https://twitter.com/politicoalex/status/1344729223500541952

https://news.clearancejobs.com/2020/12/30/the-top-5-u-s-espionage-cases-of-2020/amp/?__twitter_impression=true


The year 2020, was a year steeped with several espionage cases coming to light. As expected, China and Russia compromised the top five cases in which a nation state targeted the United States using espionage to acquire information and technological know-how.
These cases are:

#5 CHINA’S THOUSAND TALENT PROGRAM
Throughout 2020 the successful penetration of a plethora of U.S. academic and research entities was made by China througfh their Thousand Talents Program.
More..
#4 CHINESE PENETRATE DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY
In July 2020 it became known that two Chinese nationals – Li Xiaoyu and Dong Jiazhi, operating on behalf of the MSS successfully penetrated the U.S. Department of Energy.
More..
#3 JUN WEI YEO AKA DICKSON YEO
Yeo was a Singaporean citizen who lived and operated within commercial spaces in Singapore and Washington, DC to spot, assess and recruit assets on behalf of China’s Ministry of State Security and the People’s Liberation Army
More..
#2 ALEXANDER YUK CHING MA
Ma was a contractor within FBI Honolulu who was recruited in 2001 by China and worked within FBI’s Honolulu’s division from 2004 to 2010 doing Chinese language translation work on their counterintelligence cases
More..
#1 PETER DEBBINS
The former U.S. Special Forces officer pleaded guilty to years of espionage from December 1996 to January 2011 on behalf of the Russian Federation, and handled by Russian military intelligence, the GRU. Readers will remember that he was spotted and assessed during a study abroad program when he traveled to Chelyabinsk, Russia.
More..

Mr. Burgess is a Senior CIA officer

https://twitter.com/burgessct/status/1344651140915290112

Ticketmaster entered into a plea agreement with federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, New York and will pay $10 million in fines to resolve charges that it accessed the computer systems of a competitor without authorization.

"Ticketmaster employees repeatedly -- and illegally -- accessed a competitor's computers without authorization using stolen passwords to unlawfully collect business intelligence," Acting U.S. Attorney Seth DuCharme said Wednesday in a press release.

Ticketmaster is a subsidiary of LiveNation (LYV).
In 2019, Democratic senators called for a federal antitrust investigation of LiveNation for what they called "nefarious practices" and "sky-high fees" levied on consumers

MORE...
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/12/30/business/ticketmaster-plea-passwords-computers/index.html

https://twitter.com/dubblmum/status/1343929427701493762

https://twitter.com/SteveSchmidtSES/status/1343216151892008960
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To stay or to go?
Amid coronavirus outbreaks, migrants face the starkest of choices:
Risking their lives in U.S. detention or returning home to the dangers they fled

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/12/26/immigration-detention-covid-deportation/?arc404=true
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Kevin Euceda believed he was in imminent danger.

Down the hall in the immigration detention center where he was being held, a man whose psychiatric visits had been suspended because of the pandemic was hallucinating and screaming.
Others were shivering and sweating, scared they were going to die.
Surrounded by so much sickness, Kevin was growing desperate to find a way out.

A migrant who said he came to the United States when he was 17 years old to escape gang threats in Honduras, Kevin had been living for nearly three years in a place that was now being overrun by covid-19.

SNIP
In 2018, Armor was criminally charged with falsifying records to give the appearance that staffers had been checking on a man as he died of dehydration in his cell.

In other instances, Armor has hired medical staff with disciplinary records, including the sole doctor at Farmville, Teresa Moore, who had been reprimanded twice by the state medical board, and also had her license restricted,
MORE...

STUNNING & UNBELIEVABLE EVIL COMMITTED ON US SOIL, IN OUR NAME

Coal prices in China have risen over the last month as China continues to block coal carriers from entering Chinese ports—and it's causing more than just residential and industrial energy shortages and blackouts.

China's Bitcoin mining is now under siege.

China is attempting to ration its power, but bitcoin mining's unquenchable thirst for high power use is now being threatened by China's standoff with Australia, frozen wind turbines—and Russia's own short supply of coal—that has left sailors and crew stranded at sea for months.


In fact, Bitcoin miners could end up taking the brunt of the rationing, and China hosts most of the world's top bitcoin miners.

