Ransomware & U.S. Food Supplies | Tech Increasingly Serves Authoritarian Ends | Neo-Nazi Music Festivals, and more

Discover Card Cuts Ties with Left-Wing Group over Terrorist Connections  (Jessica Chasmar, FOX Business)
Discover has stopped processing donations to a left-wing U.S. organization accused of supporting Palestinian terrorism. The credit card company last month froze donations to the Alliance for Global Justice (AFGJ), which provides funding to the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, a group that Israel labeled a terrorist organization earlier this year, the Washington Free Beacon first reported. Israeli officials declared in February that Samidoun, a pro-Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions group that helps free Palestinian prisoners from Israeli prisons, acts abroad on the behalf of the U.S.-designated terrorist group Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Discover has not said why it severed ties with AFGJ, but the decision came after the Zachor Legal Institute pressured the company to do so, according to email correspondence shared with Fox News. Zachor founder Marc Greendorfer praised the move by Discover but slammed other major credit card companies for not following suit. Mastercard, Visa, and American Express began blocking donations to Samidoun in January 2020, but they currently still allow donations to AFGJ, which lets people donate to Samidoun through its website, the Free Beacon noted.

Neo-Nazi Music Festivals Are Funding Violent Extremism in Europe  (Tim Hume, Vice)
The townsfolk of Themar watched anxiously as 6,000 people gathered in a field for a music festival in their quiet rural village in Thuringia, the densely-forested state traditionally known as the “green heart of Germany.” They had good reason to be wary. While the event bore all the hallmarks of any other event on the summer festival circuit – live music, merch, overpriced beer and food – this had one key difference: the visitors were right-wing extremists, many from the hardcore neo-Nazi scene. The visitors, outnumbering the population of Themar two-to-one, had gathered to hear bands from the Rechtsrock, or right-wing rock, scene: a German term for music that’s a vehicle for far-right, neo-Nazi ideology. The lineup included notorious acts like Die Lunikoff Verschwörung (The Lunikoff Conspiracy), whose lead singer had previously been jailed when his earlier band, Landser, became the first musical group to be declared a criminal organisation by a German court for spreading hate. The event was a veritable who’s who of the extreme-right scene, drawing together prominent far-right activists, members of violent white supremacist networks like the Hammerskins, and speakers linked to neo-Nazi micro-parties and the extreme-right mixed martial arts scene.

Huawei’s Decline Shows Why China Will Struggle to Dominate  (Hal Brands, Bloomberg)
Two years ago the telecom giant was set to control global 5G, but now its goal is survival. Beijing’s belligerence is to blame.

Revenge of the State: Freedom House Finds Tech Increasingly Serves Authoritarian Ends  (Justin Hendrix, Just Security)
Freedom House, a nonprofit organization founded in 1941 to advance democracy and human rights, has released its annual report on human rights and digital technology, Freedom on the Net. The survey of 70 countries — representing 88% of the global population — finds most measures moving in the wrong direction, with global internet freedom on the decline every year since the first report was published just over a decade ago. 

Ransomware Gang Strikes Iowa Agriculture Business New Cooperative, the Latest Hack on Food Supply Chain  (Tim Starks, Cyberscoop)
The BlackMatter ransomware gang has struck an Iowa agricultural business, New Cooperative, and is demanding a $5.9 million ransom.