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The head of the private intelligence agency Stratfor has for the first time publicly said that the US government considers to be its overriding strategic objective the prevention of a German-Russian alliance. Blocking that alliance is the only way to prevent an alternative world power capable of challenging extension of the American position of being the world’s lone superpower. [In this video, he says that the U.S. will fail in that overriding objective; German technology and capital will combine with Russian natural resources and “land-power,” to produce a truly bipolar world: U.S. v. Eurasia. So: he sees the U.S. strategy as being to block that, by weakening both Germany and Russia. That strategy would explain what Obama is doing in Ukraine, and the sanctions that are hurting both Russia and Germany, but Friedman thinks that nothing can work.]

Background:

The American political scientist George Friedman is chief of intelligence think tank “Stratfor Global Intelligence”, which he founded in 1996. The headquarters of Stratfor is located in Texas. Stratfor advises 4,000 companies, individuals and governments around the world, reports the New York Times. These include Bank of America, the US State Department, Apple, Microsoft and Lockheed Martin, Monsanto and Cisco, on security issues.

In December 2011 there was a hacker attack on the computer system of Stratfor.Then 90,000 names, addresses, credit card numbers, passwords Stratfor clients were published. The attack was by the hacker Jeremy Hammond. But later it turned out that an FBI employee Hammond had instigated the attack on the Stratfor system. The FBI was involved in all phases of the attack.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Department Of Homeland Security Issues Warning After “Mall Of America” Terror Threat

February 23, 2015

Department Of Homeland Security Issues Warning After “Mall Of America” Terror Threat

First it was ruthless snow (in the winter), then we got a port blockade (caused by well-paid US workers demanding even more), and now, unveiling the last pillar of the holy trifecta of economic disappointment scapegoats, earlier today the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, aka the “De(r)partment of Fear”, Jeh Johnson said that in a video the Al Qaeda-linked terrorist group al Shabaab called for attacks on US shopping malls, specifically citing the Minnesota mall, and that the agency is taking this threat against the Mall of America “very seriously” and that people should be “particularly careful” when visiting the mall in Minnesota. It was unclear just how being “careful” would protect one from ad hocexplosive detonations and other mass murder event, but that’s a bridge the Department of Fear will cross when it gets to it.

As cited by Politico, “What we’re telling the public in general is you’ve got to be vigilant,” Johnson said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “We’ve just revamped our ‘If You See, Say Something’ campaign at the Super Bowl … Americans should still feel that they are free to associate, they are free to go to public gatherings. But it’s critical that we have public awareness and public participation in our efforts.”

In other words, don’t be too scared. Just scared “enough.”

“Anytime a terrorist organization calls for an attack on a specific place, we’ve got to take that seriously,” he explained, “So, through our intelligence bulletins, through working with state and local law enforcement, through working with the FBI, we take this kind of thing very seriously.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Understanding The Fear Of Self-Defense And Revolution

February 12, 2015

Understanding The Fear Of Self-Defense And Revolution

Our era is a strange one when considering how social attitudes have developed in such a contrary fashion to the rest of history. I think that our forefathers would look upon our current culture with bewilderment when confronted with the fact that our generation has all but abandoned the option of physical rebellion as a tool for social change. Even among the most enslaved of nations and peoples, the idea of revolution has been held in regard as an entirely moral and principled affair involving every individual, no matter their age or economic station. Today, however, that which we call “revolution” has been delegated mostly to college-age intellectuals and has been so watered down and whitewashed with politically correct restrictions that the concept is hardly recognizable.

I believe the civil rights movements in America and in India in the 20^th century have in many ways warped the public view of how opposition to totalitarianism is actually accomplished. I find it interesting that movements led by Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. enjoy so much adoration in mainstream media and in public schooling, while the American Revolution is often either misrepresented or not discussed at all. Gandhi’s movement was, in concrete terms, a failure until Indians had actually began organizing to physically fight the British, causing the Crown to attempt to defuse the movement by suddenly offering up a reformation of Indian governance (one that would continue to benefit them). When one examines the facts surrounding Cointelpro operations by the FBI and CIA during the civil rights movement in America, one realizes that half the efforts and actions were legitimate and the other half entirely manipulated.

