thecrimeshop

2019-07-22

Iran Killing US Spies?

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U.S. Central Intelligence Agency

Cristal M Clark

Iranian officials have announced today that 17 people have been captured who were all spies who happened to be working for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. That’s a rather unusual number of spies to have captured and subsequently killed and/or jailed.

Yes, Iran admitted that some have been sentenced to death while others are imprisoned. Iran claims that each of the individuals were trained by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and they claim to know just how that happened considering all of the so-called US spies are actually Iranian citizens.

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At the briefing held by Iran’s head of counter espionage, an official claimed the 17 accused were lured into spying while applying for or renewing U.S. visas or while attending conferences abroad with promises of money and opportunities to work in the United States. While the United States seems a little weary of talking about CIA recruitment abroad, not to mention that U.S. officials have not yet responded to the allegations.

The accused were given surveillance equipment by handlers to place in sensitive government locations and received “extensive training” by the CIA in order to communicate from Iran without being detected, officials claimed. They were also given fake identification. Some of those captured agreed to cooperate with Iranian authorities and are now helping to work against the U.S., officials said.

NBC News has obtained a copy of the files that they say include audio exchanges between alleged CIA operatives and their Iranian sources, business cards and photos of alleged CIA officers and their families, and a copy of an Iranian documentary that claims to uncover the identities of the alleged spies.

On Friday, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard seized a British oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz.

Senior U.S. defense officials said that U.S. Marines jammed an Iranian drone in the Gulf of Hormuz on Thursday, bringing it down and destroying it.

A U.S. surveillance drone was also shot down last month by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. In the aftermath of the incident, President Donald Trump confirmed that he was “cocked and loaded” to strike Iranian targets but decided to call the strikes off, saying the loss of life would make it a disproportionate response.

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This news breaks as tensions rise between the US and Iran, and who is to say what the US will do if anything given Trump’s rather lackadaisical take on such matters. If anything, Iran is showing the world that they are a forced not to be fucked about with.

As to the spies Iran claims to have, it would appear that the US as per the norm will quietly walk away and leave them to figure it out on their own.

Cristal M Clark

2019-07-16

Trump Tells Congresswomen of Color to “Go Back Home”

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Trump’s Racists Weekend Twitter Tirade

Cristal M Clark

Once again, Donald Trump shows us his truest of colors by promptly telling the Squad: “So interesting to see ‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world, now loudly and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run.”

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“Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how it is done.”

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Bravo Trump, Bravo for yet again showing us what a sexist, bigoted, racist you are and right in time for the very next election. Our hats are off to you for getting your supporters geared right up for more of the same hateful nonsense.

The squad by the way is made up of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ayanna S. Pressley of Massachusetts. All women and all women of color who are a free thinking and more progressive thinking group of young women who encourage us to think more outside the box so that we can begin to make real changes that actually matter to our nations and our worlds future, if our race is to survive of course, in the long term. And if anyone reading this had children, I would think or hope at the very least that you would like our species to continue on for many generations past that of our own.

Whether you agree with whatever it is they say, or suggest, they want us to help them come up with real solutions and as Trump has shown, sometimes shock value in any idea or statement does in fact work.

By the way, the women all four of them are actually American citizens. And they are feared predominantly by white men who share in the values of holding what they view as the weaker species back while they get old, fat and rich.

That weaker species is made up of women who should be barefoot and pregnant, not have opinions, and just do as they are told, African Americans, Hispanics, LGBTQ, well realistically anyone who is not male or white and basically its own extremist group all of its own. And it’s the worst kind, of extremist group, with it’s leader clearly being one Donald Trump.

While some Republicans who typically keep tight-lipped about often ill thought Trump’s Twitter rants spoke out yesterday about his incendiary comments attacking four Democratic congresswomen, saying he crossed a line. “There is no excuse for the president’s spiteful comments — they were absolutely unacceptable and this needs to stop,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, tweeted. Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio also offered a tough but terse statement. “That’s not something I would say, and I think it’s divisive, unnecessary and wrong,” Portman said.

Yet many GOP leaders have yet to condemn the hate speech.

In the very same breath, I would urge Donald Trump to go back to where he is from because he and his kind are most certainly not by default truly American citizens, last time I checked the white man had no Native American blood coursing through his veins. I mean, wasn’t his slogan something to the tune of “Make America Great Again?” Well if he was so unhappy with it why did he not go back to where it is that he and his ancestors came from? How exactly has he made it great again? Sure, the white man is allowed to pollute more under his watch, he takes credit for what others have accomplished, and America if you ever wanted to take a brutal walk down history lane, was never really great for anyone other than the White Man.

Which is the entire history of America, we raped, pillaged, murdered and stole it from Native American’s just to get away from the English.

