house. For the time that MOVE was doing this, there was a lack of harassment of the Osage Avenue neighbors, which in turn led to a relaxation of the pressure on Mayor Goode. This relaxation caused all segments of the City of Philadelphia to let their guard down until late April, where the bullhorn messages restarted with more vitriol and violent threats than had occurred before. Instead of being nebulous threats as they were before the 1978 shootouts, MOVE threatened to kill Mayor Goode and any other individuals that would set foot on their property. This change in behavior from a timid and afraid style to something that seems like a viable threat forced the Mayor's hand as much as did the construction of a gasoline tank on the roof of the house (which could conceivably be used for bombs).
This escalation shows that while the ultimate decision to bomb the compound was still the wrong one made by the Philadelphia Police Department, that MOVE was not necessarily as innocent as they would like to make themselves out to be. Aside from a shared responsibility of the eventual outcome, there also seemed to be some systemic distributional and government failures at play that led from the non-violent MOVE being arrested in 1974 and 1975 to an armed, almost terrorist-like group in 1985. In terms of distributional failures, there was an information asymmetry between the different City of Philadelphia groups. Mayor Goode was not aware of the plans to increase the power of the bomb, which was originally only intended to be a "concussive device" (Persons, 1987). Likewise, the Fire Department chief was unable of Mayor Goode's order to turn the hoses on the raging fire that was created by this bomb. Even Police Chief Sambor was left in the dark about some of his officers bringing in a military-caliber gun for the assault. There was a bureaucratic failure in that the order from Mayor Goode to remove all officers that had participated in the 1978 shootout from the teams assigned to the May assault was not followed. MOVE themselves were unclear at the length that the City of Philadelphia would go in removing them from their home; if this was communicated to them more clearly, the situation may have defused without all the bloodshed and destruction that the fires created by the bomb committed. Finally, the pressure placed on Mayor Goode reflected a government failure in terms of geographic constituencies and electoral interests; if Mayor Goode was not going to do something drastic for the "nuisance" that was present in the Osage Avenue area, there was going to be a good chance a new Mayor would be installed on election day.
The bombing of MOVE headquarters, despite what may be said, was not the ultimate goal of an overtly racist police department. Rather, Tomaskovic-Devey et al's idea of police officers that operate on their own rules in regards to the apprehension or the approaching of a group of citizens (whether they be by race or class) fits in perfectly in explaining why it was necessary in Chief Sambor's eyes to drop a 3.5 pound bomb of C4 and Tovex on a building containing a number of infants (Floyd-Thomas, 2002). Operation MOVE can thus partially explain the disproportionate number of African-Americans that are put into jail on small charges or pulled over for minor violations; that certain individuals take their interpretation of what is right and lawful too far. The other sections that influence these higher numbers of African-American individuals being approached by police do not fit as nicely; stereotyping and racial profiling do not necessarily fit due to the length of exposure that the City of Philadelphia had with MOVE, a minority-heavy area does not necessarily fit because of the fact that Philadelphia itself is such an African-American heavy city (with an excess of 30% African-American population).
Individual responsibility of those individuals in power explains a large part of why the MOVE headquarters were bombed, but MOVE cannot escape all guilt in the matter. By being tagged as criminals at the earliest part of their existence, a kernel of criminality was created that simply because larger with each time that they were apprehended. This "labeling theory" shows the gradual shift in MOVE's philosophy through the years from a non-violent group that believed in the right of all creatures to life to one that threatened to kill any City of Philadelphia individual that even dared to set foot on their property (MOVE 2005). There is some part of systemic policy and criminal justice that brought situations to a much more rapid boil; the existence of retributive justice (that espouses labeling theory as a method to "punish" the badness out of individuals in the system") instead of a more holistic brand of justice that would encourage prison deferment based on the completion of programs that were in topics that individuals complained to city officials against MOVE about (cleanliness, child care).
Works Cited
Assefa, Hizkias, and Paul Wahraftig. (1988). Extremist Groups and Conflict Resolution, New York: Praeger, Black, Donald. (1980). The Manners and Customs of the Police. New York: Academic Press, Inc.
D'Alessio, Stewart J. and Lisa Stolzenberg. (2003). Race and the Probability of Arrest. Social Forces, 81. 1381-1397.
Engel, Robin Shepherd. (2005). "Citizens' Perceptions Of Distributive And Procedural Injustice During Traffic Stops With Police." Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 42. 445.
Floyd-Thomas, J.M. (2002). The Burning of Rebellious Thoughts; MOVE as Revolutionary Black Humanism. Black Scholar (Black World Foundation); Spring2002, Vol. 32. 11-22
Hagan, John and Celesta Albonetti. (1982) Race, Class, and the Perception of Criminal Injustice in America. The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 88, No. 2. 329-355.
Huisman, Kimberly, Jeri Martinez and Cathleen Wilson. (2005). Training Police Officers on Domestic Violence and Racism. Violence Against Women, 11. 792-821.
Maddox, G.K. (1995). The Life-Cycle Rhetoric and the Establishment's Response to the "MOVE" Social Movement of Philadelphia, PA. , 1975-1985. Kent, OH: Kent State.
MOVE. (2005). Belief and Practice. http://www.onamove.com/belief/. Accessed: 12 December 2005.
Persons, Georgia A. (1987). The Philadelphia Move Incident as an Anomaly in Models of Mayoral Leadership. Phylon (1960-), 48. 249-260.
Sanchez, Pedro. (1996). Interview With Ramona Africa One Move. Prison News Service, 55. http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/115.html. Accessed: 12 December 2005.
Tomaskovic-Devey, Donald, Marcinda Mason and Matthew Zingraff. (2004). Looking For The Driving While Black Phenomena: Conceptualizing Racial Bias Processes And Their Associated Distributions. Police Quarterly, 7. 3-29.
Waddington, PAJ et al. (2004) IN PROPORTION: Race, and Police Stop and Search. British Journal of Criminology, 44. 889-910.
Weitzer, Ronald. (2000). Racialized Policing: Resident's Perceptions in Three Neighborhoods. Law and Society Review 34:129-55.
Wiley, Deane. (2004) Black and white differences in the perception of justice. Criminology: An. Interdisciplinary Journal 13(4): 507-520.
Reproduced from "A Basic History of the 1985 MOVE Bombing: Rogue Police and Weak Leadership" by JMcQ.