Over the course of half a century, the philosophy of “anti-violence” has come to include a distinct distaste for self-defense. Self-defense is now consistently equated to “violence” (and is, thus, immoral), regardless of environmental circumstances.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Al Qaeda’s Bookkeeper Spills the Beans

February 11, 2015

Al Qaeda’s Bookkeeper Spills the Beans

Zacarias Moussaoui was the bookkeeper for Al Qaeda, but the U.S. intelligence services have been keeping this fact secret as much as they can, because what he knows about the crucial financial backers of Al Qaeda can be very damaging to the U.S. aristocracy, which is heavily oil-based and closely allied with the Saudi royal family, which created Al Qaeda in order to please the Saudi clerics, who are Wahhabist Muslims who constantly threaten the royals with exposure of their economic and sexual corruption unless the royals finance the spread of the Wahhabist sect (such as by Al Qaeda), and thereby finance the spread of those clerics’ own international influence and power.

Or, so says the former bookkeeper of Al Qaeda, who was selected by Al Qaeda’s military chief, Abu Hafs (also known as “Mohammed Atef”), to serve Osama bin Laden in that capacity: Zacarias Moussaoui. This is his testimony, in brief.

If you will look at the wikipedia article on Moussaoui, it says nothing whatsoever about his having graduated with a Masters in International Export Business degree from the Institute of Export in France, the French affiliate of the UK’s Institute of Export. That’s how he described himself on the very first day of his testimony. Then, on the second day of his testimony, he was asked what qualifications he had presented to Osama bin Laden, and he answered in more detail, and listed several:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

There Are Far Fewer Terror Attacks Now Than In the 1970s

February 4, 2015

There Are Far Fewer Terror Attacks Now Than In the 1970s

Putting the Terror Threat In Perspective

The terror threat is greatly exaggerated. After all, the type of counter-terror experts who frequently appear on the mainstream news are motivated to hype the terror threat, because it drums up business for them.

The same is true for government employees. As former FBI assistant director Thomas Fuentes put itlast week:

If you’re submitting budget proposals for a law enforcement agency, for an intelligence agency, you’re not going to submit the proposal that “We won the war on terror and everything’s great,” cuz the first thing that’s gonna happen is your budget’s gonna be cut in half.

You know, it’s my opposite of Jesse Jackson’s “Keep Hope Alive”—it’s “Keep Fear Alive.” Keep it alive.

Fearmongering also serves political goals. For example, FBI agents and CIA intelligence officials, a top constitutional and military law expert, Time magazine, the Washington Post and others have all said that U.S. government officials “were trying to create an atmosphere of fear in which the American people would give them more power”. Indeed, the former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridgeadmitted that he was pressured to raise terror alerts to help Bush win reelection. Former U.S. National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski – also a top foreign policy advisor to President Obama – told the Senate that the war on terror is a “a mythical historical narrative”.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

My Post Cyberpunk Indentured Servitude

February 3, 2015

My Post Cyberpunk Indentured Servitude

Journalist Barrett Brown looks back in anger at the government’s trumped up charges against him as he starts a 63 month prison sentence.

Not long ago I was a mild-mannered freelance journalist, activist, and satirist, contributing to outlets like the Guardian and Vanity Fair. But last Thursday I was sentenced to 63 months in federal prison in a case that Reporters Without Borders cited as a key factor in its reduction of America’s press freedom rankings from 33 to 46. As inconvenient as this is for me, the upside is that for the first time in the two and a half years since I was arrested, I am at last able to speak freely about what has been happening to me and why—and what it means for the press and the republic as a whole.

