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Once your dream fireplace is a part of your home, you can rest easy that you’re ready for winter, right? This may be wrong. Depending on the type of system you have, you need to make sure you have the correct fuel to stay warm this season.

Burning Wood

If you have a wood fireplace, insert, or stove, you need to have a store of wood for winter. Running low on firewood part-way through the cold season can be a recipe for disaster (and cold holidays). Make sure you’re ready by preparing now.

  • Properly Seasoned Firewood
    You should only burn properly seasoned firewood in your wood-burning fireplace. This wood has been cut and stored to dry until it is ready to burn. When a tree is cut down it can be filled with 50 to 75 percent water. In order to burn cleanly, it should have less than 20 percent water content. You can tell wood is ready to burn by checking for dull coloring, a hallow sound when hit together, the bark will pull away from the wood, and the wood will be lighter.
  • Buying Seasoned Firewood
    If you need firewood for this season now, there is no time to let it season. You need to find a local source for seasoned firewood. You can check out the place to make sure you get what you pay for and that the wood is ready for use.
  • Storing Firewood
    You may not have a good way to store the firewood, especially if you’re just getting started with a wood-burning stove or fireplace. If you don’t have a wood shed, then stacking the wood under a tarp will work. Stacking the wood on a bed of gravel will help keep the firewood out of standing water, and stacking it loosely will keep air circulating, keeping the wood dry.

The Problem with Green Wood

Do not burn green wood, even if you’re desperate. There is always a way to find seasoned firewood. Burning green wood is bad for your chimney system, bad for the environment, and hard on your lungs. The moisture in green wood causes it to burn incompletely, leading to more creosote and soot in the chimney system, as well as an increase in smoke and particulate pollution. When you burn green wood, you have to burn two to three times as much in order to reach the same temperature as seasoned firewood. This is a waste of money and time. It will also mean that you need more chimney sweeps and inspections to clean away the excess soot and creosote.

The Cozy Flame

The Cozy Flame sells and installs the best wood-burning stoves, inserts, and fireplaces, but even the best products on the market will only work as well as the fuel you burn in them. Protect your family, your investment, and your comfort by preparing for winter now.


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When you’re shopping for a new fireplace you might hear the term “direct-vent”. These fireplaces with no chimney may seem absurd, but they are a fabulous addition to any home. Investing in a fireplace will add value and comfort to your home for years to come. Investing in a direct vent fireplace will mean efficiency and safety to boot.

How Direct Vent Fireplaces Work

In order for a fire to burn, three things are required, oxygen, heat, and fuel. Most gas appliances draw air from the home and then vent the byproducts from the fire by a flue. A direct vent fireplace neither uses air from the house nor requires a flue to vent. Instead, the direct vent fireplace is a closed unit, independent from the house. There is one pipe in which air is drawn into the unit from outdoors, and another pipe where the fire is vented outdoors. This means the unit can be installed anywhere that has access to an outside wall. The only disturbance of the air inside the home is due to blowers pulling the air into the space around the unit to heat it and then push it back into the home.

Advantages of a Direct Vent Fireplace

It’s downright difficult to determine the biggest advantage of a direct vent fireplace. They can install anywhere, so you can have a fireplace in any room, big or small, as long as there is outer wall access. That’s not all, though. There are many reasons to invest in a direct vent fireplace.

Closed Unit – Unlike a traditional open fireplace that can lose up to 75 percent of the heat out the chimney, a closed direct vent fireplace doesn’t lose any heat. In fact, all the heat generated with a direct vent fireplace is used for the home and the unit has precise heat control that allows you to regulate it.

Efficiency – Because it is a closed unit, the direct vent fireplace looks just like a standard fireplace, but works like a stove. Designed to burn natural gas, these units burn the most efficient fuel in the most efficient way possible.

Safety – Direct vent fireplaces need no flue so they don’t have the risk factors that a flue has. There is no creosote buildup in a direct vent fireplace, very little carbon buildup, and no backdraft. These units, when installed correctly by a licensed professional, are safer than many similar products.

Versatile Installation – If you don’t have space on a wall, the direct vent fireplace can be vented through the roof. They also come in big and small models that allow for any space to accommodate a beautiful new fireplace.

Versatile Style – Just as every home has a personality and style, there are many styles of direct vent fireplaces. You can choose a traditional style that complements a traditional and homey décor or a simple and sleek design that complements a contemporary or minimalist home. You can choose a direct vent fireplace because of the price or the size and then have a mantel and hearth designed to your specifications.

Converting to Gas

Installing a direct vent fireplace is a great way to convert an inefficient gas or wood fireplace into a heat machine. You can choose a direct vent gas insert that is retrofitted directly into an existing firebox and insulated properly to prevent heat transfer. The vent is then piped up through an existing chimney, bypassing tired and damaged flues altogether.

Getting Started

You don’t want to do this sort of work on your own or order these appliances online. In fact, showrooms across the country are filled with returns from improperly measured units that arrived, only to be cast aside because it was the wrong size, the wrong setup, or more. When you’re ready to get started, make sure you start and finish with a professional. A certified dealer like The Cozy Flame can have a technician out to your home to measure the space properly, to make sure the unit is the capacity you need and the style that you want. When you trust The Cozy Flame with your home hearth needs, we trust your home with our sister company Total Chimney Care.

Total Chimney Care employs only the best sweeps certified by the Chimney Safety Institute of America (CSIA). Our team of trusted professionals will arrive at the appointed time, in company uniforms, and treat your home with the respect and courtesy we would our own. When we do a service or installation we protect your flooring and furniture with drop cloths and use high powered vacuuming systems for cleaning to ensure your home stays clean and mess-free every time.

If you’re looking to add a direct vent fireplace to your space, big or small, look no further than The Cozy Flame. We carry Hampton Direct Vent Fireplaces, carefully crafted from cast iron with incredible attention to detail and timeless style. Hampton brings together the classic look of traditional cast iron and the efficiency and technology of the future. Still on the fence about a direct vent fireplace? Regency and Hampton have all the information you need, and our experts can help you choose.

Call or stop by our showroom at 116-Q Research Dr in Milford, Connecticut.

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Obama Wants to Change Rules of Elections Before 2024 to Help Democrats

Obama Wants to Change Rules of Elections Before 2024 to Help Democrats

(TheDailyHorn.com) – Former President Barack Obama just couldn’t help himself. On Monday, June 21, Obama waded into the controversial legislation titled the “For the People Act.” SR 1, formerly HR 1, the Democrats’ attempt at election reforms after the 2020 election compromised voter trust nationwide. GOP-run states have, thus far, led the charge in this area.

Obama referred to common-sense election reforms introduced by the GOP as “shenanigans.” He called on Senate Republicans not to filibuster the bill, which would handicap local election officials and hijack elections by federalizing them. However, Republicans voted unanimously against the measure, effectively stalling it indefinitely, possibly permanently — at least in its current form.

Obama wants SR 1 to pass before the next election. He offered some mental gymnastics when he tied the January 6 riot on Capitol Hill to the Democrats’ voter law. The former president claimed that if the law didn’t pass, it would hurt America’s democracy but Republicans clearly weren’t buying it.

On Monday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) announced that he and moderate Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) had come to a deal. The political stunt was designed to avoid the perception that Manchin was bucking party leadership. Democrats want to pretend the GOP is the real problem.

On Tuesday, Schumer forced a vote on the measure despite knowing it had no hope of passing. As expected, the GOP held the line and the legislation failed to muster the necessary 60 votes.

CopyRight 2021, TheDailyHorn.com


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[UK] Doritos Winterball 2020 [RESULTS]

Hello Doritos!

Earlier today, we logged for our annual 2020 Doritos Winterball! This event was a huge blast filled with laughter and joy. We started off with some opening tactics and ended it off with fun categories for everyone to participate in! We managed to pull a max of 60 troops!

Here are the winners of the Winterball:

Best Dressed

Funniest Outfit

Best Single

Best LGBTQ+ Couples

Best Couple 4ic and below

Winterball King & Queen

Doritos Leader

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What to Do When the Circus Finds You

an interview with
Alma Derricks VP Sales and Marketing, Resident Shows Division, Cirque du Soleil

If you’ve seen at least one Cirque du Soleil show, then you know this is not your grandfather’s circus. In fact, thinking about shows like Love and O, one might even forget to use the word circus when attempting to describe them.  So with such a differentiated product, you might think marketing could take a back seat and indeed this was the case for many years. But with competition rising, Cirque has had to up its game on the marketing front, adding talent like Alma Derricks, VP Sales and Marketing of Cirque’s Resident Shows Division.

In our extensive interview below, Alma shares some of the challenges she faced at Cirque, differentiating a portfolio of eight shows in Las Vegas, rebranding one of the shows, creating new customer experiences and even establishing a new line of business entirely.  It is little wonder that Alma garnered the Customer Experience Award from The CMO Club.  Read on to discover the high wire act of the modern marketer.

Drew: How did you end up at Cirque Du Soleil?

Alma: The circus sort of finds you, Drew. I can’t say that 10 years ago this was on my roadmap. It appeared as an opportunity. One of the throughlines in my career is that I run towards moments of inflection and Cirque, with its new private equity ownership, was definitely at one of those points when I joined last July. I love getting to ask questions, top to bottom, without any regard for how things have always been done. And that’s what I walked into.