^ed 

Monday, October 30, 2017

How does this make you FEEL?

As I writer, I have a pretty loyal fan base. People become addicted and my sites are mirrored all over the world in multiple languages. Some people love me, some people hate me and some people love to hate me. But the one thing that makes my voice so powerful is that I make people FEEL. 

If my language, style or profanity offends you, unfollow me. I won’t change my style and it’s only going to get worse as the day the goes on. 

I see no value in providing people with false narratives and holding back. I call it as I see it. If that offends you, you can always retreat into your safe place. 

We are living in a time of unprecedented violence, hatred and corruption. My job is to bring that to your attention. I don’t use my press credentials here, because I won’t pretend to be unbiased. You are my family and my friends. I will not pretend for your sake that everything is okay. We are in serious trouble here in America. 


If you get anything from my posts, I hope it is motivation. Get off your ass and DO SOMETHING!! This needs to end. And it needed to end yesterday. 

Yours, 

Elyssa D. Durant
Research and Policy Analyst 

Thursday, October 26, 2017

Facebook Will Find You

FACEBOOK WILL FIND YOU…

Why bother going back to the "glory days" of football uniforms and cheerleader skirts?

Is our desire to participate in the juvenile, ritualistic tradition of high school reunions and alumni weekends? 

Seeing how well we measured up against our peers?

Isn’t the competition over yet?

 Or are we still waiting to see who has the coolest toys, the biggest diamond, or the most glamorous job title?


Do we attend these events to see how far we have come, or to see how far others have fallen?

Why go anyway?  Now that we have facebook and a whole other host of social networking tools and devices. 

So I finally joined facebook.  At the urging of a few upwardly mobile name-dropper type “friends”,   I finally joined Facebook.  

To see that the girl who fucked my boyfriend in the tenth grade is now wearing his ring?
To listen to my sorority sisters who still gossip about eating disorders and drug problems?

Life is sometimes like a car wreck, you do not want to look, but you cannot turn seem to turn away. And yes, secretly, deep down inside, we are a bit relieved if not happy that it happened to someone else instead of ourselves. Yep, no question: better him then me!

So for everyone out there who recently promised to help before, during, and after my surgery-- you can all breathe a sigh of relief... You need not worry that I might actually take you up on that promise.

If you do not know me well enough to know how difficult it is for me to ask for anything, then clearly you would be the last person I want to see when I wake up the hospital.

