Actually it’s coming from the security community, companies like Mandiant and others who have reviewed the DNC hack and the sources of the emails.
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They are … probably right.
Attribution is difficult, and everything I’ve seen released points to: “It’s hard to believe it wasn’t Russia, but that could have been faked, but it would have taken a lot of effort, and who would have done that?”
Probably Russia… probably…
It’s hard, but not impossible. The link I posted says “yep, this is Russia, we know these particular agents well.”
The forensic evidence linking the DNC breach to known Russian operations
is very strong. On June 20, two competing cybersecurity companies,
Mandiant (part of FireEye) and Fidelis, confirmed
CrowdStrike’s initial findings that Russian intelligence indeed hacked
Clinton’s campaign. The forensic evidence that links network breaches to
known groups is solid: used and reused tools, methods, infrastructure,
even unique encryption keys. For example: in late March the attackers
registered a domain with a typo—misdepatrment[.]com—to look suspiciously
like the company hired by the DNC to manage its network, MIS
Department. They then linked this deceptive domain to a long-known APT 28 so-called X-Tunnel command-and-control IP address, 45.32.129[.]185.
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And these about the actual leaked documents:
The metadata in the leaked documents are perhaps most revealing: one
dumped document was modified using Russian language settings, by a user named
“Феликс Эдмундович,” a code name referring to the founder of the Soviet
Secret Police, the Cheka, memorialised in a 15-ton iron statue in front
of the old KGB headquarters during Soviet times. The original intruders
made other errors: one leaked document included hyperlink error
messages in Cyrillic, the result of editing the file on a computer with
Russian language settings. After this mistake became public, the
intruders removed the Cyrillic information from the metadata in the next
dump and carefully used made-up user names from different world
regions, thereby confirming they had made a mistake in the first round.
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I agree that the tenor of the discourse should be maintained as polite but there is also a need to address the elephant sized character flaws in the room. As an example the failure to admit, partially due to the cult of personality which attaches to the office of US president, just how weak minded, manipulable, information poor, slow learning, and incapable of critical thought Bush was cost the world dear. Let politeness not distract from the fact that Trump is a monster, a narcissist, seemingly a sociopath with a lust for power and no scruples in how he attains it to wit: xenophobia, racism, misogyny and the rupture of the fabric of society after degrading the discourse. It will take decades to recover from what he has wrought, or rather destroyed, whether he wins or not.
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All the firms involved look good, and the agencies look better not being hacked by a one off, but by hackers with ties to a nation state instead. I’m not saying it isn’t true, but nothing has been divulged yet that anyone in the industry would call definitive, unless they wanted their name in the news.
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Second Chechen war, Wikipedia:
“The exact death toll from this conflict is unknown. Unofficial estimates range from 25,000 to 50,000 dead or missing, mostly civilians in Chechnya. Russian casualties are over 5,200 (official Russian casualty figures)[30] and are about 11,000 according to the Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers.[31]”
Iraq War, also Wikipedia:
“Various scientific surveys of Iraqi deaths resulting from the first four years of the Iraq War estimated that between 151,000 and over one million Iraqis died as a result of conflict during this time.[1] A later study, published in 2011, estimated that approximately 500,000 Iraqis had died as a result of the conflict since the invasion.[2] Counts of deaths reported in newspapers collated by projects like the Iraq Body Count project found 174,000 Iraqis reported killed between 2003 and 2013, with between 112,000-123,000 of those killed being civilian noncombatants.”
Estimates for the Ukraine separatist war: approx. 10 000 deaths.
“During the war in Afghanistan (2001–14), over 26,000 civilian deaths due to war-related violence have been documented;[1] 29,900 civilians have been wounded.[1] Over 91,000 Afghans, including civilians, soldiers and militants, are recorded to have been killed in the conflict, and the number who have died through indirect causes related to the war may include an additional 360,000 people.[1] These numbers do not include those who have died in Pakistan.”
Whataboutery is usually pointless but it helps to get a sense of proportion. If Putin is a vicious world-raper, what does that make GWBIII?
Exaggeration and demonisation of the other is a well known technique of political extremists, who do nobody any good. I am sure we can agree that Russia’s interests are not aligned to those of the US. But from outside the US, where most of the world’s population resides, the US government is no better morally than the Russian government, not a lot better than the Syrian or the Israeli governments and very definitely inferior to, say, Botswana or Costa Rica.
In the case of Russia, the US has demanded sanctions which have almost no effect on the US but have had deleterious effects on the EU. The knock on effect of those sanctions (e.g. on farmer incomes) may be partly to blame for the UK referendum result. It would be astonishing if the Russian government was not trying to influence the outcome of US elections, just as NATO did the same in Ukraine. But it is the extreme nationalistic culture of the US - as exemplified by the American exceptionalist tone of speeches at both party gatherings - that causes a lot of Americans to have such a binary perception of the world.
I have been really impressed with Kerry’s handling of the Syrian crisis and still feel he’s the President you should have had. His comment to Boris Johnson - “it’s called diplomacy” - is the missing factor in almost all the candidates on both sides that is leading to the decline in the quality of politics. As I say above, I very much doubt that Putin summoned someone from the relevant agency and said specifically “go for Clinton”. But if they didn’t spy on both conventions, he would probably be a lot less than pleased. If someone is determined to be your enemy, you need to know about them.
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No, that was “not taking his chances seriously”, which is different from not taking his message seriously.
