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As India resolvesto dissolve the Sikkim sector border standoff with Beijing through diplomatic channels, all eyes are on National Security Advisor Ajit Doval'slikely visit to Chinafor BRICS NSAs' meeting on 27 and 28 July.

If the NSA does end upvisitingBeijing, it will be a crucial trip and a probable step to resolve the almost-month-old border dispute. However, at a time when China remains unyielding in the face of the current crisis, Doval's traditional tough stance against Beijing raises doubts over whether any meaningful progress can be expected from his visit.

File image of National Security Adviser Ajit Doval with China's State Councillor, Yang Jiechi. PTI

Doval, who was famously characterised as 'the hawkish Doval' by former RAW chief AS Dulat, is known for his hardliner stance in negotiating border disputes with China.

His rare public interactions, since he assumed office of NSA, have revealed that Doval prefers depending on military solutions over ceding ground in compromises. When India's traditional policy in handling border disputes with its neighbours has propagated a defensive approach, it was Doval who pitched the concept of defensive-offensive and offensive foreign policy.

It was under Doval's leadership that India carried out surgical strikes against Pakistan, and it was the current NSA who remarked that 'India would not compromise on its territorial interests and sovereignty,' when asked about his views on negotiations with China.

An article inAsia Timesin 2016 commented on the said statement of Doval: "He (Doval) said at the Munich Security Conference in New Delhi in October 2014 that 'India would not compromise on its territorial interests', when the very purpose of the meetings of the Special Representatives of the two countries is to seek a compromise on the dispute."

The impact of Doval's policy views, which clearly pervades Modi government's foreign policy, has been markedly different from his predecessors so much that his ideas on China, Pakistan and India's territorial disputes are now commonly referred to as the Doval doctrine.Firstpost looked at his selective public remarks mostly made duringhis Nani Palkiwala Memorial Lecture, 2014 and the Lalit Doshi Memorial Lecture, 2015 to help decode his views on China in context of the current border row.

Answering a question about tackling China's growing might, Doval conceded that China's militaryis much more stronger than India, even as the former Intelligence Bureau directorhailedIndia's missile technology. He said that it was tough for India to match China's might in the next fifty years, but he advocated ramping up missile technology to target China's economic installations, which he said were the Dragon's only vulnerable spot.

These remarks were made during a public interaction on 27 August, 2010, as shown in this YouTube video, however,Firstpostcould not independently verify the source's veracity. Doval's past comments on China's 'bottomless territorial hunger' assumes importance in these times, as the NSA's visit to Beijing in the coming week could be a make-or-break situation on India-China border stalemate.

The NSA's past comments become crucialalso becauseChina is slowly increasing its naval presence in Indian Ocean region and has carried out military exercises in Tibet, even as the border standoff in Sikkim is going on.

Another report inThe Times of India,quoted Doval's remarks at theMunich Security Conference in 2014. Doval had said that even though relationship with China are "very important", India must not compromise on issues of sovereignty. "I would like to develop our relations to such an extent till the time our territorial and integral sovereignty ... we would not able to compromise on it," Doval said.

Doval's remarks gain significance at atimeChina isramping up the anti-India rhetoric,in what it views as an unprecedented dispute with New Delhi. India and China are locked in a standoff in the Doklam area in Sikkim sector near the Bhutan tri-junction for over three weeks after the Chinese army attempted to build a road in the disputed narrow stretch of land. China has made it clear that back channel negotiations will only bear fruit after India withdraws its troop.

It will be interesting to see whether Doval sticks to his hardliner approach towards Beijing at a time when China too shows no inclination to compromise. TheAsian Timesarticle had compared Doval's approach to his predecessors. The article stated, that while Narendra Modi under Doval's influence has stuck to requesting China to'reconsider' its received positions on existing disputes with India, Doval's predecessorBrajesh Mishra had clocked considerable progress in Sino-India ties and had been hopeful of reaching positive results.

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Ajit Doval likely to visit China: NSA's famed 'Doval doctrine' and deconstructing India's stand on Beijing - Firstpost

malwareWar

Malwarebytes has discovered a new cyberattack modus operandi that has hackers incorporating legitimate apps into their malware to make it stronger and accomplish specific tasks.

