Obama imposes sanctions on Russia, expels 35 diplomats

[Brian4Liberty]

Obama imposes sanctions on Russia, expels 35 diplomats in response to election-related hacking (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-russia-hacking-us-response-20161229-story.html)


President Barack Obama retaliated Thursday against Russia for cyberattacks aimed at interfering with the 2016 presidential campaign, imposing sanctions on top Russian intelligence officials and agencies and expelling 35 Russian operatives from the U.S.

As part of the administration's response, the FBI and Homeland Security Department also were set to release a report with technical evidence intended to prove Russia's military and civilian intelligence services were behind the hacking to expose some of their most sensitive hacking infrastructure.
...
Among those targeted in the sanctions announced by the Treasury Department were the chief and deputy chiefs of GRU, Russia's military intelligence agency. Cybersecurity experts in the U.S. have linked GRU to the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and party officials through a group they have nicknamed APT 28 or Fancy Bear. The U.S. also is sanctioning the Federal Security Service and Main Intelligence Directorate of the Russian state and cyber companies associated with them.

Those expelled were described by Obama as intelligence operatives and the U.S. also shut down two Russian compounds — one in Maryland and another in New York — used for "intelligence-related purposes."
...
The moves will ratchet up tensions with Russia less than a month before Trump's inauguration. The president-elect, who has said the hacking could have been the work of "somebody sitting in a bed someplace," told reporters Wednesday that "we ought to get on with our lives."

They also raise the possibility of an escalating cycle of finger-pointing and retaliation between Washington and Moscow despite Trump's pledge to seek better relations with Putin. The Russian government, which has denied responsibility for the hacking, has vowed to respond to any new sanctions with unspecified counter-measures.

The actions announced Thursday may be matched by covert countermeasures intended to warn Russia that the U.S. is able to breach its most sensitive computer systems, while preserving public deniability.
...
"I'm going after Russia in every way we can go after Russia," Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said on CNN this month. "I think they did interfere with our elections, and I want Putin personally to pay a price."
...
More: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-russia-hacking-us-response-20161229-story.html

[Brian4Liberty]

Washington Warmongers Make 11th Hour Attempt To Start a War With Russia (http://daisyluther.com/washington-warmongers-make-11th-hour-attempt-to-start-a-war-with-russia/)
By Daisy Luther - December 29, 2016


In the final days of Barack Obama’s presidency, the warmongers in Washington, DC are hell-bent on causing as much chaos as possible. If they don’t manage to start a war with Russia before Donald Trump is sworn in, it won’t be for lack of trying.

The Military Industrial Complex stands to profit by billions of dollars if this comes to fruition. War is very profitable for politicians and their corporate cronies, but for the rest of us, it would inflict a heavy toll. (If you haven’t read it yet, I strongly recommend picking up a copy of the anti-war classic, War Is a Racket by General Smedley Butler.)

Today, 35 Russian diplomats were expelled from the US for their alleged part in tampering with the election:


The US has expelled 35 Russian diplomats as punishment for alleged interference into the presidential election.

It will also close two Russian compounds used for intelligence-gathering, in Maryland and New York, as part of a raft of retaliatory measures.
...
Sanctions have also been announced against nine entities and individuals including the GRU and FSB Russian intelligence agencies.

Two Republicans, John McCain and Lindsey Graham, and a Democrat, Amy Klobuchar, all voiced their support for action to be taken against Russia for “meddling with the presidential election” in November. The three are currently stirring up trouble on a tour of NATO countries near Russia’s western border.

McCain, Graham, and Klobuchar are claiming that there is support from 99% of both Republicans and Democrats for actions against Russia, and particularly against Vladimir Putin personally.
...
More:

[pcosmar]

Well,,

How incredibly stupid.

[nikcers]

/////This is where Trump Truly stands on Russia, otherwise they would of tried to oust him at the convention.



House Speaker Paul Ryan, a Republican, called the sanctions "overdue," adding that it is an "appropriate way to end eight years of failed policy with Russia."
"Russia does not share America's interests," he said in a statement Thursday. "In fact, it has consistently sought to undermine them, sowing dangerous instability around the world. While today's action by the administration is overdue, it is an appropriate way to end eight years of failed policy with Russia."

[Brian4Liberty]

814579205295972352
https://twitter.com/MZHemingway/status/814579205295972352

[Zippyjuan]

Flashback- 2010: https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/us-russia-relations-reset-fact-sheet


U.S.-Russia Relations: “Reset” Fact Sheet

In one of his earliest new foreign policy initiatives, President Obama sought to reset relations with Russia and reverse what he called a “dangerous drift” in this important bilateral relationship. President Obama and his administration have sought to engage the Russian government to pursue foreign policy goals of common interest – win-win outcomes -- for the American and Russian people. In parallel to this engagement with the Russian government, President Obama and his administration also have engaged directly with Russian society -- as well as facilitated greater contacts between American and Russian business leaders, civil society organizations, and students -- as a way to promote our economic interests, enhance mutual understanding between our two nations, and advance universal values. On the occasion of President Medvedev’s visit to the United States and one year after President Obama visited Russia, it is time to take stock of what has been achieved from this change in policy and what remains to be done in developing a more substantive relationship with Russia.

More at link. Will Trump be another failed false start in relations or will it really be a new beginning?

[Zippyjuan]

http://foreignpolicy.com/2012/10/16/how-the-russian-reset-explains-obamas-foreign-policy/


How the Russian ‘Reset’ Explains Obama’s Foreign Policy

The president's naivete about Vladimir Putin is the root cause of his failure.

As violent mobs shouting Islamist slogans rampaged against U.S. diplomats across the Middle East and Southeast Asia in the weeks following the fatal Sept. 11, 2012 attack on U.S. officials in Libya, Russian President Vladimir Putin saw a chance to kick the United States when it was down. He did it by expelling the U.S. Agency for International Development, whose work — advising private groups on democracy, as it has done since the 1990s — he evidently resented. For good measure, he just cancelled the longstanding Nunn-Lugar program of cooperation on destroying and securing old Soviet weapons of mass destruction. His message: Russia doesn’t need any help from the Americans.

These moves by Putin are just the latest in a long string of affronts and rebuffs mocking U.S. President Barack Obama’s hope that he could "reset" U.S.-Russian relations. The policy’s very name implied that the strains in the relationship were largely America’s fault — that Obama had to rectify U.S. policy. He expected to turn Russia into a cooperative partner by showing greater humility and by accommodating Putin’s sensibilities on Iran, ballistic missile defense, nuclear arms treaties, and other matters.

This Russia policy aligned with Obama’s general approach to national security. For years, Obama and his national security team argued that, by and large, America’s problems in the world resulted not from aggression or the ideological extremism of hostile actors abroad, but were the bitter fruit of America’s history of bullying, selfishness and militarism, especially during the George W. Bush administration. They complained that America had long been acting like a rogue nation, arrogant in defying the rights of others, self-serving in defining its interests in national rather than global terms, and unilateralist in refusing to constrain itself to actions approved by multilateral institutions or endorsed by progressive commentators (the latter often refer to themselves as "the international community"). They contended that the United States should be humble, out of a due sense of shame, and should adopt a "doctrine of mea culpa."

Anne-Marie Slaughter, who served Obama as the head of Policy Planning at the State Department, wrote a February 2008 Commonweal article called "Good Reasons to be Humble" in which she said that the United States "should make clear that our hubris … has diminished us and led to tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths." Current White House adviser Samantha Power, while a Harvard University lecturer, wrote in the New Republic‘s March 3, 2003 issue: "Instituting a doctrine of mea culpa would enhance our credibility by showing that American decision-makers do not endorse the sins of their predecessors."

The Obama administration has had plenty of time to test its diplomatic theories. It was back in July 2009 that the president told the New Economic School in Moscow that the U.S.-Russian relationship required a reset. "There is," he said, "the 20th-century view that the United States and Russia are destined to be antagonists, and that a strong Russia or a strong America can only assert themselves in opposition to one another. And there is a 19th-century view that we are destined to vie for spheres of influence, and that great powers must forge competing blocs to balance one another." Obama called these assumptions mistaken, and added: "In 2009, a great power does not show strength by dominating or demonizing other countries."

What are we to make of this idea that the Obama presidency is a new era, in which the great powers will no longer behave as they have for centuries? Was the president offering this up as an observation of fact? Was it an apology? A promise? A sermon?

Did Obama intend to imply that powerful nations will no longer act selfishly or aggressively? Was he suggesting that his accession to power has transformed international affairs, consigning to history’s dustbin the writings of Thucydides, the venerable Athenian historian who, roughly 2,300 years ago, observed that nations, like men, pursue what they perceive as their interests — sometimes with judgment, sometimes without, and occasionally with tragic results. If so, we can expect Thucydides to have the last laugh.

Obama first spoke of "reset" less than 12 months after Russia invaded Georgia, a U.S. friend and partner. Soon after that, the Russian-built Bushehr nuclear reactor in Iran began operations. As rebels tried to bring down the government of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad in early 2011, Russia supplied the Syrian dictator with military equipment by sea. Reuters reports that Moscow sold Damascus $1 billion dollars of military hardware since the uprising began. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned Russia in June 2012 against sending helicopters to assist the Syrian regime in its attacks against civilians and rebels. In August 2011, Putin, then the prime minister, accused the United States of living "like a parasite" on the world economy. At a May 2012 international missile defense conference in Moscow, Russia’s top military officer Gen. Nikolai Makarov denounced U.S-NATO plans to build defenses against ballistic missiles launched from the Middle East. Referring to potential Eastern European sites for such defenses, General Makarov made a remarkable threat: "A decision to use destructive force pre-emptively will be taken if the situation worsens."

In short, in the 39 months since Obama announced that great powers do "not show strength by dominating or demonizing other countries," Russia has exerted itself to defy the United States and NATO and increase its political investment in rogue regimes — in particular in Syria and Iran. In the three-and-a-half years since the policy’s inception, the Obama reset has been a head-shaking disappointment.

Yet throughout the summer of 2012 the Obama administration repeatedly voiced hope that Putin, newly re-elected as Russian president, would help end the carnage in Syria. Despite thousands of civilian casualties in Syria’s expanding civil conflict, Obama invoked no interest or principle in favor of supporting the anti-Assad dissidents, though he had cited a "responsibility to protect" the Libyan rebels, who suffered fewer casualties. As the New York Times explained, Obama’s focus in the Syria crisis was on working with Russia and through the United Nations Security Council. He strove to persuade Putin to encourage the Syrian dictator to step down. Though generally friendly to the Obama administration, the Washington Post’s editors lamented its naïveté toward Russia: "Even if Mr. Putin could be persuaded, he probably lacks the means to force out Mr. Assad and his clan. Mr. Obama’s apparent faith that Mr. Putin is ready to do business with him is at odds with the strongman’s recent behavior…" Obama failed to appreciate Putin’s interest in reasserting Russian influence in the Middle East. Russia’s predominant interest is in high oil prices and Middle Eastern turmoil serves that interest, yet Obama simply assumed that Russia would cooperate with American efforts to promote Middle Eastern stability.

More at link.

[silverhandorder]

What we all going to say about communists zippy and nickers if Trump is lifting all sanctions by end of 2017?

[Zippyjuan]

Everybody is communist, comrade.

[silverhandorder]

Everybody is communist, comrade.


No you are a communist. Specifically you and every liberal here hiding the fact that you are liberal. See I am a real man. I state my convictions and don't hide behind trolling. You on other hand look to argue for liberals without stating that this is what you are doing. Parasite.

[RandallFan]

Is this whole thing toothless? What more does Russia intelligence need to know.

[Jamesiv1]

If we avoid war and something good happens between Russia and USofA, it will be because of the magical mysterious powers of DJ DonMaster Trump.

