Counterpunch | We don’t know who killed Seth Rich and we’re not going to speculate
on the matter here. But we find it very strange that neither the media
nor the FBI have pursued leads in the case that challenge the prevailing
narrative on the Russia hacking issue. Why is that? Why is the media so
eager to blame Russia when Rich looks like the much more probable
suspect?
And why have the mainstream news organizations put so much energy
into discrediting the latest Fox News report, when– for the last 10
months– they’ve showed absolutely zero interest in Rich’s death at all?
According to Fox News:
“The Democratic National Committee staffer who was gunned down on
July 10 on a Washington, D.C., street just steps from his home had
leaked thousands of internal emails to WikiLeaks, law enforcement
sources told Fox News.
A federal investigator who reviewed an FBI forensic
report detailing the contents of DNC staffer Seth Rich’s computer
generated within 96 hours after his murder, said Rich made contact with
WikiLeaks through Gavin MacFadyen, a now-deceased American investigative
reporter, documentary filmmaker, and director of WikiLeaks who was
living in London at the time….
Rod Wheeler, a retired Washington homicide detective and Fox News
contributor investigating the case on behalf of the Rich family, made
the WikiLeaks claim, which was corroborated by a federal investigator
who spoke to Fox News….
“I have seen and read the emails between Seth Rich and Wikileaks,”
the federal investigator told Fox News, confirming the MacFadyen
connection. He said the emails are in possession of the FBI, while the
stalled case is in the hands of the Washington Police Department.”
(“Family of slain DNC staffer Seth Rich blasts detective over report of
WikiLeaks link”, Fox News)
Okay, so where’s the computer? Who’s got Rich’s computer? Let’s do the forensic work and get on with it.
But the Washington Post and the other bogus news organizations aren’t
interested in such matters because it doesn’t fit with their political
agenda. They’d rather take pot-shots at Fox for running an article that
doesn’t square with their goofy Russia hacking story. This is a
statement on the abysmal condition of journalism today. Headline news
has become the province of perception mandarins who use the venue
to shape information to their own malign specifications, and any facts
that conflict with their dubious storyline, are savagely attacked
and discredited. Journalists are no longer investigators that keep the
public informed, but paid assassins who liquidate views that veer from
the party-line.
WikiLeaks never divulges the names of the people who provide them
with information. Even so, Assange has not only shown an active interest
in the Seth Rich case, but also offered a $20,000 reward for anyone
providing information leading to the arrest and conviction of Rich’s
murder. Why? And why did he post a link to the Fox News article on his
Twitter account on Tuesday?
I don’t know, but if I worked for the FBI or the Washington Post, I’d
sure as hell be beating the bushes to find out. And not just because it
might help in Rich’s murder investigation, but also, because it could
shed light on the Russia fiasco which is being used to lay the
groundwork for impeachment proceedings. So any information that
challenges the government version of events, could actually change the
course of history.
nakedcapitalism | Silicon Valley brings us the worst of two economic systems: the
inefficiency of a command economy coupled with the remorselessness of
laissez-faire liberalism.
One reason it’s been difficult to organize workers in the tech
industry is that people have a hard time separating good intentions from
results. But we have to be cold-blooded about this.
Tech companies are run by a feckless leadership accountable to no
one, creating a toolkit for authoritarianism while hypnotized by
science-fiction fantasy.
There are two things we have to do immediately. The first is to stop
the accelerating process of tracking and surveillance before it can do
any more harm to our institutions.
The danger facing us is not Orwell, but Huxley. The combo of data
collection and machine learning is too good at catering to human nature,
seducing us and appealing to our worst instincts. We have to put
controls on it. The algorithms are amoral; to make them behave morally
will require active intervention.
The second thing we need is accountability. I don’t mean that I want
Mark Zuckerberg’s head on a pike, though I certainly wouldn’t throw it
out of my hotel room if I found it there. I mean some mechanism for
people whose lives are being brought online to have a say in that
process, and an honest debate about its tradeoffs.
I’m here today because I believe the best chance to do this is in
Europe. The American government is not functional right now, and the
process of regulatory capture is too far gone to expect any regulations
limiting the tech giants from either party. American tech workers have
the power to change things, but not the desire.
Only Europe has the clout and the independence to regulate these
companies. You can already point to regulatory successes, like forcing
Facebook to implement hard delete on user accounts. That feature was
added with a lot of grumbling, but because of the way Facebook organizes
its data, they had to make it work the same for all users. So a
European regulation led to a victory for privacy worldwide.
We can do this again.
Here are some specific regulations I would like to see the EU impose:
A strict 30 day time limit on storing behavioral data.
The right to opt out of data collection while continuing to use services.
A ban on the sale or transfer of behavioral data, including to third-party ad networks.
A requirement that advertising be targeted strictly to content, not users.
With these rules in place, we would still have Google and Facebook,
and they would still make a little bit of money. But we would gain some
breathing room. These reforms would knock the legs out from underground
political ad campaigns like we saw in Brexit, and in voter suppression
efforts in the US election. They would give publishers relief in an
advertising market that is currently siphoning all their earnings to
Facebook and Google. And they would remove some of the incentive for
consumer surveillance.
The other thing I hope to see in Europe is a unionized workforce at
every major tech company. Unionized workers could demand features like
ephemeral group messaging at Facebook, a travel mode for social media, a
truly secure Android phone, or the re-imposition of the wall between
Gmail and DoubleClick data. They could demand human oversight over
machine learning algorithms. They could demand non-cooperation with
Trump.
And I will say selfishly, if you can unionize here, it will help us unionize over there.
If nothing else, we need your help and we need you to keep the
pressure on the tech companies, the Trump Administration, and your own
politicians and journalists, so that the disaster that happened in the
United States doesn’t repeat itself in Germany.
You have elections coming soon. Please learn from what happened to us. Please stay safe.
And please regulate, regulate, regulate this industry, while you can.
Independent | Theresa May is planning to introduce huge regulations on the way the
internet works, allowing the government to decide what is said online.
Particular focus has been drawn to the end of the manifesto, which
makes clear that the Tories want to introduce huge changes to the way
the internet works.
