Yup.
See also the history of just about every country in central and south America. Pinochet, anyone?
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Nothing can be so justified. Systems reinforce themselves, practices become habits become goals. The means become the ends; they always do.
Doing evil in the name of good is not good itself; it’s not even less evil.
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I like this thread better hm the other one.
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Another thing our stalwart Democratic partisans may want to bone up on is: how the electoral college works, who is on it this go 'round, and what they can actually do with their votes. From what I understand, their options are Trump, Clinton or Johnson, the 3 top choices of the bulk electorate. The electors are dominantly career Republicans and they are not likely to vote in Clinton even if they choose to be “faithless”. I expect next Monday they’ll cast fewer votes for Trump than he thinks he should get, but not few enough to make anyone else POTUS. The “faithless” will probably abstain if allowed, or vote Johnson.
Trump does not appear to be knuckling under to the haute doyens of the Deep State as readily as some of them would like. This is, IMO, one of the very few things he has done right since the election, and one of the very few things that he’ll ever - inadvertently - do to benefit the average American.
I expect Russia connived at influencing our election. And now, I suspect we have internal manipulation to contend with. It is designed, realistically, to weaken an incoming President who has displayed signs of “independence” wrt the security state. Weakening Trump may be a good idea at this point, but it’s a zero-sum game, and those who weaken him appear correspondingly stronger.
I do not see strengthening the natsec establishment as in our interests. In fact, watching them struggle to put lipstick on this pig gives me a rare fit of the giggles.
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MAD demonstrably worked? Somewhere in the world, there were people who prayed that nuclear war wouldn’t happen. Can we say that prayer demonstrably worked because there hasn’t been a nuclear war yet?
Q: Why do elephants paint their toenails red?
A: So they can hide in cherry trees.
Q: Have you ever seen an elephant in a cherry tree?
A: Obviously it works.
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Hypotheticals are always tricky.
I do, however, think that much of the late 20th C concern over nuclear war lost sight of just how horrific “conventional” war can be. Is dying in an atomic blast really that much worse than watching your children succumb to dysentery because the sewage works caught a Hellfire missile?
The only reason why Hitler didn’t immediately annihilate London was that he lacked the ability to do so. Ditto for Bomber Harris and Berlin.
We don’t have those limitations now. Even if you remove the nukes from the equation, a full-throttle hot war between major 21st century industrialised powers would be utterly apocalyptic. A handful of Daisy Cutters would level any city just as thoroughly as a nuke would.
Humanity has become too proficient at warfare to be able to survive large-scale conflict. We cannot allow ourselves to do it again.
Unfortunately, we’re yet to come up with an effective way of preventing that catastrophe that doesn’t involve putting a gun to the head of all people everywhere.
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So there was CloudStrike’s initial forensic analysis of the DNC systems that were infected with malware. After that discovery, an account named Guccifer 2.0 appeared and claimed to be an independent Romanian hacker who was responsible.
CloudStrike’s forensic analysis is available, and the evidence in it is damning. It makes a strong case from the forensics that there were two separate groups independently going after the DNC, one with all the hallmarks of previous GRU-attributed attacks, the other with all the hallmarks of previous FSB-attributed attacks. Both of these actors are persistent threats that have been engaged in continuous attacks on government systems around the globe interesting for intelligence purposes. There are a few key pieces of evidence in that analysis that are a slam dunk, since a crypto key used in a previous attack by Russia was also used on the DNC. It’s been reviewed by pretty much everyone in the InfoSec domain and nobody contested the conclusions. In fact since then there’s been other research that’s appeared that further validates the initial findings, and nothing has been found to falsify the claim. The InfoSec world is not a place full of partisan Dems., just so you know. I work with people who are relieved Trump won, because Clinton.
After the CloudStrike was called in to do the forensics and clean up the mess, Guccifer 2.0 appeared. They started posting things, and released their first document, the DNC’s full oppo research file on Trump, probably the single most valuable document the Trump campaign could suddenly have as a gift.
The docs dumped were investigated by CloudStrike and confirmed to be data transmitted from the DNC, confirming the figure making the claim was involved in the attack. After the docs were out there, suspicions quickly grew that the Guccifer 2.0 figure was not the solo Romanian hacker they claimed to be. Part of that was metadata analysis (that Russian keyboard reference comes from this). That metadata also pointed to a large team of people involved in editing the docs, the use of Russian in various ways like:
https://twitter.com/pwnallthethings/status/743208737469509632
Also one of the accounts having a username referring to Felix Dzerzhinsky, the initial leader of the KGB:
https://twitter.com/pwnallthethings/status/743197064843104257
They also used a Russian idiomatic emoticon when communicating, and used Russian date settings, and took a break on a Russian state holiday, and there were dozens of other ways their story falls apart. It was very difficult to explain why a solo Romanian hacker would be using large number of different systems to pass docs around, with Russian metadata, from a hack with the KGB/FSB’s fingerprints on it, with an account named after the founder of the KGB/FSB, who was using Russian a lot, but never used Romanian, and when engaged in a chat session couldn’t speak Romanian. As problems were pointed out, they were immediately addressed in future releases of data, almost as though they were aware they were caught and were correcting their mistakes.