A portion of my sentence stems from an attempt I made to conceal from the government the identities of certain contacts of mine: pro-democracy activists living under Middle Eastern dictatorships such as Bahrain, with which the U.S. is known to share intelligence on such things. Another large chunk is due to an admittedly ill-conceived public threat I made—in the midst of opiate withdrawal and what court psychologists say was a manic state brought on by medication issues—to investigate and humiliate an F.B.I. agent, who had himself threatened to indict my mother in an attempt to get me to cooperate against individuals associated with the Anonymous movement (my mother was indeed charged). Though I clearly stated that my intent was not violent, the prosecution claimed that my “victim,” Dallas-based Special Agent Robert Smith, had reason to fear that I might physically harm him and even his children—in which case it is not immediately obvious why the prosecution felt the need to alter the end of the sentence in question when quoting it on the indictment. (My complete statement, (PDF) in which I make a point of noting that I was merely going to proceed along lines spelled out by the FBI-linked contractor C.E.O. Aaron Barr while he was investigating activists on behalf of his corporate clients, and that I was doing so perfunctorily, and merely in order to make a point about the F.B.I.’s traditional reluctance to investigate its allies, has been viewed on YouTube by well over 100,000 people, including the dozens of reporters who have covered the story; none of them seem to agree with the Department of Justice contention that a journalist’s threat to “look into” someone in an explicitly non-violent manner necessarily entails violence.) A separate declaration I made to the effect that I’d defend my family from any illegal armed raids by the government, while silly and bombastic, was not actually illegal under the threats statutes. To judge from similar comments made by Senator Joni Ernst, it would not even have necessarily precluded me from delivering the G.O.P.’s recent response to the State of the Union address.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Libertarian Party Calls for Release of Ross Ulbricht, Gov’t Are Real Perps in Silk Road Case

January 13, 2015

Libertarian Party Calls for Release of Ross Ulbricht, Gov’t Are Real Perps in Silk Road Case

The Libertarian Party calls for dismissal of the unfounded criminal charges against alleged Silk Road founder and operator Ross Ulbricht, whose trial is set to begin tomorrow, and for the resignation of the New York prosecutors who trumped up charges against an innocent man.

Silk Road is a website that allows its users to maintain their privacy while trading goods and services by using Tor, an open network that protects anonymity, and the digital currency Bitcoin for payment.

Because the site is alleged to accommodate the buying and selling of illegal drugs, prosecutors have charged Ulbricht with a slew of crimes: narcotics trafficking, computer hacking, money laundering, engaging in a criminal enterprise, and conspiracy to traffic in fraudulent IDs.

The prosecution has failed to identify a single victim of any of the alleged offenses.

This trial grossly oversteps the bounds of a properly limited government: one that protects the lives, liberty and property of its citizens against perpetrators who would do them harm – and no more.

The perpetrators in this case are the FBI, which shut down Silk Road and may have illegally hacked the site, and New York prosecutors involved in this case.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Is Obama Desperate to Precipitate a Nuclear War?

January 5, 2015

Is Obama Desperate to Precipitate a Nuclear War?

Anyone who still believes Obama’s rhetoric and honesty would be wasting time to read the following analysis, which is only for people who have doubts about his honesty; and thus an open mind to the possibility of his lying about his intentions is a pre-requisite to receiving the following argument:

On Christmas Day, London’s Daily Mail bannered, “North Korea was NOT behind the Sony hack according to multiple security experts who discredit FBI findings and reveal that a studio insider named ‘Lena’ may be responsible.”

Two days earlier, on December 23rd, CBS News had headlined, “Was FBI Wrong on North Korea?” and they presented evidence that the FBI was, indeed, wrong.

On December 30th, the brilliant individual who blogs as “George Washington” assembled all of the news-reports up till that time on this matter, and headlined, “FBI Busted Falsely Blaming North Korea for Sony Hack: I Hate North Korea’s Leaders … But They Didn’t Do It.”

The evidence that he presented is overwhelming.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Louis Freeh’s Latest Investigation: Billionaire Businessman Accused of Bribing African Government – The Intercept

January 2, 2015

Louis Freeh’s Latest Investigation: Billionaire Businessman Accused of Bribing African Government – The Intercept.

Louis Freeh, the former FBI director whose wife was deeded half of a $3 million beachside penthouse by a businessman–just nine days after Freeh cleared that same businessman of wrongdoing–is onto a new job: Helping exonerate a billionaire businessman accused of bribing an African government.

As I reported here the other day, Freeh has made piles of money since leaving government service by hiring himself out to conduct allegedly independent corporate and political investigations. These investigations are clearly a growth business, because now Freeh’s firm is helping coordinate the defense of an Israeli billionaire who is being investigated on three continents in regard to bribes he allegedly paid to win a mining stake in one of the world’s poorest countries.