"Some people say that it is not for government to regulate when it
comes to technology and the internet," it states. "We disagree."
Senior Tories confirmed to BuzzFeed News
that the phrasing indicates that the government intends to introduce
huge restrictions on what people can post, share and publish online.
The plans will allow Britain to become "the global leader in the
regulation of the use of personal data and the internet", the manifesto
claims.
The manifesto makes reference to those increased powers, saying that
the government will work even harder to ensure there is no "safe space
for terrorists to be able to communicate online". That is apparently a
reference in part to its work to encourage technology companies to build
backdoors into their encrypted messaging services – which gives the
government the ability to read terrorists' messages, but also weakens
the security of everyone else's messages, technology companies have
warned.
The government now appears to be launching a similarly radical change
in the way that social networks and internet companies work. While much
of the internet is currently controlled by private businesses like
Google and Facebook, Theresa May intends to allow government to decide
what is and isn't published, the manifesto suggests.
The new rules would include laws that make it harder than ever to
access pornographic and other websites. The government will be able to
place restrictions on seeing adult content and any exceptions would have
to be justified to ministers, the manifesto suggests.
The manifesto even suggests that the government might stop search
engines like Google from directing people to pornographic websites. "We
will put a responsibility on industry not to direct users – even
unintentionally – to hate speech, pornography, or other sources of
harm," the Conservatives write.
iBankCoin | Reddit and 4chan have been hard at work trying to connect the dots surrounding Rich’s murder.
To that end, a user in Reddit’s ‘the_donald’ forum has found Seth Rich’s Reddit account – ‘MeGrimlock4’ (a Transformers reference) revealing much
about the slain DNC staffer. For the most part, Rich seemed like a
regular kinda guy – into football, dogs, patriotism, riding his bike,
fun clothes, and volunteering at the Washington Humane Society.
Seth Rich’s twitter is @panda4progress,
which follows @Reddit, which led us to believe he was in fact a
redditor. That seems consistent with this reddit account, in that
they’re both in DC and have an interest in bicycles. Edit: not JUST
bicycles. A company named “split” which this account is talking abouthere@Panda4Progress talks to themhere. Also/u/MeGrimlock4is posting about Nebraska football.
Rich was from Omaha. No cornfed midwestern kid from Nebraska isn’t a Huskers fan. THIS IS DEFINITELY SETH RICH’S ACCOUNT
— Russian Embassy, UK (@RussianEmbassy) May 19, 2017
Here’s where it gets interesting:/u/pandas4bernieand
a tumblr by the same name ALSO stopped posting at the same time as this
account. If that’s Rich, then that proves motive. Rich was a BernieBro.
———-
Which may be why Rich gave WikiLeaks the DNC emails – after they false flagged Bernie…
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) uses an outside software
partner “NGP VAN,” founded by Nathaniel Pearlman, chief technology
officer for Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign. Their
‘VoteBuilder’ software was designed for Democratic candidates (Bernie,
Hillary, etc.) to track and analyze highly detailed information on
voters for the purposes of ‘microtargeting’ specific demographics.
On December 16th, 2015, NGP VAN updated the Votebuilder with a patch
that contained a bug – allowing the Sanders and the Clinton campaigns to
temporarily access each other’s proprietary voter information for
around 40 minutes. Lo and behold, the Sanders campaign National Data
Director, Josh Uretsky, was found to have accessed Clinton’s information and promptly fired.
Uretsky’s excuse was that he was simply grabbing Clinton’s data during the window of vulnerability to prove that the breach was real.
Bernie cried false flag!
Sanders claimed that Uretsky was a DNC plant – “recommended by the DNC’s National Data Director, as well as a former COO of NGP VAN.”
Of note, Seth Rich was not the National Data Director. According to the DNC’s 2016 roster, Seth Rich was the DNC’s “Voter Expansion Data Director” while Andrew Brown was the National Data Director – who Bernie said referred Uretsky.
So Seth Rich, a Bernie supporter, would have known people involved in the ‘hack’ Bernie says was meant to frame him…
It’s easy to speculate how Seth Rich could have become disgruntled
after witnessing the DNC attempt to sabotage the Sanders campaign. As
such, it’s not a stretch to imagine that Rich – a guy with access to
sensitive emails and technical skills, did in fact communicate with
Wikileaks in order to expose and root out the DNC’s misdeeds.
straightlinelogic |If Seth Rich was the source of the
WikiLeaks’ DNC email disclosures and the FBI knew it, then the Russian
hacking story was a fabrication, and James Comey was probably involved
in an attempt to drive President Trump from office.
The biggest story of the entire Russiagate controversy
was published Tuesday. Not the story about President Trump’s alleged
statement to former FBI Director James Comey: “I hope you can let this
go.” A witness is only as good as his or her credibility. If the actual
big story pans out, Comey has none, which is why the mainstream media is
obsessing over Trump’s alleged statement and doing everything it can to
ignore and stifle the other story.
Seth Rich was on the staff of the Democratic
National Committee (DNC). He was gunned down on July 10, 2016. Robbery
has been speculated as a motive for the murder, but his wallet and watch
were not taken. There is also speculation that Rich was the source of
the DNC emails that were released by WikiLeaks twelve days later, to the
consternation and embarrassment of the DNC. Fueling that speculation
was WikiLeaks’ offer of a $20,000 reward for information leading to the
conviction of Rich’s murderer. WikiLeaks has neither confirmed nor
denied that Rich was its source.
The emails appeared to show a concerted DNC
effort to stop Senator Bernie Sanders’ primary campaign for the
Democratic nomination and led to the resignation of party chairperson
Debbie Wasserman Schultz. After WikiLeaks’ DNC disclosure, the DNC
refused to let the FBI investigate its computer servers. Instead, it
allowed a cybersecurity firm, CrowdStrike, to investigate. It’s
conclusion, subsequently undercut, was that the Russians had hacked the DNC’s server.