Drew: So let’s talk about the Resident Shows Division at Cirque de Soleil.

Alma: There are two major divisions at Cirque de Soleil. There’s the Residents Shows Division which oversees shows that are nailed down including our eight shows in Las Vegas and Orlando. We also have another team, the Touring Shows Division, that oversees shows that move around in the big top tent or tour in arenas.

Drew: That’s a lot of shows and seats to fill.

Alma: In Las Vegas, we sell as many as 20,000 tickets a night. It’s a lot of inventory in a very, very busy town. My job is all about keeping our shows top of mind. For us, that’s usually an interesting continuum. Because we’re based in resorts, it’s not likely that you’ll see one of our shows more than once a year so, it’s important to stay in your peripheral vision. Once the decision is made to visit Las Vegas or Orlando, it’s really important that for us to break through the noise and remind you that we’re the most exciting thing that you can do in the evening. Cirque is over 30 years old. For the mass majority of those years, Cirque grew organically because it was new, different and dazzling. For example, a show like O, which is our flagship show at the Bellagio in Las Vegas, was sold out for two years when it opened. Marketing thinking is a relatively new thing for Cirque but incredibly important now that we’re not the newest kid on the block.

Drew: So what now?

Alma: Now, we’re in a different stage of life because we’re more established and face a lot of different challenges in the market. Vegas has gone through a number of reinventions over the past 30 years. Today, there’s a brand new 17,000 seat arena that hosts major concerts and will soon be home to a new hockey team. Special event residencies like JLo, Britney and Celine have emerged as an important part of the competitive landscape. So we have to keep reinventing ourselves in a space that, as you know from visiting Vegas, is a really busy place. We have to always make the loudest noise in that environment and make sure that visitors are still aware that we’re around, that we’re exciting and that we’re vital.

Drew: Must be a challenge from a portfolio management standpoint, right? Do people go to see a Cirque show or a specific show?

Alma: It’s a great question. What you’re hitting on is something really particular to Las Vegas because we have so many resident shows in one place. I’m always troubled when customers say that they don’t understand the differences between our shows. Some people think that there’s ‘O’, which stands out as “the water show”, and maybe one other production. One of the real challenges we have is needing to flip the brand script in Vegas and emphasize the show ahead of the Cirque brand. We need explain the differences between these shows. They all have very, very different personalities. And the thing that I’ve been working on quite a bit is, how do you communicate that each show is the only show you have to see.

Drew: Interesting. So how does this play out in places like social media?

Alma: I think one of the next new frontiers for Cirque is allowing customers behind the curtain a little bit more. It’s something that our founder was very, very cautious about in the early days of social media. But the world has changed and the expectation that an audience has about peeking behind that curtain is something we can’t put back in the bottle. So we’re trying to find ways to facilitate that via social media and social content and by creating events in Las Vegas that are complete behind the curtain experiences.

Drew: What would you look at now so far and say that oh, I’m really proud of this from a marketing standpoint that we were able to get this done and you been a relatively short period of time?

Alma: From a marketing standpoint, I think our highest profile achievement was actually rebranding our show The Beatles LOVE. I didn’t completely understand until we were well into the process that Cirque has never rebranded an existing show. For the tenth anniversary, we made quite a few changes to the show, the music, the technology and the visual identity. It was really interesting to rethink the entire way we were approaching getting that messaging out. I’m proud that we got through it and succeeded at so well.

Drew: What else?

Alma: I’m also really excited about offerings that give customers behind the scenes access. We’ve actually created an entire line of business called SPARK that serves as a learning laboratory for corporate teams. We provide business training, team building and will even create a customized curriculum. We’ve hosted companies like Adobe and Google onto the stage and into our training spaces so they can interact with our performers and production teams. It’s both an amazing bucket list moment and a chance to really learn about trust, team building, operational excellence and customer service in a very tangible way.

Drew: Very cool. I love the fact that as a marketing person you were so involved in creating a new revenue stream.

Alma: Thanks. Part of the process that I go through when I’m new to an organization, especially when I’m tasked with being a change agent, is to seek out these kinds of opportunities. I love the fact that we are able to build SPARK by leveraging our core business, our custom theatres, our performers, and our production teams. It’s taking off like a rocket, and has not only created a new way access the brand but also makes a strong statement about who we are.

Drew: By the way, I saw LOVE twice many moons ago. There you dealt with the common marketing challenge of taking a beloved brand and refreshing it.

Alma: True. With the refresh, especially if you are a Beatles fan, we’ve given you a new reason to see it again. We also recognized that technology changes and improves a lot in 10 years. Cirque has always taken pride in its fusion of technology and artistry so it seemed very natural as the tenth anniversary approached to rethink the staging, effects, and imagery. The original show was very nostalgic. Today it’s more colorful and, at the same time, showcases the fact that The Beatles are as relevant today as they were in the 60s.

Drew: Let’s talk metrics. Which ones matter?

Alma: Ticket sales are, of course, number one. Put that one in bold! But we also think about how our performers are evolving as creators and artists. Many artists like contortionists have a relatively short performing career. We are always thinking about what else interests them and how we can involve them in other ways with things like quasi-internships in marketing or sales. It’s an unusual thing but we’ve failed if we haven’t taken that into consideration along with our other marketing activities.

Drew: Do you have some advice for fellow marketers as they look ahead to 2017?

Alma: The first thing that comes to mind is proportionality. Just because the world is talking about spending more and more on digital doesn’t mean that it’s right for your business. For us, the real battle begins once a visitor to Vegas sets foot on the ground at the airport or drives into town. So, things like taxi toppers, building wraps, marquees and all those great out-of -home things will never stop being a priority in our marketing mix. It’s not about being modern or not, it’s about knowing your audience and understanding your context.

Drew: Totally agree. I’ve talked to a couple of CMOs that have pulled back their digital spend of late because it wasn’t performing as well as a mix with more TV. Do you have a recommend don’t for 2017?

Alma: Don’t get too absorbed by chasing big data, especially if it’s not relevant to you. Don’t let the pursuit of big data cause you to lose sight of the importance of instinct and intuition. It’s still the hallmark of what we do as marketers. You still have to have a gut instinct. Big data becomes a fantastic tool but, at the end of the day, you still have to know your products intimately and you still have to recognize a great idea even if you don’t have stacks of information to go on.

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Ep. 33, My Cross Podcast with Franz from Medsailor.com

by JeffreyWettig | August 31st, 2015

Franz Amussen

Greetings folks! This episode is a special one!
I had the chance a week or so ago to Cross Podcast with Franz Amussen from The Sailing in the Mediterranean Podcast. He interviewed me and then I interviewed him, and we chatted a bit in between. His interview with me is available over at http://www.medsailor.com/?p=1803.
Franz was a great guest and host and it was super interesting to chat with about his sailing experiences on the Med, how he built his 32ft. Channel Cutter from a bare hull, at the same time as building a vacation home, his sail racing on the Great Salt Lake, and his Trans Atlantic Crossing almost 20 years ago. The past 18 years or so his boat has been kept in and around the Mediterranean, and his hopes are to sail in the direction of the Black Sea, before potentially heading back towards the eastern half around Italy and Spain.
Franz also produces financial/investment podcasts and American Sailing Association classwork study guides that will help you pass the ASA sailing exams, check his website for more information about them.
I also love the introduction to his episodes, hear it and you’ll know, “Sometimes you just have to Say…….”
Episode 33 is available via Itunes or for Download Here.
or stream it below

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US Plunges in World Press Freedom Index after NSA Leaks, Attacks on Whistleblowers

Sourced: RT

Reuters / Gary Cameron

Press freedom in the United States has suffered “one of the most significant declines” in the last year after sacrificing information to national security, with the NSA surveillance scandal topping the list of wrongdoing.

That’s according to The World Press Freedom Index for 2014 from Reporters Without Borders (RWB), which put the US in 46th place out of 180 countries, a 13-place drop from last year.

This time American misdemeanors were in the report’s chapter on “Information sacrificed to national security and surveillance,” which says: “Countries that pride themselves on being democracies and respecting the rule of law” too often sacrifice the freedom of speech to “an overly broad and abusive interpretation of national security needs.”

“Investigative journalism often suffers as a result” of a “disturbing retreat from democratic practices,” the RWB report said.

World’s best countries for press freedom*

1. Finland
2. Netherlands
3. Norway
4. Luxembourg
5. Andorra
6. Liechtenstein
7. Denmark
8. Iceland
9. New Zealand
10. Sweden

World’s worst countries for press freedom*

170. Cuba
171. Lao People’s Democratic Republic
172. Sudan
173. Islamic republic of Iran
174. Vietnam
175. China
176. Somalia
177. Syrian Arab Republic
178. Turkmenistan
179. Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
180. Eritrea

*Source: Reporters Without Borders, The World Press Freedom Index for 2014.

The RWB recalled all recent major assaults on the freedom of press in the US, be it the conviction of US Army whistleblower Bradley (Chelsea) Manning or the manhunt for former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, whose revelations about pervasive worldwide surveillance conducted by the US intelligence’s made WikiLeaks publications of Manning’s files pale by comparison.

Another notorious attack on journalism mentioned by the RWB was the seizure of “thousands and thousands” of Associated Press phone calls by the US Justice Department, which was searching for a leak in the CIA.