The case involves Israeli billionaire Beny Steinmetz, who controls BSGR, a holding company that in 2008 obtained a huge stake in a gigantic iron mine in the West African nation of Guinea. BSGR reportedly paid nothing for its rights to Simandou and two years later flipped 51% of its stake to a Brazilian mining giant for $2.5 billion – twice the size of Guinea’s annual budget. The deal was consummated two weeks before the death of Lansana Conté, a homicidal dictator who had ruled since a 1984 coup.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

FBI Busted Falsely Blaming North Korea for Sony Hack Washington’s Blog

December 30, 2014

FBI Busted Falsely Blaming North Korea for Sony Hack Washington’s Blog.

I Hate North Korea’s Leaders … But They Didn’t Do It

I hate North Korea’s leaders … They’re not only clowns sporting bad haircuts and weird clothes, but they live in luxury while the population literally starves.

But the FBI’s official assertion that North Korea carried out the attack in retaliation for Sony’s releasing the movie “The Interview” is B.S.

Here’s a sample of top cybersecurity experts who say that North Korea was not behind the hacking attack of Sony:

Cyber intelligence company Norse (and see this)

Peter W. Singer, one of the nation’s foremost experts on cybersecurity

Renowned hacker, DEFCON organizer, and CloudFlare researcher Marc Rogers

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

FBI warned Year Ago of impending Malware Attacks—But Didn’t Share Info with Sony – The Intercept

December 25, 2014

FBI warned Year Ago of impending Malware Attacks—But Didn’t Share Info with Sony – The Intercept.

Nearly one year before Sony was hacked, the FBI warned that U.S. companies were facing potentially crippling data destruction malware attacks, and predicted that such a hack could cause irreparable harm to a firm’s reputation, or even spell the end of the company entirely. The FBI also detailed specific guidance for U.S. companies to follow to prepare and plan for such an attack.

But the FBI never sent Sony the report.

The Dec. 13, 2013 FBI Intelligence Assessment, “Potential Impacts of a Data-Destruction Malware Attack on a U.S. Critical Infrastructure Company’s Network,” warned that companies “must become prepared for the increasing possibility they could become victim to a data destruction cyber attack.”

The 16-page report includes details on previous malware attacks on South Korea banking and media companies—the same incidents and characteristics the FBI said Dec. 19^th that it had used to conclude that North Korea was behind the Sony attack.

The report, a copy of which was obtained by The Intercept, was based on discussions with private industry representatives and was prepared after the 2012 cyber attack on Saudi Aramco. The report was marked For Official Use Only, and has not been previously released.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

North Korea threatens strikes on U.S. amid Sony hacking claims – World – CBC News

December 22, 2014

North Korea threatens strikes on U.S. amid Sony hacking claims – World – CBC News.

U.S. President Barack Obama is “recklessly” spreading rumours of a Pyongyang-orchestrated cyberattack of Sony Pictures, North Korea says, as it warns of strikes against the White House, Pentagon and “the whole U.S. mainland, that cesspool of terrorism.”

Such rhetoric is routine from North Korea’s massive propaganda machine during times of high tension with Washington. But a long statement from the powerful National Defence Commission late Sunday also underscores Pyongyang’s sensitivity at a movie whose plot focuses on the assassination of its leader Kim Jong-un, who is the beneficiary of a decades-long cult of personality built around his family dynasty.

The U.S. blames North Korea for the cyberattack that escalated to threats of terror attacks against U.S. movie theatres and caused Sony to cancel The Interview’s release.

Obama, who promised to respond “proportionately” to the attack, told CNN’s State of the Union in an interview broadcast Sunday that Washington is reviewing whether to put North Korea back on its list of state sponsors of terrorism.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Obama says Sony hack not an act of war | Reuters

December 22, 2014

Obama says Sony hack not an act of war | Reuters.

(Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama moved to prevent U.S. anger at North Korea from spiraling out of control on Sunday by saying the massive hacking of Sony Pictures was not an act of war but instead was cyber-vandalism.