Fox News reported
that an unnamed source, almost certainly from the FBI, has seen and
read emails between Seth Rich and the late Gavin MacFadyen, a director
of WikiLeaks. A FBI forensic report on Seth Rich’s computer was
allegedly compiled within 96 hours of his murder. The source said there
were 44,053 emails and 17,761 attachments between DNC leaders
transferred from Rich to MacFadyen from January 2015 through May 2016.
If this is correct, then within 96 hours
of Rich’s murder, or by July 14, 2016, the FBI knew that Rich had
communicated with WikiLeaks and it knew what he had communicated. That
means that when WikiLeaks subsequently released the DNC emails on July
22, the FBI knew that Rich, not the Russian government, was the source.
That would make the entire “Russia hacked the DNC” story nothing more
than a concocted fabrication.
Mishtalk | Bending to the will of Democrats and mainstream media, Deputy Attorney
General, Rod Rosenstein, cited ‘public interest’ in investigating
Trump’s ties to Russia. As a matter of public interest,, Rosenstein
named former FBI director Robert Mueller as Special Counsel for Russia Probe.
What’s the Real Mission?
Republicans and Trump want to pacify the media and get this nonsense behind them.
Democrats want this to drag on forever.
Peter King is correct in his assessment “These guys go on forever.”
As a byproduct of point number two, numerous witch hunts will take
place as Democrats will want to investigate every lead, no matter how
ridiculous.
The budget is open-ended and there are no time limits. The witch
hunt could conceivably last for the duration of Trump’s presidency.
Much of Trump’s agenda will be on indefinite hold as the progress, or lack thereof, as the story unfolds.
unz |I am somewhat embarrassed to cheer the US
President for doing such minor routine things as firing an FBI director
or meeting with the Foreign Minister of a major state. Next, I’d have to
laud him for eating an apple or washing his hands (“Attaboy!”). But one
feels that the guy needs our encouragement for doing something right.
As the father of three boys, I know: boys need encouragement. And if
there is no great achievement to cheer them for, even washing their
hands before the meal will do.
Trump has a huge, Herculean task: to turn the battleship America
away from its collision course when all the important people in all the
important positions are deadly keen to run it full speed ahead. They
think the other ship will turn away first; but the “other ship” is
actually a lighthouse. It is the rock of the World-Island and its
Heartland. Why would so many smart Americans, Brits and Europeans push
their luck by courting war and disaster?
Exactly a hundred years ago, in 1917, Vladimir
Lenin discovered that the present system necessarily produces world
wars. It is not a question of bad guys or good guys, it’s the system,
stupid! He wrote about it a concise book called Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism,
radically updating Marx. The idea is that capitalism evolves from
dynamic competitive production to financial capital takeover, while the
financial capital unavoidably leads to wars. If financiers rule, war is
inevitable, he said, because they are insatiable.
Industrialists,
builders, farmers can and will stop at the limits of their territory,
but financiers always want more, and there is no natural limit to their
expansion. They want to colonise more lands, subjugate more nations and
suck up their substance. The only way to save the world from the horrors
of war (remember, Lenin wrote after Verdun and Ypres), is to get rid of
financial capital’s dominance (Jesus came to the same conclusion whens
He expelled the moneychangers from the temple).
That
same year, Lenin made his great experiment to rid his country Russia of
bankers and other exploiters, while earning their eternal hatred (and
volumes of fake news about his bloodthirsty cruelty, in addition).
History has proven him partially right: the countries that followed
Lenin’s path never began a war, and they never colonised other states,
though they did help some to get rid of their leeches and Western
interference. Soviet Russia is an example: it was a donor to all the
other socialist states, from Georgia to Afghanistan. (Perhaps the
communists had been too good for this world. After Russia was
de-communised, Russian income went up, while the incomes of practically
all the ex-Soviet states plummeted, unless subsidised by the EU.) And
they knew no war.
On
the other hand, the states that remained under bankers’ sway went to
war more and more frequently. They colonised or were colonised. Probably
none as often as the US, the home country for the Federal Reserve, for
the dollar and for so many great financial companies.
For
America, the next World War is inevitable, unless the Americans can get
rid of their financiers – and of their servants in the mass media and
other state institutions. My sympathy to President Trump has been based
on his antipathy to the moneymen. When he attacked the Federal Reserve
and Wall Street, he swayed me, and perhaps you, too.
medium |Imagine
working for a corporation that produces a (so far) hidden harm to the
community, in concealing a cancer-causing property which kills the
thousands but with an effect that is not (yet) fully visible. You can
alert the public, but would automatically lose your job. There is a
gamble that the company’s evil scientists would disprove you, causing
additional humiliation. Or the news will come and go and you may end-up
being ignored. You are familiar with the history of whistleblowers which
shows that, even if you end up vindicated, it may take time for the
truth to emerge over the noise created by corporate shills. Meanwhile
you will pay the price. A smear campaign against you will destroy any
hope of getting another job.
You
have nine children, a sick parent, and as a result of the stand, the
children’s future would be compromised. College hopes will evaporate
–you may even have trouble feeding them properly. You are severely
conflicted between your obligation to the collective and to your
progeny. You feel part of the crime and unless you do something you are
an agent: thousands are dying from the hidden poisoning by the
corporation. Being ethical comes at a huge cost to others.
In the James Bond movie Specter,
agent Bond found himself fighting –on his own, whistleblower style –a
conspiracy of dark forces that took over the British service, including
his supervisors. “Q” who built the new fancy car and other gadgets for
him, when asked to help against the conspiracy, said “I have a mortgage
and two cats” –in jest of course because he ended up risking the lives
of his two cats to fight the bad guys.
Society
likes saints and moral heroes to be celibate so they do not have family
pressures and be forced into dilemmas of needing to compromise their
sense of ethics to feed their children. The entire human race, something
rather abstract, becomes their family. Some martyrs, such as Socrates,
had young children (although he was in his seventies), and overcame the
dilemma at their expense.[1] Many can’t.
Heatstreet | No one is buying Marvel’s lineup of social justice-themed comics.
It’s no surprise, given that few readers want politics to be forced down
their throats. Thus liberal darling Ta-Nehisi Coates and Yona Harvey’s Black Panther & The Crew is getting the axe after poor sales, just two issues after its launch. Its cancellation comes just weeks after a Marvel VP revealed that comics with forced messages of “diversity” were responsible for the publisher’s sales slump.