I do not care if it is breast cancer or a broken toe-- you are not welcome here. I do not call during a crisis. Not because I am strong, not because I am brave, and not because I am weak. Simply because I am not that person. I am not stoic, I am not brave, and I am just not that person!

If or when I am in trouble, disappointment and broken promises is the very last thing I need or want. Even if it out of some misplaced sense of pity or superficial concern. I have been in trouble before. I know what to expect. I am certainly old enough, and apparently smart enough to have learned the rules of the game by now.

So if you catch me feeling sad, lonely, or just plain sorry for myself, take comfort in knowing that I expect you to walk away-- much like you have in the past. And do not worry, it is okay to think to yourself, better me than you.

REALITY BYTES

So instead, I find it is far better to drown myself in White Noise then baby bullshit and pure stupidity.


To distract myself with fancy websites, useless information, self-reflection, loud music... Fancy gadgets, the newest widgets, and everything else that completely distracts us from the reality of our existence.

To keep us from realizing that we may actually be completely alone in this world and maybe even in the next one too...

It is easier to fake a smile and go about my merry way than to be confronted with the fact that nobody gives a shit about how I feel or what I have been doing, unless, of course, I have something they need.

Something of value, something material. Something concrete. Something that can be sold or something that can be used. Something, of course, other than me.

Because sadly, what gets lost in translation, is the very fact that I am something of value. Something to love. Something to hold on to. Someone who will stay by your side even if it hurts me to do so.

The one thing you will never know is just how much it hurts to watch you walk out the door. Especially when I knew it was coming, or perhaps maybe the only way it could ever have been.

I think I am done.

You can come, you can go-- whenever you like. Eventually I do smarten up-- and the one time you come knocking; I may just not bother to let you in.

Yes-- White Noise.


The Time is Now: Impeach Trump

DailyDDoSe by ElyssaD © October 26, 2017




Before the United States and other Allies went to Germany to fight Nazis and Hitler years passed and countless Jews were executed as the world watched from afar.

It has become abundantly clear that "President" Donald J. Trump has embraced the support from White Supremacists and  Nazis who carry their flags at his rallies.  When confronted with the facts, Trump unscripted said they were "very fine people".

Trump receives letters of thanks and support from David Duke and allowed Mike Cernovich to visit the White House  Richard Spencer, Nigel Farage, Paul Joseph Watson; all known mouthpieces for the Alt-Right White Supremacist movement and the only time denounces these affiliations is when he is reading a script off a teleprompter. 

Does he know we can tell the difference?

Trump has only been in office for nine months and will be known for being the most divisive President in American history. He attacks minorities on a regular basis referring to Mexicans as rapists and Blacks as Sons of Bitches.


His hateful rhetoric only gets worse by the day and I have to ask, how long are we going to sit by and let this happen to our homeland?


Enough is enough. It/s time to impeach and indict Trump.  NOW!
Millions were killed before America deployed the military for World War II. 


I have to wonder what took us so long. 
There is renewed outrage once again demanding that Trump be relieved of his duties.


We saw similar demands and outrage after KKK rallies when A women was killed at peaceful protest.


For people who suddenly saw Trump for the White Supremacist has always been after  Charlotte, I have to ask,  WHAT TOOK YOU SO LONG?

As the grow shorter with a new season upon us, I am shocked that Trump hasn’t been removed yet.


I don’t care if they drag him let kn handcuffs or a straight jacket but Donald J. Trump is  by far the most dangerous man to the American people.


Elyssa D. Durant
New York, New York

DANGER DANGER




Before the United States and other Allies went to Germany to fight Nazis and Hitler years passed and countless Jews were executed as the world watched from afar.

It has become abundantly clear that "President" Donald J. Trump has embraced the support from White Supremacists and  Nazis who carry their flags at his rallies.  When confronted with the facts, Trump unscripted said they were "very fine people".

Trump receives letters of thanks and support from David Duke and allowed Mike Cernovich to visit the White House  Richard Spencer, Nigel Farage, Paul Joseph Watson; all known mouthpieces for the Alt-Right White Supremacist movement and the only time denounces these affiliations is when he is reading a script off a teleprompter. Does he know we can tell the difference?

Trump has only been in office for nine months and will be known for being the most divisive President in American history. He attacks minorities on a regular basis referring to Mexicans as rapists and Blacks as Sons of Bitches.

His hateful rhetoric only gets worse by the day and I have to ask, how long are we going to sit by and let this happen to our homeland?

Enough is enough. It's time to impeach and indict Trump.