The RWB recalled scandalous cases of freelance digital journalist Barrett Brown, who now faces 105 years in prison for sharing a link to stolen classified data, and New York Times reporter James Risen, who also faces a term in jail if he does not testify against CIA whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling.

Throughout 2013 a number of US journalists have been issued with subpoenas and pressured to reveal off-the-record sources they relied upon, which prompted some activists to call for a media shield law to protect journalists’ sources and thousands of internet-involved organizations to organize protest against massive electronic surveillance.

In 2012, the US fell even lower, to 47th position, after tumbling 27 positions – a result of a series of arrests of high-profile journalists during the Occupy Wall Street protests.

Freedom of speech in Britain, a close US ally, by comparison, was viewed as less restricted, with the country in 33rd place. The UK fell back three places after the exposure of deep collaboration between American and British security and intelligence services in suppressing the freedom of the press.

While UK’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) agency actually taught American NSA how to conduct online espionage, Britain has been evaluated quite mildly, only suffering a minor decline in the index. The only incident mentioned by the RWB was the detention of David Miranda, the partner of ex-Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald who revealed NSA spy programs.

screenshot from from http://rsf.orgscreenshot from from

RWB did not considered the most recent revelation about British intelligence, found practicing not just spying but actively using cyber-attacks to deal with such information disseminators as Anonymous and LulzSec hacktivists, or that global media watchdogs are planning to investigate press freedom in the UK.

Also, Glenn Greenwald’s revelations about UK and US mainstream media being “devoted servants” of the intelligence agencies seemingly have not affected the rating.

Meanwhile WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is still trapped in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, with the freedom of information campaigner still being pursued by UK and Swedish justice.

In the 2014 RWB index, Russia was placed 148th, the same as in last year’s ranking. Though praising “the resistance of civil society” in the country, the report still accuses Moscow of “using UN bodies and regional alliances such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in its efforts to undermine international standards on freedom of information.”

TLB recommends you visit for more great articles and pertinent information.

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, , , , , , , ,

Isn’t it amazing! How touching someone, no matter what age, does so many wonderful things. This touch is so profound that if babies and infants do not receiving cuddling, hugs, & other loving touches they 100% grow up to have an anti-social personality disorder, which usually leads to the harming of others.

It is extremely important to touch newborns as often as time, desire, & space permits. They will grow healthy mentally, spiritually, & physically.

How often has the touch of a loved one made your day easier, lovelier, & sweeter? Touches can say I care, I love, I support.. you. They can calm you from erratic emotions or excite you for intimate play. I think when people are upset, angry, or sad, they have probably been lacking touches in their lives. So the next time you’re out & meet an irate person, ask them do they need a little touch today? They will probably calm down & hug you…

*pics from typorama


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Woodside Red Cross Hospital 1917

Red Cross vehicles outside Woodside Red Cross Hospital in 1917.

The Glasgow and West of Scotland College of Domestic Science (Incorporated) was set up in 1908 as a result of the amalgamation of the Glasgow School of Cookery and the West End School of Cookery, and was affectionately nicknamed the "Dough School". In 1909 the college launched an appeal to raise money for a new building and construction work started in 1913 on a site in Park Drive in Woodlands. When the First World War broke out the Red Cross approached the college authorities and asked for permission to use the new building as a hospital once construction work was finished.

The building continued in use as a hospital until 1919, when it was handed back to the college. In 1975 it was renamed Queen's College, and in 1993 amalgamated with Glasgow Polytechnic to create Glasgow Caledonian University. The Park Drive site was renamed Park Campus and in 2001 was sold to the University of Glasgow.

Reference: 1530.85.272

Reproduced with the permission of Glasgow City Council, Glasgow Museums

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The LMA Choir are off to Robbie Williams' house in X Factor - The Guide Liverpool

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The LMA Choir are off to Robbie Williams’ house in X Factor

The LMA Choir has continued its success on this year’s The X Factor by storming through the hotly-contested Six Chair Challenge to win a place in the next stage of the competition.

The 14 talented singers, along with choir founder Stephanie Wallace Carr, were the first to be voted through in the nail-biting challenge on Saturday night which saw The X Factor hopefuls compete for one of the coveted six places in each category – Boys, Girls, Groups and Overs.

Their latest success follows The X Factor auditions where the choir was given a standing ovation by all four judges – Simon Cowell, One Direction’s Louis Tomlinson, singer Robbie Williams and Ayda Williams – at the SSE Arena, Wembley.

The Six Chair Challenge involves acts performing before the judges who decide if they are to be awarded a seat or sent home.

Even if they win a seat it does not necessarily mean they are safe, because if that category’s judge believes another performer deserves their seat more, they will have to give up their chair.

LMA Choir sang a stellar rendition of the Sam Cooke classic A Change is Gonna Come. Following the performance mentor for the Groups, Robbie Williams told the choir: “LMA Choir you know how I feel about you. I’m going to give you a seat.”

Speaking after the challenge, Stephanie said: “It was definitely more nerve-racking than the auditions, and so brutal as well! It’s like the Hunger Games.

“We were the first to get a seat. And then there were sing-offs. But we were lucky enough that we kept our chair all the way through.”

The Liverpool singers, who are being mentored in the Groups category by Robbie Williams, will now go forward to the Judges’ Houses.

Choir member Cameron Povall, added: “Walking away from the Six Chair Challenge, I had to stop for about five minutes. I was looking at Robbie and I was like – are we through? His words were ‘yes, you’re coming to my house’.

“It was mind-blowing, walking away from that stage just knowing we’ve got a chance now, we’re one step away from the live shows. It was just the best feeling in the world. Best. Feeling. In. The. World.”

The LMA choir is made up of founder and LMA Creative Director Stephanie Wallace Carr and 14 young people from musical courses at LMA, which is located on Duke Street and Hope Street in Liverpool’s city centre and celebrates its 10th birthday this year.

LMA is a specialist college and university centre which offers a range of courses in the creative and performing arts, including BA Hons Degrees and BTEC courses in areas such as Digital Film & TV Production, Games Art & Animation, Music Performance & Industry, Musical Theatre and Acting.  All its courses are designed and delivered by industry award-winning professionals and include significant elements of work experience in order to help graduates improve their employability after graduating.

To find out more, visit the LMA website here.

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A Security researcher has discovered a unique attack method that can be used to steal credentials from a locked computer (but, logged-in) and works on both Windows as well as Mac OS X systems.

In his blog post published today, security expert Rob Fuller demonstrated and explained how to exploit a USB SoC-based device to turn it into a credential-sniffer that works even on a locked computer or laptop.

Fuller modified the firmware code of USB dongle in such a way that when it is plugged into an Ethernet adapter, the plug-and-play USB device installs and acts itself as the network gateway, DNS server, and Web Proxy Auto-discovery Protocol (WPAD) server for the victim's machine.
Stack Overflow Teams

The attack is possible because most PCs automatically install Plug-and-Play USB devices, meaning "even if a system is locked out, the device [dongle] still gets installed," Fuller explains in his blog post.
"Now, I believe there are restrictions on what types of devices are allowed to install at a locked out state on newer operating systems (Win10/El Capitan), but Ethernet/LAN is definitely on the white list."

How does the Attack Work?

You might be wondering: Why your computer automatically share Windows credentials with any connected device?

That is because of the default behavior of Microsoft Window's name resolution services, which can be abused to steal authentication credentials.
Prevent Data Breaches

The modified plug-and-play USB Ethernet adapter includes a piece of software, i.e. Responder, which spoofs the network to intercept hashed credentials and then stored them in an SQLite database.

The hashed credentials collected by the network exploitation tool can later be easily brute-forced to get clear text passwords.

Apparently, to conduct this attack, attackers would require physical access to a target computer, so that they can plug in the evil USB Ethernet adapter. However, Fuller says the average time required for a successful attack is just 13 seconds.

You can watch the video demonstration below that shows Fuller's attack in action.
Fuller successfully tested his attack against Windows 98 SE, Windows 2000 SP4, Windows XP SP3, Windows 7 SP1, Windows 10 Enterprise and Home (but not Windows 8), as well as OS X El Capitan and OS X Mavericks. He's also planning to test it against several Linux distros.

Fuller tested the attack with two USB Ethernet dongles: the USB Armory and the Hak5 Turtle. For more detailed explanation, you can head on to his blog post.

Found this article interesting? Follow THN on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to read more exclusive content we post.


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Business / Contracts

Our firm provides advice and services in matters involving:

  • Formation of corporations, partnerships, limited partnerships and LLCs
  • Drafting of corporate bylaws, governance agreements and meeting procedures

We have experience in drafting and negotiating all types of business contracts and equine contracts.

The type of entity (LLC, PC etc.) that you decide to form your business as will determine what rights and obligations will be imposed upon your business and you as the owner.  Various types of agreements may need to be drafted including employment, confidentiality, or stock purchase agreements. When you are negotiating a contract, it is important to not get hung up on issues that may not matter in the long run. While there are certain types of provisions that sound good, they are not critical to the agreement and should not distract you from your main goals.

At The Hall Law Office, LLC, we focus on the important issues when drafting and negotiating a contract. To do this, we work with the client to figure out your vision for the business and strategies that support the overall goals of the business. Then we create a contract designed to achieve these goals and protect your rights and interests. All contracts and other legal documents are drafted with the intention of avoiding litigation.  Many claims will settle out of court, but there is never a guarantee.

You and your business are unique. Focusing on your businesses distinctive needs allows us to hand craft every business agreement and contract.