Joined by Luke Cage, Manifold, Misty Knight, and Storm, the titular superhero who entered the limelight with Captain America: Civil War
gathers his all-black crew of superheroes to investigate the death of a
civil rights activist who died in police custody. It has echoes of Sandra Bland’s death.
Set in a near-future Harlem-turned-police state patrolled by robotic
police officers controlled by a private security contractor, the comic
has every element you’d expect from a comic attempting to tell a story
inspired by Black Lives Matter. The cops beat people up for no reason,
too.
Naturally, the social justice superheroes take justice into their own
hands and go to battle against the corrupt system, while learning about
the historical figures of the Civil Rights Movement. Univision-owned
entertainment vertical Gizmodo enthusiastically describes The Crew as one that “[tells a] timely [story] about real world issues, like how police brutality devastates black communities.”
Coates explained to The Verge
that Marvel decided to kill the publication due to poor sales, and that
there wouldn’t be any continuation after the current story arc ends in
its sixth and final issue. The market spoke, and Marvel listened. Fist tap Big Don.
Counterpunch | You would think, for example, that in the heart of the most powerful
military empire that the world has ever seen, that an activist who opposedthe
savaging of other countries by the U.S. military would receive
intersectional support from a broad section of the U.S. left. And
particularly since this activist identified as LGBTQ, the LGBTQ left
would particularly be in her corner.
But no. Years earlier a top official in what is now known as the
National LGBTQ Task Force told me that “we will never” again come out
against a U.S. war, following the Task Force’s public opposition to
President George H. W. Bush’s first war against Iraq. He said that the
Task Force’s coming out against that war had “nearly destroyed” the
organization, as wealthy donors pulled their donations and threatened to
never support it again. And this was with the Task Force, the group
that likes to posture itself as the “hippest” of the big LGBTQ
non-profits.
But it was not the first, nor certainly the last time that LGBTQ
non-profits – rightly derided as “Gay Inc.” – prioritized donors’
dollars to fund their salaries and offices, over alleged adherence to
intersectional principles.
For all their talk of “grassroots organizing” – another phrase that’s
become hackneyed thru repeated misuse – Gay Inc. organizations are
staff-driven at best, and at worst, controlled by self-selected boards
chosen for their ability to tap contributions from wealthy donors. In
this way the wealthiest LGBTQs control the political agenda of what
passes for our movement, a pink version of the class stratification
talked about in straight society, but rarely mentioned in the movement.
Some
say that the reason for this conservatism is Gay, Inc.’s affection for
“heteronormativity” – the aping straight people. This is said to explain
their recent emphasis on winning equal marriage rights, for example.
But this interpretation doesn’t adequately explain where
“heteronormativity” itself comes from, and it also radically mis-reads
the chronology of how the marriage issue became center-space in our
movement.
RT | Russian President Vladimir Putin says he is ready to provide
records of the recent meeting between US leader Donald Trump and Russian
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, to dispel the "political schizophrenia"
around the allegations that state secrets were leaked.
"If
the US administration deems it possible, we are ready to provide the
Senate and Congress with the transcript of the conversation between
Lavrov and Trump," Putin said at a press conference, following a meeting with Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni on Wednesday.
It comes after the Washington Post claimed that Trump had “revealed highly classified information to the Russian foreign minister [Sergey Lavrov] and ambassador in a White House meeting” on May 10.
Trump maintains that the data he shared with Lavrov concerned flight safety and terrorism, and that he had the "absolute right" to provide the information at an openly scheduled White House meeting.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova issued a mocking response to the claims, posting on Facebook:
“Have you guys been reading American newspapers again? Don’t read them.
They can be used in many different ways, but one shouldn’t read them –
recently it has become not only harmful, but dangerous.”
"We are seeing in the US a developing political schizophrenia," Putin said.
"There is no other way I can explain the accusations against the acting US president that he gave away some secrets to Lavrov."
Those who "are
destabilizing the internal US political situation using anti-Russian
slogans either don't understand that they are bringing this nonsense in
on their own side, and then they are just stupid, or else they
understand everything, and then they are dangerous and corrupt people," Putin said.
"Anyway, this is a US matter, and we don't want and don't plan to interfere," the Russian president said.
Putin
promptly followed his statements about the Trump-Lavrov meeting by
saying he did share some secrets with the Italian prime minister.
"As for the message I delivered to Mr. Prime Minister, it is of a secret nature, I cannot tell you about it," Putin said with a smile.
While
much discussed by the media, the alleged state secret leaks appear not
to have damaged Washington's overseas alliances. UK Prime Minister
Theresa May has vowed to continue sharing intelligence data with the US.
therealnews | But why is so much of
the American foreign policy establishment, the political class, the
military leadership, the vast majority of that whole stratum wants to
maintain a very antagonistic position towards Russia, and why?
ROBERT
ENGLISH: You know, four or five reasons that all come together, pushing
in this Russophobic direction. We've always had sort of unreconstructed
Cold Warriors, people who never were easy with the new Russia, right?
Zbigniew Brzezinski and people of that ilk, who wanted to just push
Russia in a corner, take advantage of its weakness, never give it a
chance. Then you have people in the military-industrial complex, for
lack of a better term, whose vested interests lie in a continued
rivalry, and continued arms-racing, and continued threat inflation. You
have other people who normally would be liberal progressive, but they're
so angry at Hillary Clinton's loss, they're so uncomprehending of how
someone they see as vulgar and unqualified as Trump could get elected,
that they're naturally unwilling to let go of this "the Russians hacked
our election, the Russians got Trump elected" theme, and therefore,
Russia is even bigger enemy than they would be otherwise. These and
other strains all come together in a strange way. Some of this is the
hard right, all right? Some of it is from the left, some is from the
center. And across the board, we have ignorance. Ignorance of Russia.