Guccifer 2.0 also claimed they sent the mail dump to Wikileaks, and unsurprisingly, shortly after Guccifer appeared, Wikileaks posted the DNC mail dump, though as it became more and more clear Russia was involved, Wikileaks eventually claimed it was really a Democrat who sent it to them.
Notably, hackers with all the same GRU fingerprints attacked a French gov’t bureau earlier, and when caught immediately made up a cover story of a lone hacker on social media which quickly fell apart.
I’ve gone over this stuff a bunch of times recently, there’s much, much more that can be said, but the important takeaway here is that the evidence really is as strong as it is claimed. Some things really can’t be explained with any other explanation than that Russian hackers with connections to the government were involved.
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Sorry to bag on you, but this one’s a bit of a hobby horse for me. The Washington Post published an article describing various Russian propaganda efforts, and referred to it as “fake news” because that’s the new dumb word for propaganda. For that article they had four sources, one being PropOrNot, and in it they described propaganda efforts based on info from their sources which they linked to. One of those sources, PropOrNot, did post a list of sites they believed either were Russian propaganda sites, or sites that they claimed repeated information from propaganda sites (not a blacklist, BTW), and that list was garbage. PropOrNot posted that list a day after the WaPo article went live. Nowhere in the article did WaPo name any of PropOrNot’s sources (which hadn’t been posted when it was written). In response a deflection campaign appeared about the WaPo article focusing on lying about the WaPo article saying it was a list of sites. This reached a fever pitch and WaPo put in an update clarifying that PropOrNot pretty much sucked. WaPo did blow it in using one crap source, but they did not post a blacklist. WaPo was one of the few papers that actually did a decent job during this election, have been far better than the WSJ or NYT in weaseliness when writing about Trump, and seeing them being attacked with this completely baseless BS is something I find pretty disturbing.
Here’s the original WaPo article for verification:
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You mean MAD as words or the situation? If the second then I cant agree
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A barely-coherent rant, lots of ANGRY CAPITAL LETTERS and cute misspellings of words like TROOTH and GUBMINT.
Starts off with some general us-vs-them frothing, then continues into some conspiracy theories about Assange, Snowden and Manning.
Then gives a barely-coherent account of right-wing shenanigans in recent years, and vaguely insinuates that its all DA RUSSKIES.
And then the coda… an over-the-top nationalistic rant that stretches on and on.
The fact that this is even posted on BB almost makes me feel… well, who’s in charge of that list again? I need to talk to them.
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Thanks for this. This is the reason I love bbs. I know nothing about computer security but your detailed analysis is accessible and helps to put a key aspect of current news into context.
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I might not agree or disagree, but I definitely laughed.
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There is bit of detail which many reasonable Western commentators like you, seem to overlook.
Putin is a trained KGB agent. His entire adulthood, his coming of age, his entire education, his personal relations everything in his life is marked by this fact.
He surrounds himself with similar people. For Christ sake he has a Foretaster, like some medieval King–he doesn’t eat anything which hasn’t been tested in front of him. He doesn’t trust anyone and a number of his associates have died under mysterious circumstances. Some in foreign lands e.g. London. Beresowski or Litvinenko comes to mind.
There is a category difference between how power / corruption plays out in Russia and the US. As of today you still have some sort of transparency and accountability within the government. This might change under Trump, but still, you are free to discuss / debate / study and request access to various documents without fear for your life. This is not the case in Russia.
To criticise and discuss these matters meaningfully, we need to recognise shades of grey and scale otherwise we are just treading water.
Because I grew up and emigrated from Russian occupied Hungary in 1982, Putin’s KGB connection puts me on high alert–like anyone else who has experience of the Russian autocratic system of governance.
I am not saying there are no issues within the US and its agencies, or that US interventions in foreign lands is in anyway ok. It is not.
But I am saying that it is worth appreciating the fact that such events (spying / interference etc), these government actions are openly debated and discussed in the US while there is very little information on Russia’s covert actions in public domain, Most of those who bring such things to light in Russia seem to have short lives. Yes Snowden and Greenwald (Assange is not a US citizen so his is a slightly different story) live abroad. But I don’t think anyone, even in their most vivid nightmares, thinks that the US government has plans to eliminate them.
And just another thought. You mention the middle east.