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Homeschool Resources

We are one busy family! I imagine most families are. In order to help keep life organized and as stress-free as possible, we’ve created a variety of charts and lists to keep things in order.

Here, you’ll find our collection of printable homeschool records and household management charts made available for our readers to use. We pray these resources help your family, offering more time to have fun.

“But all things should be done decently and in order.”
I Cor. 14:40

(Please note: Our record keeping documents are not colorful and cute. As much as I would like them to be so, we find it necessary to maintain a professional portfolio.)

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Jacobin - December 9, 2019

"One Big Union—that is their crime. That is why the IWW {International Workers of the World} is on trial. In the end, just such an ideal shall sap and crumble down capitalist society. If there were a way to kill these men, capitalist society would clearly do it; as it killed Frank Little, for example — and before him, Joe Hill . . . So, the outcry of the jackal press, “German agents! Treason!” — that the IWW may be lynched on a grand scale."

“To be a red in the summer of 1919 was worse than being a Hun in the summer of 1917,” wrote John Dos Passos in 1919, his novel of the war years. The nation was war-weary as the year began, still reeling from the deadly influenza — the “Spanish flu.” It yearned and deserved “normalcy,” politicians argued — a return to the familiar, to a rural America, to a country of farms, small towns, and the leafy prosperity of the new suburbs. It wanted to leave behind the battlefields and bloody revolutions of the old world.

Yet the Armistice celebrations — enormous and near universal in the United States — had hardly stilled when that “normal” was erased and new disputes emerged, exposing deep fissures that presaged an extraordinary year to come. On November 11, 1918, clothing workers in New York began a general strike, demanding a forty-four-hour workweek and wage increases. They were joined on picket lines by returning soldiers and sailors. Scarcely a month had passed, and far across the continent, shipyard workers in Seattle voted to strike, rejecting the wage offers of wartime government regulators.

And strike they did, clearing the way for the Seattle General Strike, the first and only one of its kind in the United States, challenging not just managerial authority but civil as well. For a full week in February, committees of ordinary workers saw to it that the sick were cared for, that the garbage was collected, that babies got their milk, and that there was order on the streets.

Seattle was just the beginning. Workers’ moods had shifted steadily to the left. They were moved by the new radicalism of the times, not just in the United States but internationally. New solidarities had been constructed, ethnic isolation had diminished, and appetites had enlarged. Conflicts spilled out of the workplace and into working-class neighborhoods. At the same time, the mainstream American Federation of Labor was confronted as increasing numbers of workers came to reject its traditions and practice — conservatism, collaboration with employers and the state, and strict insistence on the sanctity of contracts and the authority of trade union leaders.

All this came to a head in 1919, a year like none other. Some3,630 strikes were recorded, involving 4.6 million workers. In the wake of the Seattle walkout, four harbor-wide longshoremen’s strikes broke out in New York, the last tying up shipping for six weeks. The year ended with national walkouts of coal miners and steel workers, the latter one of the largest US strikes ever: 375,000. The Open Shop Review, an organ of the employers’ associations, insisted it was an attempt by foreigners, “Bolsheviks and anarchists,” to destroy the government. In Pittsburgh, representatives of the Interchurch World Movement investigating the steel strike indeed found “the Slavic workers were radical and impatient with the conservative pleas of their leaders,” though they were neither Wobblies nor anarchists. The national coal strike was settled in November, but conflict continued in southern coalfields, culminating in insurrection in the armed march of 10,000 miners into Logan County, West Virginia — the “Battle of Blair Mountain.”

This was not what employers wanted, not what they had fought for, even as, for the most part, they were still winning. There were cracks in American society in 1919 — perhaps even large enough to be expected — but this was a chasm, and a living affront in the boardrooms and residential districts of the Babbitts of the land.

Employers were intent on rolling back wartime concessions to workers — above all, wherever they had won the eight-hour day and the union shop. Countless employers’ associations were reborn or rebounded, and myriad employment plans were produced, all of which came under the umbrella of the “American Plan.” The American Plan revived the “open shop” strategies of the 1910s, based on the idea that strikes were illegal and trade unions were “un-American.” In 1919, this was revised: now it was the reds. The “Red Scare” and the Palmer Raids would follow — along with the infamous Centralia incident.

The Wobblies

Dos Passos was quite right to point out the lumbermen and their war with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, or Wobblies). The Wobblies, always a minority within the labor movement, were in many ways the heart and soul of that movement. They believed that when the day came, “control of industry would pass from the capitalists to the masses and the capitalists will vanish from the face of the earth.” The workers would then possess the machinery of production and distribution, enabling them to create “a new society without poverty, police, jails, armies, churches . . . blessed with freedom and abundance.”

But they were trade unionists as well. They championed industrial unions, direct action, the strike; they savaged “business unionism” and the racism of the AFL unions. They organized Mexican copper miners in Arizona and black Louisiana timber workers; their leadership included Ben Fletcher, the black Philadelphia longshoreman, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, the Irish firebrand, and Frank Little, the western organizer who self-identified as American Indian.

The Wobblies gave as good as they got. Their victory in the Spokane free speech fight helped make the Pacific Northwest a stronghold, with Seattle as base camp. They fought on dozens of fronts, leading many of the biggest strikes of the period despite numbering about 200,000. One of their greatest victories came in the 1917 strike in timber — some 50,000 loggers and mill workers struck for and won the eight-hour day. ...
Read full article at Jacobin


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Joe Dibee’s 12 years on the lam came to an end last August, when Cuban authorities detained the 50-year-old environmental activist during a layover in Havana and turned him over to the United States.

More than a decade earlier, police and FBI agents had arrested a dozen of Dibee’s associates in the Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front within the span of a few months. They were charged with conspiring to burn down factories that slaughtered animals for meat, timber mills that disrupted sensitive ecosystems, government facilities that penned wild horses, and a ski resort perched on a pristine mountaintop. Dibee, a former Microsoft software tester known for his ingenuity, had slipped away in the midst of it all.

While the arsons, which never hurt or killed anyone, largely took place in the late 1990s, the wave of arrests known as the “Green Scare” came in the post-9/11 era, when terrorism was the FBI’s prevailing obsession. The fur and biomedical industries had spent years lobbying the Justice Department and lawmakers to go after eco-activists, who had damaged their property, held audacious demonstrations decrying their business activities, and cost them millions of dollars. When the planes hit the twin towers, industry groups seized on the opportunity to push legislation, and federal law enforcement ramped up pursuit of radical activists in the name of counterterrorism.

Michael B. Ward of the FBI’s counterterrorism division speaks at a press conference on Nov. 19, 2008, about a reward for the capture of four Operation Backfire fugitives. With Ward is Portland Assistant Special Agent in Charge Daniel Nielsen.

Photo: FBI

So-called eco-terrorism became the Justice Department’s No. 1 domestic terror concern — “over the likes of white supremacists, militias, and anti-abortion groups,” as one senator pointed out at the time. Operation Backfire, which sent Dibee running, was the climax of the crackdown. “There was money, there was administrative support, there was management support,” said Jane Quimby, a retired FBI agent who worked on Backfire. The results were “an affirmation that given the resources that you need, and the support that you need, you can really make these things work.”

In 2009, when a Department of Homeland Security intelligence report raised alarms about the rising threat of right-wing extremist violence, it provoked a very different response. After outcry from conservative groups, DHS backtracked on the report and later disbanded the domestic terrorism unit that produced it.

Daryl Johnson, a former domestic terrorism analyst at DHS, says there’s a reason law enforcement took a less aggressive approach to right-wing white supremacists and anti-government attackers. In the case of the eco-extremists, the government had a powerful ally: industry. “You don’t have a bunch of companies coming forward saying I wish you’d do something about these right-wing extremists,” said Johnson, who left his position in 2010, after his warnings about right-wing violence were dismissed. “If enough people lobbied congresspeople about white nationalists and how it’s affecting their business activity, then I’m sure you’ll get legislation.”

Now, in the wake of the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and the murder of counterprotester Heather Heyer by white supremacist James Alex Fields, past and current Justice Department officials have argued that a new domestic terrorism statute is necessary to better respond to far-right violence.

But law enforcement and federal prosecutors already have powerful counterterrorism authorities at their disposal, and their history of using them to go after radical activists who committed property crimes suggests that any new crackdown is likely to sweep up far more than domestic extremists who pose a lethal threat.

No new law was required to treat eco-saboteurs as terrorists in the wake of 9/11. Of 70 federal prosecutions of radical environmentalists and animal rights activists identified by The Intercept, 52 did not result in charges under anti-terrorism laws. Yet the defendants were repeatedly called terrorists by the Justice Department in public statements and internal communications. The designation opened up additional resources and gave the government powerful leverage in the form of terrorism sentencing enhancements, which prosecutors sought in more than 20 cases.

Meanwhile, in the remaining 18 cases, prosecutors applied an anti-terrorism law written with the help of industry that was designed exclusively to target animal rights activists. Six cases involved activists releasing mink and vandalizing fur facilities, and six involved individuals accused of encouraging radical acts like sabotage but not participating in any themselves. Four of the cases involved activists protesting outside researchers’ homes and were dismissed because the allegations were too vague.

The story of how years of corporate lobbying ended with Dibee in cuffs contains lessons for those considering how to handle the surge in right-wing violence, as well as for a new generation of environmental activists again facing accusations of eco-terrorism.