No back in the day if you were anything other than a white man, it really was not that great and for many minorities, we are still fighting that battle.

Later today the House Democrats will vote on whether to condemn Trump’s racist tweet or not and let us all hope they make the right decision this time, since they very rarely ever do.

Cristal M Clark

2019-07-15

Us Cracks Down on undocumented Immigrants with Scheduled Raids

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Mayors Disagree

Cristal M Clark

Does anyone recall that on June 16, 2019 Donald Trump made a vow to send ICE after all of the undocumented illegal immigrants hiding out in the United States? Well, he put that on hold initially and then last week announced that the raids would begin well yesterday. Trump supporters were left sitting on the very edge of their seats, palms sweating, hearts racing hoping to see footage on the evening news of illegals being led in cuffs unhappily into the custody of ICE.

CNN’s Alisyn Lane Camerota posed the very same question I and many others have this morning, “did the raids actually happen?”

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We all know that while ICE will not disclose intel prior to a raid, they should at least after the fact be offering up something and well, we have nothing to show for the promise Donald Trump made back on June 16^th, in fact almost all of the cities that were targeted in the raids came back to report a whole lot of nothing went on in each respective city other than a typical summer Sunday. According to a senior immigration official, the raids, or pretend raids if you will, were expected in Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New Orleans, New York and San Francisco.

It’s also important to know that many of these cities instructed local law enforcement basically refuse to share any type of immigration intel that they might have with ICE which is more or less like a kick in the junk.

In either case the story keeps changing, The New York Times said instead of one massive, simultaneous sweep, the operation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will be carried out as a series of smaller raids, spread out over several days. And, it is anyone’s guess as to whether or not the raids are actually going to happen.

To date, the threat of the raids has accomplished nothing more than to fearmonger, not only that it is a pathetic attempt for Trump to give the illusion that he is keeping his promise to his supporters to deport illegals. Again, it is all just an illusion.

As to the highly trumped up raids, a lot remains to be seen.

Cristal M Clark

2019-06-27

Robocallers Beware – US Government is Coming for You

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United States Nationwide Crackdown on Robocalls

Cristal M Clark

I wear a lot of hats at my job and one of them happens to be obtaining numbers for each robocall we get, now of course I have to rely on my team to assist with this, currently I have something of like 20 lists of phone numbers all robocalls and telemarketing bullshit.

One of my favorites is someone insisting their call is not a sales call, I don’t waste a lot of time, I simply ask if they charge for their services, when they answer yes, I laugh and hang up, it’s a bloody sales call you bloody wanker.

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On any given day my organization can receive up to 50+ robocalls, before noon and every time the US government makes an announcement to crack down on them, it only seems to intensify the number of calls we get in a day.

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This week the US Government sent out a warning to robocallers, “We’re coming for you!” more or less.

According to the Federal Trade Commission, the U.S. government has been cleared to conduct a nationwide crackdown on illegal robocalls that target companies and individuals who, according to the FTC have collectively placed over 1 billion unwanted calls for financial schemes and other services. The numbers are actually quite a bit hither than a mere 1 billion, the problem is that people got sick of reporting the calls to the FTC because it hasn’t seemed to do much in the way of preventing them from continuing.

I log the numbers and block them, the biggest reason I log them however is that by the time the FTC really does start to crack down on them, I’ll just forward the lists over to them.

According the FTC the crackdown involves nearly 100 cases, 5 of them are criminal enforcement actions. They were brought by the FTC, Justice Department, 15 states and local authorities. Derek Jason Bartoli, is one of the targets, a Florida man who allegedly developed, sold and used a form of software that allows millions of calls to be placed in quick succession, was responsible for 57 million calls to US phone numbers over six months in 2017, according to a federal complaint. I know many of you would just love to give good ole Derek the one finger salute, as would I but let’s just let the feds handle him for now.

Andrew Smith, director of the FTC’s bureau of consumer protection said; “By putting people like Derek Bartoli out of business, we are able to deprive the robocallers of the important tools of their trade.” Which is actually a rather bit, inaccurate if you will. Derek’s software has been sold, copied and improved upon by others, part of the reason robocalls have gotten so out of hand.

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Lawmakers in both chambers of Congress are preparing legislation that would expand the government’s power to limit illegal robocalls. On Tuesday, a House subcommittee is expected to consider the Stopping Bad Robocalls Act. The bill directs the Federal Communications Commission to flesh out its rules making clear that robocalls may only be made to consumers with their consent. In the Senate, the TRACED Act would expand the FCC’s power to punish illegal robocallers by increasing the maximum fines the agency can levy for each robocall and by extending the statute of limitations from 1 to just 3 years. And, the FTC still wants us to report the unwanted calls which they say will empower them to stop the calls.

