Steve Bull's Blog, page 1188
February 17, 2018
How UK Spies Hacked a European Ally and Got Away With It
Photo: Sander de Wilde/Corbis/Getty Images
HOW UK SPIES HACKED A EUROPEAN ALLY AND GOT AWAY WITH IT
FOR A MOMENT, it seemed the hackers had slipped up and exposed their identities. It was the summer of 2013, and European investigators were looking into an unprecedented breach of Belgium’s telecommunications infrastructure. They believed they were on the trail of the people responsible. But it would soon become clear that they were chasing ghosts – fake names that had been invented by British spies.
The hack had targeted Belgacom, Belgium’s largest telecommunications provider, which serves millions of people across Europe. The company’s employees had noticed their email accounts were not receiving messages. On closer inspection, they made a startling discovery: Belgacom’s internal computer systems had been infected with one of the most advanced pieces of malware security experts had ever seen.
As The Intercept reported in 2014, the hack turned out to have been perpetrated by U.K. surveillance agency Government Communications Headquarters, better known as GCHQ. The British spies hacked into Belgacom employees’ computers and then penetrated the company’s internal systems. In an eavesdropping mission called “Operation Socialist,” GCHQ planted bugs inside the most sensitive parts of Belgacom’s networks and tapped into communications processed by the company.
GCHQ Computer Network Exploitation presentation22 pages
The covert operation was the first known example of a European Union member state hacking the critical infrastructure of another. The malware infection triggered a massive cleanup operation within Belgacom, which has since renamed itself Proximus. The company – of which the Belgian government is the majority owner – was forced to replace thousands of its computers at a cost of several million Euros. Elio di Rupo, Belgium’s then-prime minister, was furious, calling the hack a “violation.” Meanwhile, one of the country’s top federal prosecutors opened a criminal investigation into the intrusion.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Russians Spooked by Nukes-Against-Cyber-Attack Policy
New U.S. policy on nuclear retaliatory strikes for cyber-attacks is raising concerns, with Russia claiming that it’s already been blamed for a false-flag cyber-attack – namely the election hacking allegations of 2016, explain Ray McGovern and William Binney.
Moscow is showing understandable concern over the lowering of the threshold for employing nuclear weapons to include retaliation for cyber-attacks, a change announced on Feb. 2 in the U.S. Nuclear Posture Review (NPR).
A nuclear test detonation carried out in Nevada on April 18, 1953.
Explaining the shift in U.S. doctrine on first-use, the NPR cites the efforts of potential adversaries “to design and use cyber weapons” and explains the change as a “hedge” against non-nuclear threats. In response, Russia described the move as an “attempt to shift onto others one’s own responsibility” for the deteriorating security situation.
Moscow’s concern goes beyond rhetoric. Cyber-attacks are notoriously difficult to trace to the actual perpetrator and can be pinned easily on others in what we call “false-flag” operations. These can be highly destabilizing – not only in the strategic context, but in the political arena as well.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has good reason to believe he has been the target of a false-flag attack of the political genre. We judged this to be the case a year and a half ago, and said so. Our judgment was fortified last summer – thanks to forensic evidence challenging accusations that the Russians hacked into the Democratic National Committee and provided emails to WikiLeaks. (Curiously, the FBI declined to do forensics, even though the “Russian hack” was being described as an “act of war.”)
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Albert Edwards on Trump’s Legacy:15% Deficits then a Deflationary Bust
Albert Edwards at Society General does not have kind words for Trump’s stimulus package.
In his latest Email, Albert Edwards at Society General fires a shot at Trump’s tax cut.
Edwards says the “fiscal expansion is probably the most foolhardy escapade in modern economic policy, and the timing of the fiscal stimulus that is utterly ridiculous and will only accelerate the collapse of US financial markets as the Fed hikes rates even more quickly.”
I doubt this is the most foolhardy expansion in history, but it is reckless and ill-timed.
Here are a few clips from Edwards.
After some eighteen months of surprising to the downside, US wage and price inflation are rising briskly, putting intense downward pressure on financial markets. Yet another Fed-inspired financial Ponzi scheme now looks set to collapse into the deflationary dust. But the post-mortem will identify President Trump’s ludicrously timed fiscal stimulus as a key trigger for the collapse. A 15% deficit will be his legacy.
Whatever the arguments are in favour of tax reform in the US (and there are many), this is probably the singularly most irresponsible macro-stimulus seen in US history. To say it is ill-timed and ill-judged would be a massive understatement.
The outcome of this front-end loaded stimulus package is patently obvious. It will rapidly accelerate the end of the economic cycle.
Tim Lee of pi Economics opined recently on why the VIX will struggle to regain the very low levels of a couple of weeks back. “We are much further into the cycle of what might be thought of as an underlying tightening of monetary conditions. The Fed is contracting its balance sheet and raising interest rates. On top of that … US imbalances are worsening with the personal savings rate set to fall to a new low while US government finances deteriorate further. Nominal and real bond yields are rising.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The All-Important Doorman
Picture this: A tribal leader from a distant country visits the US. He’s brought to a large apartment building in New York City. When he gets out of the car, he looks up at the great building and is quite impressed. A uniformed doorman exits the foyer and comes out on the sidewalk. The tribesman sees the gold braiding and brass buttons of his coat and immediately decides that this is a very important person. Again he looks up at the building and says to the doorman, “This is a very great home you have. You must be very important indeed.”