The “wanted” poster for Joseph Mahmoud Dibee, displayed during a press conference in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 19, 2008.

Photo: FBI

Industry Intelligence-Gathering

Joe Dibee grew up camping in the spectacular forests, mountains, and coastal regions of the Pacific Northwest. His parents, members of Syria’s Catholic minority, had immigrated to the U.S. before he was born, settling into Seattle’s middle class. His mother worked at the public library and his father was a finance professor at Seattle University, where Dibee would eventually study civil engineering and general science. Dibee came of age just as law enforcement in the U.S. was beginning to take notice of the budding animal rights movement.

In 1977, when he was 9 years old, a group called the Undersea Railroad released two dolphins from a University of Hawaii marine laboratory — the first known animal liberation in U.S. history. A countermovement was rapidly launched, led by organizations like the National Association for Biomedical Research, which lobbies for the use of live animals in scientific research.

NABR and other industry groups were way ahead of law enforcement in gathering intelligence on the animal rights movement, and federal agents were happy to make use of the information. In March 1987, for example, FBI agents met with NABR about four chimpanzees that had been abducted from a research laboratory. The group “maintains a large intelligence file on the activities of most of the significant animal rights groups in the world,” an agent noted after the meeting, and “furnished the FBI with many documents which deal with these groups as well as outline their significant activities dating back to 1976.”

The FBI’s account of the meeting is included in documents obtained via public records requests by Ryan Shapiro, executive director of the transparency organization Property of the People. The documents show that throughout the 1990s, the FBI and Justice Department collaborated with a range of industry groups including Americans for Medical Progress, the Fur Commission, the National Board of Fur Farm Organizations, the Foundation for Biomedical Research, and the American Feed Industry Association.

▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄No pages

In 1987, the National Association for Biomedical Research supplied the FBI with documents about the activities of animal rights groups going back more than a decade, according to an FBI memo provided to The Intercept by Property of the People. The transparency organization redacted the names of activists who did not grant permission to be identified, to protect their privacy.

In 1987, an animal diagnostics laboratory under construction at the University of California, Davis was burned to the ground — the first U.S. arson claimed by ALF. It was meant “to retaliate in the name of thousands of animals tortured each year in campus labs,” a communique from the saboteurs said.

A month after the arson, a Justice Department public information officer sent a letter to the Fur Retailers Information Council, whose members had also been targeted by the Animal Liberation Front. “I encourage you to send to me any evidence you have indicating criminal activity committed by animal rights activists,” the official wrote. “I am happy to be of assistance to the Fur Retailers Information Council.”

In response, the industry group worked with the Justice Department to create “a directory of some 200 animal rights and animal welfare organizations operating in North America which provides office addresses, names of officers and spokespersons, and a diary of incidents,” according to an October 1988 letter from the council.

▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄No pages

The Fur Retailers Information Council worked with the Justice Department to create a directory of 200 animal rights and animal welfare organizations, according to a 1988 letter from the organization.

“We would occasionally contact the [FBI] to ensure they were aware of a threat or action involving animal extremism. We also sent FBI officials occasional alerts about animal rights actions or threats that might be considered illegal,” said Jim Newman, a spokesperson for Americans for Medical Progress, a nonprofit funded by the biomedical industry to foster support for animal research. “There was no concerted effort in place.” The other groups did not respond to requests for comment, and a spokesperson for the FBI declined to comment.

In some cases, corporations went beyond intelligence sharing to actively ferreting out activists they viewed as threats. One of the strangest efforts involved Leon Hirsch, a manufacturer of surgical staples whose sales demonstrations involved cutting open live beagles and stapling them back together. His company, United States Surgical Corporation, paid a security firm called Perceptions International to infiltrate the animal rights movement.

Mary Lou Sapone, the firm’s undercover agent, befriended a troubled activist named Fran Trutt, who was subsequently accused of planting a pipe bomb at the headquarters of the surgical corporation in an attempt to murder Hirsch. But Trutt was on the phone with Sapone throughout the day before the alleged murder attempt, and another undercover operative working for the company actually drove her to the crime scene and gave her money for the pipe bomb. Trutt pleaded no contest to attempted murder charges. Despite industry’s role in manufacturing the incident, it would later be presented in a key report to Congress as the only “confirmed case” of an animal rights activist using an incendiary device “with intent of harming an individual.”

Industry groups also lobbied for federal legislation that would heighten penalties for activist tactics. “The DOJ has advised that there is significant special interest pressure on Congress to pass legislation which would protect animal and health research property, facilities and personnel from attacks,” according to a 1990 FBI memo.

Two years later, Congress enacted the Animal Enterprise Protection Act, which created a new crime of “animal enterprise terrorism.” The law was aimed at anyone who physically disrupted or conspired to disrupt an animal enterprise by intentionally damaging or causing the loss of its property. It created a legal pathway to imprison a broad range of saboteurs and their allies.

But the AEPA didn’t lead to the kind of crackdown the biomedical and fur lobbyists sought. The law was used only once before the turn of the century, in the prosecution of two activists who released mink from Wisconsin fur farms. And although the FBI charged a few individuals for eco-arsons throughout the 1990s, it would be the next generation of saboteurs — Dibee’s generation — that would bear the brunt of the government’s crackdown on eco-radicals.

Radical Tactics Reach Their Peak

By the late 1990s, Dibee was known within activist circles, regularly participating in spectacular demonstrations designed to draw attention to moneymaking activity built on animal and ecological suffering.

At the Warner Creek occupation in 1995, activists blockaded a logging road to prevent a timber company from accessing Oregon’s Willamette National Forest. The occupation lasted for nearly a year, thanks in part to 28-year-old Dibee, who designed a “bipod” structure, a precariously rigged platform between two tall poles where activists perched, complicating police efforts to remove them. The federal government, which managed the national forest land, put the company’s timber harvest on hold, as well as 150 other timber sales.

In the summer of 1997, Dibee was involved in another dramatic action, this time to protest the overfishing of pollock in the Bering Sea and the harm it was causing the endangered Steller sea lion. Seven Greenpeace activists planned to dangle from ropes off Seattle’s Aurora Bridge, more than 200 feet above Lake Union, in an effort to block four giant American Seafoods trawlers from entering Puget Sound. A skilled climber, Dibee was to position himself underneath the bridge, maneuvering along its metal support structure to assist the other climbers as needed.

Seven Greenpeace demonstrators slowly make their way up ropes Monday, Aug. 18, 1997, toward the deck of Seattle's Aurora Bridge after being suspended for two days to protest factory trawler fishing. The seven, plus another who had been under the bridge deck monitoring the lines, were placed under arrest on charges of reckless endangerment. The five women and two men rappelled over the side of the bridge Saturday morning and strung ropes in an attempt to block two trawlers attempting to depart Lake Union on their way to pollock fishing grounds in the Bering Sea. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)

Seven Greenpeace demonstrators make their way up ropes toward the deck of Seattle’s Aurora Bridge on Aug. 18, 1997, after being suspended for two days to protest factory fishing.

Photo: Elaine Thompson/AP

As the action kicked off, police confiscated critical gear, leaving the activists with nothing to protect the nylon webbing keeping them aloft from abrading and tearing against the sharp edges of the bridge beams. Determined that the action should move forward, Dibee stripped off his clothing to use as buffer material. He would spend nearly two days half-naked above the windy channel, fighting hypothermia.

“There was a lot of this macho ‘me big eco-warrior’ thing, where the guys just wanted to be rock stars,” said Helga Kahr, an activist and friend of Dibee’s. But despite his willingness to take risks, she added, “Joe was not like that.” He sewed specialized backpacks for fellow activists, trained friends in computer encryption, and donated money to whatever corner of the movement needed it.

Few of his comrades were aware, however, that Dibee was also involved in the controversial eco-radical underground. In July 1997, the Associated Press published an investigation revealing that 90 percent of the horses rounded up by the Bureau of Land Management’s Wild Horse and Burro Program ended up in slaughterhouses. Among the buyers named in the article was the Cavel West slaughterhouse. According to court filings, Dibee and four other animal rights activists came up with a plot to strike back.

The activists surrounded the Cavel West facility in Redmond, Oregon, and planted incendiary devices fueled by so-called vegan jello — a mixture of soap and petroleum. They timed them to go off at an hour when they believed the facility would be empty, then fled, stopping to dump their clothing in a hole, which they covered with acid and filled with dirt. An anonymous communique attributed the action to the Animal Liberation Front and the Equine and Zebra Liberation Front. The facility burned to the ground and did not reopen.

The fur and biomedical industries “dramatically increased their efforts to convince the FBI and the DOJ to treat animal rights and environmental protesters as terrorists.”

During the same period, other activists burned down a Forest Service ranger station, set SUVs on fire, and toppled an 80-foot high-voltage transmission tower. The attacks and demonstrations were costly. In response, the fur and biomedical industries “dramatically increased their efforts to convince the FBI and the DOJ to treat animal rights and environmental protesters as terrorists,” said Shapiro of Property of the People. “This was the true genesis of the Green Scare.”