I am not a huge fan of doing the job for the FTC however, my mobile carrier already knows which calls are spam and which are not, perhaps the FTC should expand upon it’s ability to ask individuals for help and start asking mobile carriers, Google is also from what I hear and excellent resource to find known robocall numbers, YouMail actually keeps a free online known Robo/Spam caller index and includes the actual number of reported complaints along with each number and let me tell you, some of those numbers are staggering.

The biggest problem I have with the FTC asking everyone to report the numbers to them is that we have been doing just that for years and to date all we keep seeing is lip service, pretty little laws that are on paper, but other than that, not much is being done to actually stop the unwanted calls. Consumers want to see swift action, and harsh action.

Either do something or shut it, consumers are getting really tired of lip service from our Government who promises action, yet does very little in the way of that.

Cristal M Clark

2019-06-25

Hackers Hack Mobile Carriers – Could Shut Down Networks

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Hackers Quietly infiltrated Over a Dozen Mobile Carriers

Cristal M Clark

Well here’s a delightful way to everyone’s Tuesday but on the downlow if you hackers hacked my mobile carrier could you do me a solid and shut it down for a stint? I mean I have a friend who is going through some drama and she sent me over 13 text within a span of 30 minutes yesterday and that was just for that 30 minutes, don’t get me started on the rest of the day, I need some downtime here.

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Hackers have quietly infiltrated more than a dozen mobile carriers around the world, gaining complete control of networks behind the companies’ backs, that is according to the companies. If they wanted to get ahead of the game however, they could have and would have.

According to Cybereason, a security company based in Boston, the attackers have been hacking the carriers over the last 7 (as opposed to just 1 or 2), years to steal sensitive data, but they have so much control that they could very well just shut down communications at any time they’d like.

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Essentially, hackers targeted phone providers in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East, they then infected multiple mobile carriers since 2012, gaining control and siphoning off hundreds of gigabytes of data on people.

A breech of this scale has the potential to affect millions of users globally with no warning whatsoever. Amit Serper, Cybereason’s head of security research: “They have all the usernames and passwords, and created a bunch of domain privileges for themselves, with more than one user, they can do whatever they want. Since they have such access, they could shut down the network tomorrow if they wanted to.”

While the hackers had access to millions of people’s data, they had only stolen data from less than 100 highly targeted victims. The attackers likely targeted high-profile victims involved in government and the military. That’s of course after having gaining access to mobile carriers’ internal servers, the hackers would have access to call data records on hundreds of millions of customers. That would provide information like geolocation data, call logs and text message records.

Which as any researcher will tell you is the holy grail of data in terms of hacking, mobile carriers these days tend to have it all, for all of us.

The question everyone has, who is behind the hacks? Given the types of higher profile victims that have already been targeted in some of the attacks many suspect those behind these hackers is in fact a government entity.

Either way, don’t be surprised if at some point your entire mobile network comes crashing down for a bit.

Cristal M Clark

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2019-06-24

Florida Woman Jailed for Fearing for Her Life

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Bartow, Florida

Cristal M Clark

When you think about it, you realize that Florida as a whole really does do some pretty stupid things, take for instance the police who arrested and charted Courtney Irby, 32 on June 15^th because she took her estranged husbands guns to the police out of nothing more than fear for her own safety and life. Her husband by the way has had issues with domestic violence in the past you see he had recently attempted to run her down with his motorized transport. Joseph Irby, was in jail over that as he had been arrested on June 14^th.

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So naturally, in truly disgusting form, the Lakeland Police Department decided that Courtney had broken the law and had no reason whatsoever to go to his home while he was in jail, remove his guns from it and take them to the Lakeland Police Department because she feared for her life should Joseph post bond.

After Courtney turned over the weapons, authorities arrested her and charged her with two counts of grand theft and one count of armed burglary, which by the way is completely moronic and totally absurd.

According to a police report obtained by the Miami Herald, Courtney said she was “in fear of her life.” The Herald also notes that the wife had obtained a restraining order against her husband. Joseph of course told the Miami Herald from the jail he currently housed at that he planned to press charges against his wife.

So, this man attempts to run his wife down with his vehicle thus killing her and she shouldn’t be in fear of her life knowing that he is a gun owner? What’s more is that more than half of those who are arrested nation wide never turn in the weapons they own once bonded at as in almost every case, a condition of bond is that the defendant turn over his/her firearms.

According to a report from the Brady Center released last October, over 525 women on average annually were murdered by a partner using a firearm between 2006 and 2016.

Courtney was released on bond, ordered to have no contact with her husband, and also ordered not to have any firearms. However, now that the news has broke about her case a Florida lawmaker and others are asking a State Attorney not to prosecute her. Courtney had previously obtained a temporary injunction against Joseph, yes even before he tried to mow her down with a vehicle and had informed police that her husband would not turn in the guns himself. State Rep. Anna Eskamani tweeted that her arrest was “ridiculous.” Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter was killed in the Parkland, Florida school shooting, called it “horrific.”