[Zippyjuan]

Is this whole thing toothless? What more does Russia intelligence need to know.

It is a symbolic thing. It does not reduce the ability of the US and Russia to communicate or to hack one another like maybe it could have a couple of hundred years ago- before electronic communications were possible. US kicks out a few known spies. Russia kicks out a few known spies. Spying continues. The sanctions are not on the Russian economy like they were over the Ukraine issue but on a couple of companies and a few individuals.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/29/politics/russia-sanctions-announced-by-white-house/


Russia's first visible action came later Thursday, when Russian authorities ordered the closure of the Anglo-American School of Moscow, a US official briefed on the matter said. The order from the Russian government closes the school, which serves children of US, British and Canadian embassy personnel, to US and foreign nationals.

The order also closes access to the US embassy vacation house in Serebryany Bor, near Moscow.


The State Department also has kicked out 35 Russian diplomats from its embassy in Washington and consulate in San Francisco, giving them and their families 72 hours to leave the U.S. The diplomats were declared persona non grata for acting in a "manner inconsistent with their diplomatic status."

[RonZeplin]

Juan McCain and his significant other Lindsey have tracked the Ruskies to Estonia. They gonna do sumpin!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6ID7BslpVA

[nikcers]

Is this whole thing toothless? What more does Russia intelligence need to know.

We pretty much told the world not do business with Russia or they will get their shit messed with. Not by us, by Russia, this wasn't a message to Russia per say but to the whole world not to trust them. This could severely crash their economy if it is taken seriously. Depending on the intelligence the United States shares with our allies and leaks out. If you see Russia bending over backwards to kiss our ass, or any sort of serious response from them, then it had teeth. My bet is we will see a serious response from Russia.

[Zippyjuan]

We pretty much told the world not do business with Russia or they will get their $#@! messed with. Not by us, by Russia, this wasn't a message to Russia per say but to the whole world not to trust them. This could severely crash their economy if it is taken seriously. Depending on the intelligence the United States shares with our allies and leaks out. If you see Russia bending over backwards to kiss our ass, or any sort of serious response from them, then it had teeth. My bet is we will see a serious response from Russia.

Nah- it doesn't go that far.

[nikcers]

Nah- it doesn't go that far. If you look at different sources it either says 35 diplomats or 35 spies. If you are another country are you going to give the Russian diplomats in your country a second look?

[69360]

Kind of stupid and pointless. Obama has less than a month left. Trump like him or not (I don't) has already announced he intends to have good relations with Russia. I'm sure they all get to come back or others will take their place.

[nikcers]

Kind of stupid and pointless. Obama has less than a month left. Trump like him or not (I don't) has already announced he intends to have good relations with Russia. I'm sure they all get to come back or others will take their place. Washington has a plan for that, whatever Trump's intentions used to be he can't even pretend to have the same intentions if he starts getting perceived as weak for caving to Russian influence.

[Zippyjuan]

If you look at different sources it either says 35 diplomats or 35 spies. If you are another country are you going to give the Russian diplomats in your country a second look?

It is no secret that many spies operate under the cover of diplomatic immunity. For almost all countries. That is no revelation. The Russian Embassy in DC has almost 200 people working there- and this will effect less than 20 of them.

Similar thing happened under GW Bush when fifty were expelled: http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=93757&page=1


In a return to the days of Cold War games, a diplomatic face-off was launched today between Washington and Moscow with the expulsion of dozens of Russian diplomats suspected of spying America.

Four Russian diplomats have been declared “persona non grata” and ordered out of the country in 10 days as a result of the Robert Hanssen spy case and another 46 have been asked to leave by July 1, a senior State Department official said today.

Two other Russian diplomats believed to be directly related to the Hanssen case had already left the country, the official said.

Hanssen, a 25-year FBI veteran, was arrested in a Virginia park on Feb. 18 after allegedly trying to make a “dead drop” to his Russian handlers. He is accused of spying for the Soviet Union and Russia since 1985.

[Zippyjuan]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/russia-is-harassing-us-diplomats-all-over-europe/2016/06/26/968d1a5a-3bdf-11e6-84e8-1580c7db5275_story.html?utm_term=.517a079d2ab0


Russia is harassing U.S. diplomats all over Europe

Russian intelligence and security services have been waging a campaign of harassment and intimidation against U.S. diplomats, embassy staff and their families in Moscow and several other European capitals that has rattled ambassadors and prompted Secretary of State John F. Kerry to ask Vladimir Putin to put a stop to it.

At a recent meeting of U.S. ambassadors from Russia and Europe in Washington, U.S. ambassadors to several European countries complained that Russian intelligence officials were constantly perpetrating acts of harassment against their diplomatic staff that ranged from the weird to the downright scary. Some of the intimidation has been routine: following diplomats or their family members, showing up at their social events uninvited or paying reporters to write negative stories about them.

But many of the recent acts of intimidation by Russian security services have crossed the line into apparent criminality. In a series of secret memos sent back to Washington, described to me by several current and former U.S. officials who have written or read them, diplomats reported that Russian intruders had broken into their homes late at night, only to rearrange the furniture or turn on all the lights and televisions, and then leave. One diplomat reported that an intruder had defecated on his living room carpet.

In Moscow, where the harassment is most pervasive, diplomats reported slashed tires and regular harassment by traffic police. Former ambassador Michael McFaul was hounded by government-paid protesters, and intelligence personnel followed his children to school. The harassment is not new; in the first term of the Obama administration, Russian intelligence personnel broke into the house of the U.S. defense attache in Moscow and killed his dog, according to multiple former officials who read the intelligence reports.

But since the 2014 Russian intervention in Ukraine, which prompted a wide range of U.S. sanctions against Russian officials and businesses close to Putin, harassment and surveillance of U.S. diplomatic staff in Moscow by security personnel and traffic police have increased significantly, State Department press secretary John Kirby confirmed to me.

“Since the return of Putin, Russia has been engaged in an increasingly aggressive gray war across Europe. Now it’s in retaliation for Western sanctions because of Ukraine. The widely reported harassment is another front in the gray war,” said Norm Eisen, U.S. ambassador the Czech Republic from 2011 to 2014. “They are hitting American diplomats literally where they live.”

The State Department has taken several measures in response to the increased level of nefarious activity by the Russian government. All U.S. diplomats headed for Europe now receive increased training on how to handle Russian harassment, and the European affairs bureau run by Assistant Secretary Victoria Nuland has set up regular interagency meetings on tracking and responding to the incidents.

McFaul told me he and his family were regularly followed and the Russian intelligence services wanted his family to know they were being watched. Other embassy officials also suffered routine harassment that increased significantly after the Ukraine-related sanctions. Those diplomats who were trying to report on Russian activities faced the worst of it.

“It was part of a way to put pressure on government officials who were trying to do their reporting jobs. It definitely escalated when I was there. After the invasion of Ukraine, it got much, much worse,” McFaul said. “We were feeling embattled out there in the embassy.”

There was a debate inside the Obama administration about how to respond, and ultimately President Obama made the decision not to respond with similar measures against Russian diplomats, McFaul said.

A spokesman for the Russian Embassy in Washington sent me a long statement both tacitly admitting to the harassment and defending it as a response to what he called U.S. provocations and mistreatment of Russian diplomats in the United States.

“The deterioration of U.S.-Russia relations, which was not caused by us, but rather by the current Administrations’ policy of sanctions and attempts to isolate Russian, had a negative affect on the functioning of diplomatic missions, both in U.S. and Russia,” the spokesman said. “In diplomatic practice there is always the principle of reciprocity and, indeed, for the last couple of years our diplomatic staff in the United States has been facing certain problems. The Russian side has never acted proactively to negatively affect U.S. diplomats in any way.”

[Zippyjuan]

http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/08/politics/russia-attack-us-diplomat/


U.S., Russia expel each other's diplomats


Diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Russia began to unravel after Moscow said Saturday it had expelled two American diplomats and the U.S. revealed it had tossed two Russians in response to an attack on one of its personnel.

"On June 17, we expelled two Russian officials from the United States to respond to this attack," State Department spokesman John Kirby told CNN, referring to an American diplomat who the spokesman said "was attacked by a Russian policeman" while trying to enter the U.S. embassy last month in Moscow.

Russia revealed Saturday it had responded in kind.

According to Russian State News Agency Sputnik, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said two Americans were declared persona non grata after an "unfriendly move" by the U.S. that was not specified.

The State Department declined to comment directly on that report.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dBrLnke13k

[silverhandorder]

Washington has a plan for that, whatever Trump's intentions used to be he can't even pretend to have the same intentions if he starts getting perceived as weak for caving to Russian influence.

You are a beautiful contrarian indicator.

[nikcers]

Similar thing happened under GW Bush when fifty were expelled: http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=93757&page=1
Bush was so anti Russia, I hope the president after him campaigns on restoring our diplomatic ties with them and the "Iraq" war somehow still goes on.

[Zippyjuan]

Obama said he would restore relations with Russia and end the Iraq war. Then reality hit.

[tod evans]

From Drudge;

Russian Embassy in UK responds to sanctions with 'lame duck tweet'

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/russian-embassy-uk-tweet-lame-duck-sanctions-a7501376.html

The Russian response to Barack Obama’s announcement that he was expelling 35 diplomats over the alleged cyber attack on the US election, was fast, and in some cases, rather amusing.

As officials in Moscow said that US diplomats would be ordered to leave in a tit-for-tat response, the Russian Embassy used Twitter to make its point with little panache.

“President Obama expels 35 ��iplomats in Cold War deja vu. Everybody, including the American people, will be glad to see the last of this hapless administration,” it said.

Mr Obama on Thursday sanctioned Russian intelligence services and their top officials, kicked out 35 Russian officials and closed down two Russian-owned compounds in the U.S. It was the strongest action the Obama administration has taken to date to retaliate for a cyberattack.

“All Americans should be alarmed by Russia’s actions,” he said. He added: “Such activities have consequences.”

If anyone gives a shit there's a tweeter picture at the link....

[nobody's_hero]

Washington has a plan for that, whatever Trump's intentions used to be he can't even pretend to have the same intentions if he starts getting perceived as weak for caving to Russian influence.

The only people who will see it as weak are the people who are actually buying the bullshit, and they are a minority. Though, they are a very LOUD minority, and could be mistaken for popular opinion.


From Drudge;

Russian Embassy in UK responds to sanctions with 'lame duck tweet'

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/russian-embassy-uk-tweet-lame-duck-sanctions-a7501376.html

The Russian response to Barack Obama’s announcement that he was expelling 35 diplomats over the alleged cyber attack on the US election, was fast, and in some cases, rather amusing.

As officials in Moscow said that US diplomats would be ordered to leave in a tit-for-tat response, the Russian Embassy used Twitter to make its point with little panache.

“President Obama expels 35 ��iplomats in Cold War deja vu. Everybody, including the American people, will be glad to see the last of this hapless administration,” it said.

Mr Obama on Thursday sanctioned Russian intelligence services and their top officials, kicked out 35 Russian officials and closed down two Russian-owned compounds in the U.S. It was the strongest action the Obama administration has taken to date to retaliate for a cyberattack.

“All Americans should be alarmed by Russia’s actions,” he said. He added: “Such activities have consequences.”
If anyone gives a $#@! there's a tweeter picture at the link....

I'm more alarmed by Obama's actions. He's got less than 30 days to start a war.

Pressure's on.

[AZJoe]

Kind of stupid and pointless. Obama has less than a month left. Trump like him or not (I don't) has already announced he intends to have good relations with Russia. I'm sure they all get to come back or others will take their place.

Yes, this seems to be more about sandbagging the new administration than anything else.

