#the tangled web of international alliances

[ebelal56-blog]

Neighbor victimization: India's revealed secrets

Have you ever thought about how complex India’s relationships with its neighbors really are? It’s like a tangled web of history, politics, and strategy. Take the border disputes, for instance. With China, it’s been a long-standing issue, especially in the Himalayas. Remember the Galwan Valley clash in 2020? That really escalated things. And then there’s Pakistan and Kashmir—since 1947, it’s been a rollercoaster of wars and skirmishes. Now, let’s talk about India’s growing influence. While it’s great to see India taking the lead in South Asia, it can sometimes rub neighbors the wrong way. Countries like Nepal and Sri Lanka feel like they’re caught in the middle of a power play, especially with China’s Belt and Road Initiative competing for attention. Building dams over international rivers and not sharing with Bangladesh. And don’t get me started on the strategic alliances with Western powers. They can seem more like a containment strategy than a partnership. All of this creates a perception that India is making more enemies than friends. It’s a delicate balance, and one misstep could tip the scales

[ask-jaghatai-khan]

Sect of the Revelation Mechanism

// AdMech lore! This started as a desire to make some tech-priest OCs and fluff a Mars-Taranis-Fortidus army concept. I may end up writing some actual story snippets featuring this group in the future.

A secretive, small, yet powerful organization within the Martian Adeptus Mechanicus, the Sect of the Revelation Mechanism has been headed by the Lord-Archmagos Chertovsky Upsilon-28 for nigh-on several thousand years. Though few can discern the true motives of these enigmatic tech-priests, none can dispute the might of the forces that follow their commands. More than just their hosts of rare and loyal war-walkers, from Knights of House Taranis to relics of the ancient Legio Fortidus, the Sect is at the center of a broad range of alliances with shadowy figures throughout the Imperium of Man. Archmagos Upsilon-28 has attracted the ire of many elites within the Mechanicus and the Imperium for his lack of accountability, though none have been able to lock down a specific heresy upon him or his followers. Like a javelin thrown from the void, the unstoppable forces of the Sect – known as the “Red Legion” – will appear on some warzone or another with little warning, assist Imperial forces, and promptly assume command of the situation. Though many have noted that the extreme efficiency and precision of the Sect’s methodology produces commendable results, the tech-priests always retreat back into hiding in the end – often with a new haul of rare technological artifacts pilfered from those locations they choose to visit.

Lord-Archmagos Chertovsky Upsilon-28

Appearance: Archmagos Upsilon-28 is as inhuman as is to be expected from a veteran lord of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Little of his original form remains save for a handful of specific organs, which are themselves augmented and locked away beneath layers of arcane technology. Chertovsky specialized in bionic research in his early days as a tech-priest, and so he spent countless centuries assembling the finest cybernetic enhancements for himself before branching into further fields of study.

Beneath layers of Martian-red robes, Chertovsky does not look too different in silhouette from a human, and his core chassis in many ways still resembles a humanoid form. However from his back and waist emerge a veritable tangle of mechadentrite tentacles, which provide both additional articulation support, as well as enhanced mobility beyond what the Archmagos’ standard bipedal gait could provide under so many equipment harnesses. The Magos’ face is styled to suggest a skull, with many sub-lenses to enhance his standard vision. Most notable in terms of exterior augmentations is his Abeyant, which takes the form of a metal hood extending into an insectoid carapace mounted on his back. More than just a device for additional enhanced mobility and tool-uplinks, the Abeyant is Chertovsky’s most advanced store of artificial organs, mainly to provide increased processing power and memory space to his cyborg brain. If that wasn’t enough, within the Archmagos’ torso unit are additional masterworks of bio-cybernetic engineering, making Chertovsky’s simple if strange outward appearance little more than a mask to the full extent of his prowess as an augmeticist.

Background: Born Germani Chertovsky in the sprawling hives of Mars, the current Lord-Archmagos was far from the pinnacle of guile and might that he has since become. No, he was rather a weak and skittish youth who joined the Adeptus Mechanicus for lack of any other course in life, and a desperation to alleviate some of the weaknesses of his own flesh through just a few spare augmetics. However, when he began studying more and more into the possibilities of the Mechanicum’s arcane technologies, he became obsessed. Rather than focus on more petty devices, Chertovsky went down the path of bio-cybernetic-augmentation, undertaking extensive enhancements to his internal organs and brain before anything else. In this way, he was able to manipulate his own biology to make all his future endeavors far easier, removing his sense of pain, his need for rest, and other hindrances of the flesh.

Chertovsky’s curiosity ended up pushing him away from many of the more orthodox priests on the Red Planet, however, though he still remained a patriot to his order. The Archmagos fell in with more radical sects of the tech-priests, until at one point he dropped from the galactic stage and was not seen for several centuries. When he reemerged, Chertovsky was changed. Now he is among the most enigmatic and reclusive of all Archmagi, and has placed himself at the center of a broad web of inscrutable alliances in service to some unknown end goal. None have been able to brand him as a heretic – more for how hard it is to encounter the Archmagos than the added difficulties of delving his secrets – but few trust him. This does not bother Chertovsky, as what alliances he has are ironclad, and suit his aims just fine.

Lord-Archmagos Chertovsky Upsilon-28 maintains three primary bases – one being on the small but highly industrialized ice-moon of Tyrentis, in orbit around the gas giant of Volans, located in the distant Vol system of the Segmentum Tempestus. This serves as Chertovsky’s sect’s primary base, though he still maintains a pseudo-lab and office in the southern polar region of Mars proper. It is known that Chertovsky can call upon the transport of at least two Ark Mechanicus-class vessels, with the Archmagos’ personal ship being the Immanent Ascendance.

Archmagos Dominus Go Zeta-06

Appearance: Though not so ancient as his superior Archmagos, Go Zeta-06’s outward appearance is far more typical of the eccentricities indulged by the elite of the Adeptus Mechanicus. It was Go Zeta’s dream as a youth to be a commander of one of the mighty God-Machines, or even an Imperial Knight, though he was distraught to find that his base flesh lacked the constitution for such an undertaking. Still, as a current overseer and top engineer for these venerable war-walkers, he’s remade himself to reflect his passions.

Go Zeta’s overall form is rather humanoid, with an upgraded outer dermis meant to almost evoke the armor of the God-Machines he loves. The Archmagos’ head is somewhat atypical of most tech-priests, instead taking on a form akin to a Skitarii Vanguard, though more gilded and regal, resembling the war-helm of an senior Knight-Pilot. From his back emerge several high-grade servo-arms similar to those used by Techmarines, as Go Zeta requires far greater strength than normal for the engineering he specializes in. Most unconventional are Go Zeta’s missing legs – more than just a nest of mechadendrites, the Archmagos Dominus��� lower half has been stripped bare in favor of a selection of specialized cables and appendages allowing him to jack in to one of several advanced harnesses. These “mounts” enable the Archmagos to adapt to different situations, with such variations as an equine mobility-enhancer, or a Dreadnought-esque war rig.

Background: Martian-born and first known as Temur Go, the future Archmagos was the son of a pair of menial servants of the great Knight House Taranis. From an early age Go was afforded glimpses of the mighty machines, and grew infatuated with their majesty. He joined the Adeptus Mechanicus despite his rather humble background and lack of any prominent skills beyond janitorial work, as his impassioned praise for the Imperial Knights was met with approval by his superiors. Go Zeta-06 was trained as a basic mechanic, before rising through the ranks to undertake additional work on the grandest of all Imperial walkers – the Titans. In time, Go’s eccentricity and zeal led him into the company of Archmagos Chertovsky, where he found a fellow admirer of the rare and unorthodox. Go became a sort of field commander beneath Chertovsky and was granted access to the Lord-Archmagos’ web of elusive contacts in exchange for his total loyalty.

Now, Go Zeta-06 is the master of the 2800th Martian War-Division, known colloquially as the Red Legion. This is the personal battle order of Archmagos Chertovsky, and is meant to be both the hammer and the scalpel of the Revelation Mechanism whenever violence is needed to overcome an obstacle. The Red Legion specializes in the deployment of Imperial superheavy walkers, with most of its actual infantry, maintenance, artillery, aerial, and other supplemental forces geared towards supporting these God-Machines. House Taranis has provided dedicated Knight lances towards the Red Legion’s forces, and the Titans which Go is able to deploy are his pride and joy. Through a series of intensive searches and clandestine deals, Archmagos Go acquired several Titans said to have been a part of the extinct Legio Fortidus. After recruiting select Pricipes crews and appealing to some bribed bureaucrats, Go Zeta was able to “resurrect” the Dauntless Legion and fly their heraldry over his maniples. A great victory for a collector as obsessive as Go Zeta.

Archmagos Go’s primary home and main base of operations is the Ark Mechanicus Worth of the Slain, which acts as the flagship of the Red Legion, and is outfitted with not just advanced engineering and combat capabilities, but a robust suite of intelligence-gathering and communications arrays.

Fleet

Ark Mechanicus Immanent Ascendance

The personal ship of the Lord-Archmagos, Immanent Ascendance is as much a masterwork as would be expected from a vessel of its station. Always accompanied by a fleet of servitor-craft, this Ark Mechanicus is outfitted as a mobile base of operations for Chertovsky. Prominent features include broad-based automation – a rarity closely guarded by the Adeptus Mechanicus – along with permanent astropathic communications to both the Mars and Tyrentis strongholds. Massive hangar bays service those war-walkers kept closest to the Archmagos, along with laboratories brimming with other rare artifacts. As with most ships in service to the Sect, the Immanent Ascendance also boasts a massive sensor array focused on information gathering in any local and nearby systems, reflecting Chertovsky’s compulsive need to remain aware of every last shred of data that could be of use to him.

Ark Mechanicus Worth of the Slain

There is at least one other Ark Mechanicus that the Sect can call on, and the Worth of the Slain could be said to be the more fearsome of the two, at least by conventional standards. Functioning as the personal chariot of Archmagos Dominus Go Zeta-06, the Worth of the Slain is also the flagship of the Red Legion. With similar systems and suites as the Immanent Ascendance, this Ark Mechanicus is nonetheless a warship first and foremost. Its duty is to clear all obstacles that lay in the path of the Sect’s goals and oversee the deployment of the mightiest Titans the Red Legion can boast possession of. Despite this awesome power, the Worth of the Slain is rare to deploy Exterminatus measures. Archmagos Go prides himself on providing a swift and decisive end to any conflict he deigns to enter, so that the most post-conflict value can be extracted from the relevant warzones.

Order of Battle

Though the beleaguered Imperial forces who are fortunate enough to receive assistance from the Red Legion might show gratitude, the truth is that the Revelation Mechanism does not intercede in any battles they do not believe they could win. Or, more importantly, profit from. The vast intelligence network that Chertovsky considers more powerful than any conventional weapon is the means by which he may track down lucrative opportunities to obtain artifacts, resources, or even just additional allies and informants. Once these goals have been identified, the Red Legion is the unstoppable spearhead that may claim these treasures in as swift a manner as possible.

Go Zeta is not a novice tactician, but he is still an eccentric obsessive. Though he has numerous spies, infiltrators, support troops and supplemental war engines, these are all considered just facilitators for his mainline – the Knights and Titans. Zeta-06’s preference is to weaken entrenched targets through clandestine means so that absolutely nothing might stand in the way of these superheavy walkers, inflicting maximum damage to morale and cementing the image of the Red Legion as Omnissiah-blessed liberators to their allies. The majority of the Red Legion’s actual strength in not in their own troops, but in the resources they are able to call in, such as specialized cult-assassins, mercenary insurgents, prototype archaeotech projects, and other oddities. These auxiliaries allow the mechanics and pilots of the Sect’s treasured Titans to operate with maximum focus and freedom.

The two most notable and glorified groups of war-walkers within Chertovsky’s arsenal are the Titans and the “B-class” Knights. Every Titan is valued not just for its incredible power, but for the fact that Go Zeta was able to arrange maintenance lines and Imperial filing in such a way as to “resurrect” the heraldry of the ancient Legio Fortidus. Once the pride of Mars, the Dauntless Legion suffered massive casualties in the Schism under Kelbor-Hal and was forced to be shut down. Now, a fragment of that venerable Legio remains under the control of the Sect, like vengeful ghosts of the distant past. The B-class Knights are an unofficial categorization of those off-pattern Taranis Kights that have been collected and maintained by Chertovsky’s engineers. Such legendary suits include mechs like the King-Slayer or the Martyr’s Shroud, whose core chassis reflect that fact that they were once Renegade engines which were reclaimed and purified through the most painstaking ministrations of the Mechanicus adepts. The rarity of these suits means that none but the most loyal and skilled pilots may operate them; and they provide a distinct advantage of surprise over any foes who might otherwise know the best ways to engage Knight walkers.

Secrets of the Revelation Mechanism

Ultimately, the secret of Archmagos Chertovsky and his order, as reflected in the whispered name of their Sect, is that they prescribe to the Revelationist school of radical theology. This philosophy contains a strange mixture of apocalyptic and fringe dogma, and is condemned by many within the Imperial elite. Revelationism holds that the Time of Ending is upon the galaxy, but that a great ascension is forthcoming with the return of the Emperor and the Divines. Rather than sinking into typical doomsayer dogma, however, the Revelationists believe that all endeavors of the galaxy should be geared towards preparing for this final confrontation between the Light and the Darkness, regardless of any other ethical concerns. They believe that those who sacrifice themselves in the battle against the forces of darkness will be blessed and reborn in the final battle, and in the end a new era will arise filled with divine beings like the Emperor in abundance who will be able to destroy the powers of Chaos once and for all. Therefor, while Revelationist groups are known for their suicidal zeal, they are also known for supporting any movement that will bring about greater cohesion in the name of supporting the Imperial war effort. Governors who otherwise would have been considered ideal by the High Lords have been deposed by Revelationist uprisings, only for the resulting government to be even more pious and productive than its predecessor.

As such, the Red Legion reflects their hidden religious leanings by focusing all their efforts on obtaining rare and powerful technologies, and striking key blows against the “servants of Darkness” in service to this higher plan. Numerous series of inscrutable decisions, allegiances, and wars may confuse critics of Chertovsky’s order, though within the Archmagos’ mind they are all part of one massive algorithm meant to ensure that the Imperium is preparing itself for that glorious Final Battle and subsequent ascension.