PAUL
JAY: Now, in an article you wrote recently, you went through some of
the history, and we're going to do another segment that digs into this
history more in depth, but when you look at the history of the '90s, and
Yeltsin, and the whole role of the United States in helping bring down
the Soviet Union, the whole point of bringing down the Soviet Union, and
standing Yeltsin up, and interfering in Russian elections to make sure
Yeltsin wins, and so on, was to open Russia for privatization for
American oligarchs. I don't think the idea was to do it for Russian
oligarchs, but that's how it turned out. Is that part of what is making
this section of the American oligarchs so angry about it all?
ROBERT
ENGLISH: You know, when people look at Russia today, they try to
explain it in terms of one evil man, Putin, and that sort of conceals an
assumption that if we could just get rid of Putin, everything would be
better, and that Putin is the way he is — anti-American — because he's
from the KGB. You don't need to go back to his youth or his time in
intelligence to understand why he's very skeptical, why we have bad
relations with Putin and all those around him. You don't have to go back
to the '50s or '40s. You can go back just to the '90s, when we
interfered in Russia, when we foisted dysfunctional economic policies on
them, when we meddled in their elections repeatedly, and basically for
an entire decade, we were handmaidens to a catastrophe — economic,
political, social — that sowed the seeds of this resentment that
continues to this day. It's a-
PAUL JAY: Yeah, you mention in your
article that the consequences of the '90s depression in Russia far
surpassed anything in the '07-'08 recession in the United States.
ROBERT
ENGLISH: They far surpassed that. They even far surpassed anything in
our own Great Depression of the early 1930s, of '29, '30, '31 — you
know, the Great Depression, under Hoover and then Roosevelt. At that
time, our economy contracted by about a quarter, and the slump lasted
about three years before growth resumed. Russia's economy contracted
almost by half, and the slump lasted an entire decade, and it resulted
not just in widespread poverty, but millions of excess deaths, of
suicides, of people dying of despair, of heart disease, of treatable
illnesses caused by the strains, the ... This deep, unbelievable misery
of that decade. It's no wonder that there is deep resentment towards the
US, and this underlies a lot of the Putin elites' attitudes towards us.
It's not something pathological, Putin being a bad guy. If you got rid
of Putin tomorrow, the next guy who came along, the person most Russians
would probably elect in democratic elections, wouldn't be so different.
It wouldn't be another Yeltsin or pro-Western liberal, believe me.
PAUL
JAY: Well, even if everything they say about Putin is true, and I doubt
and ... Quite sure not everything is true. If he is such a dictator,
United States foreign policy has never had any trouble with dictators,
as long as they're our dictators, so the thing drips with hypocrisy.
ROBERT
ENGLISH: Hypocrisy and double standards all around are what Russians
see, okay? I mean, where do you begin? Look at the recent ... The vote,
the referendum in Crimea to secede from Ukraine, and of course, then
Russia annexed it into Russian territory, and we find that outrageous, a
violation of international law, and the Russians say, "Yeah, and what
did you engineer in Kosovo? You yanked Kosovo out of Serbia, you caused
Kosovo to secede from Serbia with no referendum, no international law.
How is that different? Right? When it's your client state it's okay, but
when it's ours, it's not?" And of course the list is a long one; we
could spend all afternoon going through them. So the first thing we need
to do is stop the sanctimony, and deal with Russia as an equal great
power. But, you know, can I say one more thing about the '90s
that connect it with what's going on today? In 1991, we had George
Herbert Walker Bush in the White House. It was still the Soviet Union,
Gorbachev was still in power for the rest of the year, and a warning
came from our ambassador in Moscow, Jack Matlock, which was passed on to
the White House. He had inside information from sources, from
confidential sources, that a coup attempt was being planned. And, by the
way, of course it happened in August of that year. That information
came from our Ambassador Matlock, from his sources in Moscow, to the
White House. George Bush had been instructed that this was highly
sensitive, do not reveal the source of the information, keep it
confidential. Bush fouled up, and within hours, he got on the phone to
Moscow, a line that was open, monitored by the KGB, trying to reach
Gorbachev, and he revealed the information, and he revealed the source,
which went straight to the KGB. This was an unbelievable breach of
confidentiality, dangerous, potentially deadly results, and the greatest
irony is that George Herbert Walker Bush had been Director of the CIA
before. Now, why am I telling this story? Obviously, my first
point is, presidents have fouled up, and have declassified unwittingly,
or sometimes for political purposes, highly sensitive information all
the time. I'm not excusing what Trump did — it looks like he was very
sloppy — but the first thing to note is it's not unusual, this happens a
lot. The second thing, and let's talk about this, is sharing
information intelligence with the Russians. Guys, we've been doing this
for nearly 20 years. After 9/11, the Russians offered us valuable
intelligence on the Taliban, on Afghanistan, to help us fight back
against bin Laden, and we've been exchanging intelligence on terrorists
ever since. A lot of people wish we'd exchange more information; we
might have prevented the Boston bombing. So this hysteria about sharing
intelligence with our adversary, no, we are cooperating with Russia
because we have a common enemy.
PAUL JAY: Now, I said in the
beginning that I thought we should separate Trump's intent from a
policy, which seems more rational, not to treat Russia as such an
adversary, and try to work both in Syria and other places, negotiate
more things out. But when you do look at the side of intent, I don't
think you can negate or forget about the kind of historic ties that
Trump has with Russian oligarchs. Some people suggest Russian Mafia.
Tillerson's energy play, they would love sanctions lifted on Russia, and
I'm not suggesting they shouldn't be lifted, but the motive here is
they want to do a massive play in the energy sector. So it's not ... I
don't think we should forget about what drives Trump and his circle
around him, which is they have a very big fossil fuel agenda and a
money-making agenda. On the other hand, that doesn't mean the policy
towards Russia isn't rational. I mean, what do you ... I don't know if
you agree or not.
unz |There is a growing Washington consensus that
consists of traditional liberals and progressives as well as Democratic
globalist interventionists and neoconservatives who believe that Donald
Trump must be removed from office no matter what it takes. The
interventionists and neocons in particular already control most of the
foreign policy mechanisms but they continue to see Trump as a possible
impediment to their plans for aggressive action against a host of
enemies, most particularly Russia. As they are desirous of bringing down
Trump “legally” through either impeachment or Article 25 of the
Constitution which permits removal for incapacity, it might be termed a
constitutional coup, though the other labels cited above also fit.