[AZJoe]

We pretty much told the world not do business with Russia or they will get their $#@! messed with. Not by us this wasn't a message to Russia per say but to the whole world not to trust them ...

Trust? Don't trust Russia because Washington (still without evidence) blames Russia for the DNC corruption leaked by Seth Rich? This from Washington, the government that was forced to admit its NSA was hacking and tapping the phones of 35 world leaders including Angela Merkel's cell phone. That's not a case of the pot calling the kettle black. Its a case of the whole coal mine calling the teacup black.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/24/nsa-surveillance-world-leaders-calls


http://www.globaltimes.cn/Portals/0/attachment/2011/551b12d4-28a1-4bb3-b381-e15a4ca7ddd4.jpg

[Dangergirl]

Obama said he would restore relations with Russia and end the Iraq war. Then reality hit.

Obama said a lot of things. Who freaking cares? I'm thinking he just to be impeached 20 plus days or not.

[AZJoe]

Due credit and Remembrance to Seth Rich, likely true hero behind the DNC leaks.


https://lh4.ggpht.com/-RFdIsiG9hy4/V7ELa6Gu_NI/AAAAAACYGZ8/fVV2DTCmrmo/w1000-h800/image

[TheTexan]

We need to impose sanctions on HB34. He's a Russian sympathizer, and very likely Russian spy.

Its possible he also contributed to these hacks.

[Zippyjuan]

The only people who will see it as weak are the people who are actually buying the bull$#@!, and they are a minority. Though, they are a very LOUD minority, and could be mistaken for popular opinion.



I'm more alarmed by Obama's actions. He's got less than 30 days to start a war.

Pressure's on.

He has had eight years. He would have done so by now.

[TheCount]

If you look at different sources it either says 35 diplomats or 35 spies. If you are another country are you going to give the Russian diplomats in your country a second look?They're both. The head spy at an embassy is often known to the host country.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resident_spy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Station_chief

[phill4paul]

Much ado about nothing. "And the eagle and the bear shall unite against the dragon"

[Brian4Liberty]

http://foreignpolicy.com/2012/10/16/how-the-russian-reset-explains-obamas-foreign-policy/

More at link.

Zippy is hitting this thread hard. Must have come down as a priority. Budget may allow for overtime on this one.

[nikcers]

They're both. The head spy at an embassy is often known to the host country.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resident_spy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Station_chief Are you saying that if you are the government you won't give the Russians a second look, and count your votes twice? I think a lot of you guys are downplaying the results of this election. I bet the next election is going to have hyper redundant voting recounts. Especially after this disaster.

[UWDude]

Obama said he would restore relations with Russia and end the Iraq war. Then reality hit.

"reality"
The reality of who actulaly controls the presidency and foreign policy was the only reality he met.

[timosman]

We pretty much told the world not do business with Russia or they will get their shit messed with. Not by us, by Russia, this wasn't a message to Russia per say but to the whole world not to trust them. This could severely crash their economy if it is taken seriously. Depending on the intelligence the United States shares with our allies and leaks out. If you see Russia bending over backwards to kiss our ass, or any sort of serious response from them, then it had teeth. My bet is we will see a serious response from Russia.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYTfzfsbiUI

[TER]

When Putin heard this happen, I think he probably laughed out loud.

He really is up against amateurs and clueless politicians.

What a sad joke this administration, and by extension, the Democrats, have become.

[nobody's_hero]

Are you saying that if you are the government you won't give the Russians a second look, and count your votes twice? I think a lot of you guys are downplaying the results of this election. I bet the next election is going to have hyper redundant voting recounts. Especially after this disaster.

What exactly is there to downplay?

Americans were pissed off. Hillary was a sh.it candidate. Trump was perpetually energized by his haters, and the media, in typical fashion, tried to use polling to mold public opinion rather than measure it.

In other words, it's not like the results were unexpected. I suppose it came as a shock to people who spend their time bouncing reaffirming opinions off one another in safe liberal bubbles, but for most of us, the dislike of Hillary by average Americans was pretty obvious, and that was even before the emails were released.

The media, the Clinton camp, the SJWs, they all thought they had this one in the bag. Undoubtedly they went into a crisis mode and have yet to recover (in fact, doubling down on the insults to injury). The only real disaster now is being caused by their tantrums on the way out, which only serve to amplify their already-obtuse sense of entitlement. In their minds, they weren't supposed to lose. They can't lose.

I'd go so far as to say Clinton was made assurances of a 2016 victory back in 2008 when she had to step aside for Obama. So these people had a lot of time to build up their hopes to epic heights, and I'm sure it makes it a truly devastating loss in their eyes.

But for most of us, it was an election. One candidate deemed slightly less sh1tty than the other one came out on top. I suppose it's been happening like that for a couple centuries in this country.

[DamianTV]

Ive heard Putin say on several occasions he respects the American people because he knows our people are damn well fed up with the Warmongers in office. I think he knows damn well the US Warmongers trying to lay a trap by provoking him to attacking us first. Once they attack us, then it would be relatively obvious to most of the people who are still asleep that Russia is the enemy. Russia is NOT our enemy. Our greatest enemy is within our own country and operates outside the moral and legal boundaries of humanity. I, for one, am thankful that Putin has shown the citizens of our country nearly infinite patience. Russian sympathizer? Hardly not. I think the shoe is on the other foot. There are many Russians who are American sympathizers, hopefully since they see us generally as a people trying their best to survive a tyrannical regime that has metastasized like a cancer in the land of the once free that now threatens the people of both nations.

[nikcers]

What exactly is there to downplay?

Americans were pissed off. Hillary was a sh.it candidate. Trump was perpetually energized by his haters.
There is more to this hacking that the feds aren't letting on. The government has to use kid gloves with the American public. I am still not entirely convinced Clinton and Trump are enemies. Remember how its just a WWE match, I think the establishment wanted Clinton to be the winner so they could push the agenda they wanted. The big tip at the end came from Russia and it was rumored that Clinton was behind the opposition that was running against Putin that ended up dead a couple years ago. The establishment is going to use this to enact plan 2 of their strategy and this just gave them fodder for the public. The UN has been circling Russia like sharks, and they want to push for Taiwan to take control in China. China is trying to respond by instituting reforms to stop any of the poor from wanting to rebel.

[goldenequity]

Ann Coulter Verified account
Obama expels 35 Russian diplomats, closes NYC compound & gives them 72 hours to leave.
Fortunately for Russians, NYC is a sanctuary city. :p

[CPUd]

How Russia Recruited Elite Hackers for Its Cyberwar

https://i.imgur.com/NRS7Fnn.jpg
An internet security firm in Moscow. While much about Russia’s cyberwarfare program is shrouded in secrecy, details of the government’s effort to recruit programmers in the months before the American presidential election shed light on the Kremlin’s plan to create teams of computer hackers. Credit Kirill Kudryavtsev/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

MOSCOW — Aleksandr B. Vyarya thought his job was to defend people from cyberattacks until, he says, his government approached him with a request to do the opposite.

Mr. Vyarya, 33, a bearded, bespectacled computer programmer who thwarted hackers, said he was suddenly being asked to join a sweeping overhaul of the Russian military last year. Under a new doctrine, the nation’s generals were redefining war as more than a contest of steel and gunpowder, making cyberwarfare a central tenet in expanding the Kremlin’s interests.

“Sorry, I can’t,” Mr. Vyarya said he told an executive at a Russian military contracting firm who had offered him the hacking job. But Mr. Vyarya was worried about the consequences of his refusal, so he abruptly fled to Finland last year, he and his former employer said. It was a rare example of a Russian who sought asylum in the face of the country’s push to recruit hackers.

“This is against my principles — and illegal,” he said of the Russian military’s hacking effort.
Continue reading the main story
Related Coverage

The Perfect Weapon: How Russian Cyberpower Invaded the U.S. DEC. 13, 2016
Obama Strikes Back at Russia for Election Hacking DEC. 29, 2016

...

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/29/world/europe/how-russia-recruited-elite-hackers-for-its-cyberwar.html

[Dangergirl]

Once again I don't understand the relevance of the argument of liberal/progressives like Zippy here that the Russians hacked the election. If the e-mails presented were still actual e-mails of the DNC providing evidence of their own foul plays, then what does it matter if John from down the street or in Russia hacked them? The e-mails are still real and the relevance is what's inside them. The issue with the e-mails is that it doesn't show the DNC as god-faring honest beings, it shows them in various nefarious light. Notice they still don't denounce the contents of the e-mails because they can't. They've been caught with pants around their ankles and they're arguing about being caught.

Presenting facts is not cheating the system. It's actually encouraging honest perpetuation of our political condition. That's what whistle blowers and journalists do.

[AZJoe]

https://i.imgflip.com/1g7vmn.jpg

[silverhandorder]

Are you saying that if you are the government you won't give the Russians a second look, and count your votes twice? I think a lot of you guys are downplaying the results of this election. I bet the next election is going to have hyper redundant voting recounts. Especially after this disaster.

Lol smells like a democrat.

[silverhandorder]

There is more to this hacking that the feds aren't letting on. The government has to use kid gloves with the American public. I am still not entirely convinced Clinton and Trump are enemies. Remember how its just a WWE match, I think the establishment wanted Clinton to be the winner so they could push the agenda they wanted. The big tip at the end came from Russia and it was rumored that Clinton was behind the opposition that was running against Putin that ended up dead a couple years ago. The establishment is going to use this to enact plan 2 of their strategy and this just gave them fodder for the public. The UN has been circling Russia like sharks, and they want to push for Taiwan to take control in China. China is trying to respond by instituting reforms to stop any of the poor from wanting to rebel.

Hey everyone this is what a hallucination looks like.

[CPUd]

https://i.imgur.com/9E8E7mO.jpg

[osan]

Obama imposes sanctions on Russia, expels 35 diplomats in response to election-related hacking (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-russia-hacking-us-response-20161229-story.html)

I swear the patterns are so predictable, one could correct the errors of a class-1 cesium fountain clock by them.




President Barack Obama retaliated Thursday against Russia for cyberattacks aimed at interfering with the 2016 presidential campaign, imposing sanctions on top Russian intelligence officials and agencies and expelling 35 Russian operatives from the U.S.

Eight years and all of a sudden Obama acts as if he had some small fraction of a testicle? Probably borrowed it from Michelle or Hillary.


As part of the administration's response, the FBI and Homeland Security Department also were set to release a report with technical evidence intended to prove Russia's military and civilian intelligence services were behind the hacking to expose some of their most sensitive hacking infrastructure.

Note the wording. "Were" set. Are they no longer so? This sentence is most curious and I am wondering whether we will ever see this purported "evidence".


Among those targeted in the sanctions announced by the Treasury Department were the chief and deputy chiefs of GRU, Russia's military intelligence agency. Cybersecurity experts in the U.S. have linked GRU to the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and party officials through a group they have nicknamed APT 28 or Fancy Bear. The U.S. also is sanctioning the Federal Security Service and Main Intelligence Directorate of the Russian state and cyber companies associated with them.


Why Treasury and not State? Serious question there.

What are these vaguely referenced "cyber companies associated with them"? US companies? Russian? Eye-Rain-EEan? What?

Lots of words. Lots of innuendo. No substance I can detect.


Those expelled were described by Obama as intelligence operatives and the U.S. also shut down two Russian compounds — one in Maryland and another in New York — used for "intelligence-related purposes."

What is meant my "Russian compound"? It cannot refer to embassies, as those are sovereign Russian territories. It would be interesting to know more about these establishments - how long they have been there, for one.



The moves will ratchet up tensions with Russia less than a month before Trump's inauguration.