DailyDDoSe © ElyssaD
© October 25, 2017



Wednesday, October 25, 2017

Many organizations —AMAZON— unprepared for DNS attacks, reveals new global survey - Latest Web Hosting Trends | Cloud News

Many organizations unprepared for DNS attacks, reveals new global survey - Latest Web Hosting Trends | Cloud News
My Amazon was hacked three times over again. I can personally conform that this a fùcking nightmare. 



Many organizations unprepared for DNS attacks, reveals new global survey

According to the recently released results of a global survey by Infoblox Inc., most of the companies are still not well-prepared against DNS attacks. The survey found that the companies have inadequate defenses against DNS attacks and DNS security is often ignored during charting an organizational cybersecurity strategy.

The study was conducted by Dimensional Research, and they surveyed over 1000 security and IT professionals across the world, and found that 86% of DNS solutions failed to pre-alert teams of an occurring DNS attack, and approximately one-third of the companies were not sure whether they can defend against the DNS attack in future.

Infoblox had last year reported that there was an increase of 71% in DDoS attacks from 2015 to 2016, which had knocked many leading companies including Amazon, Twitter, New York Times, and more. But still only 11% of the companies have dedicated security teams for DNS management, which shows that DNS is not a high priority for most of the companies.

"Our research reveals a gap in the market – while we found that DNS security is one of IT and security professionals' top three concerns, the vast majority of companies are ill-equipped to defend against DNS attacks," said David Gehringer, principal at Dimensional Research. "This is exacerbated by the fact that companies are extremely reactionary when it comes to DNS security, only prioritizing DNS defense once they have been attacked. Unless today's organizations begin moving to a proactive approach, DDoS attacks such as the one on DNS provider Dyn will become more pervasive."

The other important findings of this survey are:

• 3 out of 10 companies had already faced DNS attacks, and it had resulted in downtime in most cases, nearly 93%.

• 71% of the companies already had real-time monitoring for DNS attacks, even then, 86% of their solutions had failed to notify their teams about an occurring DNS attack.

• Only 37% of the companies could defend all DNS attacks, while 63% of them were apparently not capable to defend the next DNS attack.

• 74% of the companies had anti-virus monitoring as their top priority until they faced a DNS attack. Following an attack, the DNS security became the top priority for 70% of them.

• As for the financial losses by DNS attacks, 24% of the companies lost over $100,000 from their last attack, while 54% of them lost $50,000 or more.

Also read: Latest release Kubernetes 1.8 focuses on security and workload support

The number of DNS attacks is increasing each year. Reducing or completely eliminating the network outage threat can make a huge difference between the success and failure of a business, and the most important element to keep a network up and running is by securing the Domain Name System.

So, the companies need to give DNS security the attention it deserves, since DNS is going to remain one of the most vulnerable internet systems.



^ed 

Every Wi-Fi enabled device vulnerable to a new security attack called KRACK - Latest Web Hosting Trends | Cloud News

Every Wi-Fi enabled device vulnerable to a new security attack called KRACK - Latest Web Hosting Trends | Cloud News
An absolute nightmare for iot. 



Every Wi-Fi enabled device vulnerable to a new security attack called KRACK

Security researchers have discovered weaknesses in the WPA2 (Wi-Fi Protected Access II), the security protocol for most modern Wi-Fi networks. An attacker within the range of victim can interrupt credit card numbers, passwords, photos, and other sensible information using the bug called KRACK (Key Reinstallation Attacks).

What this means is that the security built into Wi-Fi is likely ineffective, and we should not assume it provides any security. If the security problem which researchers have discovered is true, then it will be very difficult to fix it. Because the WPA2 is built into almost every internet connected device.

During the initial research, it was found that Android, Linux, Apple, Windows, OpenBSD, MediaTek, Linksys, and others are all affected by some variant of attacks. The attacks against Linux and Android 6.0 or higher devices could be devastating because these devices can be tricked into (re)installing an all-zero encryption key. Currently 41% of Android devices are vulnerable to this attack.

It is also possible that attackers can inject and manipulate data depending on the network configuration, such as ransomware or other malware data into websites.

US Homeland Security's cyber-emergency unit US-CERT confirmed the news of vulnerability on Monday and described the research this way- "US-CERT has become aware of several key management vulnerabilities in the 4-way handshake of the Wi-Fi Protected Access II (WPA2) security protocol. The impact of exploiting these vulnerabilities includes decryption, packet replay, TCP connection hijacking, HTTP content injection, and others. Note that as protocol-level issues, most or all correct implementations of the standard will be affected. The CERT/CC and the reporting researcher KU Leuven, will be publicly disclosing these vulnerabilities on 16 October 2017."