Of course, if we were present, we might chuckle at the tribesman’s naiveté. The owners of such a great building would never greet people at the entrance. They leave such trivial tasks to hired servants, whilst they run the real business without ever needing any direct contact with visitors as they enter the building. And, in addition, doormen come and go – they are, after all, disposable. The owners – those who control what happens in the building – retain their positions over the long term… and may remain anonymous, if they so choose.
We find this simple concept easy enough to understand, and yet we chronically have difficulty in understanding that, in most countries, the president, or prime minister, is not by any means the man who makes the big decisions in the running of the country.
We assume that, because we were allowed to vote for our leader, he must actually be our leader. But, as Mark Twain has at times been credited as saying, “If voting made any difference, they wouldn’t let us do it.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
America: A Military Nation
Americans like to think of their country as different from those run by military regimes. They are only fooling themselves. Ever since the federal government was converted into a national-security state after World War II (without a constitutional amendment authorizing the conversion), it has been the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA that have run the government, just like in countries governed by military dictatorships.
Oh sure, the façade is maintained — the façade that is ingrained in all of us in civics or government classes in high school and college: that the federal government is composed of three co-equal, independent branches that are in charge of the government.
But just a façade. It’s fake. It’s a lie.
It’s true that the federal government used to consist of three branches. But that quaint notion disintegrated when the federal government was converted to what is known as a “national-security state” after World War II. Even though it was done without a constitutional amendment, that conversion effectively added a fourth branch of government to the federal government — the national-security branch, which consists of the NSA, the CIA, and the Pentagon.
The addition of that fourth branch fundamentally altered the original three-branch concept, especially because the fourth branch quickly became the most powerful branch. The reason is because ultimately government is force, and the fourth branch is where the most force was concentrated within the new, altered governmental structure.
As law professor Michael Glennon has pointed out in his book National Security and Double Government, the result is a federal government in which the military, the CIA, and the NSA are in charge. They are the ones actually calling the shots. But they permit the other three branches to maintain the façade that they are in charge, including periodically going along with decisions in the other three branches to keep Americans thinking that everything is the same as it always has been.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Falsehoods and Lies: Inciting War Is a War Crime
Falsehoods and Lies: Inciting War Is a War Crime
The torrent of reckless false accusations against Russia made by the US and its NATO allies is hitting warp speed.
This week saw more baseless allegations of Russian cyber attacks on American elections and British industries.
There were also crass claims by US officials that Russia was behind so-called sonic attacks on American diplomats in Cuba.
Then a Dutch foreign minister was forced to resign after he finally admitted telling lies for the past two years over alleged Russian plans for regional aggression.
Elsewhere, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson claimed this week during a tour of the Middle East that “the primary goal” of his nation’s involvement in Syria is “to defeat” Islamic State (Daesh) terrorism.
This is patently false given that the US forces illegally occupying parts of Syria are launching lethal attacks on Syrian armed forces who are actually fighting Islamic State and their myriad terrorist affiliates.
Meanwhile, US ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley accused Russia of blocking peace efforts in Syria – another audacious falsehood to add to her thick compendium of calumny.
Perhaps the most barefaced falsehood transpired this week when French President Emmanuel Macron candidly admitted that his government did not have any proof of chemical weapons being used in Syria.
“Today, our agencies, our armed forces have not established that chemical weapons, as set out in treaties, have been used against the civilian population,” said Macron to media in Paris.
His admission follows that of US Defense Secretary James Mattis who also fessed up earlier this month to having no evidence of chemical weapons being deployed in Syria.
“We have other reports from the battlefield from people who claim it’s been used,” said Mattis to reporters at the Pentagon. “We do not have evidence of it.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
February 16, 2018
Is New Zealand A Doomsday Preppers’ Paradise?
Earlier today, we reported that Peter Thiel, the Bay Area’s most prominent conservative and one of President Trump’s most outspoken supporters from the LGBT community, announced that he was relocating to Los Angeles – and taking his investment firm with him – because of the famously intolerant culture in Silicon Valley.
The announcement of the move conjured up images of street harassment for Thiel, who is loathed in Silicon Valley and by the mainstream media because of his role in bringing down Gawker as part of a nearly decade-long revenge plot…
Interestingly, the Guardian also happened to publish today a profile about Thiel’s decision to build another potential domicile much, much further south: In New Zealand, where it was reported last year that he had become a citizen in 2011, and later that he purchased a large tract of land nearly the size of Manhattan that used to be a sheep station on New Zealand’s southern island.
Of course, the wealthy have many options for doomsday preparedness, as we’ve noted time and time again – from personal bunkers to memberships to luxury post-apocalyptic communities.