It wasn’t just about arson. Patti Strand, a Dalmatian breeder and co-founder of the National Animal Interest Alliance, which works to “promote responsible animal ownership and use, and to oppose animal rights extremism,” said that after she published her 1998 book on animal extremism she was targeted by radical activists. They put dead animals and garter snakes in her mailbox. “I received letters that included information about my son, who was 11 at the time — what path he was taking to school and that they liked his new green jacket,” she said. When others who had been targeted reached out to Strand with their stories — “If their fences were cut, if there were lawsuits that were going on, if they had started to receive death threats or things that were intimidating” — she would pass along the details to the FBI.

By April 1998, the anti-environmental lobbying campaign was again bearing fruit. The Justice Department held a conference on animal rights terrorism and invited the executive director of the Fur Commission “to address the attendees with her perception of the animal rights terrorism trends, and recommended investigative aids,” according to an FBI summary of the event. Along with federal prosecutors, the attendees included officials from the FBI, the Justice Department’s terrorism and violent crime section, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.

▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄No pages

The Justice Department held a conference on animal rights terrorism in 1998, inviting the director of the Fur Commission to speak, according to an FBI memo.

Later that year, the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on “Acts of Ecoterrorism by Radical Environmental Organizations.” U.S. Rep. Frank Riggs, who had accepted thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from the forestry industry, described an activist stunt in which a large tree stump was dumped in the middle of his Northern California office. “My office was quite literally assaulted by a group of environmental terrorists,” he said. “Upon responding to the horrific sound, my two female staff members were greeted by the visage of several Earth First! terrorists, one wearing a black ski mask, and another wearing dark goggles and a hood.”

**FILE** The remains of Vail Mountain's Two Elks restaurant were still smoldering in this Oct. 20,1998 file photo, after a morning fire destroyed the mountain-top facility.  A radical environmental group called Earth Liberation Front claimed responsibility for fires that caused $12 million in damages to the facilities at the nation's busiest ski resort. The remnants of the organization's members were sentenced for their crimes by a federal judge in Oregon in 2007. (AP Photo/Jack Affleck)

The remains of Vail Mountain’s Two Elks restaurant on Oct. 20, 1998, after a fire destroyed the mountain-top facility.

Photo: Jack Affleck/AP

In October 1998, in the midst of renewed focus on their activities, Earth Liberation Front activists raised the stakes. In the name of protecting lynx habitat, they burned down several buildings at a new ski resort near Vail, Colorado, causing $12 million worth of damage. “The environmental groups who have not just claimed credit, but in some cases have been proved to have committed criminal acts, are a very, very serious part of our domestic terrorism focus,” then-FBI Director Louis Freeh told Congress a few months later.

The Fur Commission celebrated. “Over the last year, the people of the fur trade have been key players with other animal and resource-based industries in a concerted effort to push eco and animal rights terrorism up the government’s priority pole,” according to a March 1999 newsletter. “These efforts have resulted in a strong statement of commitment from the FBI.”

Detective Greg Harvey joined the Eugene Police Department’s special investigations unit in June of that year. For the better part of the next decade, solving the string of ALF and ELF arsons would become his primary task.

Harvey’s work on the team coincided with an intense national tug of war over the meaning of terrorism. Indeed, Harvey had his own taxonomy. Blocking a road and trespassing? Not terrorism. The ALF and ELF arsonists? Not in the same category as international terrorists who kill people, but terrorists just the same. “Their whole intent is to change the way things are done,” Harvey told The Intercept. “They’re trying to close down businesses. Well, that’s terrorism. When the families or the workers are afraid to do something, that’s what I consider terrorism.”

“One of the things we were really trying to focus on was breaking the movement,” he said. Harvey and other law enforcement officials went after the group’s omerta — its staunch refusal to cooperate with authorities. “That was one of the things that we broke.”

But it would take a disaster even bigger than the Vail arson to give industry and law enforcement the political capital needed to cripple the movement. “They called us eco-terrorists before 9/11,” said John Sellers, former director of the Ruckus Society, which trains environmental justice organizers in direct action. “But no one really believed them.”

Protesters, some proclaiming to be supporters of the group Earth Liberation Front, march in Portland, Ore., Tuesday, Feb. 12, 2002. In remarks prepared for a hearing in Washington, a chairman of a House subcommittee said Tuesday that eco-terrorists are hardened criminals--that they are dangerous well-funded, savvy sophisticated and stealthy.  The ELF and its sister organization the Animal  Liberation Front, have claimed responsibility for 137 illegal direct actions in 2001. (AP Photo/Don Ryan)

Protesters, some proclaiming to be supporters of the Earth Liberation Front, march in Portland, Ore., on Feb. 12, 2002.

Photo: Don Ryan/AP

From 9/11 to the Green Scare

Rescue workers were only beginning to survey the damage when Alaska Republican Rep. Don Young picked up a call from an Anchorage Daily News reporter on September 11, 2001. Few details had emerged about who was behind the attacks, but Young was unfazed. “War has been declared as far as terrorists go,” he told the newspaper. “I’m not sure they’re that dedicated, but eco-terrorists — which are really based in Seattle — there’s a strong possibility that could be one of the groups” behind the assault.

Young’s remarks were prescient: Eco-saboteurs would become one of the U.S. government’s lesser-known war on terror adversaries. September 11 was a crisis perfectly suited to the groundwork industry groups had laid in the 1990s, and corporate actors stood ready to exploit it. It didn’t hurt that the saboteurs aligned themselves against capitalism, which was being defended as critical to America’s suddenly imperiled way of life. With political careers freshly dependent on hammering terrorism, eco-sabotage became an easy target.

The attacks “did not set off the Green Scare,” Shapiro said. Instead, “9/11 was exploited by Green Scare warriors to turn up the volume on their surveillance and suppression of the animal rights and eco movements.”

The Patriot Act’s broad new definition of domestic terrorism, signed into law in October 2001, was another step toward institutionalizing the notion that eco-saboteurs were terrorists. The law targets those who commit criminal acts “dangerous to human life” that “appear to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population” or influence government policy. It also made it easier for the FBI to wiretap and surveil U.S. citizens. Even though a core tenet of ALF and ELF was to avoid harming living things, the Justice Department considered the movement’s acts of arson and vandalism dangerous enough to count.

Craig Rosebraugh, spokesman for the Earth Liberation Front, talks about being a spokesman for the radical enviromental group during a photo session Thursday, May 24, 2001, in Portland, Ore. (AP Photo/Jack Smith)

Craig Rosebraugh, a spokesperson for the Earth Liberation Front, on May 24, 2001, in Portland, Ore.

Photo: Jack Smith/AP

Less than a week after the law’s passage, Craig Rosebraugh, a spokesperson for ELF and ALF, received a subpoena to testify before members of Congress at a hearing on eco-terrorism. Rosebraugh had been profiled in news articles as the face of the movement, even though his role was to publish anonymous communiques rather than conduct acts of sabotage.

At the hearing, representatives from both parties offered anti-ALF and ELF soliloquies. “On the morning of December 28, the employees of U.S. Forest Industries arrived at work to find their offices smoldering. The scene is reminiscent of what we saw of the damaged part of the Pentagon after September 11,” said Oregon Republican Rep. Greg Walden. “It didn’t take a jetliner to destroy this office. An ELF firebomb did the job. And while fortunately there was no loss of life, the destruction was just as severe.”

The domestic terrorism section chief of the FBI, James Jarboe, announced that ALF and ELF were “the No. 1 priority in the domestic terrorism program.”

Rosebraugh tried to turn the tables on his accusers. “If the U.S. government is truly concerned with eradicating terrorism in the world, then that effort must begin with abolishing U.S. imperialism,” he wrote in prepared remarks. “Members of this governing body, both in the House and Senate as well as those who hold positions in the executive branch, constitute the largest group of terrorists and terrorist representatives currently threatening life on this planet.”

Lawmakers at the hearing proposed various legislative fixes, including an Agroterrorism Prevention Act, which would have made activists eligible for the death penalty if someone were to die in one of the arsons. That bill was never passed, but another proposal — an expansion of the Animal Enterprise Protection Act — did become law, with help from industry.

In tandem with politicians’ maneuvers, Quimby and the other law enforcement officers assigned to the arsons were doubling down on capturing the saboteurs. In the summer of 2001, they had met to discuss how they could crack open what had become stubbornly cold cases. “We decided we were going to be much more overt, and we were going to go start knocking on doors,” Quimby said.

Armed with a list of 30 to 40 targets, the lead agent on the case began popping up in coffee shops and neighborhoods where he knew activists would recognize him. “You start to induce a little bit of paranoia,” Quimby explained. The idea was that the activists would start thinking, “Are they on to us? Are they watching me? Are they on my phone? Are they monitoring my email account?” she told The Intercept. “It sewed some seeds of doubt.”

“They called us eco-terrorists before 9/11, but no one really believed them.”

Eugene detective Harvey’s job was to remain unseen. “I lived in the shadows. I basically sat in my car, watching people, buildings,” he said. At one point, he said, he spent hours sitting outside the Castle Superstore where one of the activists worked, in the hopes that Dibee would show up to visit.

The operation zeroed in on Jake Ferguson, who was suspected of being one of the most prolific arsonists. “We were following around Jake Ferguson for months and months,” said Harvey. “You’re looking at a heroin user, which makes him unbelievably paranoid.” Agents from multiple states moved into a shared office in Eugene, where the walls were papered with charts, photos, and timelines.

Quimby doesn’t fully credit 9/11 for the intensified investigation. But “there’s no question that funding that became available as a result of 9/11 may not have been there” if not for the attacks, she said. The ALF and ELF cases “became a priority and a very visible priority.”