Most of the protected Wi-Fi networks including personal and enterprise WPA2 networks are affected by the KRACK and are at risk of attack. All the clients and access points that were examined by researchers were vulnerable to some variant of the attack. The vulnerabilities are indexed as: CVE-2017-13077, CVE-2017-13078, CVE-2017-13079, CVE-2017-13080, CVE-2017-13081, CVE-2017-13082, CVE-2017-13084, CVE-2017-13086, CVE-2017-13087, CVE-2017-13088.

"The weakness lies in the protocol's four-way handshake, which securely allows new devices with a pre-shared password to join the network. If your device supports Wi-Fi, it is most likely affected," said Mathy Vanhoef, a computer security academic, who found the flaw.

Changing the passwords is not going to work even if you set a strong one. So, update all your devices and operating systems to the latest versions. As of now, users can protect themselves by sticking with sites that have HTTPS security, and keeping the Wi-Fi off. Since the security issue is related to Wi-Fi, the attacker has to be within a range, and the odds of widespread attacks are apparently low.

Also read: Many organizations unprepared for DNS attacks, reveals new global survey

The warning came at Black Hat security conference, and is scheduled to be formally presented on November 1 at ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS) in Dallas.



^ed 

KRACK: Huge Wi-Fi Vulnerability Threatens Internet Armageddon

KRACK: Huge Wi-Fi Vulnerability Threatens Internet Armageddon
The latest threat to worry about. 

KRACK: Huge Wi-Fi Vulnerability Threatens Internet Armageddon

The IoT is predicated on Wi-Fi connectivity; whatever security flaws existed previously pale in comparison to a flaw discovered in the Wi-Fi security protocol itself. Hundreds of millions of existing Wi-Fi devices are at risk, and most will never be patched. Undoubtedly, this will raise calls for a new security protocol, like quantum encryption currently being perfected by China.  TN Editor

Security researchers have discovered weaknesses in the WPA2 (Wi-Fi Protected Access II), the security protocol for most modern Wi-Fi networks. An attacker within the range of victim can interrupt credit card numbers, passwords, photos, and other sensible information using the bug called KRACK (Key Reinstallation Attacks).

What this means is that the security built into Wi-Fi is likely ineffective, and we should not assume it provides any security. If the security problem which researchers have discovered is true, then it will be very difficult to fix it. Because the WPA2 is built into almost every internet connected device.

During the initial research, it was found that Android, Linux, Apple, Windows, OpenBSD, MediaTek, Linksys, and others are all affected by some variant of attacks. The attacks against Linux and Android 6.0 or higher devices could be devastating because these devices can be tricked into (re)installing an all-zero encryption key. Currently 41% of Android devices are vulnerable to this attack.

It is also possible that attackers can inject and manipulate data depending on the network configuration, such as ransomware or other malware data into websites.

US Homeland Security's cyber-emergency unit US-CERT confirmed the news of vulnerability on Monday and described the research this way- "US-CERT has become aware of several key management vulnerabilities in the 4-way handshake of the Wi-Fi Protected Access II (WPA2) security protocol. The impact of exploiting these vulnerabilities includes decryption, packet replay, TCP connection hijacking, HTTP content injection, and others. Note that as protocol-level issues, most or all correct implementations of the standard will be affected. The CERT/CC and the reporting researcher KU Leuven, will be publicly disclosing these vulnerabilities on 16 October 2017."

Most of the protected Wi-Fi networks including personal and enterprise WPA2 networks are affected by the KRACK and are at risk of attack. All the clients and access points that were examined by researchers were vulnerable to some variant of the attack. The vulnerabilities are indexed as: CVE-2017-13077, CVE-2017-13078, CVE-2017-13079, CVE-2017-13080, CVE-2017-13081, CVE-2017-13082, CVE-2017-13084, CVE-2017-13086, CVE-2017-13087, CVE-2017-13088.

"The weakness lies in the protocol's four-way handshake, which securely allows new devices with a pre-shared password to join the network. If your device supports Wi-Fi, it is most likely affected," said Mathy Vanhoef, a computer security academic, who found the flaw.