The
rationale Trump haters have fabricated is simple: the president and his
team colluded with the Russians to rig the 2016 election in his favor,
which, if true, would provide grounds for impeachment. The driving
force, in terms of the argument being made, is that removing Trump must
be done “for the good of the country” and to “correct a mistake made by
the American voters.” The mainstream media is completely on board of the
process, including the outlets that flatter themselves by describing
their national stature, most notably the New York Times and Washington
Post.
So
what is to be done? For starters, until Donald Trump has unambiguously
broken a law the critics should take a valium and relax. He is an
elected president and his predecessors George W. Bush and Barack Obama
certainly did plenty of things that in retrospect do not bear much
scrutiny. Folks like Ray McGovern and Robert Parry should be listened to
even when they are being provocative in their views. They are not, to
be sure, friends of the White House in any conventional way and are not
apologists for those in power, quite the contrary. Ray has been strongly
critical of the current foreign policy, most particularly of the
expansion of various wars, claims of Damascus’s use of chemical weapons,
and the cruise missile attack on Syria. Robert in his latest article
describes Trump as narcissistic and politically incompetent. But their
legitimate concerns are that we are moving in a direction that is far
more dangerous than Trump. A soft coup engineered by the national
security and intelligence agencies would be far more dangerous to our
democracy than anything Donald Trump can do.
ibankcoin | Steven Cohen, Professor of Russian studies at Princeton and NYU (an
obvious Russian spy) was besides himself tonight, in sheer disbelief
over the with hunt of gigantic nothing-burgers that are being used to
assault the Presidency of Donald Trump.
He declared, “today, I would say (the greatest threat to national
security) is this assault on President Trump. Let’s be clear what he’s
being accused of is treason. This has never happened in America, that we
had a Russian agent in the White House. Cohen believes Flynn did
nothing wrong by talking to the Russian ambassador, describing it as
‘his job’ to do so.
He then illuminated the indelible fact that there is a 4th branch of
government, the intelligence community, who have been meddling in
American foreign affairs, obstructing the other 3 branches of
government.
“In 2016, President Obama worked out a deal with Russian
President Putin for military cooperation in Syria. He said he was gonna
share intelligence with Russia, just like Trump and the Russians were
supposed to do the other day. Our department of defense said it wouldn’t
share intelligence. And a few days later, they killed Syrian soldiers,
violating the agreement, and that was the end of that. So, we can ask,
who is making our foreign policy in Washington today?”
Professor Cohen added, “you and I have to ask a subversive question,
are there really three branches of government, or is there a 4th branch
of government? These intel services. What we know, as a fact, is that
Obama tried, not very hard but he tried for a military alliance with
Putin, in Syria, against terrorism and it was sabotaged by the
department of defense and its allies in the intelligence services.”
wikipedia |Systema (Система, literally meaning The System) is a Russian martial art.[1]
Training includes, but is not limited to: hand-to-hand combat,
grappling, knife fighting, and firearms training. Training involves
drills and sparring without set kata.
In Systema, the body has to be free of tensions, filled with endurance,
flexibility, effortless movement, and explosive potential; the "spirit"
or psychological state has to be calm, free of anger, irritation, fear,
self-pity, delusion, and pride.[2]
Systema focuses on breathing, relaxation, and fluidity of movement,
as well as utilizing an attacker's momentum against him and controlling
the six body levers (elbows, neck, knees, waist, ankles, and shoulders)
through pressure point
application, striking, and weapon applications. As a discipline, it is
becoming more and more popular among police and security forces and it
is taught by several practitioners inside and outside Russia.
wikipedia | The Russian girya (ги́ря, a loanword from Persian غران girān "heavy") was a type of metal weight, primarily used to weigh crops, in the 18th century. The use of such weights by circus strongmen is recorded for the 19th century. They began to be used for recreational and competition strength athletics in Russia and Europe in the late 19th century. The birth of competitive kettlebell lifting or girevoy sport
(гиревой спорт) is dated to 1885, with the foundation of the founding
year of the "Circle for Amateur Athlethics" (Кружок любителей атлетики).[2]
Russian kettlebells (Russian: ги́ри giri, singular ги́ря girya) are traditionally measured in weight by pood, corresponding to 16.38 kilograms (36.1 lb).[3] The English term kettle bell has been in use since the early 20th century.[4]
Similar weights used in Classical Greece were the haltere, comparable to the modern kettlebell in terms of movements. Another comparable instrument was used by Shaolin monks in China.
NYTimes | China,
India and Russia were among the countries most affected by the
ransomware attack, according to the Moscow-based computer security firm
Kaspersky Lab. The three countries are also big sources of pirated
software. A study last year by BSA, a trade association of software vendors,
found that in China, the share of unlicensed software reached 70
percent in 2015. Russia, with a rate of 64 percent, and India, with 58
percent, were close behind.
Zhu
Huanjie, who is studying network engineering in the city of Hangzhou,
blamed a number of ills for the spread of the attack, like the lack of
security on school networks. But he said piracy was also a factor. Many
users, he said, did not update their software to get the latest safety
features because of a fear that their copies would be damaged or locked,
while universities offered only older, pirated versions.
“Most
of the schools are now all using pirate software, including operation
system and professional software,” he said, adding: “In China, the
Windows that most people are using is still pirated. This is just the
way it is.”
On
Monday, some Chinese institutions were still moving to clean out
computer systems jammed by the attack, which initially struck on Friday
and spread across the world.
Prestigious research institutions like Tsinghua University were
affected, as were major companies like China Telecom and Hainan
Airlines.
China’s
securities regulator said it had taken down its network to try to
ensure it would not be affected, and the country’s banking regulator
warned lenders to be cautious when dealing with the malicious software,
which locked users out of their computers and demanded payment to allow
them back in.