By the end of 2001, however, Dibee and fellow activists had begun to move away from radical protest tactics like arson, according to Lauren Regan, a lawyer who would later represent one of the Backfire defendants. “It was causing division, because there was no way to control who was doing what,” she said. “They felt as if, sooner or later, some wildcard would potentially screw something up and kill themselves or kill someone else.” An October 2001 arson, of a hay barn at a Bureau of Land Management holding facility for wild horses, would be the last fire prosecutors attributed to Dibee and other Backfire defendants.

Dibee also had a falling out with one of his closest collaborators in the movement, Jonathan Paul. Paul had participated in the Cavel West arson, and he and Dibee had co-founded an organization called Sea Defense Alliance, which sought to physically disrupt the Makah people’s whale hunt (an action that is hard to imagine in today’s environmental movement, which seeks to follow the lead of Indigenous people).

The two activists sued each other over ownership of the organization’s boat, and at one point, Dibee drove toward Paul’s home with a gun, allegedly planning to confront him, according to law enforcement accounts included in federal court filings. But Dibee got lost and was pulled over by police, and the meeting was averted.

For a time, Dibee appeared to move on with his life, maintaining his adrenaline high by racing cars and flying planes. But the Backfire case was about to break. In 2003, Ferguson, who had a young child to consider, agreed to wear a wire and travel around the U.S., visiting his activist friends and convincing them to talk about the old days.

**ADVANCE FOR MONDAY, FEB. 6, 2006**Huntington Life Sciences in East Millstone, N.J., can be seen Friday, Feb. 3, 2006. Seven members of the Philadelphia-based group, Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, which goes by the acronym SHAC, were arrested in May 2004 and charged with animal enterprise terrorism, conspiracy and interstate stalking, part of a plan to drive Huntingdon Life Sciences out of business. Charges against one of the defendants were dropped; the other six are to stand trial in Superior Court, where jury selection begins on Monday.  (AP Photo/Mel Evans)

Huntingdon Life Sciences in East Millstone, N.J., on Feb. 3, 2006.

Photo: Mel Evans/AP

Breaking the Movement

Among the earliest casualties of the Green Scare was a group known as the SHAC 7. After reporters and undercover activists obtained disturbing footage from inside the laboratories of the research company Huntingdon Life Sciences, a campaign called Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty emerged to shut it down. The nerve center of the campaign was a website where administrators posted communiques describing protest actions that targeted not just Huntingdon, but any company or individual that supported it — from clients to investment firms to the club where the CEO played golf. In response to persistent disruptions, dozens of companies severed ties with Huntingdon.

In January 2004, the American Legislative Exchange Council, a powerful organization whose members include legislators and corporate lobbyists, released draft legislation meant to strengthen the Animal Enterprise Protection Act to make it even easier to crack down on activist groups like SHAC. Under ALEC’s model, titled the “Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act,” filming an animal facility without the owners’ consent could be prosecuted as terrorism. ALEC’s version would also have created a “terrorist registry” of anyone convicted under the law.

But prosecutors didn’t need ALEC’s draft legislation to go after SHAC. A few months after the proposal was finalized, seven SHAC organizers were arrested and six were later sentenced to prison terms under the original version of AEPA. They were accused of encouraging and publicizing radical tactics, but not participating in acts of sabotage themselves.

Nor did authorities need a new anti-terrorism law to go after the ALF and ELF arsonists. In December 2005, FBI agents carried out simultaneous arrests in five states. Over the next year, 18 alleged ALF and ELF saboteurs would be accused of participating in a domestic terrorism conspiracy. The feds interviewed Dibee. Then he disappeared.

The pressure on the eco-radicals to inform on their friends in exchange for reduced prison time was immense. Hanging over their heads were terrorism sentencing enhancements developed in the wake of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, which could increase prison time for a specific list of crimes if they were “calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion, or to retaliate against government conduct.” Among the charges that fit the enhancement were arsons of buildings involved in interstate commerce or belonging to the U.S. government.

Given the prison time at stake, with some facing possible life sentences, nearly every activist shared information. “Some named every name they could,” Harvey said, while others “listed involvement without naming names.”

Prosecutors declined to negotiate with the handful of defendants who refused to cooperate, according to Regan. But that changed overnight, she said, after defense lawyers issued an extensive motion demanding the government reveal whether the National Security Agency or FBI had used warrantless wiretapping or Patriot Act-authorized surveillance against the activists. When the judge supported the motion, and prosecutors changed their tune. “They said, ‘OK, we’ll do a noncooperating plea deal if you’ll drop this motion,’” Regan recalled.

“If I had to choose who was the greater threat, I would obviously go with the ones who were killing people.”

A narrower version of ALEC’s law, introduced by Republican Sen. James Inhofe and Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, passed the following November. The Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, or AETA, left out much of ALEC’s wish list, limiting the law to animal enterprises rather than actions targeting mining, timber harvesting, and fossil fuel extraction. However, it succeeded in criminalizing “interference” in the activities of any entity with a connection to an animal enterprise, a lower bar than AEPA’s “physical disruption.” It also increased the maximum penalty for causing economic damage, from three years in prison to 20, and allowed for up to five years in prison if an action simply caused someone a “reasonable fear of serious bodily injury or death.”

The section that would have criminalized filming at animal facilities was picked up by state lawmakers across the U.S. — “ag gag” bills became law in nine states, though they’ve been overturned as unconstitutional in three, and legal battles continue.

Twelve of the Backfire defendants received terrorism enhancements. They were sentenced to between one and 12 years in prison. One defendant’s status as a “terrorist” was later used to justify his transfer to a communications management unit, where his contact with friends, family, and the public was severely limited.

But it wasn’t prison time that most deeply undermined the movement. “The level of betrayal that took place during the Green Scare and the number of hardcore activists that basically crumbled under minor pressure by the state to become snitches or informants really shook the foundations of the radical movement,” Regan said. “It was very, very difficult for a lot of people to organize and trust each other in the aftermath of that shakeup.”

As for Dibee, the FBI suspected that he sheltered with relatives in Syria. Friends thought he might have died in the violent civil war there. One by one, the other Backfire fugitives were picked up. After 30-year-old New Jersey native Justin Solondz was arrested on drug charges in 2009 in the backpacker community of Dali, China, he pleaded guilty in the U.S. to firebombing the University of Washington’s Center for Urban Horticulture. Thirty-nine-year-old Rebecca Rubin, who had been hiding in her home nation of Canada, turned herself in in 2012, exhausted by years when “she was forced to live in what is, in some ways, a prison without walls,” as her lawyer told a Maclean’s reporter. She pleaded guilty to freeing wild horses and helping with the Vail arson.

While Dibee was on the lam, Obama’s election drove much of the environmental movement’s energy toward legislative change and away from direct action. The Intercept identified only 13 eco-activist cases prosecuted federally after 2008 — all but two charged under AETA. Six of the cases involved activists freeing mink from fur farms — actions that could hardly be considered terrorism even under the Patriot Act’s broad definition. Four more of the cases were dismissed. “The primary purpose of these laws is to try and brand activists as terrorists in order to turn public opinion against their advocacy and their campaigns,” Regan said.

Meanwhile, Democratic leadership failed to deliver any meaningful response to the deepening climate crisis and resulting biodiversity loss. Rising ocean temperatures caused the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, which Dibee had visited as a kid, to bleach and die. Wildfires burned with more intensity through the desiccated Pacific Northwest forests that he’d fought to protect from the timber industry. Orca whale populations shrunk to perilous levels off the coast of Washington state. And Donald Trump was elected president, paving the way to reverse even the minor steps the Obama administration had taken to challenge corporate polluters.

Daryl Johnson, a former analyst at a branch of the Department of Homeland Security that studied the threat posed by anti-government militia groups, near Rockville, Md., Jan. 7, 2016. Johnson says that too little is being done to combat a rising domestic terrorism threat from right-wing extremists. (T.J. Kirkpatrick/The New York Times)

Daryl Johnson, a former domestic terrorism analyst at the Department of Homeland Security, near Rockville, Md., on Jan. 7, 2016.

Photo: T.J. Kirkpatrick/The New York Times via Redux

A Rising Threat Dismissed

Daryl Johnson started at the Department of Homeland Security as a domestic terrorism analyst when eco-terrorism was still one of its major priorities. He didn’t have a problem with that. “I still believe they’re terroristic threats, because it’s ideologically motivated violence against property,” he said. “But if I had to choose who was the greater threat, I would obviously go with the ones who were killing people.”

By 2009, Johnson had come to see right-wing extremism as a severe, rising threat. That April, he became the lead author on an intelligence assessment that found that right-wing movements were using Obama’s election as a recruiting tool. That same month, three police officers in Pittsburgh were ambushed and killed by a man who regularly posted on the white supremacist website Stormfront. “Lone wolves and small terrorist cells embracing violent right-wing extremist ideology are the most dangerous domestic terrorism threat in the United States,” the report concluded.

The report was leaked, and the backlash was swift. Conservative groups were particularly offended by its suggestion that veterans might be vulnerable to recruitment by far-right groups. Everyone from Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner to the American Legion released statements deriding it.