[edenfalling]

[Fic] “I Believe the Children Are Our Future” - Chronicles of Narnia

Summary: Helping your sister take care of her new twins is vexing. Figuring out a stable and robust system of government for Narnia that will outlast your death is even more vexing, but you can't properly manage the former task without eventually facing the latter. AU, no White Stag. (1,425 words)

Note: Written for alexseanchai, in response to the prompt: kids / babies, the Pevensie(s) of your choice, didn't-return-to-England AU. It is also a fill for the Genprompt Bingo square kids / babies.

--------------------------------------------- I Believe the Children Are Our Future ---------------------------------------------

"I still say having twins was a bit much," Lucy remarked as she held Ngoro on her lap, carefully propping her niece upright so the baby could stare out the nursery window at the summer rain pattering on an exuberant spray of ivy. "Yes, it's a marvelous way to trump Edmund and Margita for having the first child of House Pevensie, but when do you and Jurusi sleep?"

"We trade watches," Susan said, deftly folding the last flap of Alfred's diaper and fastening it with a silver pin, "besides which, all the good folk of Cair Paravel stand ready to lend a hand, paw, or wing whether we need the assistance or not."

"That's not-- well, yes, I suppose that is how things go around here," Lucy conceded. "Though frankly, as vexing as it can be to have everyone sticking their noses into one's decisions, I prefer that to the alternative. We've seen quite clearly what happens when people have no one willing and able to tell them they're being foolish or need more sleep."

Susan made a hideous face at her son, who giggled and flailed his pudgy, uncoordinated hands toward her mouth and nose. "I beg you, don't remind me."

Lucy made a face in turn, then swayed back to avoid getting smacked in the eye by Ngoro's equally uncoordinated excitement. "Alas, I think I have to -- at least in a roundabout way. It was fine when Ysavetta was the only heir, but we now have three children of House Pevensie and no established rule of precedence for which shall inherit what. Worse yet, I don't think we've established a principle of dynastic inheritance at all, considering our authority comes directly from Aslan and the land's own prophecy, which isn't what I'd call an easily replicable precedent."

"Lucy. I am too tired to think about political theory."

Lucy hefted Ngoro into her arms and stood from her armchair. "You won't become any less tired for at least a year." Ngoro made a noise halfway between a coo and a frustrated kitten-mew, and flailed again toward Lucy's face. Lucy intercepted her niece's hand with one of her own fingers, which Ngoro promptly wrapped her own tiny fingers around and tugged close to shove into her mouth. "Besides, you're far more honest when you're too exhausted to put on your regal face." And like it or not, some questions needed answers.

"You're far too honest all the time. It's most vexing, having a sister who's the next best thing to a living saint." Susan sat down on the broad couch that doubled as a bed for whoever was taking night watch in the nursery and guarding the infant prince and princess. Then she flopped down onto her back, pulling Alfred with her until he was lying face-down on her stomach. "Hello, darling! Yes, I know, that feels so much better now. Isn't it nice to be clean? How about we try to keep Mummy's dress clean for at least five minutes? Can we do that, sweetling?"

"Five candied chestnuts says he can't."

"Deal," Susan said as she grasped Alfred's hands within her own and began waving his arms back and forth, up and down, in mirrored patterns. "Now take your finger out of my daughter's mouth -- honestly, when was the last time you washed your hands? -- and tell me why you think we ought to settle the succession today rather than wait to discover if any of our children even wish to shoulder the weight of an entire country."

Lucy pried her finger out of Ngoro's mouth and tapped her niece on the nose to distract her from her thwarted gnawing. "The Tisroc's sons."

Susan's hands stilled for a moment. "Ugh. Yes. Fair point. There are any number of rotten strands contributing to that poisoned web, but the tacit rule that the throne goes to whosoever can take and hold it certainly bears much of the weight."

"I fear that accepting murder as a legitimate method of succession was the seed of a number of those other rotten strands over the generations," Lucy said. "I'd prefer for our family and our country not to turn down that path."

"The trouble, of course," Susan said as she continued to wave Alfred's arms about to his apparent glee, "is that any fixed succession method for a royal house opens the way to unfit or uninterested rulers. Moreover we face the problem of either converting a tetrarchy into a monarchy without creating hard feelings among any children who don't inherit a throne, or of establishing some equivalent to Peter's role as High King without divine appointment to back that person's claim over the other three rulers."

Lucy sighed. "Yes, exactly. I'd thought we might have the High Throne go by seniority -- whoever has been king or queen the longest when the current High King or High Queen dies -- but that only works if there's a clear rule for accession to the lesser thrones. This is why I need your help. The Lion only knows I haven't found any foolproof answers and I've been worrying at the matter since Ysavetta was-- Ouch!" Ngoro, both hands tangled in Lucy's hair, yanked again. "Yes, I know my hair is shiny, but we don't hurt people unless we're at war, and even then we warn them first. Let go. Why don't we go look at the rain again? It's shiny too!"

"One would think a soldier would know the value of braiding back her hair," Susan remarked to the white-gold stars painted in constellations across the nursery ceiling.

"Braids make my scalp itch."

"'Tis a great pity for you. Regardless, it occurs to me that you have framed the problem too narrowly. The question is not who shall inherit the throne or thrones of Narnia. The question is how Narnia shall be governed when we four are gone to Aslan's Country. Why have a throne at all? I seem to recall that some lands in Spare Oom managed well enough without one."

Lucy stilled, hand stretched out through the open window to cup a palmful of rain, cool and cleansing on her skin. Then she pulled her arm back in and let Ngoro smash one hand gleefully into the tiny puddle.

"Narnia has always had a king or queen, since the Dawn of Time itself. Will the land be satisfied without one?"

Susan rolled onto her side to meet Lucy's gaze, Alfred cradled safely within her arms. "Perhaps not. But I think that is the question we must answer first, before we seek to burden my children or our niece with the weight and duty of a throne. And further, I think we should draw others into our search. We have never ruled alone -- neither one king or queen without three others to hold the balance, nor four tetrarchs alone with no counsel from our people -- and a question so vital as this cannot be resolved behind closed doors. That, too, is a rotten seed I would not see take root in Narnian soil."

"It's most vexing, having a sister who would rather ask a dozen new questions than find a simple answer," Lucy said with a smile.

"Anyone who claims to have a simple answer to a complicated problem is lying or deceived," Susan said.

"Even Aslan?"

"Aslan is the only potential exception, but I prefer to reserve judgment until I reach his Country and examine the perspective from which he makes his decisions." Susan heaved herself upright and held out one hand to forestall Lucy's rejoinder. "In the meantime, because you're my sister and I love you, all vexation aside, I will give you one simple answer."

She crossed the nursery, pushed Lucy down into the armchair, and deposited Alfred on her lap beside Ngoro. "You wanted to know when Jurusi and I sleep? I'm going to join him in our bed right now. You may take my watch."

Lucy watched her sister stride swift and elegantly from the room, then glanced down at her niece and nephew. Ngoro and Alfred met her gaze with wide, curious eyes, before Ngoro turned back to the window and Alfred smacked his hands on Lucy's shoulder, making tiny noises with each touch.

Perhaps it was asking too much to find a simple answer that would keep these two small lives safe as Lucy herself had never been, save for a month of peace snatched here and there from the swirl of duty and chaos.

Even so, she could do no less than try.

---------------------------------------------

End of Fic

---------------------------------------------

Miscellaneous worldbuilding notes! In this AU, I am assuming the Pevensies are still interested in international alliances -- probably moreso since the whole Rabadash incident -- and this has resulted in Susan marrying a relative of the royal house of Kutu (the country south of Calormen) while Edmund has married a princess from Telmar. I am unsure about Peter, and as for Lucy, she's eventually going to go on a sailing adventure to the uttermost east and run into a suspiciously familiar Sea-Woman because if I'm already going AU, why not shove in the Lucy ship of my heart? *waves tiny Lucy/Sea-Girl flag*

[wolfliving]

EternalBlue, the cyberwar equivalent of mustard gas

*That’s a lot of damage.  Hospitals, airports, rail and shipping operators, ATM's, factories and especially local governments. l

------------------------------ Date: Sun, 26 May 2019 17:15:12 -0700 From: Henry Baker <hbaker1@pipeline.com> Subject: NSA's EternalBlue: Mustard Gas for the 21st Century (NYTimes) The ancient Lydian king Croesus -- yes, THAT rich king Croesus -- "turned to the Delphic oracle and the oracle of Amphiaraus to inquire whether he should pursue this campaign [against Persia] and whether he should also seek an alliance.  The oracles answered, with typical ambiguity, that if Croesus attacked the Persians, he would destroy a great empire -- this would become one of the most famous oracular statements from Delphi [after Croesus was defeated."[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croesus Mustard gas and other poisonous gasses were used to devastating effect in WWI, although outlawed by multiple conventions both before and since.  The subsequent use of poisonous gasses has since been vastly reduced -- not due so much to the effectiveness of these international treaties, but to the fact that the gasses are indiscriminate, and have a tendency to "blow back" on those using them as weapons. [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_weapons_in_World_War_I Computer scientists have been warning for quite a while about "blowback" ("CIA internal coinage denoting the unintended, harmful consequences -- to friendly populations and military forces -- when a given weapon is used beyond its purpose as intended by the party supplying it" [3]) from cyberweapons such as STUXNET.  Unlike most "kinetic" weapons, which leave little trace after their use, the core problem with cyberweapons is that in the overwhelming percentage of uses, the digital pieces of the cyberweapon continue to exist after the attack, and can be repurposed for counter-attacks.  In this way, cyberweapons are like poison gas, which isn't instantly neutered after achieving its killing purpose, but remains toxic to non-combatants as well as to the original users. [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blowback_(intelligence The billion-dollar blowback from EternalBlue continues [3] without any apologies from the NSA, which developed it ("Adm. Michael S. Rogers, who was director of the NSA during the Shadow Brokers leak [including EternalBlue], suggested in unusually candid remarks that the agency should not be blamed for the long trail of damage." [4]).  Yet the FBI and the Five Eyes around the world continue their push for "back doors" in encryption, completely clueless about the even greater repercussions possible in the form of blowback from the compromise of such encryption backdoors. Dona NOBUS Pacem, indeed! [4] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/25/us/nsa-hacking-tool-baltimore.html In Baltimore and Beyond, a Stolen NSA Tool Wreaks Havoc Nicole Perlroth and Scott Shane, The New York Times, 25 May 2019 https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/25/us/nsa-hacking-tool-baltimore.html For nearly three weeks, Baltimore has struggled with a cyberattack by digital extortionists that has frozen thousands of computers, shut down email and disrupted real estate sales, water bills, health alerts and many other services. But here is what frustrated city employees and residents do not know: A key component of the malware that cybercriminals used in the attack was developed at taxpayer expense a short drive down the Baltimore- Washington Parkway at the National Security Agency, according to security experts briefed on the case. Since 2017, when the NSA lost control of the tool, EternalBlue, it has been picked up by state hackers in North Korea, Russia and, more recently, China, to cut a path of destruction around the world, leaving billions of dollars in damage.  But over the past year, the cyberweapon has boomeranged back and is now showing up in the NSA's own backyard. It is not just in Baltimore.  Security experts say EternalBlue attacks have reached a high, and cybercriminals are zeroing in on vulnerable American towns and cities, from Pennsylvania to Texas, paralyzing local governments and driving up costs. The NSA connection to the attacks on American cities has not been previously reported, in part because the agency has refused to discuss or even acknowledge the loss of its cyberweapon, dumped online in April 2017 by a still-unidentified group calling itself the Shadow Brokers.  Years later, the agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation still do not know whether the Shadow Brokers are foreign spies or disgruntled insiders. Thomas Rid, a cybersecurity expert at Johns Hopkins University, called the Shadow Brokers episode "the most destructive and costly NSA breach in history," more damaging than the better-known leak in 2013 from Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor. "The government has refused to take responsibility, or even to answer the most basic questions," Mr. Rid said.  "Congressional oversight appears to be failing.  The American people deserve an answer." The NSA and FBI declined to comment. Since that leak, foreign intelligence agencies and rogue actors have used EternalBlue to spread malware that has paralyzed hospitals, airports, rail and shipping operators, ATM's and factories that produce critical vaccines. Now the tool is hitting the United States where it is most vulnerable, in local governments with aging digital infrastructure and fewer resources to defend themselves. Before it leaked, EternalBlue was one of the most useful exploits in the NSA's cyberarsenal.  According to three former NSA operators who spoke on the condition of anonymity, analysts spent almost a year finding a flaw in Microsoft's software and writing the code to target it.  Initially, they referred to it as EternalBluescreen because it often crashed computers -- a risk that could tip off their targets.  But it went on to become a reliable tool used in countless intelligence-gathering and counterterrorism missions. EternalBlue was so valuable, former NSA employees said, that the agency never seriously considered alerting Microsoft about the vulnerabilities, and held on to it for more than five years before the breach forced its hand. The Baltimore attack, on 7 May, was a classic ransomware assault.  City workers' screens suddenly locked, and a message in flawed English demanded about $100,000 in Bitcoin to free their files: "We've watching you for days," said the message, obtained by The Baltimore Sun.  "We won't talk more, all we know is MONEY! Hurry up!" Today, Baltimore remains handicapped as city officials refuse to pay, though workarounds have restored some services.  Without EternalBlue, the damage would not have been so vast, experts said.  The tool exploits a vulnerability in unpatched software that allows hackers to spread their malware faster and farther than they otherwise could. North Korea was the first nation to co-opt the tool, for an attack in 2017 -- called WannaCry -- that paralyzed the British health care system, German railroads and some 200,000 organizations around the world.  Next was Russia, which used the weapon in an attack -- called NotPetya -- that was aimed at Ukraine but spread across major companies doing business in the country.  The assault cost FedEx more than $400 million and Merck, the pharmaceutical giant, $670 million. The damage didn't stop there.  In the past year, the same Russian hackers who targeted the 2016 American presidential election used EternalBlue to compromise hotel Wi-Fi networks.  Iranian hackers have used it to spread ransomware and hack airlines in the Middle East, according to researchers at the security firms Symantec and FireEye. "It's incredible that a tool which was used by intelligence services is now publicly available and so widely used," said Vikram Thakur, Symantec's director of security response.  (((I wonder if he’s ever heard of LSD.)))