Washington’s longstanding dispute with North Korea, which for years has centered on its nuclear weapons program, has entered new territory with the accusation that Pyongyang carried out an assault on a major Hollywood entertainment company.

Obama and his advisers are weighing how to punish North Koreaafter the FBI concluded on Friday that Pyongyang was responsible. North Korea has denied it was to blame.

The U.S. president put the hack in the context of a crime.

“No, I don’t think it was an act of war,” he told CNN’s “State of the Union” show that aired on Sunday. “I think it was an act of cyber vandalism that was very costly, very expensive. We take it very seriously. We will respond proportionately.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Hacking Collective Anonymous Says FBI Is Lying, “North Korea Is Not Source Of Hack” | Zero Hedge

December 21, 2014

Hacking Collective Anonymous Says FBI Is Lying, “North Korea Is Not Source Of Hack” | Zero Hedge.

Having confirmed unequivocally, in a statement by the FBI and reiterated by President Obama, that “the North Korean government is responsible” for hacking Sony, it appears the YouTube-less ‘evidence’ the FBI provided is being questioned by the hacking-collective ‘Anonymous’ and former Lulzsec hacker Sabu.As The Daily Beast reports, the hackers blasted, the North Koreans “don’t have the technical capabilities,” and added “we all know the hacks didn’t come from North Korea, and “all of the evidence FBI cites would be trivial things to do if a hacker was trying to misdirect attention to DPRK.” Meanwhile, on Saturday afternoon, Guardians of Peace, the hacking group that’s so far claimed responsibility for wreaking havoc on Sony, posted a message online mocking the FBI’s investigation – a series of gyrating animated bodies shrieking, “You are an idiot!”

As The Daily Beast reports,

While the FBI, President Obama, and George Clooney seem thoroughly convinced that the Guardians of Peace are the work of Pyongyang—the name “Guardians of Peace” comes from a quote used by former President Richard Nixon describing South Korea—many hackers online have questioned the allocation of blame from Day One, including former Lulzsec hacker turned government information Sabu, who maintains they “don’t have the technical capabilities,” and Anonymous, who wrote, “we all know the hacks didn’t come from North Korea,” and threatened to launch further hacks against Sony if they don’t release the film online.

Some of the world’s leading cybersecurity experts have also questioned whether North Korea is responsible for hacking Sony, claiming a decided lack of evidence or that it came from a group posing as North Korea as misdirection, such as Brett Thomas, chief technology officer of Redwood City, California-based online services company Vindicia:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Defiant North Korea Says Can Prove It Is Not Behind Hack “Without Resorting To Torture Like The CIA” | Zero Hedge

December 20, 2014

Defiant North Korea Says Can Prove It Is Not Behind Hack “Without Resorting To Torture Like The CIA” | Zero Hedge.

Just hours after the FBI announced that, with absolute certainty, it had determined that North Korea was behind the Sony hack, a “theory” that has become the butt of global jokes, we learned, in a far less prominent release, that according to an internal inquiry, FBI evidence if “often mishandled.” According to the NYT, “F.B.I. agents in every region of the country have mishandled, mislabeled and lost evidence, according to a highly critical internal investigation that discovered errors with nearly half the pieces of evidence it reviewed.

The evidence collection and retention system is the backbone of the F.B.I.’s investigative process, and the report said it is beset by problems.

It gets better: according to the report, the F.B.I. was storing more weapons, less money and valuables, and two tons more drugs than its records had indicated. Almost as if the FBI was siphoning off cash, while hoarding guns and blow.

The report’s findings, based on a review of more than 41,000 pieces of evidence in F.B.I. offices around the country, could have consequences for criminal investigations and prosecutions. Lawyers can use even minor record-keeping discrepancies to get evidence thrown out of court, and the F.B.I. was alerting prosecutors around the country on Friday that they may need to disclose the errors to defendants.

A majority of the errors identified were due in large part to human error, attributable to a lack of training and program management oversight,” auditors wrote in the report, which was obtained by The New York Times.

F.B.I. officials on Friday said that they decided on their own to conduct the review after discovering during an internal audit that there might be issues with the record keeping for evidence.

In other words, there was human error, as well as willful “record keeping” lies.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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