Possible money-shot right there. To my eyes, Obama is a wildly pathological narcissist, though he does manage to keep it under wraps fairly neatly - an indication to me that the pathology is excessive. America has largely turned its back on him and I suspect he is experiencing some butthurt he never anticipated, particularly since the defeat of Clinton. Granted, he may hate Hillary, but she was the one who stood to carry the torch of his legacy and cement it into our crooked history. But it now appears that this may not happen. What do ill-bred children do when they do not get their ways? Tantrum. Some are so bad that they will throw and break things in front of mommy and daddy, just to show 'em. I am suspecting this will prove the case with Obama: hurt America as much as possible and make the nastiest mess for Trump that he is able. If Trump spends the next 4 years dealing with this mess, Obama's stunted logic may go, he will have no time to deal with the dismantling of his legacy.

Of course, this too may be more theatre, whether planned at higher levels, or just some smoke Obama blows for his own purposes other than what I have already speculated. Obama is a king-schmuck, dishonest to a fault, and a pathetic weakling, but he is decidedly not stupid, and dangerously treacherous. The next three weeks could see some interesting developments. How predictable would it be if on inauguration day we found ourselves at loggerheads with Russia, just this side of war? I will not say that it will go that far, but will not be surprised if it does. One thing Obama is not is a diplomat, so far as I can see, what with all this bowing shit that he does to foreign heads of state and all that rot. This feeble attempt to display a borrowed scrotum and its contents strikes me as a dangerous move by a "man" who clearly grew up as a typical weasel with a milquetoast bent. I don't think he knows the first thing about standing up to his tranny "wife", much less to the town dog catcher. Trying this shit with Russia as his "cherry" event strikes me as ill-advised.


The president-elect, who has said the hacking could have been the work of "somebody sitting in a bed someplace," told reporters Wednesday that "we ought to get on with our lives."

Bad choice of words IMO. If we have been hacked in that manner, getting on with life would mean getting to the bottom of it. Trump is still putting a toe in his mouth here and there. That boy needs to slow down and think a bit more prior to operating the vocal cords. IMO, of course.


They also raise the possibility of an escalating cycle of finger-pointing and retaliation between Washington and Moscow despite Trump's pledge to seek better relations with Putin. The Russian government, which has denied responsibility for the hacking, has vowed to respond to any new sanctions with unspecified counter-measures.

It should be noted that Putin != Khrushchev, who was mostly a blowhard whose bluff Kennedy successfully, if very riskily, called. I don't think Putin bluffs much. I could be wrong. Getting into it in this way with Russia seems unnecessary and not advised, particularly if the Russians are not guilty as claimed.


The actions announced Thursday may be matched by covert countermeasures intended to warn Russia that the U.S. is able to breach its most sensitive computer systems, while preserving public deniability.

Now you see, THIS statement cries "bullshit!" from every tower in London. If we have the ability to breach Russia's "most sensitive" systems, you had best believe it has been done already and is being done. If we can do this, you bet your ass we have been sucking the technical specs of all their "blackest" militaria. Statements like this make a thinking man suspect that the Fourth Estate is some sort of a fifth column for Themme. Otherwise, why publish so stupid a statement as this? Certainly it is not fooling the Russians, nor is it intimidating them.



"I'm going after Russia in every way we can go after Russia," Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said on CNN this month. "I think they did interfere with our elections, and I want Putin personally to pay a price."


Graham. How comforting.

[vita3]

Just a coincidence that Russia & Turkey signed peace agreement within Syria yesterday?

perpetual war mongers be doing their thing

[Jamesiv1]

Do you think a significant % of Americans see thru this bullsh*t? Or at least scratch their head and go 'hmmmm'?

Prez and pundits indignant that foreign govs tried to influence our elections... seriously?

Like we don't do it all over the world and have been for decades.....

[Son_of_Liberty90]

https://i.imgur.com/9E8E7mO.jpg

Yea, that doesn't look like a propaganda toon at all.

[Son_of_Liberty90]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/29/world/europe/how-russia-recruited-elite-hackers-for-its-cyberwar.html

Wow, stop the presses, an propaganda NYT article.

[osan]

He has had eight years. He would have done so by now.

Why?

I see every reason to wait until the 11:59 mark to get this going.

[osan]

Do you think a significant % of Americans see thru this bullsh*t? Or at least scratch their head and go 'hmmmm'?

Prez and pundits indignant that foreign govs tried to influence our elections... seriously?

Like we don't do it all over the world and have been for decades.....

Either they do not, or the lack of substantive response would indicate they have other things on their minds. Perhaps they have simply given up on anything good happening. IOW, they have become weaklings going along to get along.

[osan]

/////This is where Trump Truly stands on Russia, otherwise they would of tried to oust him at the convention.

Interesting how you do not state when and where he supposedly said this. Granting that he did say it, I would wager this was campaign rhetoric, which one must take with boulders of salt, whether you like or hate what has been said.

Your attempt to paint has failed. Your art is weak. :)

[goldenequity]

'...humiliated by their own president': US imposed new set of anti-Russian sanctions




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IJMLfUPBug






PUTIN: NO RETALIATION / INVITES US-MOSCOW FAMILIES TO THE KREMLIN NEW YEARS PARTY (https://www.rt.com/news/372256-putin-diplomats-expulsion-rejects/)



Putin said that, unlike the Obama administration,
Russia will not target foreign diplomats and their families
days before New Year’s celebrations.

“We will not forbid families and children
from spending the New Year’s holidays at the places they are used to.
Moreover, I invite the children of all American diplomats with accreditation in Russia
to New Year’s and Christmas festivities in the Kremlin”.

Putin said he regretted that US President Barack Obama
is ending his term “in such a way,”
but that he extended his New Year’s congratulations
to the outgoing US president and his family nevertheless.

“I congratulate President-elect Donald Trump and the entire American people.”

The Kremlin said it will send a government plane to the US
to evacuate the expelled diplomats and their family members.
Earlier, there were reports that the diplomats were having problems buying tickets on such short notice,
with airlines already booked by New Year’s travelers.




fAKe nOOz
THE GUARDIAN: Russia plans immediate 'counter-measures' after US ejects 35 diplomats

(good thing it was archived (http://archive.is/XYZgL).... cuz you are now 'redirected' here (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/30/russia-plans-immediate-counter-measures-us-diplomats). :)
The 'old' article has been disappeared.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/30/russia-plans-immediate-counter-measures-us-diplomats

[AZJoe]

Once again I don't understand the relevance of the argument of liberal/progressives like Zippy here that the Russians hacked the election. If the e-mails presented were still actual e-mails of the DNC providing evidence of their own foul plays, then what does it matter if John from down the street or in Russia hacked them? The e-mails are still real and the relevance is what's inside them. ... They still don't denounce the contents of the e-mails because they can't. ...

Yes. While it is certainly courteous to be able to thank the whistle blower [Seth Rich] that brings us the truth, which whistle-blower to thank for exposing the corruption is minor compared to the actual corruption and crime that took place.

Since Seth Rich is already dead, they can't keep punishing him and they can't utilize a DNC whistle-blower for war agenda, so why not instead distract from the wrong-doings and simultaneously exploit the leaks for another round of neoconservative propaganda by simply leveling a continuous string of non-stop accusations without any evidence [sound familiar] for half a year to promote the same old warmongering neoconservative MIC agenda.

The spectacularly hyped "joint report" is nothing but a bad joke. The joint FBI/DHS report (http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/312132-fbi-dhs-release-report-on-russia-hacking) is simply an advisory letter of basic 101 advice to avoid hacking , with a few pages of continued accusation of hacking by Russia without anything backing it up. Simply keep repeating allegations as unquestioned facts, while offering no evidence.

[CPUd]

Why Feds Are So Confident Russia Was Behind the DNC Hack And Other Breaches

The U.S. government provided new details today that revealed how a state adversary broke into American computer systems and allegedly influenced the U.S. democratic process.

In a report issued this afternoon, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security outlined “technical details” that led them to conclude Russian military and intelligence services were behind a massive cyberassault on U.S. institutions, including a breach of the Democratic National Committee that became public earlier this year.

“All Americans should be alarmed by Russia’s actions,” which seek “to harm U.S. interests in violation of established international norms of behavior,” President Barack Obama said in a statement today.

U.S. officials have dubbed the alleged Russian campaign Grizzly Steppe, and today’s report was issued shortly after the Obama administration announced new sanctions against Russian agencies and individuals for the cyberattacks.

According to the report, two Russian groups took part in the hack of “a U.S. political party” — a reference to the Democratic Party and the DNC, which had tens of thousands of internal emails stolen and then released online this year.

...
http://abcnews.go.com/US/feds-confident-russia-dnc-hack-breaches/story?id=44449827

[goldenequity]

Syrian war to be solved if US mends ties with Russia: Assad (https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/syrian-war-solved-us-mends-ties-russia-assad/)

https://media.almasdarnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Assad-696x387.jpg

[GunnyFreedom]

http://abcnews.go.com/US/feds-confident-russia-dnc-hack-breaches/story?id=44449827

I read the entire 13 page report and the IP list addenda. I know that I have only been an internet and networking professional for 18 years, and that I only command $75/hr with regularity as a self employed professional in high demand, but I did not even see a single shred of evidence ANYWHERE in that report, much less "proof" of any kind.

I mean, I get it. I've only been doing this as a primary profession for a little under 20 years, so what would I know eh?

[timosman]

“It is a pity that the President Obama administration finishes its work this way,”

:D

[AZJoe]

The U.S. government provided new details today that revealed how a state adversary broke into American computer systems and allegedly influenced the U.S. democratic process. http://abcnews.go.com/US/feds-confident-russia-dnc-hack-breaches/story?id=44449827

This is truly bizzaro world and msm hacks like abc just keep repeating allegations as facts without evidence. They willfully refuse to be journalists and instead act as spokes-propagandists.

The spectacularly hyped "joint report (http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/312132-fbi-dhs-release-report-on-russia-hacking)" is nothing but a bad joke. Check it out: joint FBI/DHS report (https://www.us-cert.gov/sites/default/files/publications/JAR_16-20296A_GRIZZLY%20STEPPE-2016-1229.pdf). The "report" is simply an advisory letter on basic computer 101 advice to avoid hacking, with a few pages tossed in of continued accusations against Russia without any actual evidence backing it up. Simply keep repeating allegations stated as unquestioned facts, while offering no evidence.



"But security experts say that the document provides little in the way of forensic "proof" to confirm the government's attribution. Private security firms — like CrowdStrike, who investigated the DNC breach — went much further, they say.

"The DHS statement is a restatement of already known public information, a series of technical indicators that are intended for use by cybersecurity professionals in finding and remediating APT28 malware on private sector networks, and some generic advice for companies as to how to improve their network security," said Matt Tait, founder of the U.K.-based security consultancy Capital Alpha Security."" http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/312132-fbi-dhs-release-report-on-russia-hacking



P.S. - Remember Seth Rich
https://i.redd.it/r9jot2vojqlx.jpg

[AZJoe]

“It is a pity that the President Obama administration finishes its work this way,”:D


http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-5QLyLSjfFFo/U0bnaiUF7uI/AAAAAAAAcu0/ZQv13bUzF4M/s1600/obama3.jpg

[goldenequity]

I read the entire 13 page report and the IP list addenda.

https://www.us-cert.gov/sites/default/files/publications/JAR_16-20296A_GRIZZLY%20STEPPE-2016-1229.pdf

[CPUd]

C.I.A. Judgment on Russia Built on Swell of Evidence



WASHINGTON — American spy and law enforcement agencies were united in the belief, in the weeks before the presidential election, that the Russian government had deployed computer hackers to sow chaos during the campaign. But they had conflicting views about the specific goals of the subterfuge.