One month before the Shadow Brokers began dumping the agency's tools online in 2017, the NSA -- aware of the breach -- reached out to Microsoft and other tech companies to inform them of their software flaws.  Microsoft released a patch, but hundreds of thousands of computers worldwide remain unprotected. Hackers seem to have found a sweet spot in Baltimore, Allentown, Pa., San Antonio and other local, American governments, where public employees oversee tangled networks that often use out-of-date software.  Last July, the Department of Homeland Security issued a dire warning that state and local governments were getting hit by particularly destructive malware that now, security researchers say, has started relying on EternalBlue to spread. Microsoft, which tracks the use of EternalBlue, would not name the cities and towns affected, citing customer privacy.  But other experts briefed on the attacks in Baltimore, Allentown and San Antonio confirmed the hackers used EternalBlue.  Security responders said they were seeing EternalBlue pop up in attacks almost every day. Amit Serper, head of security research at Cybereason, said his firm had responded to EternalBlue attacks at three different American universities, and found vulnerable servers in major cities like Dallas, Los Angeles and New York. The costs can be hard for local governments to bear.  The Allentown attack, in February last year, disrupted city services for weeks and cost about $1 million to remedy -- plus another $420,000 a year for new defenses, said Matthew Leibert, the city's chief information officer. He described the package of dangerous computer code that hit Allentown as "commodity malware," sold on the dark web and used by criminals who don't have specific targets in mind.  "There are warehouses of kids overseas firing off phishing emails," Mr. Leibert said, like thugs shooting military-grade weapons at random targets. The malware that hit San Antonio last September infected a computer inside Bexar County sheriff's office and tried to spread across the network using EternalBlue, according to two people briefed on the attack. This past week, researchers at the security firm Palo Alto Networks discovered that a Chinese state group, Emissary Panda, had hacked into Middle Eastern governments using EternalBlue. "You can't hope that once the initial wave of attacks is over, it will go away," said Jen Miller-Osborn, a deputy director of threat intelligence at Palo Alto Networks.  "We expect EternalBlue will be used almost forever, because if attackers find a system that isn't patched, it is so useful." (((Has a half-life to rival plutonium.))) Until a decade or so ago, the most powerful cyberweapons belonged almost exclusively to intelligence agencies -- NSA officials used the term "NOBUS," for "nobody but us," for vulnerabilities only the agency had the sophistication to exploit.  But that advantage has hugely eroded, not only because of the leaks, but because anyone can grab a cyberweapon's code once it's used in the wild. Some FBI and Homeland Security officials, speaking privately, said more accountability at the NSA was needed.  A former FBI official likened the situation to a government failing to lock up a warehouse of automatic weapons. In an interview in March, Adm. Michael S. Rogers, who was director of the NSA during the Shadow Brokers leak, suggested in unusually candid remarks that the agency should not be blamed for the long trail of damage. "If Toyota makes pickup trucks and someone takes a pickup truck, welds an explosive device onto the front, crashes it through a perimeter and into a crowd of people, is that Toyota's responsibility?" he asked. "The NSA wrote an exploit that was never designed to do what was done."  (((He’s got a point, except that pickup trucks have constructive uses and spooky vulnerabilities don’t.))) At Microsoft's headquarters in Redmond, Wash., where thousands of security engineers have found themselves on the front lines of these attacks, executives reject that analogy. "I disagree completely," said Tom Burt, the corporate vice president of consumer trust, insisting that cyberweapons could not be compared to pickup trucks.  "These exploits are developed and kept secret by governments for the express purpose of using them as weapons or espionage tools.  They're inherently dangerous.  When someone takes that, they're not strapping a bomb to it.  It's already a bomb." Brad Smith, Microsoft's president, has called for a "Digital Geneva Convention" to govern cyberspace, including a pledge by governments to report vulnerabilities to vendors, rather than keeping them secret to exploit for espionage or attacks. Last year, Microsoft, along with Google and Facebook, joined 50 countries in signing on to a similar call by French President Emmanuel Macron -- the Paris Call for Trust and Security in Cyberspace -- to end "malicious cyber-activities in peacetime." Notably absent from the signatories were the world's most aggressive cyberactors: China, Iran, Israel, North Korea, Russia -- and the United States. A version of this article appears in print on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Cities Hijacked By Tool Stolen From the NSA. ------------------------------

[governmentagencynews]

PHOENIX — The results of a multi-agency undercover operation supported by Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and led by the Phoenix Police Department Human Exploitation and Trafficking (HEaT) Unit, was announced Oct. 24.The operation was conducted with federal, state and local HEaT representatives, including the Phoenix Police Department Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Unit, Tempe Police Department, Mesa Police Department, FBI, and the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office for Operation Tangled Web. This undercover operation targeted to reduce the demand of child sex crimes and human trafficking. Throughout the operational period, undercover detectives placed ads on websites commonly sought out by suspects seeking illegal sex acts. The suspects allegedly solicited and/or brokered deals for various sex acts with minors and were subsequently arrested. The Phoenix Police Department routinely conducts operations of this type with local, state and federal partners in a continuous effort to reduce the demand that fuels child sex trafficking and the exploitation of children in the community. The following suspects solicited various sex acts from minors and were arrested: HSI encourages the public to report suspected child predators and any suspicious activity through its toll-free tip line at 1-866-347-2423, or by completing its online tip form – both are staffed around-the-clock by investigators. From outside the United States and Canada, callers should dial 802-872-6199. Hearing impaired users may dial TTY 802-872-6196. HSI takes a victim-centered approach to child exploitation investigations by working to identify, rescue and stabilize victims. HSI works in partnership with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), ICAC partners, and other federal, state, and local agencies to help solve cases and rescue sexually exploited children. Suspected child sexual exploitation or missing children may be reported to NCMEC’s toll-free 24-hour hotline, 1-800-THE-LOST. HSI is a founding member of the Virtual Global Taskforce, an international alliance of law enforcement agencies and private industry sector partners working together to prevent and deter online child sexual abuse. One of HSI’s top priorities is to protect the public from crimes of victimization, and HSI’s child exploitation investigations program is a central component of this mission set. Further, HSI is recognized as a global leader in this investigative discipline, and is committed to utilizing its vast authorities, international footprint and strong government and non-government partnerships to identify and rescue child victims, identify, and apprehend offenders, prevent transnational child sexual abuse, and help make the internet a safer place for children. HSI is a directorate of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the principal investigative arm of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), responsible for investigating transnational crime and threats, specifically those criminal organizations that exploit the global infrastructure through which international trade, travel, and finance move. HSI’s workforce of over 10,400 employees consists of more than 6,800 special agents assigned to 225 cities throughout the United States, and 93 overseas locations in 56 countries. HSI’s international presence represents DHS’s largest investigative law enforcement presence abroad and one of the largest international footprints in U.S. law enforcement.

[irvinenewshq]

Surprise reef II to be constructed by V8 Supercars engineers on Surfers Paradise

Building has begun on Surprise Reef II, on the first sand dunes at Narrowneck. Engineers for the V8 Supercars have confirmed that they’re making certain that the brand new tradie-style “scaffold reef” has been designed and constructed on the high-tide storm mark to permit it to naturally fall into the ocean, that means that prices are saved low for ratepayers within the preliminary development part which makes use of apparent cycles of the pure swell and storm circumstances to maneuver it into place. “We’re anticipating a constructing northeast swell to peak at over three metres with a interval of 9.5 seconds by late Monday night time, and our calculations present that the Surprise Reef II ought to find yourself lodging itself someplace between the present Narrowneck Reef and Surfers Paradise by early Tuesday morning,” mentioned Pete Koncretas, head engineer on the venture. Additional, he mentioned: “Simply because we’ve collected 50 years of knowledge as to why constructing on the dune techniques causes extra erosion, doesn’t imply we are able to’t use that data to our benefit.” A spokesperson from the Mayor’s workplace has declared that the financial savings made will permit extra concrete to be poured on the Oceanway dunes to the north of Narrowneck. Mayoral stenographer Adam Blotts denied that there have been any environmental or coastal administration points with the venture and mentioned that the V8 Supercar engineers had been the “finest within the enterprise”. He mentioned: As soon as in place, Surprise Reef II might be one other shining instance of what ignorant blow-ins can do after they actually put their minds to it — you possibly can neglect Burleigh being the brand new Bondi, and even Coolangatta as the brand new Principal Seashore… Surprise Reef II might be our subsequent nice new tourism attraction delivered by the Mayor’s workplace.   As a metropolis, we are able to’t afford to let the prevailing Surprise Reef function as a monopoly, and this new construction will result in wholesome competitors. When pressed, Mr Blotts refused to verify that after put in the brand new Surprise Reef II will embody a hyperlink to the Oceanside Cruise Ship Terminal, a Cable Automotive, a second On line casino, the Surfers Bowls Membership web site and International Tourism Hub, or {that a} second set of Gold Coast lights like these at Yatala might be constructed there. Beachgoers, surfers and swimmers are being suggested that as a result of twisted steel nature of the brand new reef construction, massive security boundaries will later be put in to maintain all individuals away from the tangled new reef — which can additionally double as a whale catching omninet which is able to hold humpbacks nearer to shore for longer, boosting tourism choices for the town. Council paperwork concerning the new reef have been closely redacted, and approval was negotiated behind closed doorways. Extra to return. Darren Crawford is a surfer, environmentalist, sports activities coach/administrator and tutorial. He’s additionally vice chairman of Save Our Spit Alliance, You possibly can observe Darren on Twitter @Darrencanplay. This text was initially revealed on Darren’s Medium web page below the title ‘New tourism product for the Gold Coast — Surprise Reef II to be constructed by V8 Supercars Engineers off Surfers Paradise’. Associated Articles Assist unbiased journalism Subscribe to IA.   Originally published at Irvine News HQ

[wemresearch]

IoT Identity Access Management (IAM) Market Report 2022 to 2030 By Top Key Players, Types & Applications

The Global IoT Identity Access Management (IAM) market size is presently valued at USD 13.4 Billion and is poised to reach a valuation of USD 25.6 Billion by 2030, amplifying at a CAGR of 13.7%.

IoT Identity access management (IAM), commonly referred to as identity management, is a discipline, structure, and set of tools used in IT security to manage IoT device IDs. IoT Identity access management offers a vital security feature that ensures unauthorised individuals cannot access the IoT ecosystem. IoT devices are designed to link people, things, tools, and apps. IoT Identity access management contributes to the development of solid security capabilities by offering end-to-end encryption, overload detection, and unwanted access removal.

IoT Identity access management (IAM), commonly referred to as identity management, is a discipline, structure, and set of tools used in IT security to manage IoT device IDs. IoT Identity access management offers a vital security feature that ensures unauthorised individuals cannot access the IoT ecosystem. IoT identity access management assists in providing end-to-end encryption, overload detection, and unauthorised access removal to help develop robust security capabilities. IoT devices are focused on connecting things, people, tools, and apps.

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Top Key Players:-

Microsoft Corporation

Amazon Web Services

LogMeIn, Inc.

Intel Security Group

Oracle Corporation

Siemens AG

CA Technologies

Cloud Security Alliance

Arcon Tech Solutions

EMC Corporation

Hitachi Ltd.

Schlumberger Limited

Kappa Engineering

General Electric Company

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[balioc]

Tangled web of causality, as you'd expect.

The big drivers -- like usual -- are the atomization and online-ification of the local civilization. (And it is way beyond the scope of this post to talk about how much those things are interrelated, or not, and in what ways.)

The human brain is a gossip device: a marvelous engine that's optimized for keeping track of a huge social web, for monitoring and analyzing the character / motivations / relationships of a whole lot of people. (So much so that "your intelligence being a little bit not-as-optimized-as-usual for that thing" is one of our major clades of mental disorder.) I don't think it's really an exaggeration to say that gossip is the foundation of perceived reality, for many people, in many ways.

Of course, in Ye Olde Postulated Environmente of Evolutionarie Adaptedenesse, by which I mean "almost all of human society as recently as my own childhood," that social web was pretty compact and well-defined. And those on its fringes were, well, less real.

Now that's much, much less true. Lots of people (in the atomized online-ified portions of society) have smaller social webs overall: it's hard to make friends, people don't engage with their extended families, institutions like clubs and pubs and churches have been replaced with more-convenient-but-less-social commercial things, etc. Moreover, the social webs that people do have tend to be less thick. Your activities are all chosen a la carte, rather than being bound together by some kind of overarching community. People in different parts of your life are likely not to know each other. Insofar as you know people online, you're likely to know them in extremely fragmented ways, and it's hard to get access to more parts of their lives (or to give them such access).

When people talk about drowning in the unreality of modernity, I think this is a lot of what they mean, just on its own. It's common for your social landscape not to add up to anything coherent and internally interconnected, and -- that causes psychic damage.

But we have these celebrities. And we all know about them. And, crucially, we all know that we all know about them. And while their lives are (presumably) very filtered and managed and prettied-up for public consumption, most of the time, the public-consumption version of those narratives tends to be cohesive.

If you're a youngish urban normie leading a youngish-urban-normie life...

Celebrity gossip is often going to feel more like a comprehensible social story than the kind of local gossip you can actually get. You see the alliances and the betrayals, the failures of character that lead to falls, the human motives at play. They're fake people and you don't really know them at all, but they're people, not the weird hyper-flattened facets-of-people that you get at your workplace or on a Discord server or in a yoga class.

And if you share their stories, your listener is likely to know what the hell you're talking about, which is not true of anyone you actually know.

In the end, even if you don't like celebrities or care about celebrities, you may be in a position where celebrities are the real actors in your social landscape. And of course your brain is going to latch on to that. What else could deserve so much attention?

I mean, there's been ambient celebrity obsession for as long as there have been celebrities, but --

-- it's not exactly a scorcher take to say that the rise of omnipresent inescapable celebrity gossip has something to do with the decline of normal-ass local gossip, right?