Police
stations and local security offices reported problems on social media,
while students at universities reported being locked out of final thesis
papers. Electronic payment systems at gas stations run by the state oil
giant PetroChina were cut off for much of the weekend. Over all,
according to the official state television broadcaster, about 40,000
institutions were hit. Separately, the Chinese security company Qihoo
360 reported that computers at more than 29,000 organizations had been
infected.
If
those behind the ransomware attack profited from the hacking, they may
have figured out how to do something that has been beyond Microsoft:
making money from Windows in China. Microsoft and other Western
companies have complained for years that a large majority of the
computers running their software are using pirated versions.
Telegraph |Vladimir
Putin has blamed the US for causing the global cyber attack. He said
Russia had "nothing to do" with the cyber attack, adding that the US had
indirectly caused it by creating the Microsoft hack in the first place.
"Malware created by intelligence agencies can backfire on its creators," said Putin, speaking to media in Beijing.
He added that the attack didn't cause any significant damage to
Russia. Russian security firm Kaspersky said hospitals, police and
railroad transport had been affected in the country. Another report
suggested Russia was one of the worst hit locations.
Putin said:
As regards the source of these threats, I believe that the leadership
of Microsoft have announced this plainly, that the initial source of
the virus is the intelligence services of the United States.
Once they're let out of the lamp, genies of this kind, especially
those created by intelligence services, can later do damage to their
authors and creators.
So this question should be discussed immediately on a serious
political level and a defence needs to be worked out from such
phenomena.
nbcnews | President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday targeting
the federal government's notorious vulnerability to cyber threats,
mandating one set of standards and making the heads of each government
agency responsible for security.
"The United States invented the internet and
we need to better use it," Tom Bossert, Trump's homeland security
adviser, said at a briefing on the order for reporters. "There will
always be risk, and we need to address that risk."
The new order puts responsibility for cybersecurity squarely on the
shoulders of the director of every federal agency, making it more
difficult for executives to pass the buck to their information
technology staffs every time a new breach is discovered.
"Risk management decisions made by agency
heads can affect the risk to the executive branch as a whole," according
to the order. "Effective risk management requires agency heads to lead
integrated teams of senior executives with expertise in IT, security,
budgeting, acquisition, law, privacy and human resources."
Drafts of the order have been widely circulated for months, but the
version Trump signed Thursday includes a major and unexpected
initiative: moving as much of the government's cyberdefense system to
"the cloud" as possible.
That provision effectively establishes a single structure centralizing all federal IT networks.
"We've got to move to the cloud and try to
protect ourselves instead of fracturing our security posture," Bossert
said, adding: "If we don't move to shared services, we have 190 agencies
all trying to develop their own defenses against advanced collection
efforts."
Specifically, the order directs all federal
agencies to adopt cybersecurity policies drawn up by the National
Institute of Standards and Technology — policies that were issued years
ago but that the government itself has never adopted.
"From this point forward, departments and agencies shall practice what we preach," Bossert said.
Microsoft | This attack demonstrates the degree to
which cybersecurity has become a shared responsibility between tech
companies and customers. The fact that so many computers remained
vulnerable two months after the release of a patch illustrates this
aspect. As cybercriminals become more sophisticated, there is simply no
way for customers to protect themselves against threats unless they
update their systems. Otherwise they’re literally fighting the problems
of the present with tools from the past. This attack is a powerful
reminder that information technology basics like keeping computers
current and patched are a high responsibility for everyone, and it’s
something every top executive should support.
At the same time, we have a clear understanding of the complexity and
diversity of today’s IT infrastructure, and how updates can be a
formidable practical challenge for many customers. Today, we use robust
testing and analytics to enable rapid updates into IT infrastructure,
and we are dedicated to developing further steps to help ensure security
updates are applied immediately to all IT environments.
Finally, this attack provides yet another example of why the
stockpiling of vulnerabilities by governments is such a problem. This is
an emerging pattern in 2017. We have seen vulnerabilities stored by the
CIA show up on WikiLeaks, and now this vulnerability stolen from the
NSA has affected customers around the world. Repeatedly, exploits in the
hands of governments have leaked into the public domain and caused
widespread damage. An equivalent scenario with conventional weapons
would be the U.S. military having some of its Tomahawk missiles stolen.
And this most recent attack represents a completely unintended but
disconcerting link between the two most serious forms of cybersecurity
threats in the world today – nation-state action and organized criminal
action.
The governments of the world should treat this attack as a wake-up
call. They need to take a different approach and adhere in cyberspace to
the same rules applied to weapons in the physical world. We need
governments to consider the damage to civilians that comes from hoarding
these vulnerabilities and the use of these exploits. This is one reason
we called in February for a new “Digital Geneva Convention”
to govern these issues, including a new requirement for governments to
report vulnerabilities to vendors, rather than stockpile, sell, or
exploit them. And it’s why we’ve pledged our support for defending every
customer everywhere in the face of cyberattacks, regardless of their
nationality. This weekend, whether it’s in London, New York, Moscow,
Delhi, Sao Paulo, or Beijing, we’re putting this principle into action
and working with customers around the world.
We’ve documented that the intelligence services intentionally create digital vulnerabilities, then intentionally leave them open … leaving us exposed and insecure.
Washington’s Blog asked the highest level NSA whistleblower ever* – Bill Binney – what he thinks of the attacks.
Binney told us:
This is what I called short sighted finite thinking on the part of the Intelligence Community managers.
This is also what I called (for some years now) a swindle of the tax
payers. First, they find or create weaknesses then they don’t fix these
weaknesses so we are all vulnerable to attack.
Then, when attacks occur, they say they need more money for cyber security — a total swindle!!! [Indeed.]
This is only the second swindle of the public. The first was terror
efforts by saying we need to collect everything to stop terror — another
lie. They said that because to collect everything takes lots and lots
of money.
Then, when the terror attack occurs, they say they need more money,
people and data to stop terror. Another swindle from the start. [The war
on terror is a “self-licking ice cream cone”, because it creates many more terrorists than it stops.]
And, finally, the latest swindle “THE RUSSIANS DID IT.” This is an
effort to start a new cold war which means another bigger swindle of US
tax payers.