Last week, Central Intelligence Agency officials presented lawmakers with a stunning new judgment that upended the debate: Russia, they said, had intervened with the primary aim of helping make Donald J. Trump president.

The C.I.A.’s conclusion does not appear to be the product of specific new intelligence obtained since the election, several American officials, including some who had read the agency’s briefing, said on Sunday. Rather, it was an analysis of what many believe is overwhelming circumstantial evidence — evidence that others feel does not support firm judgments — that the Russians put a thumb on the scale for Mr. Trump, and got their desired outcome.

It is unclear why the C.I.A. did not produce this formal assessment before the election, although several officials said that parts of it had been made available to President Obama in the presidential daily briefing in the weeks before the vote. But the conclusion that Moscow ran an operation to help install the next president is one of the most consequential analyses by American spy agencies in years.
Continue reading the main story
Russian Hacking in the U.S. Election
Complete coverage of Russia’s campaign to disrupt the 2016 presidential election.

Mr. Trump’s response has been to dismiss the reports by citing another famous intelligence assessment — the botched 2002 conclusion that the Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, had weapons of mass destruction — and portraying American spies as bumbling and biased.

“I think it’s ridiculous. I think it’s just another excuse. I don’t believe it,” Mr. Trump said on Sunday in an interview on Fox News. Some top Republican congressmen have said the same, although with less bombastic language, arguing that there is no clear proof that the Russians tried to rig the election for Mr. Trump.

Yet there is a loud chorus of bipartisan voices, including Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, going public to accuse the Russians of election interference.

Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said the public evidence alone made it clear that Moscow had intervened to help the “most ostentatiously pro-Russian candidate in history.”

“If the Russians were going to interfere, why on earth would they do it to the detriment of the candidate that was pro-Russian?” Mr. Schiff asked.

The dispute cuts to core realities of intelligence analysis. Judgments are often made in a fog of uncertainty, are sometimes based on putting together shards of a mosaic that do not reveal a full picture, and can always be affected by human biases.
...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/11/us/politics/cia-judgment-intelligence-russia-hacking-evidence.html

[angelatc]

On the other hand, Snowden released, without comment, a document detailing what the NSA knew about a previous Russian hack. Glenn Greenwald's Intercept speculates that if the NSA had the technology discussed 10 years ago, it's probable that the technology has advanced since then.

Which could hint at some legitimacy.

https://theintercept.com/2016/12/29/top-secret-snowden-document-reveals-what-the-nsa-knew-about-previous-russian-hacking/

[nikcers]

I read the entire 13 page report and the IP list addenda. I know that I have only been an internet and networking professional for 18 years, and that I only command $75/hr with regularity as a self employed professional in high demand, but I did not even see a single shred of evidence ANYWHERE in that report, much less "proof" of any kind.

I mean, I get it. I've only been doing this as a primary profession for a little under 20 years, so what would I know eh? I am not a l337 hacker like you, I don't know where you get that kind of experience doing honest work. I would say based on the information it's more than implied that they have withheld the specific vulnerability they used to find out Russia hacked us. I would assume that the only way that we know Russia hacked us is because we hacked them. I would hope we have that sort of capabilities in this day and age. If we don't have that sort of capability than we are more fucked then they are letting on. Nuclear bombs can't reek the havoc cyber warfare can if we can't respond to them appropriately.

[AZJoe]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/11/us/politics/cia-judgment-intelligence-russia-hacking-evidence.html

More fake news from Cpud.

Despite the false headline, there is no evidence contained in the NYT story. Just more distraction form the corrupt and criminal wrongdoings by political elite contained in the leaks. (Again thank you Seth Rich).

The NYT story is a regurgitation of lots of allegations. Allegations are no substitute for proof. The article essentially boils down to here is an allegation, here are more allegations, here are some senators and politicians and other msm outlets with allegations. "Because we at NYT list lots of allegations, somehow that is proof. Plus Russians were critical of Clinton and Obama's foreign policy [well duh]. Plus Trump said some nice things about Russia and Putin said diplomatic things about Trump. Therefore there was hacking" - that is the NYT argument.

NYT just like ABC and the rest of the MSM merely regurgitating allegations as fact, without evidence. They willfully refuse to be journalists and instead act as spokes-propagandists.

The spectacularly hyped "joint report (http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/312132-fbi-dhs-release-report-on-russia-hacking)" is nothing but a bad joke. Check it out: joint FBI/DHS report (https://www.us-cert.gov/sites/default/files/publications/JAR_16-20296A_GRIZZLY%20STEPPE-2016-1229.pdf). The "report" is simply an advisory letter on basic computer 101 advice to avoid hacking, with a few pages tossed in of continued accusations against Russia without any actual evidence backing it up. Simply keep repeating allegations stated as unquestioned facts, while offering no evidence.


"But security experts say that the document provides little in the way of forensic "proof" to confirm the government's attribution. Private security firms — like CrowdStrike, who investigated the DNC breach — went much further, they say.

"The DHS statement is a restatement of already known public information, a series of technical indicators that are intended for use by cybersecurity professionals in finding and remediating APT28 malware on private sector networks, and some generic advice for companies as to how to improve their network security," said Matt Tait, founder of the U.K.-based security consultancy Capital Alpha Security."" http://thehill.com/policy/national-s...russia-hacking (http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/312132-fbi-dhs-release-report-on-russia-hacking)



P.S. - Remember Seth Rich

https://i.imgflip.com/1g7vmn.jpg

[Brian4Liberty]

All this talk about Russia hacking "us", or "we" were hacked by Russia. We do know that someone passed Podesta and DNC emails on to Wikileaks. That is certain. Who counts themselves as "we" along with Podesta and the DNC?

[KEEF]

Ya know, I think what our country needs is more war... I mean come on 'Merica let's blow some stuff up and sit back with a Budweiser. Scratch that, Budweiser was sold to a German company. Man let's bomb Germany for stealing all of our beer companies. <sarcasm >

[angelatc]

All this talk about Russia hacking "us", or "we" were hacked by Russia. We do know that someone passed Podesta and DNC emails on to Wikileaks. That is certain. Who counts themselves as "we" along with Podesta and the DNC?

If you read the Intercept link above, it indicates we might know they did it because we were "hacking" them when they did it.

I don't trust anything our government says. But Greenwald and Snowden still have credibility.

[osan]

https://i.imgur.com/9E8E7mO.jpg

Trump is a Russian/commie now?

Get help.

[osan]

Yes. While it is certainly courteous to be able to thank the whistle blower [Seth Rich] that brings us the truth, which whistle-blower to thank for exposing the corruption is minor compared to the actual corruption and crime that took place.

Since Seth Rich is already dead, they can't keep punishing him and they can't utilize a DNC whistle-blower for war agenda, so why not instead distract from the wrong-doings and simultaneously exploit the leaks for another round of neoconservative propaganda by simply leveling a continuous string of non-stop accusations without any evidence [sound familiar] for half a year to promote the same old warmongering neoconservative MIC agenda.

The spectacularly hyped "joint report" is nothing but a bad joke. The joint FBI/DHS report (http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/312132-fbi-dhs-release-report-on-russia-hacking) is simply an advisory letter of basic 101 advice to avoid hacking , with a few pages of continued accusation of hacking by Russia without anything backing it up. Simply keep repeating allegations as unquestioned facts, while offering no evidence.

These are the sorts of things that leads to purges, which are universal failures. That is what the choice and the will to ignorance, complacency, and other individual corruptions buys humanity. And this is why Theye have been so wildly successful: they have tapped in to every shitty turn of the human animal and amplified it to the point that it now appears to be largely self-sustaining. Truth and basic sense are now so foreign to the average man that he no longer recognizes them, much less pines for them.

Once again, my hat is off to Themme, repulsive bastards that they may otherwise be. Their cleverness and patience are legend.

[GunnyFreedom]

I am not a l337 hacker like you, I don't know where you get that kind of experience doing honest work.

I am not a hacker. Did you just imply that I do not to honest work? What do you think would happen to your networks and the Internet if all the sysadmins quit tomorrow?


I would say based on the information it's more than implied that they have withheld the specific vulnerability they used to find out Russia hacked us.

I do not understand this statement. What kind of vulnerability can a sysadmin use to determine if someone hacked them? I usually use access and DNS logs to start with, but I have never called my logs "vulnerabilities." I am not sure exactly what you are attempting to say?


I would assume that the only way that we know Russia hacked us is because we hacked them.

Which would tell us precisely nothing.


I would hope we have that sort of capabilities in this day and age.

Nobody has those kinds of capabilities, and nobody ever will. The entire concept is a product of your imagination with no basis in reality. Hacking a random computer to find evidence of them hacking you barely even works as technobabble in a Hollywood movie. It certainly has nothing to do with actual reality.


If we don't have that sort of capability than we are more fucked then they are letting on.

Or maybe you simply have no idea how cybersecurity works, and are trying to demand things that basically have no basis in reality.


Nuclear bombs can't reek the havoc cyber warfare can if we can't respond to them appropriately.

LMAO okay, now I know you have no idea what you are talking about! :D

[GunnyFreedom]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/11/us/politics/cia-judgment-intelligence-russia-hacking-evidence.html

So are they ever going to produce any of this evidence, or are they just going to talk about how much evidence exists...somewhere...in secret? FFS GWB's yellowcake uranium at least had a dubious memo. We don't even have THAT here.

[GunnyFreedom]

If you read the Intercept link above, it indicates we might know they did it because we were "hacking" them when they did it.

I don't trust anything our government says. But Greenwald and Snowden still have credibility.

Is it technically possible to hack into another system and then you see them hacking you in progress? Sure, but that's like two bullets colliding in mid air during the Civil War. It happens, but it's so vanishingly rare that it's like a 1 in a 100,000,000 chance.

[Brian4Liberty]

If you read the Intercept link above, it indicates we might know they did it because we were "hacking" them when they did it.

I don't trust anything our government says. But Greenwald and Snowden still have credibility.

It's possible. The specific quote about the previous hack was:

"On 5 December 2005, RFIS initiated an attack against the account annapolitkovskaia@US Provider1, deploying malicious software which is not available in the public domain."

Not enough info here to know what the specific evidence or tracking was. Was it simply that the malware was unknown or was known to be developed by the Russians?

They also talk about Snowden's claims of the ability to track the data as it is extracted. So they would know the location of the initial theft of info. They would not necessarily know where it went from there. For instance, a hacker in Lithuania steals the data. Do they then give it to the Russians, who in turn give it to Wikileaks, or does the hacker give it to Wikileaks directly themselves? Additional intelligence could link the hacker to the Russians in some way, making for a circumstantial evidence of Russian involvement. Even better would be intelligence that proves command and control directly from Russia, specifically for the DNC hack. If the original hack was done directly from the Kremlin, then you have a pretty good case.

As for Podesta, he supposedly fell prey to a common email phishing scam. Almost anyone could do that.

This is all a side circus. A misdirection for Democrats to blame anything or anyone for their failures.

[RJB]

I think a lot of us saw this coming over a year ago. I saw a few posters pop up on different forums to accuse people of being Russian spies when others spoke out against war. I wondered WTF? Now it makes a little more sense as things unfold.

[goldenequity]

"I tried everything possible to start World War 3.
I attacked Russian ally in Middle East with my bunch of jihadist pets.
I engineered coup directly on the Russian borders.
I expelled 35 Russian diplomats from the US.
And this damned Putin just wished me happy New Year..."

Barack Obama, 30th of December 2016

[Zippyjuan]

Trump says he will agree to look at the intelligence. He "knows" Russia was not involved but has not seen any of it yet.

http://fortune.com/2016/12/29/russia-hacking-sanctions-trump-obama/


Trump has brushed aside allegations from the CIA and other intelligence agencies that Russia was behind the cyber attacks. He said on Thursday he would meet with intelligence officials soon.