[storiedadventures]

Would you rather be a super soldier OR the scientist who created them? * • * I am so excited to be on the Storygram tour for Helix!! Thank you so much @storygramtours , Mary Ting, and Vesuvian Media for the copy! * Alliances are forming. The resistance is growing. Everything is about to change. * Helix by @authormaryting is the second book in the International Sensory Assassin Network series. This is the perfect series for all science fiction fans that like adventure, romance and suspense. Comes out September 10! * If you would like to learn more about the books or purchase a copy click on the link in my linktree! I have partnered with @vesuvianmedia  for a great giveaway. Check out the details below: * 💉🧪GIVEAWAY🧪💉 Enter to win a copy of Helix and a $20 Amazon Gift Card!! * How to win: - follow me, @authormaryting , @vesuvianmedia and @storygramtours - tag a friend you think will be interested For EXTRA entry: -Visit @dropandgivemenerdy account tomorow and repeat these steps * RULES - Giveaway will end July 1st at midnight EST - US only - not affiliated with Instagram -must be 18 or have parents permission -must be a public account so I can verify entries *   * Summary: With her memory still fragmented, Ava returns to the International Sensory Assassin Network (ISAN) to find the twin sister she never knew she had. But as Ava hunts for information, she finds herself tangled in a web of yet more lies and conspiracy. The Helix serum may not be required to access her superpowers, and the number of male assassins—previously considered too volatile to tolerate Helix—is growing in every territory. The more Ava uncovers, the more of a threat she becomes to ISAN. Her only salvation may be to join the rebels—if she isn’t killed first. * * #HelixTour #Helix #MaryTing #InternationalSensoryAssassinNetworkseries  #vesuvianmedia #storygramtours #bookbabe #bibliophile #bookdrunk #readersgonnaread #booksarethebest #bookish #bookmeup #nofilter #bibliolover #bookishpeepsies #bookstagram https://www.instagram.com/p/BzLltSwAxbP/?igshid=ow996owe0645

[tlatollotl]

In the fall of 2012, a 48-year-old fisherman and carver named Terry St. Germain decided to enroll his five young children as members of the Nooksack, a federally recognized Native American tribe with some 2,000 members, centered in the northwestern corner of Washington State.

He’d enrolled his two older daughters, from a previous relationship, when they were babies, but hadn’t yet filed the paperwork to make his younger children — all of whom, including a set of twins, were under 7 — official members. He saw no reason to worry about a bureaucratic endorsement of what he knew to be true. “My kids, they love being Native,” he told me.

St. Germain was a teenager when he enrolled in the tribe. For decades, he used tribal fishing rights to harvest salmon and sea urchin and Dungeness crab alongside his cousins. He had dozens of family members who were also Nooksack. His mother, according to family lore, was directly descended from a 19th-century Nooksack chief known as Matsqui George. His brother, Rudy, was the secretary of the Nooksack tribal council, which oversaw membership decisions. The process, he figured, would be so straightforward that his kids would be certified Nooksacks in time for Christmas, when the tribe gives parents a small stipend for buying gifts: “I thought it was a cut-and-dried situation.”

But after a few months, the applications had still not gone through. When Rudy asked why, at a tribal council meeting, the chairman, Bob Kelly, called in the enrollment department. They told Rudy that they had found a problem with the paperwork. There were missing documents; ancestors seemed to be incorrectly identified. They didn’t think Terry’s children’s claims to tribal membership could be substantiated.

At the time, Rudy and Kelly were friends, allies on the council. At the long oval table where they met to discuss Nooksack business, Rudy always sat at Kelly’s right. But the debate over whether Rudy’s family qualified as Nooksack tore them apart. Today, more than four years later, they no longer speak. Rudy and his extended family refer to Kelly as a monster and a dictator; he calls them pond scum and con artists. They agree on almost nothing, but both remember the day when things fell apart the same way. “If my nephew isn’t Nooksack,” Rudy said in the council chambers, “then neither am I.”

To Rudy, the words were an expression of shock. “It’s fighting words,” he said, to tell someone they’re not really part of their tribe. At stake were not just his family’s jobs and homes and treaty rights but also who they were and where they belonged. “I’ll still be who I am, but I won’t have proof,” Rudy said. “I’ll be labeled a non-Indian. So yeah, I take this very personally.”

To Kelly, the words were an admission of guilt, implicating not just the St. Germains but also hundreds of tribal members to whom they were related. As chairman, he felt that he had a sacred duty: to protect the tribe from invasion by a group of people that, he would eventually argue, weren’t even Native Americans. “I’m in a war,” he told me later, sketching family trees on the back of a copy of the tribe’s constitution. “This is our culture, not a game.”

Terry St. Germain at home with three of his children, from left, Sotero, Kylan and Jeremiah.

The St. Germains’ rejected application proved to be a turning point for the Nooksack. Separately, the family and the council began combing through Nooksack history, which, like that of many tribes in the United States, is complicated by government efforts to extinguish, assimilate and relocate the tribe, and by a dearth of historical documents. An international border drawn across historically Nooksack lands only adds to the confusion. There were some records and even some living memories of the ancestors whose Nooksack heritage was being called into doubt. But no one could agree on what the records meant.

In January 2013, Kelly announced that, after searching through files at the Bureau of Indian Affairs office in nearby Everett, he had reason to doubt the legitimacy of more than 300 enrolled Nooksacks related to the St. Germains, all of whom claimed to descend from a woman named Annie George, born in 1875. In February, he canceled the constitutionally required council meeting, saying it would be “improper” to convene when Rudy St. Germain and another council member, Rudy’s cousin Michelle Roberts, were not eligible to be part of the tribe they’d been elected to lead. A week later, he called an executive session of the council but demanded that St. Germain and Roberts remain outside while the rest of the council voted on whether to “initiate involuntary disenrollment” for them and 304 other Nooksacks, including 37 elders. The resolution passed unanimously. “It hurt me,” Terry St. Germain said later. Even harder was watching the effect on his brother, Rudy. “It took the wind right out of him.”

Two days after the meeting, the tribal council began sending out letters notifying affected members that unless they could provide proof of their legitimacy, they would be disenrolled in 30 days. Word and shock spread quickly through the small, tight-knit reservation. The disenrollees, now calling themselves “the Nooksack 306,” hired a lawyer and vowed to contest their expulsion. “I told ’em, ‘I know where I belong no matter what you say,’ ” an 80-year-old woman who, in her youth, had been punished for “speaking Indian” at school, said. “ ‘You can’t make me believe that I’m not.’ ”

The Nooksacks who want the 306 out of the tribe say they are standing up for their very identity, fighting for the integrity of a tribe taken over by outsiders. “We’re ready to die for this,” Kelly would later say. “And I think we will, before this is over.”

Outside the lands legally known as “Indian Country,” “membership” and “enrollment” are such blandly bureaucratic words that it’s easy to lose sight of how much they matter there. To the 566 federally recognized tribal nations, the ability to determine who is and isn’t part of a tribe is an essential element of what makes tribes sovereign entities. To individuals, membership means citizenship and all the emotional ties and treaty rights that come with it. To be disenrolled is to lose that citizenship: to become stateless. It can also mean the loss of a broader identity, because recognition by a tribe is the most accepted way to prove you are Indian — not just Nooksack but Native American at all.

Efforts to define Native American identity date from the earliest days of the colonies. Before the arrival of white settlers, tribal boundaries were generally fluid; intermarriages and alliances were common. But as the new government’s desire to expand into Indian Territory grew, so, too, did the interest in defining who was and who wasn’t a “real Indian.” Those definitions shifted as the colonial government’s goals did. “Mixed blood” Indians, for example, were added to rolls in hopes that assimilated Indians would be more likely to cede their land; later, after land claims were established, more restrictive definitions were adopted. In the 19th century, the government began relying heavily on blood quantum, or “degree of Indian blood,” wagering that, over generations of intermarriage, tribes would be diluted to the point that earlier treaties would not have to be honored. “ ‘As long as grass grows or water runs’ — a phrase that was often used in treaties with American Indians — is a relatively permanent term for a contract,” the Ojibwe author David Treuer wrote in a 2011 Op-Ed for The Times. “ ‘As long as the blood flows’ seemed measurably shorter.”

Even for those early rolls, though, determining blood quantum was tricky; it was not a measure that tribal people used or something they kept track of. Government agents compiling base rolls in the 1800s sometimes simply guessed at the percentage of Indian blood; at the time, anthropologists used feet and hair width as a “scientific” test of blood degree in indigenous tribes. Many traditionalist Indians, known as “irreconcilables” or “blanket Indians,” were so suspicious of the government that they refused to be enrolled at all, making all their descendants unenrollable as well. In 1988 the historian Kent Carter coined a half-joking term for the millions who claim Indian ancestry but who, for a variety of reasons, don’t sort neatly into today’s official boxes: people with mixed tribal heritage; people whose ancestors were denied recognition by early government agents or died before registration was complete; people whose tribes, in the face of the federal government’s attempts to extinguish them, didn’t maintain the cohesion that same government would later require for recognition. Carter called them the “outalucks.”

Contemporary Indian identity is refracted through a tangled accumulation of 18th- and 19th-century understandings of biology and race, as well as several centuries’ worth of conflicting federal policies. The Constitution uses the word “Indian” twice but never bothers to define it. A congressional survey in 1978 found that, in addition to the different requirements used by tribes and individual states, federal legislation defined Native Americans in at least 33 ways. In 2005, one frustrated judge, quoting an earlier decision, described the legal definitions of Indian-ness as “ ‘a complex patchwork of federal, state and tribal law,’ which is better explained by history than by logic.” Given the web of criteria, courts are sometimes called upon to decide whether individuals, or even tribes, are “authentically” Indian. This has led to weighing things like whether twenty-nine 128ths constitutes a “significant degree” of Indian blood (a federal court ruled in 2009 that it did); whether someone who was “Indian in an anthropological or ethno-historical sense” was also Indian for the purposes of criminal jurisdiction if his tribe isn’t federally recognized (the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decided he was not); and whether behaviors like eating fast food and driving cars show that a tribe’s culture had been abandoned and its land rights “extinguished” (in 1991, a Canadian court said that they did; the ruling was later overturned).

Modern Native Americans — who in 2017 are still issued cards by the federal government certifying their “Degree of Indian Blood” — are used to, if not necessarily comfortable with, the need to “prove” their identities in ways that may seem strange to people of other ethnicities. Tribes set their own membership requirements, but in order to be recognized by the federal government, they must also prove their historical continuity and have generally hewed to the methods it has established. Tribes have on occasion been warned that federal recognition, and thus their treaty-guaranteed rights, can disappear if their membership becomes unclear. When, in 1994, the Blackfeet Nation considered doing away with its blood-quantum requirement, a Bureau of Indian Affairs official warned that a tribe that “diluted” its relationship with its members might find that “it has ‘self-determined’ its sovereignty away.” Today, most tribes use direct descent from tribal members listed on historical rolls and blood quantum. For a 2003 book, “Real Indians: Identity and the Survival of Native America,” the Cherokee scholar Eva Marie Garroutte interviewed Native people about what it felt like to be defined in this way. Many said they saw blood quantum as a helpful guidepost and a guard against fraud or against people who identify as Indian without cultural understanding. Others regarded it as odd, even offensive. An Ojibwe man joked that he is also “part white, but I don’t have the papers to prove it.” A Cree-and-Anishinabe woman replied, “I don’t like being talked about in a vocabulary usually reserved for dogs and horses.”

Lately, though, old debates about identity have taken a harsh new direction. Loss of tribal acceptance, which was once rare and seldom permanent, has become increasingly common over the last two decades. David Wilkins, a professor of American Indian studies at the University of Minnesota who has followed the phenomenon since the mid-1990s, says there has been a surge in disenrollment that involves between 5,000 and 9,000 people in 79 tribes across 20 states. Even the dead have been disenrolled and, in some cases, exhumed from their graves, against tradition and taboo, to have their DNA tested.

The ejection of tribal members is most prevalent in small tribes with casinos on their land; “per capita” profit shares go further when split fewer ways. Many of the most famous cases have been in California: Following the opening of a new tribal casino in 2003, the Chukchansi, in Coarsegold, disenrolled more than half of approximately 1,600 tribal members, and battles among factions eventually led to an armed takeover of the casino. But disenrollment also happens where casino money isn’t a major factor (the Nooksack have one casino and another recently closed, but don’t make enough money from gaming to issue per capita payments) or isn’t a factor at all, as in tribes where factions hope to consolidate political power or settle grudges or simply believe that people were mistakenly let in. Robert Williams, chairman of the Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy Program at the University of Arizona, told me that some tribes have recently begun to hire membership consultants to help trim their rolls. “It’s almost become an industry in some parts of Indian Country,” he said.

The National Native American Bar Association issued a resolution in 2015 denouncing loss of membership without due process, while the Association of American Indian Physicians warned that such loss of identity could cause serious grief and depression. In general, though, the voices against disenrollment have been few. A 1978 Supreme Court decision, Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez, held that, due to its sovereignty, a tribe cannot be sued for discrimination for accepting the children of male members who married outside the tribe but not those of female members who did. It has been widely interpreted as giving tribes the right to determine their membership requirements, even if individual rights are compromised. The Bureau of Indian Affairs, out of respect for sovereignty, has repeatedly declined to intervene in internal membership disputes.

Native leaders, leery of inviting scrutiny that could undermine tribal sovereignty, have been reluctant to speak out. “They tend to view any interference in such matters as an intrusion of the thin end of an infinitely expandable wedge against which they must exercise constant vigilance,” writes Garroutte. Ron Allen, the chairman of the Jamestown S’Klallam — a Western Washington tribe that disenrolled six members for insufficient blood quantum — says that “the topic is rising” and eliciting strong emotions, but it’s not appropriate to tell other tribes what to do: “It would be like Oregon saying to Washington, ‘You’re not managing your affairs properly.’ ”

Of the sweeping lands that historically made up Nooksack territory — it once stretched from the glaciated heights of Mt. Baker to the rocky shores of Puget Sound — the tribe now owns about 2,500 acres, bought from private owners in the last 50 years. The reservation is centered in Deming, an unincorporated town of a few hundred people, with pockets of tribal housing scattered beyond it. Most Nooksack tribal members do not live on the reservation; many of them, or their ancestors, followed opportunities in the more developed southern Sound or in other parts of the country.