Although the cybersecurity firm did not name the malware used as an example in its report, the company did note that this hacking methodology is representative of what is happening in the wild and becoming more prevalent.

The example used by Malwarebytes recently found a banking trojan that once installed on the victims machines downloaded FFmpeg, a free software that produces libraries and programs for handling multimedia data. This ability, along with several others already included in the malware, allows the hacker to not only grab screenshots, but full video of the victim's computer.

Essentially, once the malware recognizes that the computer is on a banking site it turns on its various capture capabilities to grab login credentials and other personal data. The malware itself is unsophisticated, easily defeated and poorly obfuscated, but Malwarebytes warns that despite these shortcomings it is highly capable of spying and even backdooring the victim's computer.

This malware is prepared by an unsophisticated actor, Malwarebytes said. Neither the binary nor the communication protocol is well obfuscated. The used packer is well-known and easy to defeat. However, the malware is rich in features and it seems to be actively maintained. It's capabilities of spying on the victim and backdooring the attacked machine should not be taken lightly because even a simple threat actor can cause a lot of damage when neglected.

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Hackers incorporating legitimate software to increase a malware's potential - SC Magazine

Macphun announced earlier this year that it will be releasing its popular photography software for Windows after focusing on Mac up until now. Today the company made its first big move by launching a free public beta version of Luminar for Windows.

Luminar is a powerful photo editing program thats a competitor to Adobe Lightroom well, the Develop module, at least (photo library and catalog features are coming soon).

This is Macphuns first-ever software for Windows, bringing the company into a new age of serving both Windows and Mac photographers.

From its beginnings in 2016, Luminar has been designed to be a powerful yet flexible photo editor that can be customized for photographers of all skill levels. If you need the most advanced RAW editing tools and features, the program offers those. But if youre just starting out and would like to get a feel of basic controls, your workspace can be adjusted for that as well.

Luminar currently offers 300 different tools for working with your photos. There are over 50 one-click presets, 40 photo editing filters, support for the latest RAW file conversions, and non-destructive editing.

Certain features of the Mac version of Luminar are still a work in progress and arent available in the beta yet. These include workspaces, plug-in support, object removal, noise reduction, and some others. Addition features will be added to the public beta until the full Windows version is released later in 2017.

Macphun is following in the footsteps of Affinity Photo, which itself launched a very popular free Windows beta of its Photoshop alternative back in November 2016. You can download the free Macphun Luminar for Windows beta here by entering your email address.

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Macphun Luminar is Now on Windows: Get the Free Beta - PetaPixel (blog)

MARION, Iowa (KCRG-TV9) - The Marion Police Department charged Matthew Boleyn, 37, with Disorderly Conduct and Criminal Mischief 4th degree on July 12.

Boleyn came to the Marion police department and was cited and released on a promise to appear in court for an incident that happened on June 22.

Around 11:40 p.m. Boleyn caused damage to Samuel Gires car by shattering his window, resulting in the Criminal Mischief charge.

Boleyn was also charged with Disorderly Conduct. He was charged due to exiting his car, challenging Gire and one other person to a physical fight, and then breaking out Gires car window.

This led to Boleyn being shot by Gire, while Gire was still in his vehicle.

The Marion Police Department has determined that Gire was acting in self-defense and reviewed the new Stand Your Ground law.

To read previous KCRG-TV9 coverage go to:

http://www.kcrg.com/content/news/UPDATE-Road-rage-causes-shooting-near-Marion-Library--431770263.html

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New Stand Your Ground Law used in Marion shooting - KCRG.com - KCRG

By Noah Shusterman By Noah Shusterman July 14 at 6:00 AM

Noah Shusterman is the author of "The French Revolution: Faith, Desire, and Politics," and is currently researching 18th-century militias. He teaches history at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Every year on July 14, France celebrates its national holiday, commemorating the storming of the Bastille in 1789. The festivities include fireworks, dances and a military procession through Paris.

Ironically, it was fear of the French army that first led Parisians to storm the Bastille. And distant though that event may be in both time and place, Americans should take note: this kind of scenario is why the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution exists. Both those storming the Bastille and those ratifying the Bill of Rights had a genuine fear of a standing army as the enemy of a true republic a fear that shows just how disconnected modern readings of the Second Amendment have become.