"It's time for our country to move on to bigger and better things," Trump said in a statement.

"Nevertheless, in the interest of our country and its great people, I will meet with leaders of the intelligence community next week in order to be updated on the facts of this situation," he said, without mentioning Russia .

[JK/SEA]

obama is a punk...end of story.

[Brian4Liberty]

I read the entire 13 page report and the IP list addenda. I know that I have only been an internet and networking professional for 18 years, and that I only command $75/hr with regularity as a self employed professional in high demand, but I did not even see a single shred of evidence ANYWHERE in that report, much less "proof" of any kind.

I mean, I get it. I've only been doing this as a primary profession for a little under 20 years, so what would I know eh?

And this illustrates the problem with Congressional oversight and approval.

Not that King Obama has ever asked for Congressional approval for anything, if he did, what member of Congress would be able to even understand the first thing about "evidence" presented to them?

Sure, Gunny could understand it. I'd trust Thomas Massie. But what about Nancy Pelosi? McCain? The vast majority of Congress would understand this in the same way that a dog would understand it. Throw the ball, they can fetch, that's about the depth of understanding.

Any member of Congress that was to be "briefed" would need to have an unbiased and security cleared computer expert with them to translate and filter the inevitable bullshit.

[angelatc]

Is it technically possible to hack into another system and then you see them hacking you in progress? Sure, but that's like two bullets colliding in mid air during the Civil War. It happens, but it's so vanishingly rare that it's like a 1 in a 100,000,000 chance.

I feel blessed when I can connect to the internet, so I'm not really clear about all of it. But if they were already in a system, and could therefore either watch or later decipher what they were seeing...

I don't know. But the timing of the tweet is what it is.

[Brian4Liberty]

Once again I don't understand the relevance of the argument of liberal/progressives like Zippy here that the Russians hacked the election. If the e-mails presented were still actual e-mails of the DNC providing evidence of their own foul plays, then what does it matter if John from down the street or in Russia hacked them? The e-mails are still real and the relevance is what's inside them. The issue with the e-mails is that it doesn't show the DNC as god-faring honest beings, it shows them in various nefarious light. Notice they still don't denounce the contents of the e-mails because they can't. They've been caught with pants around their ankles and they're arguing about being caught.

Presenting facts is not cheating the system. It's actually encouraging honest perpetuation of our political condition. That's what whistle blowers and journalists do.

Temper tantrums and distractions from the sore losers who refuse to accept the election results.

[Brian4Liberty]

Since Seth Rich is already dead, they can't keep punishing him and they can't utilize a DNC whistle-blower for war agenda, so why not instead distract from the wrong-doings and simultaneously exploit the leaks for another round of neoconservative propaganda by simply leveling a continuous string of non-stop accusations without any evidence [sound familiar] for half a year to promote the same old warmongering neoconservative MIC agenda.

The Democrats (Leninists) and their neoconservative brethren (Trotskyites) can certainly agree about Russia. Still all butt-hurt about Stalin.

[timosman]

Temper tantrums and distractions from the sore losers who refuse to accept the election results.

Nobody was able to say NO to Ms. Clinton http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?505509-Nobody-was-able-to-say-NO-to-Ms-Clinton

[Brian4Liberty]

The Election Was Not Hacked (https://ricochet.com/399685/election-not-hacked/)
By Jon Gabriel - December 29, 2016


Between jeremiads decrying “fake news,” the mainstream media has created and advanced the biggest fake news story of 2016: That the presidential election was hacked.


“Obama Strikes Back at Russia for Election Hacking” New York Times
“Obama administration unveils retribution for Russia over election hacking allegations” CNBC
“U.S. Slaps Sanctions On Russia For Election Hacking, Expels 35 Diplomats” CBS
“Obama sanctions Russian officials over election hacking” USA Today
“U.S. Sanctions Russia Over Election Hacking; Russia Threatens to Retaliate” Wall Street Journal

Despite the histrionic claims of the press, the election was not hacked. The Democratic National Committee’s lousy IT security allowed someone to access their emails which were then leaked. Clinton’s campaign manager John Podesta fell for an age-old phishing scam that was as believable as getting millions of dollars from a Nigerian prince. Using the spotty media understanding of cybersecurity, they can claim that the DNC and Hillary’s campaign were “hacked,” but the election decisively was not. And the press knows it.

In order to “hack” an election, a nefarious group would have to infiltrate the voting systems of 50 states, plus DC and territories. All of these systems are unique, with completely different architecture, ballot formats, tabulation processes, etc., etc. This did not happen. In fact, some hackers tried breaking into a few different states’ systems weeks before the election, were quickly identified, and prevented from doing so. Likewise, someone attempted to gain illegal access to the Republican National Committee, but since they had a competent IT staff, this too was thwarted.

But even without delving into the technical details, it’s obvious that the election wasn’t hacked. If, say, Russia wanted to elect Trump, they would have given him the popular vote victory along with his electoral victory. They also wouldn’t have left him to squeak out meager wins across the upper midwest and rust belt.

The media is intentionally lying to the public because they want a better excuse for Election Day than the reality. They would rather focus on hacking, the popular vote, FBI Director James Comey, or the minuscule alt-right, instead of accepting that American voters slightly preferred Donald Trump to Hillary Clinton, at least in the states where it counted. People wanted change over the ineptness, cronyism, and stagnation of the Obama era. They didn’t trust the utterly untrustable Clinton and liked her even less.

The harsh reality is this: Hillary Clinton is the worst presidential nominee in American history. And if the media is actually concerned about fake news, they will drop the election hacking lie and just admit that their candidate was a disaster.
...
https://ricochet.com/399685/election-not-hacked/

[nikcers]

I am not a hacker. Did you just imply that I do not to honest work? What do you think would happen to your networks and the Internet if all the sysadmins quit tomorrow? You are not a hacker therefore you are out of your wheelhouse. Your opinion is valid but your authority on hacking is as good as Trumps.

[Lovecraftian4Paul]

Wow, sad that the Dems are really willing to risk WWIII to have their temper tantrum over Madam Never President losing.

[nikcers]

Wow, sad that the Dems are really willing to risk WWIII to have their temper tantrum over Madam Never President losing. Is it so hard to imagine blowback for Paul supporters? Our state department tried to oust Putin, they even said as much that it was a personal vendetta against Clinton. There is always blowback, there is always cause and effect.

[GunnyFreedom]

You are not a hacker therefore you are out of your wheelhouse. Your opinion is valid but your authority on hacking is as good as Trumps.

You really have no clue at all how these things work, do you?

[nikcers]

You really have no clue at all how these things work, do you? You really are a hacker then? Tell me then, I have an ip address Greg can you hack me??

[GunnyFreedom]

You are not a hacker therefore you are out of your wheelhouse. Your opinion is valid but your authority on hacking is as good as Trumps.

Hacking, and network security are completely different skill sets. I always set up intrusion detection monitoring and alerts Meraki firewalls. Do you understand the security settings in a Fortinet? This is not "outside my wheelhouse," it is square in the center of it. Does a road builder suddenly not know how to build roads because he's never driven a Ferrari? Perhaps you should stop pretending like you have sure knowledge of things that you quite obviously do not have the first clue.

[GunnyFreedom]

You really are a hacker then? Tell me then, I have an ip address Greg can you hack me??

Who is Greg?

I am not a hacker.

You are doubling down on stupidity.

[Jamesiv1]

Either they do not, or the lack of substantive response would indicate they have other things on their minds. Perhaps they have simply given up on anything good happening. IOW, they have become weaklings going along to get along.
I'm thinking the technology generations get it - like everyone under 40-yr old.

A lot of the older folks that aren't comfortable with computers are probably buying the "Dirty Russkies!!" narrative.

[CPUd]

So are they ever going to produce any of this evidence, or are they just going to talk about how much evidence exists...somewhere...in secret? FFS GWB's yellowcake uranium at least had a dubious memo. We don't even have THAT here.

They showed some of the signatures from whatever they were using to exploit, but the specific info you are looking for, don't hold your breath for them to give that up. They use honeypots, but also watch pretty much anything that accesses a server at .gov. The US side at least, they're not monolithic, like DoE has their own groups doing research independent from the intel agencies. I'm assuming they share, but I don't know the specifics on that.

[pcosmar]

Who is Greg?

I am not a hacker.

You are doubling down on stupidity.

I have offered my system for those that would care to attempt it.

several times over the years. I secure my own system.. I hack it.

and I am not Paranoid ,, so I don't run on those settings. (that is an actual setting)

I have not been hacked by an outsider.. despite invitations to those that make claims.

[GunnyFreedom]

I have offered my system for those that would care to attempt it.

several times over the years. I secure my own system.. I hack it.

and I am not Paranoid ,, so I don't run on those settings. (that is an actual setting)

I have not been hacked by an outsider.. despite invitations to those that make claims.

yeah, likewise when I am properly buttoned up in General Quarters, I'd defy Elliot Alderson to break in. But we aren't talking home security but enterprise. Most enterprise level network security comes on their own devices. Firewalls, security appliances. Most of that kind of business requires console cables and a serial port and a terminal emulator.

You have to know the difference between how Cisco ASA, Fortinet, Cisco Meraki, and Juniper deal with security and how to manipulate the settings.

The most important thing of course is to enable full logging, intrusion detection, and alerts. Any device on a home network is unlikely to even have such features.

[pcosmar]

yeah, likewise when I am properly buttoned up in General Quarters, I'd defy Elliot Alderson to break in. But we aren't talking home security but enterprise. Most enterprise level network security comes on their own devices. Firewalls, security appliances. Most of that kind of business requires console cables and a serial port and a terminal emulator.

You have to know the difference between how Cisco ASA, Fortinet, Cisco Meraki, and Juniper deal with security and how to manipulate the settings.

The most important thing of course is to enable full logging, intrusion detection, and alerts. Any device on a home network is unlikely to even have such features.

Shorewall
http://shorewall.org/

and an ability to read. ;)

[CPUd]

yeah, likewise when I am properly buttoned up in General Quarters, I'd defy Elliot Alderson to break in. But we aren't talking home security but enterprise. Most enterprise level network security comes on their own devices. Firewalls, security appliances. Most of that kind of business requires console cables and a serial port and a terminal emulator.

You have to know the difference between how Cisco ASA, Fortinet, Cisco Meraki, and Juniper deal with security and how to manipulate the settings.

The most important thing of course is to enable full logging, intrusion detection, and alerts. Any device on a home network is unlikely to even have such features.

Do you use a lot of remote logging? I've always wanted to set up a machine on the local net that is dedicated for receiving and parsing logs.

[nikcers]

Most enterprise level network security comes on their own devices. Firewalls, security appliances. Most of that kind of business requires console cables and a serial port and a terminal emulator.

You have to know the difference between how Cisco ASA, Fortinet, Cisco Meraki, and Juniper deal with security and how to manipulate the settings.

The most important thing of course is to enable full logging, intrusion detection, and alerts. Any device on a home network is unlikely to even have such features.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/photos-of-an-nsa-upgrade-factory-show-cisco-router-getting-implant/


Here’s how it works: shipments of computer network devices (servers, routers, etc,) being delivered to our targets throughout the world are intercepted. Next, they are redirected to a secret location where Tailored Access Operations/Access Operations (AO-S326) employees, with the support of the Remote Operations Center (S321), enable the installation of beacon implants directly into our targets’ electronic devices. These devices are then re-packaged and placed back into transit to the original destination. All of this happens with the support of Intelligence Community partners and the technical wizards in TAO.

[osan]

I'm thinking the technology generations get it - like everyone under 40-yr old.

A lot of the older folks that aren't comfortable with computers are probably buying the "Dirty Russkies!!" narrative.