But New Zealand represents something different: A sparsely populated island with plenty of resources – essentially clay for wealthy capitalists to mold a new society from the ashes of the old after the collapse sets in…
But while Thiel’s New Zealand investment was more of a novelty news story in the US, in New Zealand, it has become a major scandal, sparking a national debate over how much leeway wealthy individuals should be given to become citizens and provide property.
And Thiel isn’t the only one: The Guardian points out that several other wealthy Silicon Valley figures have also taken an interest in the country…
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
How WaPo, BuzzFeed, And Soros-Backed Group Pushed The Phrase “Fake News” Until It Backfired
In the immediate aftermath of Wednesday’s tragic school shooting in Parkland, Florida, several major news outlets published a report that the shooter, Nikolas Cruz, was a member of a white supremacist organization. In fact, the MSM was hoodwinked by 4chan users into publishing fake news.
In fact, the stories are still up despite the Broward County Sherriff’s department declaring that there are “no known ties” between the shooter and the hate group.
Jordan said Thursday that his office has arrested militia leader Jordan Jereb at least four times since January 2014 and has been monitoring the group’s membership.
He says his office has “very solid” information on the group and “there’s no known ties that we have that we can connect” 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz with the group. –TampaBay.com
And while the MSM’s enormous mistake was simply a case of terrible journalism, those very outlets participated in a seemingly coordinated effort to brand any media with a divergent opinion as “fake news,” with a little help from their friends.
In a recent Tedx talk at the University of Nevada, investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson revealed some of the earliest efforts to seed the phrase “fake news” into the public lexicon by a little nonprofit group funded in part by George Soros’ Open Society Foundation and Google.
The group, “First Draft,” announced a partnership on September 13, 2016 “to tackle malicious hoaxes and fake news reports,” said Attkisson. “The goal was supposedly to separate wheat from chaff, to prevent unproven conspiracy talk from figuring prominently in internet searches. To relegate today’s version of the alien baby story to a special internet oblivion.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Op-Ed: Et Tu, The Intercept? Smear Of Assange Murderously Timed
Less than 48 hours after a UK judge ruled against Julian Assange’s legal team in their efforts to free him from the Ecuadoran embassy, The Intercept published a disingenuous and sloppy character assassination against the Wikileaks Editor-In-Chief.
The timing of the article’s publication acted to brutally counter growing support for Assange that arose in the wake of a clearly unjust UK ruling. Essentially, the publication of the smear attempted to deflect attention from the revelation of corruption in the ongoing detention of Assange, and to assassinate his character in the process.
The Intercept’s decision to publish the article at such a time unfortunately serves to characterize the outlet as a servant of the same US deep state that The Intercept has gained a reputation for – at least in theory – opposing.
The serious errors contained in The Intercept’s character assassination of the Wikileaks co-founder were quickly dismantled earlier today by independent journalists including Suzie Dawson, Caitlin Johnstone, HA Goodman and others. That Micah Lee, who has engaged in continual attacks against Assange on social media, would be allowed to contribute to an article of this kind represents a fundamental conflict of interest in the work, not to mention the factual inaccuracies and assumptions it makes without so much as pausing to take a breath.
The claims made in The Intercept’s hit piece regarding messages sent privately by Wikileaks’ Twitter account were disingenuous on multiple levels, beginning with the assumption that Assange was the sole author of the texts. The inference is clearly stated in the article, destroying any shred of journalistic integrity that might be expected from a well-respected news outlet.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Brazilian Army Ordered To “Restore Order” In Rio De Janeiro
With public spending on police and social services collapsing amid Brazil’s worsening economic crisis, violent crime has crept back up in Rio de Janeiro, a city widely recognized for its favelas – urban hillside slums teeming with violence, drugs and prostitution, according to Bloomberg.
And ahead of an October election where President Michel Temer will try to win his first full term in office, the president is trying to send in the army to seize control of the city’s streets and restore order to an increasingly lawless town.
President Michel Temer issued a decree on Friday putting an Army general in charge of Rio’s security forces, including the state’s civilian police. The intervention, which requires congressional approval, will last until the end of the year, according to the decree.
“Our prisons will no longer be offices for thieves, our public squares party halls for organized crime,” Temer said after signing the decree.
“I know it’s an extreme measure but many times Brazil requires extreme measures to put things in order.”
But as is often the case with Brazilian politics, Temer has a plausible ulterior motive: By sending in the army, he might create enough of a distraction to avoid voting on an unpopular pension bill because Brazilian law conveniently prohibits making constitutional changes during times of military crisis.
Temer told Reuters that the intervention wouldn’t halt negotiations over pension reform or stop a vote on the plan, which is deeply unpopular with the country’s retirees, who stand to see their benefits cut.
Meanwhile, crime in the city has erased nearly a decade of progress, climbing back to its highest level since 2009. Temer’s decision is the first time the military has intervened in public affairs since the former military dictatorship ended in the mid-1980s and the country returned to democracy.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