[Trump loves a military parade its one reason hes gone to Paris]

Gun rights advocates argue that the founders included the amendment to protect the people from a tyrannical government. To an extent, they are correct. But the founders were concerned about a specific kind of tyranny. They were worried about the same thing that the Parisians were worried about on the eve of the storming of the Bastille: that a despot would order his soldiers to attack the citizens. A citizens militia, by replacing the army, could prevent that scenario from happening.

In recent years, the idea of the Second Amendment as a justification for standing up to the government has become more popular. Todays visions of armed resistance, though, have become unhinged from the Amendments 18th-century moorings, in ways that make appeals to what the founders thought ring hollow. The story of the storming of the Bastille can help, by showing how an 18th-century Second Amendment solution was meant to work and how ideas of military service have changed since the Early Republic.

In early July 1789, Frances National Assembly was less than a month old. It represented a new beginning for a nation accustomed to absolutist rule. When the troops arrived in the region, Parisians believed that the king or someone close to him had ordered them to destroy the Assembly and put an end to Frances Revolution. This, in a nutshell, was the kind of action that the Second Amendment was meant to prevent.

Parisians were unwilling to wait andsee what would happen. On July 12, on the initiative of the citys government, Parisian men began arming and organizing themselves into a militia. In a well-constituted state, one city leader told a town meeting, every citizen is obliged to bear arms in defense of the fatherland.

By the morning of July 14, 1789, tens of thousands of Parisian men had joined the new militia. They seized guns from a Paris arsenal. Lacking gunpowder and ammunition, they attacked the Bastille prison, which had a large supply inside its walls. The storming of the Bastille had begun.

It had begun, moreover, so that the Parisian citizens, organized into a militia and under local government leadership, could fight against Frances professional army. This, in a nutshell, was the Second Amendment solution, tested two months before the Bill of Rights and with it, the Second Amendment would be written, and two years before itwould be added to the Constitution.

To be clear, there was no causal link between the storming of the Bastille and the writing of the U.S. Bill of Rights. Both, though, borrowed from the same groups of ideas. Americans were even more fearful than the French of a standing army of professional career soldiers. For the founders, such an army was incompatible with a free society, because salaried career soldiers were loyal to their leaders, not to the society they served. Kings or generals could order their soldiers to do anything, including marching on the citizens themselves. That Frances king could order his troops into the Paris region seemed to confirm such fears.

How could a society defend itself, though, without relying on professional soldiers? The 18th-century answer to standing armies was the citizens militia, in which all citizens were part-time militiamen. In any other society, freedom existed at the whim of the military leaders, but an armed, trained, and organized society depended only on itself. Hence the militias necessity to a free state.

The Second Amendment said all of this in its first 13 words A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state without spelling it out as explicitly as it might have. Virginias 1776 Bill of Rights made the links clearer: That a well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defense of a free state; that standing armies, in time of peace, should be avoided as dangerous to liberty; and that, in all cases, the military should be under strict subordination to, and be governed by, the civil power. The phrasing was different but the ideas were the same: for a society to be free, there could be no professional army. Citizens had to be soldiers, and soldiers citizens.

At the Bastille, French citizens were putting those ideas into action. Storming the prison began as a means to an end, a way to better prepare Parisians to face off against the army. Once the attackers took over the prison, though, the gunpowder became an afterthought. A multiday celebration began.

Still, the militia formed during the preceding days remained in place. Thomas Jefferson, in France at the time, wrote of 50, or 60,000 men in arms in Paris. The king ordered his soldiers back to the border.

The people, armed, organized and under the leadership of the local government, had stood up to Frances Royal Army, and the king had backed down. This was the kind of resistance to the government that the founders had in mind, and it was a far cry from the kinds of resistance seen or even proposed in the United States today.

Over the past two centuries, changes in public perception of the military have made the original vision of the Second Amendment unrecognizable. The nation has moved away from the mandatory militia service that the founders took from granted. As part-time militia service became unpopular among citizens, Americans came to embrace their professional army, and being a career soldier became the highest form of patriotism.

As a result, it has become harder to understand what these well regulated militias were and why they were necessary for the security of the free state. But the storming of the Bastille serves as a reminder that those who would haul out the founders to defend the modern Second Amendment would do well to remember how much American society has changed since the 1790s.

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Bastille Day reminds us that our Second Amendment debates are distorted - Washington Post