Under 40 = millennials, the least clued-in, most simplistically minded weaklings this nation has ever seen.

I don't think they get shit.

[nobody's_hero]

Is it so hard to imagine blowback for Paul supporters? Our state department tried to oust Putin, they even said as much that it was a personal vendetta against Clinton. There is always blowback, there is always cause and effect.

It's not hard to imagine the concept of blowback.

I'm just not convinced that there has been any blowback at all from Russia, but I'm seeing a lot of folks gluttonizing themselves at the MSM bulls*it buffet and then looking at everyone else like we're crazy for losing our appetites.

Better if you ask:

Is it so hard to imagine the concept [that this is all just propaganda intended to fuel a renewal of tensions between two world superpowers so people live in a state of perpetual fear of alleged foreign enemies while our government continues to fuck us in the ass] for Paul supporters? THAT I would believe, without hesitation.

Besides, right now Putin is gonna take the high road. Looks like he's gonna drop the issue from his end and let Obama fade into obscurity as the mental midget who flailed his arms around screaming his last few weeks in office.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgQKqMfuCuY

Happy New Year.

[silverhandorder]

Is it so hard to imagine blowback for Paul supporters? Our state department tried to oust Putin, they even said as much that it was a personal vendetta against Clinton. There is always blowback, there is always cause and effect.

It's not hard to imagine. So next time dont go around threatening regime change only to get out played. You look like Obama, sad.

Regardless of what you may think Trump won fair, overwhelming and will be your president. I generally do not vote and would abolish government if it was up to me. In Trump's case I make an exception.

[Jamesiv1]

Under 40 = millennials, the least clued-in, most simplistically minded weaklings this nation has ever seen.

I don't think they get shit.
they might be clueless in the ways of the world, but they grew up on computers, and probably don't react the way grandma does when CNN screams, "Russia is hacking our freedoms!!!"

[osan]

they might be clueless in the ways of the world, but they grew up on computers, and probably don't react the way grandma does when CNN screams, "Russia is hacking our freedoms!!!"

Oh, you give them WAY too much credit for clues.

I was a very late first generation programmer. I made my bones banging assembly code on machines with 64K cores, where one had to be a true expert in order to write programs that did not bomb and take foreign real estate with them. There was no memory management except that which you created. This is not to pine for the good old days of writing the same swaths of code over and over, but only to illustrate what it means to actually know what it is you are doing as a programmer, v. what today passes for a cracker-jack coder just because he can write a "Hello World!" in Java without causing the hardware racks to catch fire. We were actual scientists, whereas most of these whipper snappers are mere byte-twiddlers, at best.

There are people of that generation who are passably knowledgeable, some even good. But the bulk know nothing beyond the system library calls for platforms like Java, Python, C++ (maybe), php, etc. Most of those have no clue as to internals, and THAT is where some of the real knowledge resides.

I suspect you are confusing knowledge with apathy. A great plurality of these young people could give a shit about truth. They believe what is convenient to getting laid, high, and maybe paying the bills. So long as little Chelsea is gobbling little Jimmy's knob, neither could give the least shit about any truth that offends their delicate sensibilities. Hence, the rise of the term "snowflake". They are weak, willfully ignorant, tantrum pitching, über self-absorbed infants in grown bodies. They represent at least half of their generation, and I suspect a whole lot more than that. They are the future, which means humanity has no future of which to speak, unless something really big happens to point the lot of them in a very much better direction.

Luckily, I will be dead soon and will have no more concerns regarding the fate of this apparently idiotic race. One can only hope that sense, courage, and decency will find a way to survive.

[goldenequity]

Oh, you give them WAY too much credit for clues.

I was a very late first generation programmer. I made my bones banging assembly code on machines with 64K cores, where one had to be a true expert in order to write programs that did not bomb and take foreign real estate with them. There was no memory management except that which you created. This is not to pine for the good old days of writing the same swaths of code over and over, but only to illustrate what it means to actually know what it is you are doing as a programmer, v. what today passes for a cracker-jack coder just because he can write a "Hello World!" in Java without causing the hardware racks to catch fire. We were actual scientists, whereas most of these whipper snappers are mere byte-twiddlers, at best.

There are people of that generation who are passably knowledgeable, some even good. But the bulk know nothing beyond the system library calls for platforms like Java, Python, C++ (maybe), php, etc. Most of those have no clue as to internals, and THAT is where some of the real knowledge resides.

I suspect you are confusing knowledge with apathy. A great plurality of these young people could give a $#@! about truth. They believe what is convenient to getting laid, high, and maybe paying the bills. So long as little Chelsea is gobbling little Jimmy's knob, neither could give the least $#@! about any truth that offends their delicate sensibilities. Hence, the rise of the term "snowflake". They are weak, willfully ignorant, tantrum pitching, über self-absorbed infants in grown bodies. They represent at least half of their generation, and I suspect a whole lot more than that. They are the future, which means humanity has no future of which to speak, unless something really big happens to point the lot of them in a very much better direction.

Luckily, I will be dead soon and will have no more concerns regarding the fate of this apparently idiotic race. One can only hope that sense, courage, and decency will find a way to survive.

Great.
Thnx alot Osan... I just sat down to read me some RPF..
and yours is the first post I read.
I was laughing.
Now I feel like pukeing... dammit.
I'm a half ta put some Jack in my coffee now
to forget your razor sharp paper cuts.
Somm'bitch. Say something funny again. Me no like da funk.
I'll be back. :(

I'm back. All better now. :)

[AZJoe]

Besides, right now Putin is gonna take the high road. Looks like he's gonna drop the issue from his end and let Obama fade into obscurity as the mental midget who flailed his arms around screaming his last few weeks in office.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgQKqMfuCuY

Obama went low and Putin went high with a response that is simultaneously high-class, sensible, and shrewd:

"We regard the recent unfriendly steps taken by the outgoing US administration as provocative and aimed at further weakening the Russia-US relationship. This runs contrary to the fundamental interests of both the Russian and American people. … Although we have the right to retaliate, we will not resort to irresponsible ‘kitchen’ diplomacy but will plan our further steps to restore Russian-US relations ...

We will not create any problems for US diplomats. We will not expel anyone. We will not prevent their families and children from using their traditional leisure sites during the New Year’s holidays. Moreover, I invite all children of US diplomats accredited in Russia to the New Year and Christmas children’s parties in the Kremlin.

It is regrettable that the Obama Administration is ending its term in this manner. Nevertheless, I offer my New Year greetings to President Obama and his family. … I wish all of you happiness and prosperity." http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/53678

[tod evans]

What a classy response from Putin.

[goldenequity]

What a classy response from Putin.

https://www.godlikeproductions.com/external?https%3A%2F%2Fpbs.twimg.com%2Fmedia%2FC07 g7gQXgAAgKtq.jpg%3Alarge

[Brian4Liberty]

814995935931539457
https://twitter.com/USAB4L/status/814995935931539457

[pcosmar]

What a classy response from Putin.


Truth..

and in stark contrast to what has been US "diplomacy".

[osan]

814995935931539457
https://twitter.com/USAB4L/status/814995935931539457

Funny, that.

[enhanced_deficit]

Perhaps they should create a new Nobel Prize category for "weird timing".

If Russia had announced sanctions when America was mourning Boston Marathon deaths (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?505868-If-Russia-had-announced-sanctions-when-America-was-mourning-Boston-Marathon-deaths&)

[nikcers]

I am not a hacker. Did you just imply that I do not to honest work? What do you think would happen to your networks and the Internet if all the sysadmins quit tomorrow?



Nuclear bombs can't reek the havoc cyber warfare can if we can't respond to them appropriately.


LMAO okay, now I know you have no idea what you are talking about! :D


http://Russian hackers penetrated U.S. electricity grid through a utility in Vermont
A code associated with the Russian hacking operation dubbed Grizzly Steppe by the Obama administration has been detected within the system of a Vermont utility, according to U.S. officials.
While the Russians did not actively use the code to disrupt operations, according to officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a security matter, the discovery underlines the vulnerabilities of the nation’s electrical grid.



No I implied you are not a hacker, I don't claim to be one either. I know about as much about hacking as what I seen in independence day. In that movie it didn't matter how many nukes were fired at them, it was hacking that saved the planet.

[timosman]

No I implied you are not a hacker, I don't claim to be one either. I know about as much about hacking as what I seen in independence day. In that movie it didn't matter how many nukes were fired at them, it was hacking that saved the planet.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PxTAn4g20U

[pcosmar]

No I implied you are not a hacker, I don't claim to be one either. I know about as much about hacking as what I seen in independence day. In that movie it didn't matter how many nukes were fired at them, it was hacking that saved the planet.

And I didn't want to hijack a thread,, But Gunny made a good point,, and I made a collaborative point as a minor hacker.. and without His resume.

One,, there was no hack,,
and two,, there is no security apparent in all US govt hacks.

We see this from different perspectives,, and yet. it is seen.

[GunnyFreedom]

No I implied you are not a hacker, I don't claim to be one either. I know about as much about hacking as what I seen in independence day. In that movie it didn't matter how many nukes were fired at them, it was hacking that saved the planet.

So, you are basing your understanding of reality on a Hollywood movie?

[pcosmar]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PxTAn4g20U

I had the screensaver (likely still do @?)

and yes I have nmap,,and then some.

[nikcers]

So, you are basing your understanding of reality on a Hollywood movie? Just because it was in a movie doesn't mean it's a ridiculous concept. I would say that stuxnet slowed Iran's nukes. Obviously this isn't the matrix, but it doesn't have to be when we have bombed ISIS based on facebook tags.

[pcosmar]

Just because it was in a movie doesn't mean it's a ridiculous concept. I would say that stuxnet slowed Iran's nukes. Obviously this isn't the matrix, but it doesn't have to be when we have bombed ISIS based on facebook tags.

No,, stuxnet was an Act of War.

Against no threat at all.

ans ISIS was created from the ground up by the US and Allies.

[nikcers]

No,, stuxnet was an Act of War.

Against no threat at all.

ans ISIS was created from the ground up by the US and Allies.
Dude I am not a pro Israel guy at all if you look at my posts, but its obvious that they have been our counterbalance against Russia. That's why we give them all of the weapons. The foreign aid that we give them is spent on weapons that they use to keep the cold war going. Yeah its an act of war, this is all an act because we have always been at war. This is how wars are fought these days, instead of sending men into battle fields they run simulations on computer's and undermine each others economies.

[GunnyFreedom]

Just because it was in a movie doesn't mean it's a ridiculous concept. I would say that stuxnet slowed Iran's nukes. Obviously this isn't the matrix, but it doesn't have to be when we have bombed ISIS based on facebook tags.

No, it is indeed possible to demonstrate what actual hacking looks like in a movie, look at the TV Show Mr. Robot for instance, but you are going the wrong direction. You have to know reality first and THEN judge the movie based on that. Taking a movie FIRST and then trying to base reality on THAT is not logical.

[CPUd]

Oh, you give them WAY too much credit for clues.

I was a very late first generation programmer. I made my bones banging assembly code on machines with 64K cores, where one had to be a true expert in order to write programs that did not bomb and take foreign real estate with them. There was no memory management except that which you created. This is not to pine for the good old days of writing the same swaths of code over and over, but only to illustrate what it means to actually know what it is you are doing as a programmer, v. what today passes for a cracker-jack coder just because he can write a "Hello World!" in Java without causing the hardware racks to catch fire. We were actual scientists, whereas most of these whipper snappers are mere byte-twiddlers, at best.

There are people of that generation who are passably knowledgeable, some even good. But the bulk know nothing beyond the system library calls for platforms like Java, Python, C++ (maybe), php, etc. Most of those have no clue as to internals, and THAT is where some of the real knowledge resides.