And it is both horrific and ridiculous. While two wrongs do not make a right, the man attempted to murder her already, he has a blatant disregard for the law as his behavior clearly shows so why would he turn in his weapons if he had bonded out.

Hopefully the prosecution will see the error in the ways of the police on this one and refrain from moving forward with charging Courtney.

Cristal M Clark

2019-06-18

Donald Trump Announces Sweeping Deportations to Start Next Week

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Illegal Immigration

Cristal M Clark

Trump says millions of people living in the country illegally will be deported, beginning next week. In a pair of tweets Monday night, the eve of formally announcing his re-election bid.

So, it would appear that he is going to wage this new election on illegal immigration, again.

According to Trump’s latest tweet storm: Trump said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement would next week “begin the process of removing the millions of illegal aliens who have illicitly found their way into the United States. They will be removed as fast as they come in.”

Allow for me to ask, is this just from those entering in through our southern border or will it also include those heading in from the north and who can forget the robustly pregnant Russian women who are flocking to Miami in an effort to give birth to anchor babies?

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What’s more is that White House can neither confirm nor deny Trump’s latest tweets not to mention that it is rather unusual for any law enforcement agencies to announce raids before they take place and ICE, well they really avoid announcing operations in advance, particularly large-scale ones, sort of defeats the purpose.

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At any rate, Trump also seemed to have gotten his numbers mixed up because Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen pushed DHS which just so happens to oversees ICE to conduct a sprawling operation targeting undocumented immigrants in major cities. That operation would have entailed the arrest of as many as 10,000 immigrants, not exactly “millions.”

According to the AP Any such massive deportation would affect not only undocumented immigrants with pending removal orders, but millions of mixed-status families with members who are U.S. citizens, particularly children.

Cry me a river, we need to change the law so that no one can enter into the US, give birth and create a larger population issue because now the child is a US citizen simply because it was born here by a parent who is not a US citizen. That is the most absurd law ever written.

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Either way, I say that Trump should finally put his money where his rather extraordinarily large mouth is and do it for once instead of making empty threats, I am not sure about the rest of you but having less traffic upon the road would be welcome in part of town.

In short, grow a pair Donald Trump and get on with it, either do what you say you are going to do or shut it already, quite a few are actually quite tired of you failing to actually take the action you keep promising.

Cristal M Clark

2 Comments Leave a comment

2019-06-17

People Living in Portland Sewers?

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Portland, Oregon

Cristal M Clark

I am sure you’ve all heard the slogan “Keep Portland Weird,” if you have ever been to Portland you understand the slogan in its entirety this past week however things in Portland took an even more weird turn when a store manager was checking out some surveillance video and noticed someone popping out of a manhole from the sewer, maybe with the intent on doing a little midnight shopping?

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The manager of the Chown Hardware store first looked at the video because he noticed a shoe was just sort of oddly out of place, yes you see it was in the street as opposed to being one someone’s foot. According to Kris Lake the store manager; “The manhole cover opens up and it’s like a clown car. Three people pop out, start undressing, swapping shirts around, trying to get whatever muck off of them.”

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The Video shows an empty street at 10:44 p.m. then with no warning at all a manhole cover is pushed open from below and moved to the side. One person climbs out and is then followed by two additional individuals, each with flashlights. Two of them then close the manhole and then the trio is seen hanging around the area for another minute, during which one of them changes pants. All three of them then walk away and in true Disney Cinderella fashion, one of the three left a shoe behind.

Here’s where things get a little stranger, the manager of the store starts checking more video from prior nights and finds on 6/2, 5 individuals came out of the very same manhole to hang out and do a little midnight shopping.

Diane Dulken with the Portland Bureau of Environmental Services saw pictures from one of the videos and said what the people did was dangerous. According to Diane; “they would have been exposed to untreated sewage as well as low levels of oxygen. In addition to the safety hazards, and it’s against city code for them to be down there.” Which I doubt if they are actually living the city sewer they care about.

Diane said when crews from environmental services go into the sewers, they first send a sensor down to determine the oxygen levels and see if it’s safe for people. Then, they go down in a harness, so they can be pulled up if they get into trouble. Workers are also supplied fresh air through a scuba-type hose or with air exchanges.

Diane ended it by saying that the bureau now plans to send crews into that area to see if there’s any damage or vandalism.

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Damage or vandalism? I see, I suppose that checking for any type of vandalism or damage in the sewer is much m or important than checking for oh, I don’t know any signs of actual people living in the bloody sewer?

Cristal M Clark