Adelina Narte-Parker, 64, lives across the Sound, closer to the Olympic Mountains. A great-granddaughter of Annie George, the common ancestor who unites the Nooksack disenrollees, and a cousin of Rudy and Terry St. Germain’s mother, she was among the first of the 306 accepted as Nooksack decades ago. One afternoon as we sat on her porch watching ships come and go from Seattle, she showed me the letter the tribe sent her in 1983, announcing her new membership. Overhead, a bald eagle wheeled; inside, her husband, a painter, made sketches for a portrait of Annie George. He was working from an old, grainy photograph that he wasn’t sure depicted George. A relative found it in a shed, and the features were indistinct. “Once you title something,” he said, laughing, “it is what you say it is.”

After she got her letter of acceptance, Narte-Parker recalled, she was quick to tell her family, and then to write back to the enrollment director: “We were all jubilant, laughing, full of joy, jumping, screaming, crying, and the greatest overwhelming feeling of belonging somewhere.” She was proud, she wrote, to finally know where she came from, “and prouder still to be a Nooksack Indian.”

Narte-Parker didn’t set out to be a member of the Nooksack tribe. She grew up well south of Nooksack lands, following her parents as they sought work in the fields, orchards and canneries of Washington State. Her father was Filipino and her mother was Indian, raised on a Shxway reserve in British Columbia. Her mother always said she was part Shxway, a Canadian band within the Stolo nation, through her grandfather, and part Nooksack, through her grandmother Annie George. Annie George’s three daughters — Narte-Parker’s grandmother and her two aunts — all married Filipino farmworkers. The family spoke Halkomelem, a native language that was widely spoken in what is now British Columbia but also in the Nooksack River valley until the mid-20th century; it eventually largely replaced the original Nooksack language, Lhechalosem. As a child, Narte-Parker would sometimes drive north with her mother to visit family, and they would stop off in Nooksack territory to visit a man they called Uncle Louis.

In 1983, Narte-Parker, her mother and one of her great-aunts decided they wanted to learn more about their heritage. They went to the Bureau of Indian Affairs office in Everett, Wash., and then to the Nooksack enrollment office in Deming, to work on a family tree. Narte-Parker’s mother told the enrollment director that her grandmother’s name was Annie George, and that her grandmother’s siblings had been named Louis, Amanda, Frank and William. Annie George wasn’t on the family trees the tribe had, and she wasn’t listed on any of the censuses it used, but Louis George was on a Nooksack tribal census from 1942. In a probate document, they found Annie’s name: Four interviewees described her as Louis’s half sister. The enrollment director encouraged the women to apply for membership, and they did. Within a month, the council sent them word that they had been accepted.

Narte-Parker was the 777th enrolled member of the Nooksack tribe. Many of her relatives quickly followed. (Some also enrolled, separately, as Shxway.) As more houses became available, more members of the three families moved to reservation lands. Before long, the descendants of Annie George became an influential voting bloc, and their members were being elected to council seats and hired to run tribal offices.

While some elders welcomed them, others were skeptical. The sisters had never lived on Nooksack land. Some elders had no memory of them; others remembered them visiting but thought of them as Shxway. Kelly heard, indirectly, that elders in British Columbia didn’t remember the sisters’ being born there, but rather, showing up suddenly as young children — the beginning of his suspicions that, though they “had teachings,” the sisters weren’t Annie’s real daughters at all but non-Indian children she had taken in. Roberts showed me copies of two of the sisters’ birth certificates, reissued later in their lives, listing Annie and her husband as their parents. Other members of the tribe remembered knowing some of the 306 further south in the 1950s, when their families were doing agricultural work; at the time, they said, the families identified as Filipino. They certainly hadn’t been around in the 1960s or ’70s, when the tribe was writing its constitution — when, as Kelly put it, the council “took a look around at who was here when they passed it, and they wrote their criteria for that, based on who was here — this is who Nooksack’s going to be.”

The debate continued into the 1990s, when the tribe did an enrollment audit of one of the three families descended from Annie’s daughters, the Rabangs. They were ultimately found to be enrollable, but not before an ugly confrontation. In 2000, after a number of Rabangs were arrested for smuggling marijuana into the United States from Canada, some elders told The Associated Press that “a clan of outsiders masquerading as Nooksacks” was “controlling tribal government.” Bob Kelly now calls Narte-Parker and the other first enrollees from her extended family “Trojan horses.”

The Nooksack, as is the case with many tribes, have not always been known by their modern name. Rather, Nooksack, which is also rendered Noxwsá7aq, was the name of one of many villages scattered along what is now called the Nooksack River. When white settlers arrived in the mid-19th century, they applied the name of the village to all the people in the valley. Noxwsá7aq translates to “always bracken fern roots,” on which people of the village are said to have subsisted during a time of famine. One tribal member told me that she thinks the name captures something of what it means to be Nooksack. It makes her feel like a survivor.

That’s a fair description of Nooksack history, especially in the last few hundred years. For centuries, the people fished their own river valley but also traveled regularly, including to what is now Canada’s Fraser River, to fish for salmon or gather shellfish. They intermarried and formed alliances with their neighbors on both sides of what is now an international border. When white settlers arrived and introduced new diseases, many of the Nooksack died. By some counts their numbers plummeted to 450 from perhaps 1,200. In the 1855 Treaty of Point Elliot, in which Coast Salish tribes ceded their lands to the federal government in exchange for small reservations and the right to continue fishing, hunting and gathering, the Nooksack received no reservation. Instead, as settlers moved onto their lands, they were told to go live with the Lummi, in their new reservation by the coast. Most refused. Of those who remained, some filed homestead claims on their own lands; others scattered in search of a livelihood. For the next hundred years, as far as the federal government was concerned, the tribe essentially ceased to exist.

This is not an unusual story. The federal government used the law as “a mighty, pulverizing engine to break up the tribal mass,” as Teddy Roosevelt said to Congress in 1901. He was referring to the General Allotment Act, under which tribally owned land was carved into small parcels and handed out to individuals. It was a huge blow to the stability and sovereignty of tribes: Within 20 years, Native people lost ownership of 90 million acres. It was also the beginning of the government’s reliance on blood quantum to determine Indian status. Those deemed “half-bloods” or less were regarded as more responsible and given more freedom to handle their land. Even many “progressive” reformers saw assimilation into white society as the best way to transform tribal members into citizens. “Kill the Indian in the student so we can save the man!” went the famous slogan of a superintendent at one of the 500 boarding schools that Native children, forcibly separated from their families, were made to attend.

Some Nooksack people, unrecognized by the federal government, stayed on their lands and continued to operate as a tribe. In the 1920s, they joined other Northwest tribes to sue the federal government for lands lost; in the 1930s, even though they weren’t considered eligible to participate, they voted to accept the Indian Reorganization Act, in which the government backed away from its assimilationist policies and instead encouraged tribes to be self-governing and self-sufficient. (A decade later the United States ended its government-to-government relationships with tribes and returned to promoting assimilation, before changing its policies and pushing self-government again.) In the 1960s, a committee of Nooksacks opened a bid for federal recognition. They gained title to one acre of land in Deming, the first Nooksack Reservation, in 1970, and full federal recognition in 1973. Like many tribes, they adopted a constitution based on a model that the Bureau of Indian Affairs developed during the reorganization period in the 1930s. The new constitution restricted Nooksack membership to recipients of early land allotments, recipients of a 1965 government settlement or people who appeared on a 1942 tribal census. Their direct descendants could also be enrolled, provided they had “at least one-fourth (1/4) degree Indian blood.”

The Nooksack weren’t alone in seeing long-lost applicants turn up after the tribe was officially recognized. Ron Allen, the tribal chairman of the Jamestown S’Klallam, told me it was common, in the last decades of the 20th century, for the “inner-circle communities” of northwestern tribes to be surprised by a “wave” of people who started coming back to places their families once left. He credits the political advancement of tribes, which made members of the broader society feel that it was “O.K. to be Indian.” Tribes generally welcomed the new arrivals, he said, but still, “it was like, ‘Where are all these Indians coming from?’ ”

The most outspoken critics of disenrollment call it a form of genocide. Others don’t go quite so far but still view the practice as an outgrowth of policies designed to suppress Native American identity — “to control us, to assimilate us, and ultimately, to extinguish us,” as John McCoy, a Washington State senator and member of the Tulalip Tribes, neighbors to the Nooksack, wrote in an op-ed for the Indian Country Media Network earlier this year. Robert Williams, of the University of Arizona, argues that disenrollment is a remnant of “colonialism and good old-fashioned American racism, with Indians left to deal with the mess.” In a 2015 tweet, Sherman Alexie, the Spokane and Coeur d’Alene author, put it even more emphatically: “Dear Indian tribes who disenroll members, you should be ashamed of your colonial and capitalistic bullshit.”

The first person to reply to Alexie’s tweet — thanking him for speaking out when others were silent — was Gabe Galanda, a member of the Round Valley Indian tribes in California and the lawyer whom the Nooksack 306 hired to represent them. The next replies came from some of Galanda’s other clients: former members of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, who were disenrolled in 2014. Grand Ronde was formed in 1857 when the federal government forced at least 27 tribes and bands to leave their homelands, which ranged from California to Washington, and move to a reservation in Oregon. The 86 Grand Ronde disenrollees descend from a man known as Chief Tumulth, who signed one of the treaties that created the reservation. Decades after they enrolled, tribal officials noted that Chief Tumulth failed to appear on the official base roll, made the year it was founded. It was true: He was hanged the year before, by a lieutenant of the U.S. Army.

I thought of this last spring as I watched Narte-Parker leaf through old letters and family trees, newspaper clippings and documents. “We didn’t make the laws,” she said. “We just got stuck in the middle.”

After the first disenrollment letters went out to Nooksack members, Galanda appealed to tribal courts and the Department of the Interior and managed to delay the disenrollment hearings. Meanwhile, the 306 tried to make sense of what documents they could find to illuminate their past. They had no birth certificate for Annie, so they turned to old censuses and to 19th-century church records kept by the Archdiocese of Vancouver, marking the sacraments of birth, marriage and death. They found that Annie’s birth mother, Marie Siamat, was buried in December 1875, two days after giving birth to Annie, and that her father (variously recorded as Chief Matsqui, George Kot kro itmentwh, George Roelkwemeldon, George Tekwomclko, George Matsqui and so on) remarried a woman named Madeline Jobe.

Indian censuses taken during Annie’s childhood repeatedly recorded her living with George and Madeline. Michelle Robert’s grandmother remembers her mother, Annie, referring to Madeline as the woman who raised her and as “Mother.” The 306 think this is compelling evidence Madeline adopted Annie. The council remains unconvinced. Kelly says that citing Madeline as an ancestor — their only tie to recognized base rolls — was a blatant lie.

If Madeline didn’t count, the family responded, they should still qualify for membership under Section H of the Nooksack constitution, which allows the enrollment of “persons who possess at least ¼ Indian blood and who can prove Nooksack ancestry to any degree.” Records indicate that Matsqui was considered a Nooksack village even after the Canadian border was established to the south, and Matsqui George was a chief of the village. In a U.S. census from 1910, Louis George indicated that both his parents, Madeline and Matsqui George, were Nooksacks from Washington, and that he was a full-blooded Nooksack. Besides, the 306 like to point out, Kelly’s own family was adopted by the Nooksacks; it is originally from a different Canadian tribe.

Kelly suggested that the 306 disenroll themselves and reapply under Section H. But he soon called for a referendum to remove Section H from the Nooksack constitution. He said later that this change was unrelated to the 306 and was instead a much-needed tightening of loose enrollment laws that could have let “almost anybody” in. The amendment passed with 61 percent support.

As part of their defense, the 306 produced letters from anthropologists. One cited not just the requirements for Nooksack membership provided in tribal code but “historical documents, family oral history and well-established concepts of identity, affiliation and membership within anthropology regarding the social organization of the Coast Salish peoples.” But for some tribal members, this only served to undermine his case. “It’s not a club,” a woman named Mary Brewer, who recently gave up her membership in the Lummi tribe to enroll as a Nooksack, told me. “My mom has about 10 different tribes in her ancestry, and she meets the requirements for only two.” Their family lost title to 80 acres on the Yakima reservation because they didn’t have high enough blood quantum to be enrolled there; they were sorry to lose the land, she said, but respected the rules by which modern tribes operate. Brewer’s mother, Diane, said she had two grandchildren whose blood quantum is one-quarter. “We’ve been telling them, better marry Native or else it’ll die out,” she said.

“The 306 say, ‘Disenrollment isn’t traditional,’ ” Mary said. “Well, enrollment was never traditional!” It is, however, the way things work now. “It’s not, ‘this guy took care of me, and that’s how we did it in the olden days,’ ” Brewer continued. “If you don’t have documentation, then you’re not Indian.”

In more than 30 years of membership, Annie’s descendants became interwoven in the life of the tribe. They married other Nooksacks and had kids; those kids had kids. But once the disenrollment process began, people chose sides. “It was just like a light switch,” Elizabeth Oshiro, one of the 306, told me. People she knew for years “all of a sudden had a different heart.”

With the hearings repeatedly delayed as lawsuits made their way through the tribal court system, both sides formed Facebook groups to argue their cases and regularly debated or taunted each other online. (Their competing slogans were “We Belong” and “We Are Nooksack.”) “While some people challenge the idea of tribal enrollment, referring to it as ‘Western thinking’ and an imposed system on American Indians,” posted Katrice Romero, the tribe’s housing director, “that tribal enrollment number is what holds the United States government accountable to the American Indian people and its trust responsibility to tribes; a responsibility that my ancestors fought, struggled and sacrificed for.”

On the reservation, Michelle Roberts found that people who babysat for her as a child or attended her wedding would no longer make eye contact with her. “The most important thing isn’t friendship,” says Diane Brewer, who no longer speaks to her former best friend, one of the 306. “The most important thing is the tribe.”

Rudy St. Germain at the home of Michelle Roberts’s parents in Deming, Wash.

In the summer of 2013, Roberts was fired from her job as the human-resources manager at the Nooksack River Casino. Later, when she tried to count the number of disenrollees and their allies who lost tribal jobs, she got to 58. At first, Kelly told me he wouldn’t comment on personnel decisions but later said, “We got rid of all them a long time ago.” Rudy St. Germain was fired from his job as the casino’s landscaping manager and had to move his two boys into a relative’s house when he couldn’t make rent. “Those were dark days,” he told me. Today he works in a pork-processing plant.