I suspect you are confusing knowledge with apathy. A great plurality of these young people could give a shit about truth. They believe what is convenient to getting laid, high, and maybe paying the bills. So long as little Chelsea is gobbling little Jimmy's knob, neither could give the least shit about any truth that offends their delicate sensibilities. Hence, the rise of the term "snowflake". They are weak, willfully ignorant, tantrum pitching, über self-absorbed infants in grown bodies. They represent at least half of their generation, and I suspect a whole lot more than that. They are the future, which means humanity has no future of which to speak, unless something really big happens to point the lot of them in a very much better direction.

Luckily, I will be dead soon and will have no more concerns regarding the fate of this apparently idiotic race. One can only hope that sense, courage, and decency will find a way to survive.

I've known a few who try to get through an assembly course without having to learn how to use a debugger. These are the same ones who ask why they keep getting seg fault errors when their program compiles just fine.

[timosman]

I've known a few who try to get through an assembly course without having to learn how to use a debugger. These are the same ones who ask why they keep getting seg fault errors when their program compiles just fine.

They should be using java. :cool:

[osan]

They should be using java. :cool:

Nothing particularly wrong with Java, per sé. It is the environment that sucks. The libraries are complete shit as they make the simplest tasks painful and complicated. The base grammar is not all that different from languages such as Python, but the various libraries and other toolboxes for Python are pure rock and roll v. junk.

One language that has been so foolishly ignored is REXX. It is an abfab language of absolutely enormous power, much of it residing in the PARSE instruction where patterns of arbitrary complexity can be detected. Since it is a string-based language, the built-in functions cover it all in an intuitively sensible and very powerful way. It was chosen by Commodore as the executive language for the Amiga, which to this day stands as a monument to sheer human genius and machine-frugality. Those boys knew what in hell they were doing, second perhaps only to those at Symbolics. The Genera 7 operating system to this very day outstrips any other OS you care to name, including DMERT.

There is plenty of good reason to remain concerned, as once all good programmers were, with efficiency. What these rocket surgeons fail to retain in terms of understanding is that being good memory managers also tends to make us good in terms of minimizing bugs. But memory is cheap, as are ultra-high clocking, multi-core processors, so why bother ourselves with efficiency? That is why we have programs like Firefox that eat memory and leak it all over the floor, seize up, and burn at the most inopportune moments. Memory management and the associated garbage collection SUCK in both Winders and LINUX. True UNIX was far better, but that was long ago. Not up on how well it manages these monstrous chunks of internet code these days.

Most programmers don't rise to the status of third-rate hacks these days. They know how to get things done, but not efficiently and often not even with sufficient reliability, leaving discarded objects laying about, for example, rather than destroying them when finished. They rely way too much on someone else doing it for them and hence their code is shyte.

[pcosmar]

oops
double

[pcosmar]

. Yeah its an act of war, this is all an act because we have always been at war.

I never mentioned Israel. where did that come from?

and "we have always been at war with---,," is a famous quote.

[nobody's_hero]

I never mentioned Israel. where did that come from?

and "we have always been at war with---,," is a famous quote.

Waiting for nikcers to realize his posts are reading like a famous novel frequently alluded to on these forums.

[nikcers]

I never mentioned Israel. where did that come from?

and "we have always been at war with---,," is a famous quote.
It's geopolitics stupid. Israel is racist and hates Iran and wants to go to war with Iran. We stopped war with Iran already by signing the Iran deal. We have now entered the phase where our current administration and Israel is putting on this WWE shit show like they hate eachother, so that when Israel does what they want to do, we will say we were against it. Trump will bail out Israel after Russia intervenes because that's what he campaigned on. Israel has everything to do with world war 3.

[RJB]

Not just this post, but from reading your posts history in this thread, you may may want to reread your posts, take a calm breath or two, and have a thoughtful moment before hitting the "submit reply" button.




It's geopolitics stupid..

[nikcers]

Not just this post, but from reading your posts history in this thread, you may may want to reread your posts, take a calm breath or two, and have a thoughtful moment before hitting the "submit reply" button.

I've had a lot of criticism against my posts lately but none of it constructive. You aren't really saying anything right now.

[RJB]

A neg rep? Lol. You really need to take a moment to consider how you are coming across. That was friendly advice.

I've had a lot of criticism against my posts lately but none of it constructive. You aren't really saying anything right now.

[Brian4Liberty]

814611944313384960
https://twitter.com/LindseyGrahamSC/status/814611944313384960

[silverhandorder]

It's geopolitics stupid. Israel is racist and hates Iran and wants to go to war with Iran. We stopped war with Iran already by signing the Iran deal. We have now entered the phase where our current administration and Israel is putting on this WWE $#@! show like they hate eachother, so that when Israel does what they want to do, we will say we were against it. Trump will bail out Israel after Russia intervenes because that's what he campaigned on. Israel has everything to do with world war 3.

Ravings of a mad man.

[nikcers]

Ravings of a mad man.
Said the conspiracy theorist.

[pcosmar]

Said the conspiracy theorist.

and when we attacked and overthrew a Democratic government and imposed a brutal dictator in 1953..

what was it then?

[nikcers]

814611944313384960
https://twitter.com/LindseyGrahamSC/status/814611944313384960

815232903948931073

[silverhandorder]

815232903948931073

Political corpses for 200 Alex.

[Origanalist]

A neg rep? Lol. You really need to take a moment to consider how you are coming across. That was friendly advice.

Neg rep, being friendly isn't in vogue here these days.

[Krugminator2]

It's geopolitics stupid. Israel is racist and hates Iran and wants to go to war with Iran. We stopped war with Iran already by signing the Iran deal. We have now entered the phase where our current administration and Israel is putting on this WWE $#@! show like they hate eachother, so that when Israel does what they want to do, we will say we were against it. Trump will bail out Israel after Russia intervenes because that's what he campaigned on. Israel has everything to do with world war 3.

Racist? There is that whole Iran wanting to wipe Israel off the map thing. Iranian leaders have repeatedly used the phrase "wipe Israel off the map." The leaders of that country think the Jews made up the Holocaust.

I don't want the US involved at all in the region. It makes the US less safe. If I were from Israel though, I would want the Israeli government doing everything possible to undermine Iran, including preemptive attack if need be.

Here is a simple thought experiment. If every country in the Middle East were like Israel how many problems would there be? The answer is none. Muslim countries are still in the Stone Age and are not part of civilization. They are 100% of the problem.

[nobody's_hero]

I've had a lot of criticism against my posts lately but none of it constructive. You aren't really saying anything right now.

"We have always been at war with. . . " was from Orwell's 1984.

And RJB is right, you need to calm down and reflect on where you stand, because right now your hatred of Trump is blinding you so badly that you sound as if you're essentially championing moves towards war with Russia. And coupled with the fact that you do so when there still has yet to be any evidence of Russian hacking, we think you've lost your mind to be suddenly so trusting of the government's 'official story'.

I think even people here who support Trump aren't expecting much (there are few that I think are setting themselves up for huge disappointment, and would probably be wise to temper their enthusiasm). I hope they will not abandon a healthy amount of skepticism of government's broader actions once he takes office.

But, then again, I think when TPTB are reacting this way, something is threatening them. I'll be shocked if it all has to do with Trump but to be honest, when they ramrod us towards provoking a war, especially knowing they have no credibility and no one is buying the bull shit, something is up. Everything Obama and this administration and the media is doing appears to be out of desperation, and it's a very dangerous position to be in when you're a lame duck and have nothing to lose.

[UWDude]

How Russia Recruited Elite Hackers for Its Cyberwar

So elite they left traces and didn't even know to use proVPN. "elite"

[UWDude]

Dude I am not a pro Israel guy at all if you look at my posts, but its obvious that they have been our counterbalance against Russia.

LoL

[nikcers]

"We have always been at war with. . . " was from Orwell's 1984.

And RJB is right, you need to calm down and reflect on where you stand, because right now your hatred of Trump is blinding you so badly that you sound as if you're essentially championing moves towards war with Russia. And coupled with the fact that you do so when there still has yet to be any evidence of Russian hacking, we think you've lost your mind to be suddenly so trusting of the government's 'official story'.

I think even people here who support Trump aren't expecting much (there are few that I think are setting themselves up for huge disappointment, and would probably be wise to temper their enthusiasm). I hope they will not abandon a healthy amount of skepticism of government's broader actions once he takes office.

But, then again, I think when TPTB are reacting this way, something is threatening them. I'll be shocked if it all has to do with Trump but to be honest, when they ramrod us towards provoking a war, especially knowing they have no credibility and no one is buying the bull $#@!, something is up. Everything Obama and this administration and the media is doing appears to be out of desperation, and it's a very dangerous position to be in when you're a lame duck and have nothing to lose.
I don't hate Trump, I am scared that he will not be able to handle this situation. This situation didn't happen out of nowhere, I keep seeing people act like Obama started a war with Russia right before he left office. This is something our government has been doing, and its something I am terrified of. This is why I was such a big Rand Paul supporter, he was the only one saying lets not shoot down Russian planes, lets get out of the middle east. Yeah Trump said it too, and you can believe him if you want, but I won't. Trump said it because it was popular. I am sorry if it comes out bad the way I write it, but its not anger, its fear. I am terrified of losing this country that I love.

[euphemia]

Obama just keeps acting like what he does is going to stick.

[AZJoe]

Meme for the Democrats

https://scontent-lax3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/15781244_589528144586558_734951940492183553_n.jpg? oh=7d007047adca6c2d47e59198d372c2a3&oe=58F0B73F

[CPUd]

https://i.imgur.com/jCaxkyd.jpg

[RJB]

but its not anger, its fear. I am terrified of losing this country that I love.
I hear you. I didn't mean that critique in a mean way, but I can see how it appeared I was adding in to the dog pile. I probably should have messeged you in a + rep.

I also shouldn't have neg repped you back either, but for some reason I always turn a neg rep into a silly game.

As for fear that shows in your writing... When I first woke up, I was really fearful of SHTF for a few years. Then I ran into an old guy who was aware of all this since the 1960s. It dawned on me that had I known what he knew back in the 60s, I would have died of a heart attack in the 1970s. Ironically this man is the most peaceful minded and contented person I've ever met.

Fear and what it wreaks on the mind and body is all self-inflicted. Don't let it take you over. There has always been a threat, there always will be, SHTF could happen tomorrow. This is a screwed up world, but in it are many people I love (I'm married with a bunch of kids) and I enjoy life immensely. My grandfather lived through the Great Depression and WWII. That was almost two decades of what we would consider hell and he actually enjoyed his life during that time.

How to deal with this conflict of knowing what we know and living:
1. Prep for disaster. Have some food, weapons, survival skills, and good friends.
2. Make peace with God. We are born here to eventually die.
3. Learn to be at peace with the reality and lose your fear of it.

Sorry if it sounds like a lecture, but I've felt your fear. I know it sucks and I wish you didn't bear that burden.

[RJB]

Is this the CIA's proof of collusion? I'm thinking that picture looks photoshopped. Can any expert out there verify if this is real?


https://i.imgur.com/jCaxkyd.jpg

[UWDude]

42% of the IP addresses put out in the Homeland Security report are ToR exit nodes:


I found out, after some digging, that of the 876 suspicious IP addresses that the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of National Intelligence put on the Russian cyber attacker list, at least 367 of them (roughly 42%) are either Tor exit nodes right now, or were Tor exit nodes in the last few years.
https://theintercept.com/2017/01/04/the-u-s-government-thinks-thousands-of-russian-hackers-are-reading-my-blog-they-arent/

Either Homeland Security had an amateur write their report, or it was just propaganda. I am going to guess the latter.