Changing the passwords is not going to work even if you set a strong one. So, update all your devices and operating systems to the latest versions. As of now, users can protect themselves by sticking with sites that have HTTPS security, and keeping the Wi-Fi off. Since the security issue is related to Wi-Fi, the attacker has to be within a range, and the odds of widespread attacks are apparently low.

Read full story here…

Related Articles That You Might Like



^ed 

Israel Hacked Kaspersky, Caught Russian Spies Hacking American Spies, But...

Israel Hacked Kaspersky, Caught Russian Spies Hacking American Spies, But...

but what?

Israel Hacked Kaspersky, Caught Russian Spies Hacking American Spies, But...

kaspersky-hacking-news
The cold cyber war has just turned hot.

According to a story published today by the New York Times, Israeli government hackers hacked into Kaspersky's network in 2015 and caught Russian government hackers red-handed hacking US government hackers with the help of Kaspersky.

In other words — Russia spying on America, Israel spying on Russia and America spying on everyone.

What the F^#% is going around?

It is like one is blaming another for doing exactly the same thing it is doing against someone else. Wow!

Well, the fact that everyone is spying on everyone is neither new nor any secret. However, somehow now Kaspersky Labs is at the centre of this international espionage tale for its alleged devil role.

Just last week, the Wall Street Journal, an American media agency, published a story against the Kaspersky, a Russian antivirus provider, claiming that the Russian government hackers stole highly classified NSA documents and hacking tools in 2015 from a staffer's home PC with the help of Kaspersky Antivirus.

Even if the incident is real, quoting multiple anonymous sources from US intelligence community, Wall Street Journal article failed to provide any substantial evidence to prove if Kaspersky was intentionally involved with the Russian spies or some hackers simply exploited any zero-day vulnerability in the Antivirus product.
Now, the latest NYT story, again quoting an anonymous source from Israeli Intelligence Agency, seems another attempt to justify the claims made by WSJ article about Russians hacking NSA secrets.
"The role of Israeli intelligence in uncovering [the Kaspersky Labs] breach and the Russian hackers' use of Kaspersky software in the broader search for American secrets have not previously been disclosed," the NYT reported.

According to the report, United States officials began an immediate investigation in 2015 after Israel officials notified the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) about the possible breach.

Indeed, in mid-2015, Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab detected sophisticated cyber-espionage backdoor within its corporate network and released a detailed report about the intrusion, although the company did not blame Israel for the attack.

At the time, Kaspersky said that some of the attack code the company detected shared digital fingerprints first found in the infamous Stuxnet worm, same malware which was developed by America and Israel to sabotage Iran's nuclear program in 2010.

This suspicion of malicious Kaspersky's behaviour eventually leads the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to ban and remove Kaspersky antivirus software from all of its government computers.

Moreover, just last month, the U.S. National Intelligence Council shared a classified report with NATO allies concluding that the Russian FSB intelligence agency had access to Kaspersky's databases and as well as the source code.

However, Kaspersky Lab has always denied any knowledge of, or involvement in, any cyber espionage operations.

"Kaspersky Lab has never helped, nor will help, any government in the world with its cyberespionage efforts," Kaspersky's founder Eugene Kaspersky said in a statement.

Eugene today also announced that he has just launched an internal investigation to cross-check if United States LEA has relevant facts.

Eugene previously admitted there's a possibility that NSA hacking tools could have been picked up as malware by their Anti-malware scanner because antivirus products are designed to work in that way.

"We absolutely and aggressively detect and clean malware infections no matter the source," the antivirus company said.

Until now it is quite tough to judge if Kaspersky was involved in any wrongdoing, but the ball is in America's court, who has to provide the actual evidence to the world about the highly classified Israeli counter-intelligence operation.


^ed 

KRACK Demo: Critical Key Reinstallation Attack Against Widely-Used WPA2 Wi-Fi Protocol

KRACK Demo: Critical Key Reinstallation Attack Against Widely-Used WPA2 Wi-Fi Protocol
KRACK IS WHACK

KRACK Demo: Critical Key Reinstallation Attack Against Widely-Used WPA2 Wi-Fi Protocol

wpa2-krack-wifi-hacking
Do you think your wireless network is secure because you're using WPA2 encryption?

If yes, think again!

Security researchers have discovered several key management vulnerabilities in the core of Wi-Fi Protected Access II (WPA2) protocol that could allow an attacker to hack into your Wi-Fi network and eavesdrop on the Internet communications.