Roberts and St. Germain couldn’t find resolution in the council. Kelly began insisting that meetings be held over the phone. He’d received threats, he said, and it wasn’t safe to meet in person. When St. Germain and Roberts spoke, no one seemed to be able to hear them. I asked Kelly whether he muted them. He shrugged and said: “Probably. I muted a lot of people.” (He says they weren’t supposed to be on the call in the first place.) The following winter, Kelly scheduled the first in-person council meetings in months on the Friday, Saturday and Monday of Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend; the Nooksack constitution allows for council members to be removed from office if they miss three monthly council meetings in a row. St. Germain and Roberts, who were out of town, tried to reach the council by phone or email. At the third meeting, the council declared their seats empty and appointed two new members to replace them. “It was the only way we could get them off council,” Kelly told me later. Rudy said, “I was lost for words.”

By that time, Kelly was calling the 306 scam artists. “Nobody stepped forward and claimed them!” he told me repeatedly. “You don’t show up and just insert yourself into someone else’s family tree.”

With an election looming and four of eight council seats expiring, the council asked the tribal court judge to keep pending disenrollees from voting. After the judge refused, the council declined to schedule the elections. The incumbents remained in office, but some argued that, without an elected quorum, the tribe had no viable government.

Several lawsuits, including one called Kelly v. Kelly, brought by a group that included the chairman’s sons, were filed to force elections, but amid litigation, the council abruptly fired the tribe’s judge. The council also barred Galanda from practicing in the tribe’s courts, saying he’d behaved unethically by citing an opinion he wrote while serving as a judge for another tribe; the court began to return all of his filings unopened. An appellate court directed the chief of police to arrest and imprison the court clerk if she continued to reject filings; when the chief of police refused, the appellate court held him in contempt, began levying a fine of $1,000 a day and wondered, in its ruling, if “at Nooksack, the rule of law is dead.” (The council contends that, because the courts are under the jurisdiction of the council, these fines and rulings are meaningless.) Two of the remaining council members whose seats did not expire and who have resisted disenrollment (one is the mother of Kelly’s sons and is now married to one of the 306) were targeted with petitions calling for their recall. One of the recalls succeeded. The charge was treason.

In July, some of the disenrollees and their allies scheduled what they called a general council meeting. To avoid the tribal police, they met on the grounds of an old logging show. Several people showed me text messages they received from tribal employees who said they’d been warned that they would be fired if they attended. Later, thinking Kelly might consider the meeting a kind of coup, I asked him what he thought of it. He shrugged. “It was meaningless,” he said. “It’s not real. It’s make-believe.”

George Adams, who taught Lhechalosem language classes for the tribe until he was fired early last year (he’s such a fervent supporter of the 306 that he likes to call himself “307”), called the meeting to order; he spoke in Lhechalosem, though he is considered the only remaining fluent speaker. (He learned the language by studying old recordings a quarter century after the last native speaker died.) Adams charged four witnesses with committing the proceedings to memory in order to later share what happened. “Remember these names,” he told the crowd, “because this is how we survived for thousands of years.”

People rose to speak. “My enrollment number is six, so there you go,” said one man, by way of introduction. Another said, “I’m 71 years old, and I’m kind of ashamed to call myself a Nooksack right now. Years ago, our people never asked, ‘Where you from?’ They welcomed you to their table.” A woman asked how the decisions of this council could be considered valid when there were so few people, around 200, present. People began to speak of shutting down the tribe altogether, to force the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which had consistently declined to intervene, to call new elections.

Adams asked for a vote. The crowd decided that the four expired seats on the tribal council were vacant, that everything the government had done since the canceled elections was invalid and that they should vote in four new officers — none of them disenrollees — from their own ranks. “This has to do with 10 generations from now,” one of the newly elected officers said. He described the worst-case scenario: for lots of people to be cut off from the tribal community, “to be just a person roaming around, trying to figure it out for themselves.”

The new treasurer, Bernadine Roberts, a short, dark-haired woman (“Stand up please,” Adams told her. “Oh! You are standing!”) who enrolled three years after the tribe was officially recognized, told me that until she moved to the reservation from Seattle, she “was one of those urban Indians that didn’t know much.” She gave a brief acceptance speech about what it meant to her to reconnect to her family’s past. “My grandmother said we were going home, and I didn’t know what she was talking about,” she said. “But I know now.”

Michelle Roberts at her parent’s home in Deming, Wash

In July, after the meeting at the logging show, some of the Nooksack 306 joined in the intertribal Canoe Journey, an annual event in which hundreds of members from dozens of Northwest tribes spend weeks paddling the coast to and from one another’s lands for meals, dancing and ceremonies. They named their canoes — hand-carved, with seating for 15 — for Annie’s daughters, and shared them with people of the Shxway band. Some Nooksacks told me this was ridiculous: the sharing with the Shxway, the names, participating at all. The Nooksack, they said, are known for racing narrow, fast war canoes, not paddling wide traveling canoes. Near the end of the journey, the canoes crossed Puget Sound and came to shore on a sandy beach in Seattle. George Adams, in the center canoe, stood and addressed two elders from the Muckleshoot tribe, which was hosting that day. “We are all one,” he said, “carrying on the tradition of knowing who you are and where you come from.”

The following month, the 306 celebrated what they saw as a hopeful precedent when the Grand Ronde Tribal Court of Appeals overturned the disenrollment of Chief Tumulth’s descendants, holding that it was unfair to subject tribal members to “such an extreme sanction” after accepting them for nearly three decades. Elsewhere, a few tribes have rejected disenrollment altogether. The Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria in California amended their constitution to ban disenrollment in 2013. The Spokane tribe of Washington did the same in 2015, as part of more than two dozen constitutional changes meant to better reflect the historical complexity of the tribe.

But the Nooksack dispute dragged on. In October, the Bureau of Indian Affairs informed Kelly that it would not recognize any actions of the tribal council because it failed to hold elections in March 2016, stressing that it wasn’t telling the tribe who counted as a member but simply responding to the “exceedingly rare situation” of a council’s lacking a quorum. The tribe scheduled new elections and certified the results of a referendum to disenroll the 306. But the bureau would not recognize the results: by excluding pending disenrollees from voting, the tribe had violated its constitution and the rulings of its court of appeals.

So when the 306 received letters informing them that their 10-minute disenrollment hearings had finally been scheduled to take place on the phone in November, they weren’t sure what to do. Some, including Rudy St. Germain, refused to participate on the grounds that the hearings were illegitimate. Others scheduled their appointments, then called in to tell the council they didn’t recognize its authority.

Michelle Roberts called from Canada, where she was staying with Shxway friends. “Annie George was Nooksack because her father was Matsqui George, and he was Nooksack,” she said. “We are all Nooksack. I am Nooksack. I can’t say that more and mean it more.”

A voice came on the line. It was Bob Solomon, who holds one of the expired council seats and is a descendant of Madeline Jobe: “I have never heard anybody say that you were adopted by Madeline Jobe. You are not my relative through Madeline.”

“Yes, we are,” Roberts said, her voice rising. “The document proves it, my grandmother proves it, the oral history proves it.”

“That’s your story,” he said. “That’s not mine.”

A week later, the day before Thanksgiving, Kelly announced that the tribe had removed the names of “non-Indians who had been erroneously enrolled in the Tribe” from its membership list. Those who called and those who didn’t, all were gone. “It’s finally over,” he wrote.

But of course it wasn’t over. The departments of Housing and Urban Development and Health and Human Services, which enforce the government’s treaty responsibilities to provide housing and health care to the tribe, did not recognize the disenrollment of the 306 and maintained they were still entitled to their services. In late December, the Bureau of Indian Affairs warned that the tribe’s failure to hold valid elections put all its federal funding at risk.

There were now two sides offering two competing realities, each telling the other it was illegitimate. The 306 would be another chapter in the long, strange history of who decides who is — and who isn’t — an Indian.

[topsolarpanels]

‘ Who knows what we’ll find next ?’ Journey to the heart of Mozambique’s hidden forest

Since it was identified on Google Earth in 2005, the forest of Mount Mabu has amazed scientists with its unique wildlife. Jeffrey Barbee joins explorer Professor Julian Bayliss on the first trip to its green heart

The soggy boots of the team slide backwards in the black mud as they struggle up towards the ridge line separating the forest edge from one of the last unexplored places on Earth.

The rain is an incessant barrage of watery bullets firing down through the tree canopy. Thunder crashes. Tangles of vines and spider webs make for a Hollywood movie scene of truly impenetrable jungle.

Near the front of the seven hikers is a Welshman carrying a billhook, a backpack almost the same size as him, and what appears to all intents and purposes to be a briefcase. The slope is so steep that the heavy briefcase clatters against the ground at every step, so he swings it in front of him clonk like a ship using an anchor to warp out of harbour against the green, vertical tide. He takes two steps up and swings the case up the hill again. Clonk.

On this wet March day in Mozambique, Professor Julian Bayliss, naturalist, explorer, fellow of the Royal Geographical and Royal Entomological societies, is heading deep into the green heart of the Mabu forest for the first time. The forest, also known as the Google forest after the way he discovered it using Google Earth in 2005, has more recently been called the butterfly forest, after the butterflies that congregate around the summit of Mount Mabu at certain times of year. Many of the species since identified here carry Baylisss name. These include Nadzikambia baylissi, the sleek little chameleon with the prehensile tail, and Cymothoe baylissi, the graceful forest gliding butterfly, both of which exist only here within the largest rainforest in southern Africa.

One other thing we have discovered on this trip, shouts Bayliss, with a huge grin over the sound of yet another downpour on another day on another seemingly unending hillside ascent, Mabu is not flat.

The scientific discovery of Mount Mabu was a huge breakthrough. Working with Kew Royal Botanic Gardens, the Mozambique governments institute for agricultural research (IIAM) and the Darwin Initiative, Bayliss was sitting at his laptop looking at Google Earth in 2005, when he wondered whether mountains in Mozambique might also harbour some of the species he was uncovering in nearby Malawi. So he and a Malawian botanist named Hassam Patel decided to take a look.

As reported by the Observer, over the years Bayliss and the Kew Gardens team have since identified three new species of snake, eight species of butterfly, a bat, a crab, two chameleons and many plants, as well as a trove of rare birds that are critically endangered.

However, no one has ever journeyed into the heart of the forest until now. Previous discoveries came from the forest base camp, the peak and a small satellite camp, all on the lower eastern edge. To explore Mabus secrets further, an expedition has been undertaken this month by the international scientific and environmental reporting initiative Alliance Earth.

The Alliance Earth teams objectives were to create a 3D map, uncover new species, check on the health of the forest, publish an ethno-botanical study, seek out potential non-timber forest products, produce a feature documentary and film a 360-degree virtual reality experience for museums and science centres around the world, so everyone can explore the mountains mysteries.

Alliance Earths 360-degree look at the Google forest. Copyright: Jeffrey Barbee/Alliance Earth

This is a new species of Dipsadoboa, Bayliss says, holding the poisonous tree snake with a twinge of obvious concern. As it writhes, he holds it farther away from his torso. This is currently undescribed, it doesnt have a name yet. Stretching out imploringly, the snake tries to reach the perceived safety of my video camera. To find an actual new species of snake is extremely exciting, and very rare. He has now found three new snakes in Mabus forest.

According to Bayliss, on this trip the team have identified at least one new butterfly species, and quite possibly more, once genetic testing confirms them. They have also found a Caecilian, one of the rarest animals on Earth, which is sort of a cross between a reptile and amphibian, and may be a new type of its kind.

But these precious finds arent the only new discoveries that have him excited. Under a huge tree he airs his wet boots, squeezing his socks dry before putting them on again. Yesterday was great. We discovered a new waterfall, which is fantastic. Weve never been here before, and because its the rainy season the water was just crashing through the rocks.

More discoveries have come daily, such as the valley of giants, an open canyon with a central raised ridge surrounded by the largest grouping of big trees yet found. Their vast trunks stretch upwards like a cathedral, blending into the green nave of leaves hundreds of metres above. These waterfalls, huge trees, deep canyons, and riverside camping spots are important geographical discoveries that Bayliss hopes will help bring tourists here.

At times the forest guides are clearly as perplexed about directions as the team, looping round in ever-widening circles in search of a way across the maze of folded valleys, often climbing up and down one punishing ridge after another in order to make headway.

Bayliss holds what is possibly yet another previously unidentified species of butterfly. Photograph: Jeffrey Barbee

Senior hunter turned guide Oflio Cavalio, 41, and his son Bartolomeo, 26, joined the expedition one morning before breakfast, hiking from their home many kilometres away. They heard through the grapevine that Bayliss had returned and so tracked him down. Cavalio and Bayliss have worked together on every visit he has made to Mabus forest. The local hunter and famous scientist have developed a friendship and deep respect for one another.

Once Cavalio arrived, the team started to push deeper into the most unexplored parts of the eastern forest, following the tops of the ridges and making better time.

Guides such as Cavalio have an intimate knowledge of the area, making the outside discovery of Mabu a purely scientific designation. According to him, the local people have benefited from the forest for generations. It even saved their lives during the back-to-back conflicts that started in 1964 with the war of independence against Portugal, before segueing into the civil war that finally ended in 1992.

His friend, 38-year-old guide Ernesto Andr, agrees. He grew up in the forest, sheltered from the ravages of war, with dozens of other people in small forest camps. Not far into the undergrowth, holes the size of unfilled graves are clearly man-made. Standing in one, Andr explains that these sheltered whole families and were the only way to hide the sounds of crying children from the Portuguese soldiers who tried to hunt them down.

On a remote ridge line with another potential new butterfly in his net, Bayliss talks about the future of the mountain. Every new discovery helps make the case for the mountain to be officially protected, he says.

But time is of the essence. The team finds the forest intact, yet still not officially protected. A recent report in the Guardian told how, despite a two-year ban on timber exports, corruption and organised crime are still stripping Mozambique of forests such as this. According to the independent Environmental Investigation Agency, as much as $130m worth of hardwoods are stolen from Mozambique annually. Much of it is sent to China.

Ecologically aware visitors could help build a tourism industry here that protects the forest and benefits the community in a sustainable way, while safeguarding the incredible biodiversity, according to Justia Ambiental, the Mozambican environmental justice group that has been working at Mabu since 2009 to create and implement an eco-tourism plan for the mountain.