And that makes sense because Bitcoin is extremely electricity-intensive, with just a single transaction consuming the power equivalent of as much as one U.S. household does for 23 days, with the carbon footprint of about 54,563 hours of YouTube video watching.

But the bitcoin factor adds another layer of complexity into the mix, and it's garnering media attention because one bitcoin (BTC) is now worth $27,077, with a market value near $500 billion—mining is big business.

While multifaceted, the root cause of China's coal shortage is its embargo of Australian coal imports as the tension between the two nations has turned into a full-blown trade war...

https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Chinas-Energy-Shortage-Threatens-Bitcoin-Mining.html
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Bitcoin, like coal mining, needs to die off
The environment can sustain neither.

Coal prices in China have risen over the last month as China continues to block coal carriers from entering Chinese ports—and it's causing more than just residential and industrial energy shortages and blackouts.

China's Bitcoin mining is now under siege.

China is attempting to ration its power, but bitcoin mining's unquenchable thirst for high power use is now being threatened by China's standoff with Australia, frozen wind turbines—and Russia's own short supply of coal—that has left sailors and crew stranded at sea for months.


In fact, Bitcoin miners could end up taking the brunt of the rationing, and China hosts most of the world's top bitcoin miners.

And that makes sense because Bitcoin is extremely electricity-intensive, with just a single transaction consuming the power equivalent of as much as one U.S. household does for 23 days, with the carbon footprint of about 54,563 hours of YouTube video watching.

But the bitcoin factor adds another layer of complexity into the mix, and it's garnering media attention because one bitcoin (BTC) is now worth $27,077, with a market value near $500 billion—mining is big business.

While multifaceted, the root cause of China's coal shortage is its embargo of Australian coal imports as the tension between the two nations has turned into a full-blown trade war...

https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Chinas-Energy-Shortage-Threatens-Bitcoin-Mining.html
***************

Bitcoin, like coal mining, needs to die off

COVID Update December 26: The wind is invisible too, but you can feel it change.Not with COVID where the stillness is deceptive. And deadly.

THREAD by Andy Slavitt @ 🏡🇺🇸@ASlavitt
Ex-Obama health care head (Source: https://threader.app/thread/1342925914531774464)

SNIP

"We chose to the let virus overwhelm us rather than make the adjustments necessary. And a generation that built this country, fought in our wars, immigrated here to give us a better life are left most vulnerable.

The people who this country has always abused & forgotten— whose families came in chains or out of poverty— who haven’t realized the “American dream” other than to be able to work in a warehouse, farm, store or factory every day— are left to pay the price.

No windy dark sky, no floodwaters & to date no government to warn us or prepare.
Slow & invisible, we have been fooled.
Uncaring & incompetent, the government made it worse.

2021 must be when all that changes. It will be hard but I believe we will. "
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You can read the entire Article @ASlavitt (Source: https://threader.app/thread/1342925914531774464)

Follow Andy Slavitt on Twitter:
https://mobile.twitter.com/ASlavitt

https://twitter.com/AP_Europe/status/1342751251507912704

From AP News

https://apnews.com/article/belarus-coronavirus-pandemic-only-on-ap-prisons-802ce0309de3df0df64d82d4deaa0ab9

Activists who spoke to The Associated Press after their release described massively overcrowded cells without proper ventilation or basic amenities and a lack of medical treatment.

Kastus Lisetsky, 35, a musician who received a 15-day sentence for attending a protest, said he was hospitalized with a high fever after eight days at a prison in eastern Belarus and diagnosed with double-sided pneumonia induced by COVID-19.


“Humid walls covered by parasites, the shocking lack of sanitary measures, shivering cold and a rusting bed —-that was what I got in prison in Mogilev instead of medical assistance,” Lisetsky told the AP in a telephone interview. “I had a fever and lost consciousness, and the guards had to call an ambulance.”

Lisetsky said that before he entered prison, he and three bandmates were held in a Minsk jail and had to sleep on the floor of a cell intended for only two people. All four have contracted the virus. Lisetsky must return to prison to serve the remaining seven days of his sentence after he’s discharged from the hospital.

He accused the government of allowing the virus to run wild among those jailed for political reasons.

“The guards say openly that they do it deliberately on orders,” Lisetsky said.