WPA2 is a 13-year-old WiFi authentication scheme widely used to secure WiFi connections, but the standard has been compromised, impacting almost all Wi-Fi devices—including in our homes and businesses, along with the networking companies that build them.

Dubbed KRACKKey Reinstallation Attack—the proof-of-concept attack demonstrated by a team of researchers works against all modern protected Wi-Fi networks and can be abused to steal sensitive information like credit card numbers, passwords, chat messages, emails, and photos.

Since the weaknesses reside in the Wi-Fi standard itself, and not in the implementations or any individual product, any correct implementation of WPA2 is likely affected.

According to the researchers, the newly discovered attack works against:

  • Both WPA1 and WPA2,
  • Personal and enterprise networks,
  • Ciphers WPA-TKIP, AES-CCMP, and GCMP

In short, if your device supports WiFi, it is most likely affected. During their initial research, the researchers discovered that Android, Linux, Apple, Windows, OpenBSD, MediaTek, Linksys, and others, are all affected by the KRACK attacks.
It should be noted that the KRACK attack does not help attackers recover the targeted WiFi's password; instead, it allows them to decrypt WiFi users' data without cracking or knowing the actual password.

So merely changing your Wi-Fi network password does not prevent (or mitigate) KRACK attack.

Here's How the KRACK WPA2 Attack Works (PoC Code):



Discovered by researcher Mathy Vanhoef of imec-DistriNet, KU Leuven, the KRACK attack works by exploiting a 4-way handshake of the WPA2 protocol that's used to establish a key for encrypting traffic.

For a successful KRACK attack, an attacker needs to trick a victim into re-installing an already-in-use key, which is achieved by manipulating and replaying cryptographic handshake messages.
"When the victim reinstalls the key, associated parameters such as the incremental transmit packet number (i.e. nonce) and receive packet number (i.e. replay counter) are reset to their initial value," the researcher writes. 
"Essentially, to guarantee security, a key should only be installed and used once. Unfortunately, we found this is not guaranteed by the WPA2 protocol. By manipulating cryptographic handshakes, we can abuse this weakness in practice."
The research [PDF], titled Key Reinstallation Attacks: Forcing Nonce Reuse in WPA2, has been published by Mathy Vanhoef of KU Leuven and Frank Piessens of imec-DistriNet, Nitesh Saxena and Maliheh Shirvanian of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Yong Li of Huawei Technologies, and Sven Schäge of Ruhr-Universität Bochum.

The team has successfully executed the key reinstallation attack against an Android smartphone, showing how an attacker can decrypt all data that the victim transmits over a protected WiFi. You can watch the video demonstration above and download proof-of-concept (PoC) code from Github.
"Decryption of packets is possible because a key reinstallation attack causes the transmit nonces (sometimes also called packet numbers or initialization vectors) to be reset to zero. As a result, the same encryption key is used with nonce values that have already been used in the past," the researcher say.
The researchers say their key reinstallation attack could be exceptionally devastating against Linux and Android 6.0 or higher, because "Android and Linux can be tricked into (re)installing an all-zero encryption key (see below for more info)."

However, there's no need to panic, as you aren't vulnerable to just anyone on the internet because a successful exploitation of KRACK attack requires an attacker to be within physical proximity to the intended WiFi network.

WPA2 Vulnerabilities and their Brief Details 


The key management vulnerabilities in the WPA2 protocol discovered by the researchers has been tracked as:

  • CVE-2017-13077: Reinstallation of the pairwise encryption key (PTK-TK) in the four-way handshake.
  • CVE-2017-13078: Reinstallation of the group key (GTK) in the four-way handshake.
  • CVE-2017-13079: Reinstallation of the integrity group key (IGTK) in the four-way handshake.
  • CVE-2017-13080: Reinstallation of the group key (GTK) in the group key handshake.
  • CVE-2017-13081: Reinstallation of the integrity group key (IGTK) in the group key handshake.
  • CVE-2017-13082: Accepting a retransmitted Fast BSS Transition (FT) Reassociation Request and reinstalling the pairwise encryption key (PTK-TK) while processing it.
  • CVE-2017-13084: Reinstallation of the STK key in the PeerKey handshake.
  • CVE-2017-13086: reinstallation of the Tunneled Direct-Link Setup (TDLS) PeerKey (TPK) key in the TDLS handshake.
  • CVE-2017-13087: reinstallation of the group key (GTK) while processing a Wireless Network Management (WNM) Sleep Mode Response frame.
  • CVE-2017-13088: reinstallation of the integrity group key (IGTK) while processing a Wireless Network Management (WNM) Sleep Mode Response frame.