Mount Mabu expedition 2017. Produced by Alliance Earth. Edited and written by Jeffrey Barbee. Camera Jeffrey Barbee and Julian Bayliss. Copyright: Jeffrey Barbee/Alliance Earth

The groups forestry specialist, Rene Machoco, explains that its vision is for Mabu to be legally designated as a community conservation area.

Andr says that before Justia Ambiental came, his community didnt think the forest was particularly valuable, but then it was explained and we knew the truth. The forest is life and the forest is wealth.

Tourism is only one way to help people like Ernesto benefit from their home. Expedition team member Ana Alecia Lyman is a non-timber forest products specialist based in Mozambique who runs Bio leos de Miombo. Non-timber forest products, such as honey or mushrooms, can be sustainably derived from the landscape to generate income in rural communities without jeopardising local biodiversity, she says.

After seeing the forest first-hand, she is enthusiastic and feels that the more people who are engaged in these sustainable value chains, the more local investment there can be in the health of the forest.

Under the tree canopy, Bayliss is hunting an elusive butterfly that finally flutters and rests on the leafy forest floor in a scattered beam of sunlight. Butterflies use solar energy to fly. Their wing veins are usually dark in order to channel energy from the sun to engage their muscles. This is why when they are seen slowly folding their wings while perched in the sunlight, they are getting ready to take to the air. But the shy brown butterfly with the spotted wing markings is no match for the speedy scientist from Wales. A deft swing loops the net shut, I think I got it!

This is probably a new species, he says, looking through the net and walking over to a sunny spot. Extracting it gently he examines the wing spots. This is probably the one we have been looking for. He looks closer. With a breathless voice he breaks with his usual understatement. This is very exciting this is the first time I have ever seen this butterfly.

What else awaits discovery in the remote forest of Mabus basin? Potential answers to that question sit snugly in Baylisss anchor-like briefcase: motion-sensitive video cameras, the first ever to be deployed at Mabu. Encased in steel boxes and strapped to trees, the four high-definition cameras will be left running at secret locations deep in the foliage for two years.

Having finished securing the last camera above a stream, Bayliss washes his hands in the clear water among the mossy rocks, looking satisfied. Every time we come to Mabu we discover something new. Who knows what we will find next?

The question hangs in the air as he turns around and starts back on the long hike to base camp with his butterfly net in hand, his briefcase empty, and his wet boots squishing merrily.

Alliance Earth paid for Jeffrey Barbees transport and accommodation.

Read more: www.theguardian.com

The post ‘ Who knows what we’ll find next ?’ Journey to the heart of Mozambique’s hidden forest appeared first on Top Rated Solar Panels.

from Top Rated Solar Panels http://ift.tt/2EU13KA via IFTTT

[plumdwarf]

Blog Tour: Helix by Mary Ting

#BookBlogTour: Helix by @MaryTing #amreading #readingcommunity #newrelease #authorinterview

Alliances are forming. The resistance is growing. Everything is about to change.

With her memory still fragmented, Ava returns to the International Sensory Assassin Network (ISAN) to find the twin sister she never knew she had.

But as Ava hunts for information, she finds herself tangled in a web of yet more lies and conspiracy. The Helix serum may not be required to access her superpowers, and…

[blogolivertaylorfintech-blog]

Fintech Pioneer Counterattack Against Seed Investor-Turned-Scammer

SAN JOSÉ, COSTA RICA, April fourteenth. 2019 – After four years, a worldwide saga of scamming, disloyalty, digital currency, and hidden identity may shortly come to an end in London and San José. Walter Gomez, co-founder of financial technology pioneer project, Börser S.A., officially declares his quest for legal action against Edward Roworth and Jaspal Singh Arri.

The motion pursues the return of $1 million declared by Gomez and his partners following an exchange that started in 2015 and was only partially contended. The first arrangement, portrayed in a legally binding contract signed by Gomez and Arri, who characterized himself as the head of a corporate alliance, tangled in the trading of Venezuelan bolivares and US dollars, at a preferential rate. Gomez and his associates for the exchange—Cesar Potenza, Natividad Rojas, Sofia Akly, and Jerome Kislingbury—provided the bolivares, which Arri consented to trade for $1M US.

The arrangement's logic was sound enough. Gomez, being the creator of Börser S.A., one of the world's most advanced fintech firms and involving three particular organizations: Mi Wall Street, which gives first class economic services to independent financial specialists; CrowdingFunds, a blockchain-based crowdfunding service; and X-Change, a low-priced service that eases the trade between Börser's digital currency and cash. The organization's showed knowledge in complex trade tools made it an alluring partner.

After some postponements, Arri issued a first part of $35k in late 2015. This portion originated from sources on India and was issued by a Dubai based bank. With some worry over the abruptly intricate nature of what ought to have been a simple currency exchange, Gomez recurrently tried to reach Arri, without any result. He would not get a response again.

In 2016, Gomez was reached by Richard Durrant, who proposed a trade of monetary standards like the one Arri had neglected to fulfil. After a few discussions and a personal gathering with Durrant's delegate Edward Patrick Roworth in the border town of Cucuta, Colombia, Gomez followed through with the arrangement; however, Roworth also failed to bring the deal to completion.

Roworth introduced himself in 2017 as a potential venture capital investor in Gomez's new fintech venture, Börser. Roworth never fulfilled on either the financing or the work force he guaranteed but instead, he sent a low quantity of seed capital in return for a portion of Börser's tokens. In spite of this, he claimed he was owed the complete amount that was initially agreed-upon in Börser's shares. Afterward, he organized a modest venture by an Australian father and son, again demanding shares in Börser for his part on said deal. Analogous one-sided and eventually unfulfilled negotiations went on for the following year and a half.

It became known in late 2018 that both Jaspal Singh Arri and Richard Durrant were partners of Roworth and associates on his organization Eco Worldwide Ltd. Additionally, Eco Worldwide was was found to be an organization only on paper, made by Roworth, without any workers, no income, and no business . Durrant, it appears, was sent by Roworth to use Gomez after Arri had severed his ties.

After once again promising to fulfil his duties regarding the 2015 scam submitted under his organization's guise, Roworth didn’t deliver. Meanwhile, with Börser S.A. turning into a solid and successful company in the digital currency sector, Roworth intensified his requests for shares of the organization, maintaining at this point that he had been assured a controlling stake. When Gomez reacted by freshening Roworth memories on the legally approved contract they had signed—an agreement which not in the slightest concedes the chance of Roworth being issued a controlling share of Börser—Roworth took the road of last resort. He started a smear crusade against Gomez.

This assault was as exhaustive and meticulously coordinated as Roworth's previous endeavors to swindle Gomez. Not content with defaming Gomez on the web, Roworth methodically reached Gomez's business partners, throwing outlandish and unconfirmed slanders on his character and on Börser's capability as an organization. Roworth recruited help, also: the Australian father and son whose purchase of Börser tokens was arranged by Roworth as a supposed gesture of good will and intent of investment in the organization, took an active role in the campaign to demolish Gomez's good name.

Amid this assault, Roworth reached Gomez directly, threatening to falsify records, including transcripts of discussions and telephone messages, if Gomez did not surrender his controlling shares for Börser. When Gomez declined, Roworth relinquished all pretension of discussing a business arrangement and decided on overt extortion. His strategies at this stage turned out to be progressively desperate, blunt, and perilous. Roworth reached his lowest bottom when he endeavored to extract $50,000 USD from Gomez by threatening to sending a "South American collector" to visit him at his home.

After documenting the whole crusade against him, Gomez is currently going forward with legal actions in his country of origin, which will be later followed by an international legal action in London. These pending legal process aim for a full compensation of the $1 million settled upon by Arri, functioning as Roworth's representative, and for damages corresponding of the defamation coordinated against him. To know the complete story behind this defamation, please contact Börser S.A's. legal division.

###

Founded in 2017, Börser S.A. is a popular online financial services company offering investment solutions, funding vehicles, and affordable currency-exchange capabilities.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

#EdwardPatrickRoworth #WalterGomez #Scam #TraderinLies #AndrewMcCane #EWW #Borser

[fmservers]

Latin America is the next stage in the race for dominance in the ride-hailing market

Nathan Lustig Contributor

Nathan Lustig is an entrepreneur and managing partner at Magma Partners, a seed-stage investment fund in Santiago, Chile.

More posts by this contributor

Latin America’s Groupon Mafia

A new era for startup investing in Latin America

As the number of competitors in the ride-hailing industry dwindles, geographic expansion is emerging as the next proving ground to determine who will be the victor in the ride-hailing market.

The race for control of the industry, which is estimated by Goldman Sachs to grow eightfold to $285 billion by 2030, is escalating with China’s Didi Chuxing already surpassing Uber as the most valuable startup in the world. With a recent valuation of approximately $56 billion, compared to Uber’s $48 billion, Didi is posing a real threat to Uber’s operations and shows no signs of slowing down. Cementing its position as the top ride-hailing service in China, Didi is now turning its attention to another region of the world that is still filled with vast opportunities and not yet dominated by a single taxi alternative: Latin America.

While many ride-hailing and sharing services have already sprung up and faced regulation in cities across Latin America such as Mexico City, Montevideo, and São Paulo, the region still presents an enormous opportunity for the companies that can adapt and move fast enough.

The current opportunities in Latin America

Unlike many other regions of the world, Latin America is still very much reliant on traditional forms of public transportation such as buses, trains, and subway systems. What’s more, larger cities such as São Paulo, Mexico City, and Bogota simply cannot support any more vehicles on the road without an infrastructure overhaul. Large metro areas are already at or above maximum capacity during peak hours, making owning and commuting with a car more of a hassle than a luxury. As a result, many commuters across Latin America are putting less importance on owning a vehicle and opting to use alternative modes of transportation and on-demand services instead.

Beyond the rising demand for alternative transportation options, it’s also worth noting that Latin America is the world’s second-fastest-growing mobile market. In a region of approximately 640 million people, there are more than 200 million smartphone users. By 2020, predictions say that 63% of Latin America’s population will have access to the mobile Internet. Latin American smartphone users have quickly adopted global apps, such as Uber and Facebook. However, tech companies have yet to fully tap into the region’s potential.

Chilean taxi drivers demonstrate along Alameda Avenue against US on-demand ride service giant Uber, in Santiago, on July 10, 2017. Uber smartphone app has faced stiff resistance from traditional taxi drivers the world over, as well as bans in some places over safety concerns and questions over legal issues, including taxes. (MARTIN BERNETTI/AFP/Getty Images)

The key players

Uber

According to a Dalia survey, Latin Americans with smartphones that live in urban areas are the most likely to have used a ride-hailing app or site. Overall, 45% have used an app, with Mexico taking the top position in the region at 58%.

Uber entered Latin America in 2013 and claims to have more than 36 million active users in the region, proving employment for more than a million drivers. The company quickly dominated Mexico, which is now its second-largest market after the U.S. In fact, up until recently Uber claimed a near monopoly on ride-sharing in Mexico with few competitors. Uber also has operations in more than 16 Latin American countries.

99 (formerly 99Taxis)

With an urban population of approximately 180 million, Brazil is the ultimate prize for ride-hailing and taxi companies with several services competing for market share. Most notably, 99 (formerly “99Taxis”) was able to gain momentum early on with exclusive services that extended beyond basic ride-hailing (such as its 99 TOP and 99 POP services) and better tools for its drivers.

With over 200,000 drivers and 14 million users, 99 attracted the attention of investors worldwide, including that of China’s Didi Chuxing. Didi invested $100 million into 99 in January 2018 before acquiring 99 entirely months later for nearly $1 billion to take on Uber in Latin America, shortly after it acquired Uber’s operations in China.

Easy Taxi

Rocket Internet -backed taxi booking service, Easy Taxi, started in Latin America in 2011, two years after Uber first started in San Francisco. The company provides an easy way to book a taxi and track it in real-time. Today, the company is owned by Maxi Mobility, which acquired the company from Rocket Internet in 2017 for an undisclosed amount. Maxi Mobility also owns Cabify, and operates across many Latin American markets, including Argentina, Mexico, Bolivia, Panama, Brazil, Peru, and Chile, in addition to a handful of markets elsewhere.

To solidify its position in the region, Easy Taxi merged with Colombian taxi-booking app Tappsi in 2015. Tappsi launched in Bogotá in 2012 and was doing quite well in the Colombian market. The merger allowed the companies to pool their resources just as other competitors, such as Uber, began entering the region.

Easy Taxi maintains impressive traction, raising more than $75 million to date. But as the ride-hailing battle in Latin America pushes forward, the company is rumored to be a likely investment or acquisition target for Uber, Didi, or the largest global investor in this space, Softbank.

Cabify

Cabify is a Spanish company that provides private vehicles for hire via its smartphone app. Although founded in Madrid, Cabify has always positioned itself as a Latin American company, investing heavily across the region. The company was able to gain a strong foothold due to some significant funding raised by its parent company, Maxi Mobility. In January 2018, Maxi Mobility raised another $160 million and said the funding would be used to accelerate both of its companies, Cabify and Easy Taxi, in the 130 cities where they operate throughout Spain, Portugal, and Latin America.

Cabify reported it has over 13 million users and grew its installed-base by 500% between 2016 and 2017, tripling its user base and fulfilling six times more trips in 2017.

Cabify competes directly with Uber, 99, and Easy Taxi in Brazil; however, it reportedly has around 40% market share in Sao Pãolo, one of the largest cities in all of Latin America.

Smaller players to watch

Beat (Formerly Taxibeat)

Beat is a profitable ride-hailing service founded in Athens, Greece that also operates in Peru. Beat is slowly expanding its operations across Latin America, though expansion appears to be limited to Chile for now.

As of January 2017, Beat had around 15,000 drivers and 800,000 customers in Peru.

Nekso

Toronto-based Nekso bet on the Latin American taxi-hailing market before its home market with a pilot launch in Venezuela in 2016. Nekso was able to gain acceptance from the taxi industries in Venezuela, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, and Panama with its slightly different approach to ride-hailing.

The company connects a network of 550+ licensed taxi companies with thousands of drivers and allows users to flag down a cab off the street and without using in-app requests. Nekso also uses artificial intelligence technology to offer drivers real-time updates on weather, events, and traffic data to predict areas of a city which may need more drivers. The company claims taxi drivers can spend up to two-thirds of their day looking for or waiting for riders and that Nekso technology helps drivers increase their daily rides by more than 25% percent.