I don’t think he can do worse than GWB/Cheney, who started two wars of conquest, rolled back 30 years of environmental protections, enacted '80s energy policies, pushed “abstinence-based” sex-ed, revived the war on drugs, killed funding for all sorts of pro-choice programs, threw gazillions at the banks, cut taxes like crazy, created a fascist border-police corp, etc etc etc. That was real fascism-on-a-stick, and you’ve already exported it all. Trickle-down and socialism-for-the-rich are now dominant ideology in Europe too, anti-choicers and religious nutcases are as strong as ever, your economy grows while ours stutters, and you’ve dropped us in a bunch of crusades most of us didn’t want, so we’re already scraping the bottom of most barrels, thank you very much. There is literally nothing else you can do to make things worse bar launching nukes. (Well, actually there’s the matter of TTIP, but I don’t think either candidate will make much of a difference on that topic)
This is just a rich guy who wants to be really popular and make a buck. He’ll do what the Wall Street people ask him to do (in exchange for favours, of course), what Lockheed and generals tell him to do, talk smack all the time, and probably break several records for number of holidays taken by a US President. He’ll get along wonderfully with the strongmen of the world, like Silvio did. The only issue where he can (and probably will) really mess things up is on civil rights – he’s a not-even-that-casual racist and his VP is a nutcase Christian fundamentalist. For 4 years it will suck to be Mexican, black, Asian or a woman, but hey, what’s new there? With a bit of luck he’ll piss off enough people that the Obama coalition will crush him next time around, likely with another black candidate (or even better a Mexican one). You can only be seen as anti-establishment for so long, like GWB found out (he had the 9/11 lucky break, without which he wouldn’t have lasted 8 years), and Dems are running out of candidates with negatives as huge as HRC.
Populists are usually campaigners, not administrators; they lose steam quickly once in office. Trump’s dismal business record vs his massive public image suggests (or even proves) that he’s exactly that sort of person: big on talk, lacking on execution. So I think you can sleep safe, he just couldn’t fuck things up too much even if he put his mind to it.
Yup, it’s utter spin.
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If you call that an “act of cyber warfare”, then the US has committed cyber first strikes against most of the world long before this, and it is therefore quite legitimate for other countries to defend themselves against American cyberagression by striking back.
Or, you could tone down your rhetoric a bit.
Somebody saw a shameful truth and revealed it.
Would you expect foreigners to stay silent when they notice that the American people are being cheated out of their alleged democratic rights?
Would you expect them to only speak up when it hurts their own interests to speak up?
Either way, the unenviable situation that the US seams to be in is that you can’t appropriately punish what has been going on here because the only alternative your system gives you is worse.
Now, consider two different situations:
- A trump presidency is disastrous for the US, but good for Putin, and Putin revealed what the DNC had been doing.
- A trump presidency is an unmitigated disaster for the entire world, including Putin, and an American citizen uncovered what the DNC had been doing.
Will you vote/act differently in these two situations?
Remember what the NSA is for?
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Yeah, like the intelligence and security communities never, ever lie to the people who pay their budgets and vote for their bosses, let alone other peoples.
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It’s also literal truth. Trump has long courted business deals with Russian oligarchs, and his campaign has partially been funded by those businessmen. Paul Manafort, quite the Trump supporter, was previously an advisor to Viktor Yanukovych, former president of the Ukraine. His foreign policy advisor? He worked for Gazprom, the Putin-run energy monopoly. And Trump himself has said many times what a fan he is of Putin; their mutual admiration society isn’t exactly secret.
It’s not too tough to connect the dots between Russian hackers that the FBI believes worked with Russian intelligence and Mr Trump.
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You know, I don’t know how shameful it was. Sure, Debbie and her staff were annoyed and against Bernie, but they still did their jobs and didn’t do any of the underhanded things they considered. If anything, they were blowing off steam in what they thought was a private channel.
That the channel was hacked/leaked is simply another nail in the coffin of DWS’ reputation. From the 2014 losses to this, she’s going down as one of the more incompetent ones to hold the chair.
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“The United States” <> “the Democratic National Committee”
Exposing the motivations and actions of the DNC to the light of day is a patriotic action, in the long term good for the United States, and I commend whomever did ti.
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I’ll just repeat: I’m glad I don’t live in Michigan anymore and my vote won’t matter, the US doing it too doesn’t make is not a reason to ignore Russia doing it, and both aspects cannot be ignored.
[quote=“lolipop_jones, post:73, topic:82119”]
“The United States” <> “the Democratic National Committee”
[/quote]That’s not what I said, but you don’t care.
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well I regret that I came into this comment thread…
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I can’t help but think that there is little difference between what Trump tweets in public and says in private.
So, lemme see if I have this right…
Bernie has not got an invisible friend that tells him what to do. He would not put the will of this invisible friend above the duties of his office. This fact can convince Americans he is not the right person to be in charge of their nuclear missiles.
That doesn’t sound right to me, but perhaps I have missed something…
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Looking back at this thread so far, one thing that has struck me is the more or less universal acceptance that revealing the truth about how the Democratic Party operates is helpful to Trump.
I find that to be delicious.
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In general terms, maybe, but on the subject of this hacking, it’s just speculation and spin. http://www.democracynow.org/2016/7/25/exclusive_wikileaks_julian_assange_on_releasing
I love this bit btw: http://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/757638806510116869/photo/1
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DWS didn’t fail; she successfully accomplished her mission.
“Sure, we bribed the ref, but she was a bad referee and we were probably going to win anyway.”
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