Please note, that the day after Trump’s election (facilitated by US stupidity and / or Russian interference) the rebel held areas of Aleppo were attacked / liberated (what ever you want to call it) by Russian air bombardment.
Basically, the outcome of the Syrian war seemed to have changed significantly within hours of the announcement of Trump’s victory.
So, the carving out of that oil corridor seems to go just fine.
And the irony of it is, that this outcome has been facilitated by the US governments / i.e. Obama’s refusal to intervene. While Assad was propped up by the Russians, the Rebels were largely left to their own devices and thus peaceful, democratic protests led to the destruction of a country and the strengthening of an unaccountable dictatorship. So there you go for non-intervention.
And I am not even saying the US should have intervened. I am merely pointing out that non-intervention also has consequences, especially, when your opponents follow a different logic.
EDIT to add this little gem on the rather sophisticated manipulation of US public opinion:
“The ascendancy of his secessionist organization says just as much about the state of media as it does about the Russian government’s ability to sway U.S. public opinion.”
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I read BAR and Naked Capitalism regularly, and they are pretty pissed off about the PorN list and WaPos role in promoting it. They argue, (and it seems pretty reasonable to me) that the journalistic ethics of promoting a list from a site that no one had heard of, that had no traffic and doesn’t say who it is, is pretty much the same as using a cutout. If WaPo hasn’t written the piece the “harm” wouldn’t have happened. So blaming it on the “source” seems pretty feeble. Also if you read the original piece it was an offense against logic - intentional or unintentional propaganda? Really?
Here is the latest Naked Capitalism demand for a retraction.
In terms of journalistic ethics, the usual commenters seem to be affirming that WaPo behaved badly.
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Thall all sounds very compelling provided you very carefully ignore both the WaPo article’s content and the fact that PropOrNot’s list wasn’t posted when the WaPo article went live. WaPo did post an update on PropOrNot’s unreliability in the article. I can understand that sites will complain about their editorial policy, they always have. Given that most of the article wasn’t related to PropOrNot, and is still germane, I think WaPo’s response was quick, reasonable, and acceptable. YMMV.
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You may think so, but many others to whom I’m more inclined to grant credibility don’t. Why won’t the WaPo detract the article and issue a prominent formal apology to those it has defamed?
It’s so bizarre to see mainstream Dems act like hysterical redbaiters these days. Just goes to show I guess how far they’ve slithered to the right.
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They posted a partial retraction in the editor’s note. It wouldn’t make any sense to retract the full article, since it mostly wasn’t about PropOrNot.
There was wide scale Russian involvement in manipulating the US election, not only in hacking various Dem. and Dem. organization’s systems, exfiltrating data, and using that data to attack Dems. (not just Clinton, BTW), but also in many and various kinds of manipulation of public opinion which that WaPo article discussed.
Because of that very ugly, but real situation, the public response is not going to be measured. This isn’t because they’ve “slithered to the right,” but because the US has been attacked by a hostile foreign nation’s cyberwarfare divisions to manipulate an election. That’s a really huge fucking deal. It bears repeating that that’s a really huge fucking deal. It’s a really huge fucking deal for which there’s abundant reliable evidence available to anyone who cares to check. The situation is not only shocking, but very dangerous, and infuriating to many. Given the seriousness, dangerous precedent, and results of that cyerwarfare attack, some people are losing their grip, no doubt, but this isn’t about redbaiting, but a response to very real, very serious events that just happened involving a Russian cyberwarfare attack on the US.
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Here is something which pertains to harm.
Naked Capitalism just got compared to Fappy the masturbation dolphin!
With respect to the list appearing after, I guess my question is how did the WaPo find PorN and why did it include them in its piece at all? Who are they to be considered experts? But I also question whether you are right about them not seeing the content. Seems ambiguous to me.
This is how the Post described them.
Another group, called PropOrNot, a nonpartisan collection of researchers with foreign policy, military and technology backgrounds, planned to release its own findings Friday showing the startling reach and effectiveness of Russian propaganda campaigns. (Update: The report came out on Saturday).
Except PorN are anonymous so none of their claims can be verified. What kind of reporter takes the word of an anonymous group he has never heard of and who provide no evidence, and then gives it prominence in a piece on propaganda! The WaPo piece itself says they referred to their “work” with the journalist so it’s not as if the author didn’t know they were going to release a report. But if he didn’t know what it would contain why did he write this in the original piece?
PropOrNot’s monitoring report, which was provided to The Washington Post in advance of its public release, identifies more than 200 websites as routine peddlers of Russian propaganda during the election season, with combined audiences of at least 15 million
At the very least it’s shoddy journalism. At worst it was a hit piece.
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It was poor journalism. That’s why they posted an editor’s note retracting the section of the article dealing with PropOrNot. That’s what a paper’s supposed to do when they use a bad source, and that’s what they did.