At the end of 2017, Nekso boasted around 150,000 users and facilitated approximately 400,000 rides per month. Now, the company plans to make its debut in Canada as well as expand to more countries in South America, including Argentina, Colombia, Chile, and Peru.

Didi, 99, and the next phase

99’s new owner, Didi, which dominates the Asian market and was able to defeat Uber in China, has big plans for international expansion. Its acquisition of 99 reveals the potential it sees in Latin America but also adds to the complicated web of global ride-hailing services.

After Didi shut down and acquired Uber’s assets in China, it also bought a stake in Uber for $1 billion. Uber, Didi, and 99 are all backed by Softbank. However, everywhere outside of China, Didi and Uber are competing with each other. Didi’s full plans for 99 are not yet obvious, but the company has already set up an office in Mexico and begun poaching staff from Uber in Mexico.

With an infusion of capital, Latin America’s ride-hailing industry is multiplying. That said, companies that want to compete in the region will need to use an aggressive and strategic approach that can withstand the uniqueness of commuters and transportation options in the region. It’s only a matter of time until we see if these companies continue ramping up their operations for geographic domination, or if we see more and more partner up to advance their technologies and address other looming threats – such as bike sharing, scooter sharing, and even autonomous vehicles.

Two of the founders of 99, who sold their company to Didi, have already launched a dockless bike sharing startup called Yellow in Brazil and raised $9 million to grow its operations. No other scooter company has taken the plunge into Latin America yet besides Grin Scooters in Mexico City, but other larger cities such as Buenos Aires, Bogota, Santiago, and Lima would be ideal markets if the companies can figure out pricing as well as security and safety issues first.

Didi’s activity in Brazil and Mexico is sure to trigger a new wave of competition between existing ride-hailing players and create an even more tangled web of alliances and acquisitions. Whether or not these companies can adapt and move fast enough to rise to the top, and deal with the other looming alternative modes of transportation, remains to be seen.

Via Jonathan Shieber https://techcrunch.com

[myvantagepoint-blog1]

HK/NY Home

In the cloudy, spring afternoon on April 5th, the Hong Kong / New York – Student Film Festival and Exchanged commenced in Lang Recital Hall at Hunter College, featuring twelve short films produced and directed by Film Academy students at Hong Kong Baptist University, along with Hunter College IMA alumni’s.

The inaugural film festival/exchange is the first for Hunter College IMA department. Their goal is to open cultural borders through this exchange by welcoming film students from a variety international film schools, starting with the Film Academy at Hong Kong Baptist University. Each of the submitted works by the filmmakers, including Hunter alumni’s, featured movies with “Home” as its central thesis. The short films varied in its interpretation of what “home” meant to them.

The three short-films that brought to light the different point of view of home were the works of Emily Collins, “Chula,” “Twenty Dollars” and “The Dinner.” Emily Collins “Chula,” was a fascinating story of Gaby Munoz or “Chula the Clown,” who spent a decade working alongside other clowns in refugee camps across the world. Her medical struggle as a young child helped shape the identity of her alter ego, “Chula the Clown,” who brought joy and laughter to children around the world, no matter what their circumstances are.

Gaby’s story was filmed with a combination of live-action and animation. The costuming, choice of location and Chula’s own charm gave the film a playful tone. Emily and her team captured the sadness in Gabby’s story and infused it by using cut-out animation that lessened the severity of emotion and gore that would have been out of place with the style of the film. “Chula,” successfully communicated what home meant to our protagonist. “Home” as a place where you can be comfortable in your own skin, wherever it may be.

“Twenty dollars,” on the other hand, is a film that dives into the complexity of life in the seedy corners of Hong Kong. The film opening scene was shot inside a storage room (the size of a closet), with four men casually packaging durian fruits filled with cocaine. Drug smuggling, prostitution and gambling are central to the life of the people tangled in the web of this underground world. The cinematographer successfully sawed together scenes that brought to life the unfortunate state of her subjects, using her camera as a witness to these events. However, in the midst of the darkness, friendships and alliance forms, unknowingly to the people within the story. Home, like family, chooses you and not the other way around.

“The Dinner” a film focused on the nuclear family, tells a tale of a lonely young boy and his yearning for his hard-working single-mother. What made this movie different than any others before it, is the way the director captured the boy’s loneliness through his drawings. There’s one pivotal scene that brought tears to my eyes and broke my heart. It was a scene when the mother arrived home, late at night. She found her son asleep on the couch with his drawing still in his hand. She bent down and leaned-in to kiss his cheek. She then knelt in front of him, took out cleaning wipes from her purse and she starts wiping his hands clean. Then the camera panned to the wall where his son, drew an unassuming cut-out of two people in space, separated by many planets, light years away from each other. The boy’s loneliness, summed up in a beautiful but painful picture. To this boy, home is his mother.

The festival showcased many others compelling works from different filmmakers, but the above were the one that captured my heart and left me thinking long after the short-films were over.  

[iota-news]

The other day @BongInma1 pointed my interest towards one of IOTA’s main fields of operation besides Internet of Things (IoT; although the two are obviously linked): Decentralized Digital Identity. One has to distinguish between Identity of Things (which I have touched upon in my previous article) and Decentralized IDs (DID, mainly human beings’ identities). I shall first explain what this is actually about and second what IOTA has to do with it.

1. Decentralized Identity — what is it after all?

I will follow Outlier Ventures’ Jamie Burke in explaining what this is actually about to make it as understandable as possible.

The problem: Today, we have to trust other parties (be it companies, agencies or whatever) to secure our personal data, which they are obliged to collect. This in itself is not a problem, but the data is not safe (thefts of personal data is what happens all the time, as you know). There simply is no standard which tells companies that Joe from Germany, their customer, is really Joe and not some scammer from another part of the world. The problem gets especially apparent if we consider that today more than 1 billion people live without an officially recognized identity.

Possible solution: Blockchain / DLT (Distributed Ledger Technology): The idea is to use this new technology to get rid of third parties and let each individual store personal data in a safe which only he or she has access to: this is the digital identity. Of course, this can (and will) also include devices that are connected to the Internet of Things; in sum, this is called the Identity of Things (IDoT):

Rather than perceiving them as lifeless amalgams of metal and plastic with a specific purpose, we need to shift toward considering each device as its own identity with different attributes.(David Sonstebo, IOTA Co-founder, click)

Advantages:

data is stored in a tamper-proof fashion = safe!

no third parties involved

Zero knowledge proofs: They are “an innovation that means an ability to prove a claim (through clever math) without revealing any of the data that makes it so, such as proving you’re over 21 without revealing your birthday or even your age. This means you can make verifiable claims without burdening the relying party with having to secure your data.” (click)

user-tailored: other parties/agencies/companies get only access to relevant data which in turn reduces legal and compliance risks by processing such information, instead of controlling it on behalf of the user.

it is fast (far less bureaucracy needed)

it is convenient and can be taken wherever you go

Use cases:

By means of your Digital ID you could

vote at elections (without providing evidence that you are eligible)

get background medical record information

use any government-related service

buy things which need an age-verification without providing any personal information (not even your birthday!)

…

Cities and governments could use it for

inter-organisation and inter-city data exchanges,

healthcare

granting access to aid programs to people who have lost their identity

only example so far: Taipei’s partnership with IOTA

…

“Things” could use it for

Digital Twins (example: car industry)

Data marketplace

…

The possibilities are endless — one great use case of Digital Identity is already running in Jordan by the UNHCR in order to help refugees:

https://medium.com/media/6bf76c58f5ce0b57f1a7b5605edea724/href

The possibilities are endless, obviously. However, in order for it to become reality, a standard layer is needed which is accepted by all the countries worldwide in order to process all of the data; you can think of it as the http of data information: Just like you open every web page by means of the http-protocol you would store all your personal data safely on this new data layer and other parties could get access to it if you let them.

The question is how to set up this new layer; and that’s where IOTA comes into play.

2. The (possible) role of IOTA

One of IOTA’s first officially announced partnerships was the one with the Digital Identity Foundation (DIF). Moreover, IOTA has also partnered with REFUNITE to help reunite families during and after conflicts by means of the IOTA ledger called the Tangle.

I will not go into technicalities as to why IOTA is suitable for the job of digital IDs and everything connected with it (just three words: feeless-fast-scalable). However, this article seeks to explain the role of IOTA in all of this. As you will see, there are many connections in this emerging web of interoperation between big companies, governments and IOTA.

I shall first of all introduce you to some big players in this realm and then point out what IOTA’s role might be.

2.1. The DIF

The DIF was founded “to build an open source decentralized identity ecosystem for people, organizations, apps, and devices”. Members include:

http://identity.foundation

2.2. Evernym

Evernym develops software solutions that leverage distributed ledger technology to provide every individual, organization and connected device with secure and irrevocable identity.

The company has just announced that it is partnering with R3 (another DIF member) to apply self-sovereign identity to financial services. Essentially, this joint initiative brings together two ledgers: One for the financial service industry (Corda by R3) and one that was built for self-sovereign identity (Sovrin, originally developed by Evernym and later turned over to the international non-profit Sovrin Foundation).

2.3 Sovrin

At its heart, Sovrin technology facilitates the exchange of ‘verifiable claims’, which in this context refers to those provable attestations which entities make about themselves: their age, address, certifications earned, and more. Evernym builds applications upon the Sovrin network which specialize in identity-based claims, such as those which establish a user’s authority to exert control over the funds in a particular financial account. (click)

Sovrin is als the name of the self-sovereign identity ledger. It is a free and open-source project. The whitepaper can be read here.

2.4 Microsoft

Yesterday, Mircosoft published a blogpost about their status quo in Digital IDs which is also a good introduction to the topic as such:

Decentralized Digital Identities and Blockchain – The Future as We See It.

Of course, Microsoft sees the potential of the technology quite clearly yet they also acknowledge that scalability is a major issue:

Some public blockchains (Bitcoin [BTC], Ethereum, Litecoin, to name a select few) provide a solid foundation for rooting DIDs, recording DPKI operations, and anchoring attestations. While some blockchain communities have increased on-chain transaction capacity (e.g. blocksize increases), this approach generally degrades the decentralized state of the network and cannot reach the millions of transactions per second the system would generate at world-scale. (source)

In order to overcome this they are “collaborating” on other protocols “to achieve global scale” (click). Note that in their blogpost Microsoft reveals that they have “invested in incubating a set of ideas for using Blockchain (and other distributed ledger technologies [which COULD include IOTA]) to create new types of digital identities […].” (click)

2.5 ID2020

Moreover, Microsoft has joined the ID2020 Alliance in January 2018 whose strategic goals encompass:

Accelerate access to digital identity for those living without

Set standards for a trustworthy decentralized identity framework, facilitating interoperability and creating an efficient market

Increase the efficiency and sustainability of global financing for identity

Enable more efficient and effective delivery of development and humanitarian aid

Another main sponsor and also partner of DIF is Accenture.

3. Connecting the dots

So the DIF is the place where all of the above-mentioned companies come together. Microsoft being among those has linked in their blogpost under point 5 (first bullet-point) the website of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) which is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web according to Wikipedia. This organization is working on Decentralized Identifiers which are “a new type of identifier for verifiable, “self-sovereign” digital identity. DIDs are fully under the control of the DID subject, independent from any centralized registry, identity provider, or certificate authority.”

The main editors are closely connected to Evernym (Drummond Reed is the Chief Trust Officer at Evernym and Secretary at Sovrin Foundation), Manu Sporny and Dave Longley are members of Sovrin’s Technical Governance board (click).

To put it short: W3C is working on standardizing Decentralized Identifiers and Evernym people are (deeply) involved; this project can also be found among the above-mentioned DIF working groups . The same people that also have a partnership with the R3. Cool.

Now Evernym was recently not only chosen by the same Outlier Ventures as IOTA back in June 2017 to be backed financially, but Evernym has also officially launched a collaboration with IOTA in the field of Digital ID:

The challenge of determining identity goes far beyond simply identifying humans. If the great promise of the Internet of Things is to be fulfilled, connected devices must also be uniquely and enduringly identifiable, and the validity of what they claim to be must be quickly verifiable. This is precisely the work Evernym is pursuing. Expect significant advancements to emerge from our collaboration with IOTA. (Drummond Reed, Evernym’s Chief Trust Officer. Source)

Drummon Reed summed it up in his overview about Sovrin here and called IOTA’s approach as a “powerful new way”:

https://medium.com/media/9c7d990704ed58bb57eea00dbb9d845b/href

The UN-backed ID2020 consortium was co-founded by John Edge. The same John Edge joined the IOTA Foundation in July 2017.

Thus, we have an apparently very good interconnection of IOTA in the realm of DIF on the one side and the co-founder of the biggest Digital ID alliance on a government scale (ID2020) aboard the IOTA Foundation (That both are somewhat linked could be seen from tweets like this).

Something many are not yet aware is IOTA’s collaboration with an initiative which was founded on Richard Branson’s Necker Island, namely the World Identity Network:

https://medium.com/media/f7f1dc24674faf942416c097cb4f9bb4/href

Add to this that not only IoT, but also Identitiy of Things (IDoT) plays an integral part of the IOTA roadmap and you will recognize that big things are about to be revealed here (Taipei certainly is only the beginning).

Obviously, only the tip of the iceberg has been revealed so far, but it also is a very complex undertaking. In Dominik Schiener’s words:

source: IOTA Discord channel

Just to emphasize it: signing up a lot of companies…dedicate their best people…5 companies on board so far.

Bringing IDoT to the masses is an enormous undertaking, but the IOTA Foundation has the means (both financially and manpower-wise) to do so. Enabling this in the real world will certainly be a gamechanger.

I can only advise you to dig a bit deeper into the matter by following the links provided above or simply watch this video of Wilfried Piementa, another IOTA Foundation member, explaining it:

https://medium.com/media/15ed595e8ebc01638d96bab140f95bef/href

We are at the edge if a whole new level of this technology…

As always, I would be really happy about donations (you may also read my other articles):

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This Post was originally published by Chris Mueller on Medium.

The post IOTA: The case of Decentralized Digital Identity appeared first on IOTA News.

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