At first, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano defended Johnson’s work. “We must protect the country from terrorism whether foreign or homegrown, and regardless of the ideology that motivates its violence,” she said in a statement a week after the report was published. But after 20 conservative groups put out ads calling for her to resign, she backtracked, claiming there had been a breakdown in internal review processes and promising to replace the report.

“Their whole intent is to change the way things are done. … Well, that’s terrorism.

In contrast to the crackdown on eco-radicals, DHS stepped back from focusing on domestic terrorism altogether. Johnson’s unit was gutted, and he left the agency along with many of his peers.

“It sent a chilling effect in the law enforcement and intelligence community. They saw what happened to me and how my unit was politicized,” he told The Intercept. As a result, “you have 10 years of attacks almost,” said Johnson, who now works as a consultant on domestic extremism. “Lots of people have died. The threat [of far-right groups] is still very active right now, and so it’s thriving.”

According to the Anti-Defamation League, between 2002 and 2018, 80 percent of extremist-related murders in the U.S. were carried out by people linked to right-wing movements. Only 3 percent were linked to left-wing ideologies, and 17 percent to Islamic movements. Every single extremist killing in 2018 — 50 in all — had a link to a right-wing movement.

Journalist and civil liberties advocate Will Potter, whose book “Green Is the New Red” exposed industry influence over Green Scare-style prosecutions, argues that the federal focus on animal rights activists over right-wing extremists was driven by more than corporate lobbying. “Beliefs that motivate [animal rights] activists were presented as this ideological threat to core concepts that underpin what some people think it means to be an American — defense of capitalism, a religiously aligned state, defense of industry, the belief that humans are exceptional.”

In contrast, many of America’s foundational values — Christianity, individualism, gun rights, and white supremacy — align with those of right-wing extremists. As Johnson put it, right-wing groups “operate under some of the same values that [I], an FBI agent, might believe.”

Shapiro went even further: “No shit the FBI doesn’t like to go after right-wing groups. They’re on the same team.”

Activist Jessica Reznicek, talks with Lee County Sheriff's Deputy Steve Sproul while conducting a personal occupation and protesting the Bakken pipeline, Tuesday Aug. 30, 2016 at a pipeline construction site, along the Mississippi River Road near Keokuk, Iowa. Reznicek, a Des Moines Catholic Workers group member, was later taken into custody at about noon Tuesday by the Lee County Sheriff's Department.  (John Lovretta/The Hawk Eye via AP)

Activist Jessica Reznicek, left, talks with Lee County Sheriff’s Deputy Steve Sproul while protesting the Dakota Access pipeline on Aug. 30, 2016, at a construction site near Keokuk, Iowa.

Photo: John Lovretta/The Hawk Eye via AP

A New Generation

In October 2016, as thousands of opponents of the Dakota Access pipeline gathered in protest camps in North Dakota, activists simultaneously turned above-ground valves on five tar sands oil pipelines across the U.S., shutting off the oil’s flow in solidarity with the Standing Rock tribe. They livestreamed the actions and stayed on site, awaiting arrest.

Less than a year later, holes burned using welding tools began appearing on valves along the Dakota Access pipeline. Two pipeline activists, Ruby Montoya and Jessica Reznicek, called a press conference to claim responsibility for the sabotage.

In response to the resurgence of direct action tactics, 84 members of Congress, including four Democrats, sent a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions in October 2017 asking whether “the attacks against this nation’s energy infrastructure, which pose a threat to human life, and appear to be intended to intimidate and coerce policy changes,” fell within the Justice Department’s understanding of domestic terrorism.

“Just because time passes doesn’t mean the FBI forgets.”

The American Petroleum Institute praised the letter and told the industry publication Natural Gas Intelligence that the group was working with the Trump administration on the issue, including the Justice Department and the FBI. “A key component of securing our nation’s energy infrastructure is ensuring that law enforcement has the tools needed to prosecute those who attack it,” an institute spokesperson said.

As if on cue, ALEC entered the fray. By December 2017, it had introduced a model Critical Infrastructure Protection Act, which would increase penalties for trespassing on or inhibiting the operations of oil and gas pipelines. Under the model, “conspirator” organizations, such as activist groups, would face a fine several times that of the trespasser. Eight states are considering versions of the law, and industry groups and oil and gas companies, including Dakota Access parent company Energy Transfer Partners, have been lobbying on its behalf.

“It’s the corporate state bringing out the same old tired playbook and repeating the same plays again and again,” said Regan.

While legislators’ efforts haven’t yet translated into Green Scare-style prosecutions, their enthusiasm reveals that the anti-eco-terror framework built in the 1990s and strengthened in the wake of 9/11 could easily be deployed again.

On August 10, the FBI held a press conference to announce it had captured Dibee. “Just because time passes doesn’t mean the FBI forgets,” FBI agent Tim Suttles, who worked the Operation Backfire case for 14 years, said in a statement. “We are very gratified to have Dibee in custody.”

Dibee’s lawyer declined to comment. But if his case turns out like those of his co-defendants, he’ll probably negotiate a guilty plea. The judge is likely to consider a terrorism enhancement, and Dibee will be sentenced to years in prison.

Harvey, the Oregon detective who spent years trying to catch Dibee, learned of the arrest from a friend who’s still working on the case. “I was extremely happy,” he told The Intercept.

Quimby, the former FBI agent, was similarly gratified. “When Joe was picked up, it was sort of cool, like one more down, one to go.”

But she knows it’s not over. One Backfire defendant, Josephine Overaker, remains missing. “She speaks fluent Spanish and may seek employment as a firefighter, midwife, sheep tender, or masseuse,” the FBI said in its press release announcing Dibee’s capture.

“With Overaker still out there the case isn’t closed,” Quimby said. “It won’t be until she comes into custody.”

Source documents used in this reporting were obtained by Property of the People and shared exclusively with The Intercept. You can learn more about Property of the People’s work litigating Freedom of Information Act requests here.


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Food and Drink / Love & Life

Whew Chile, The Holidays

It’s officially Holiday Season! I, for one, am someone who knows the holidays are full of marketing and propaganda but don’t care, I still love them. Thanksgiving, Christmas, and NYE are time for family, friends, comfort food and new beginnings. But for a lot of us these days are also full of stress and emotional triggers! Between finding the perfect gift while staying in the budget to not having anyone to share them with, the Holidays can also enhance some of our feelings of lack and loneliness. Instead of laughter and joy you spend the night trying to avoid Aunt Jackie who loves asking why you don’t have any kids or aren’t married yet, so you don’t cuss her out.

This year though, this year will be different. We are going to flow through this season and give ourselves the love and abundance we think we lack, because we now know that the only true joy resides within. All genocide aside, let’s look at Thanksgiving as a time to be grateful and thankful for all the people in our lives and the things we do have. And on the flip side if your family/situation makes you feel shitty, give them a designated time to spend and then keep it moving to Friendsgiving or somewhere else you feel yourself.

A helpful tip to remember is QTIP: Quit Taking It Personal. The miserable things people say or do are only reflections of them, not of you. The moment you take it personal you make it about you, and we don’t have time for that.

MasterClass Level: Send them compassion. Instead of getting upset, embarrassed, or hurt, try to be compassionate for the person and imagine (without going too deep) where that ignorance may stem from. This helps you brush it off and not cause disruption to your day.

Love and Light,

Recommended Reading (for not taking things personally):

The Four Agreements by Paulo Coehlo

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The explosion of electronic devices has been a godsend to travelers. No longer do you have to lug hardback novels to read on the beach or pocket language guides to make sure that you order your dinner correctly. There are apps for that…and more are hitting the market every day. If you're headed to the beach or other getaway this fall, make sure you download one or more of the following:

1.  Gas Buddy.  With the price of cost soaring, even a few cents can impact your vacation budget. Find the lowest gas prices wherever you are in the United States with this free app. Just enter a zip code and Gas Buddy will tell you where to find the lowest priced gas station. Cost: free.

2. Google Translate. No longer do you have to lug an English to French (or Spanish or German or ?) dictionary or phrase book with you when you travel. And, you don't have to be frustrated when no one understands what you are trying to say. Google Translate converts your English phrase to one of 50 other languages, from French to Farsi. This app is useful whether you’re in Quebec or Kashmir. It will even speak your phrase aloud in 23 languages.  Cost: free.

3. What's the Rate. This app, designed by veteran British travel conglomerate Thomas Cook Ltd., makes it easy to comparison shop no matter what part of the world you're in.  This app not only converts currencies, but gives you trends in more than 80 different currencies, so you know whether you're getting a good exchange rate or not. Cost: free.

4. Where for iPhone. This one combines user reviews from Yelp with a tourist guide for things to do, see, eat and enjoy in hundreds of cities around the United States. You'll never have to wonder where the nearest movie theater, drug store or Starbucks is located again. Cost: free.

5. Kindle for iPhone. It wasn't that long ago that you had to carry heavy books if you wanted to read the latest novel on vacation. Or, you had to settle for days-old newspapers if you were vacationing on a remote island. With Kindle, that all has changed. If there's Internet access, you have a virtual bookstore of reading material at your fingertips. Cost: free.

Best Free Travel Apps


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August 2 in LGBTQ History

1986: Roy Cohn dies of AIDS in Bethesda, Maryland, asserting to his last breathe that he has liver cancer.

1995: U.S. President Bill Clinton signs Executive Order 12968,  which bans discrimination based on “sexual orientation” as it establishes uniform policies for allowing government employees access to
classified information.

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