For cyber security, I would suggest the president order NSA, CIA and
any others to fix the cyber problems they know about; then, maybe we
will start to have some cyber security.
The bottom line is that our intelligence services should start concentrating on actually defendingus, rather than focusing their resources on offensive mischief.
theduran | A widespread computer virus attack known as ‘WannaCry’ has been
compromising computers with obsolete operating systems across the world.
This should be the opening sentence of just about every article on this
subject, but unfortunately it is not.
The virus does not attack modern computer operating systems, it is
designed to attack the Windows XP operating system that is so old, it
was likely used in offices in the World Trade Center prior to September
11 2001, when the buildings collapsed. Windows XP was first released on
25 August, 2001.
Furthermore, early vulnerabilities in modern Windows systems were
almost instantly patched up by Microsoft as per the fact that such
operating systems are constantly updated.
The obsolete XP system is simply out of the loop.
A child born on the release date of Windows XP is now on the verge of his or her 17th birthday. Feeling old yet?
The fact of the matter is that governments and businesses around the
world should not only feel old, they should feel humiliated and
disgraced.
With the amount of money governments tax individuals and private
entities, it is beyond belief that government organisations ranging from
some computers in the Russian Interior Ministry to virtually all computers in Britain’s National Health Service,
should be using an operating system so obsolete that its manufacturer,
Microsoft, no longer supports it and hasn’t done for some time.
arstechnica | A highly virulent new strain of self-replicating ransomware shut down
computers all over the world, in part by appropriating a National
Security Agency exploit that was publicly released last month by the
mysterious group calling itself Shadow Brokers.
Wcry is reportedly causing disruptions at banks, hospitals,
telecommunications services, train stations, and other mission-critical
organizations in multiple countries, including the UK, Spain, Germany,
and Turkey. FedEx, the UK government's National Health Service, and
Spanish telecom Telefonica have all been hit. The Spanish CERT has called it
a "massive ransomware attack" that is encrypting all the files of
entire networks and spreading laterally through organizations.
The virally spreading worm was ultimately stopped when a researcher who uses the Twitter handle MalwareTech and works for security firm Kryptos Logic
took control of a domain name that was hard-coded into the
self-replicating exploit. The domain registration, which occurred around
6 AM California time, was a major stroke of good luck, because it was
possible only because the attackers had failed to obtain the address
first.
The address appeared to serve as a sort of kill switch the attackers
could use to terminate the campaign. MalwareTech's registration had the
effect of ending the attacks that had started earlier Friday morning in
other parts of the world. As a result, the number of infection
detections plateaued dramatically in the hours following the
registration. It had no effect on WCry infections that were initiated
through earlier campaigns.
WaPo | It is true, as I pointed out in a Post op-ed in October,
that Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch, after her tarmac meeting with
Bill Clinton, had left a vacuum by neither formally recusing herself nor
exercising supervision over the case. But the remedy for that was for
Comey to present his factual findings to the deputy attorney general,
not to exercise the prosecutorial power himself on a matter of such
grave importance.
Until Comey’s testimony last week,
I had assumed that Lynch had authorized Comey to act unilaterally. It
is now clear that the department’s leadership was sandbagged. I know of
no former senior Justice Department official — Democrat or Republican —
who does not view Comey’s conduct in July to have been a grave
usurpation of authority.
Comey’s
basic misjudgment boxed him in, compelling him to take increasingly
controversial actions giving the impression that the FBI was enmeshed in
politics. Once Comey staked out a position in July, he had no choice on
the near-eve of the election but to reopen the investigation when new
evidence materialized. Regrettably, however, this performance made Comey
himself the issue, placing him on center stage in public political
discourse and causing him to lose credibility on both sides of the
aisle. It was widely recognized that Comey’s job was in jeopardy
regardless of who won the election.
It is not surprising that
Trump would be inclined to make a fresh start at the bureau and would
consult with the leadership of the Justice Department about whether
Comey should remain. Those deliberations could not begin in earnest
until the new deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, to whom Comey
would report, was confirmed and in a position to assess Comey and his
performance. No matter how far along the president was in his own
thinking, Rosenstein’s assessment is cogent and vindicates the
president’s decision.
Rosenstein made clear in his memorandum
that he was concerned not so much with Comey’s past arrogation of
power, as astonishing as it was, but rather with his ongoing refusal to
acknowledge his errors. I do not dispute that Comey sincerely believes
he acted properly in the best interests of the country. But at the same
time, I think it is quite understandable that the administration would
not want an FBI director who did not recognize established limits on his
powers.
It is telling that none of the president’s critics are
challenging the decision on the merits. None argue that Comey’s
performance warranted keeping him on as director. Instead, they are
attacking the president’s motives, claiming the president acted to
neuter the investigation into Russia’s role in the election.
The
notion that the integrity of this investigation depends on Comey’s
presence just does not hold water. Contrary to the critics’ talking
points, Comey was not “in charge” of the investigation.
Sputniknews | In his recent Davos speech, Kissinger reiterated that the global order the US and EU were familiar with is fading away.
"One of the key problems of our period is that
the international order with which we were familiar is disintegrating
in some respects, and that new elements from Asia and the developing
world are entering it," Kissinger pointed out Friday.
In light of this, it is no surprise that Kissinger sees Trump's approach toward Russia largely as a step in the right direction.
Kissinger as Trump's 'Informal Foreign Policy Adviser'
Citing information obtained by Western European intelligence
from Trump's transition team, the German newspaper wrote in late
December that Kissinger has repeatedly met with Trump in the past couple
of months and that the White House is likely to go for "constructive
cooperation" with the Kremlin.
In early January 2017, citing officials with Trump's transition team, Eli Lake of Bloomberg disclosed
that since the election, the veteran diplomat has been counselling
incoming National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and his team, citing
officials with Trump's transition team.
But that's half the story. According to Lake, it was Kissinger who
urged Trump to nominate Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State and
recommended his former assistant K.T. McFarland to be Flynn's deputy.
"Kissinger is one of the few people in Trump's
orbit who can get him on the phone whenever he wants, according to one
transition adviser," Lake noted.
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