The researchers discovered the vulnerabilities last year, but sent out notifications to several vendors on July 14, along with the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT), who sent out a broad warning to hundreds of vendors on 28 August 2017.
"The impact of exploiting these vulnerabilities includes decryption, packet replay, TCP connection hijacking, HTTP content injection, and others," the US-CERT warned. "Note that as protocol-level issues, most or all correct implementations of the standard will be affected."
In order to patch these vulnerabilities, you need to wait for the firmware updates from your device vendors.

According to researchers, the communication over HTTPS is secure (but may not be 100 percent secure) and cannot be decrypted using the KRACK attack. So, you are advised to use a secure VPN service—which encrypts all your Internet traffic whether it's HTTPS or HTTP.

You can read more information about these vulnerabilities on the KRACK attack's dedicated website, and the research paper.

The team has also released a script using which you can check whether if your WiFi network is vulnerable to the KRACK attack or not.

We will keep updating the story. Stay Tuned!


^ed 

#WikiLeaks publishes millions of Hacked Stratfor E-mails #gifiles

#WikiLeaks publishes millions of Hacked Stratfor E-mails #gifiles

Turns out I was right to block Wikileaks. And I'm still paying a price for it. 



#WikiLeaks publishes millions of Hacked Stratfor E-mails #gifiles

#WikiLeaks publishes millions of Hacked Stratfor E-mails #gifiles


WikiLeaks today began publishing more than five million confidential e-mails from US-based Intelligence firm Stratfor.  About 5.5m emails obtained from the servers of Stratfor, a US-based intelligence gathering firm with about 300,000 subscribers and has been likened to a shadow CIA.

The emails, snatched by hackers, could unmask sensitive sources and throw light on the murky world of intelligence-gathering by the company known as Stratfor, which counts Fortune 500 companies among its subscribers. Stratfor in a statement shortly after midnight said the release of its stolen emails was an attempt to silence and intimidate it.

The Online organisation claims to have proof of the firm's confidential links to large corporations, such as Bhopal's Dow Chemical Co and Lockheed Martin and government agencies, including the US Department of Homeland Security, the US Marines and the US Defense Intelligence Agency. WikiLeaks did not say how it had acquired access to the vast haul of internal and external correspondence of the Austin, Texas company, formally known as Strategic Forecasting Inc.

Stratfor, somewhat akin to a privatized CIA, sells its analyses of global politics to major corporations and government agencies.Members of Anonymous with direct knowledge of the hack and transfer of data to WikiLeaks told that the group decided to turn the information over to WikiLeaks because the site was more capable of analyzing and spreading the leaked information than Anonymous would be.

People linked to Anonymous took credit for the data theft.'Congrats on the amazing partnership between £Anonymous and £WikiLeaks to make all 5 million mails public,' AnonSec Tweeted. Hackers linked to the loosely organized Anonymous hackers group said at the beginning of the year they had stolen the email correspondence of some 100 of the firm's employees. WikiLeaks and Anonymous maintain the emails will expose dark secrets about the company.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said, 'Here we have a private intelligence firm, relying on informants from the U.S. government, foreign intelligence agencies with questionable reputations and journalists.'

The first batch of released emails contains only 167, and the rest some 5 million are to be gradually released in the coming weeks, as WikiLeaks media partners report on what they found in them.The source of the leaked emails is Anonymous, who got their hands on it when they breached Stratfor's systems in December.

The group claims to have found evidence that Stratfor gave a complimentary membership to Pakistan General Hamid Gul, former head of Pakistan's ISI Intelligence service, who, according to US diplomatic cables, planned an IED attack against international forces in Afghanistan in 2006.

Bradley Manning, the man suspected of turning over a massive cache of classified US documents to the secret-spilling site, on Thursday declined to enter a plea at his arraignment. Manning, a 24-year-old US army private, is charged with 22 counts in connection with one of the biggest Intelligence breaches in US history. WikiLeaks was due to hold a Press conference at London's Frontline Club later today.

After Stratfor's computers were hacked at least twice last December, the credit card details of more than 30,000 subscribers to Stratfor publications were posted on the Internet. The hacking attack on Stratfor is subject to an FBI investigation. Several alleged members of Anonymous have been arrested by authorities in the US and UK as part of investigations.Stratfor had not at the time of writing commented on the authenticity of the published material.


^ed