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Laptop

Security Threats to Russia: FSB Counter-hacking and other challenges of 2016

Filip Kovacevic
Newsbud
Thu, 12 Jan 2017 21:49 UTC
fsb rusia
© Sputnik
This is the third and last article in the investigative series in which I analyzed the 2016 press releases published on the official FSB website. In the previous two articles, I covered the FSB counterespionage and counter-terrorist operations during 2016.[1] These operations were the subject of more than one third of the FSB press releases. This means that they consumed a great deal of attention, time, and resources of the Russian domestic law enforcement and counterintelligence community. It is safe to conclude that espionage and terrorism are considered the primary threats to Russia's national security.

However, there are several other types of illegal activity that were occasionally covered in the press releases and that can also be used as tools to undermine political stability and economic well-being in Russia. They involve cybercrime and cyberattacks (hacking), and arms and narcotics trafficking. In this article, I will discuss in detail the FSB press releases dealing with these types of law-breaking activities.

Cybercrime and Cyberattacks (Hacking)

The first 2016 press release concerning cybercrime activities, popularly known as hacking, was published by the FSB on June 1.[2] It reported that during the massive law-enforcement operation taking place simultaneously in 15 regions of Russia, the FSB, in cooperation with the Russian Ministry of Interior and the National Guard, arrested close to 50 people, suspected of being members of a hackers' group. The group allegedly stole more than 1 billion 700 million rubles ($27 million) from various Russian banks. The FSB recovered some of the stolen money, in addition to seizing a large number of false bank documents, credit cards, and computers.

Comment: Previous parts:

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Jet3

Tragedy: Dozens of civilians killed in botched airstrike on Boko Haram


RT
Tue, 17 Jan 2017 21:50 UTC
people seen moving within their thatched houses at the Muna Internally displace peoples camp in Maiduguri, Nigeria
© Afolabi Sotunde / ReutersFILE PHOTO: Some people seen moving within their thatched houses at the Muna Internally displace peoples camp in Maiduguri, Nigeria.
The Nigerian air force has accidentally killed dozens of civilians in an airstrike against Islamist militant group Boko Haram, according to reports.

Regional military commander General Lucky Irabor said the strike took place on Tuesday morning in the Kala Balge area of Borno state in the northeast of the country, close to the border with Cameroon.

It remains unclear how many people died when an air force fighter jet mistakenly bombed an Internally Displaced Peoples camp. Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has said 120 have been injured and 50 were killed, according to Reuters, while an unnamed official told AP that more than 100 civilians lost their lives.

"Many civilians including personnel of International Committee of the Red Cross and Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) were wounded," General Irabor told Reuters.

Comment: It is hard to fathom how this "mistake" could be made on a camp that has been there awhile.

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Chess

Too Little, Too Late: Obama commutes Chelsea Manning's unjust prison sentence


RT
Tue, 17 Jan 2017 21:39 UTC
chelsea manning
© Elijah Nouvelage / Reuters
President Barack Obama has shortened the prison sentence of former Army private and whistleblower Chelsea Manning, She will be released on May 17, instead of remaining in military custody until 2045 as originally sentenced.

Sentenced under US Army Court Martial to 35 years' imprisonment in August 2013, Manning had leaked to WikiLeaks thousands of documents that came to be known as the Iraq War Logs and the Afghan War Diary.

Manning, formerly known as Bradley Manning, had demanded the military provide her sexual reassignment surgery to align with her gender dysphoria, identifying as a woman. That issue with the Department of Defense would now be moot.

Manning is one of 273 people "given a second chance," the White House announced Tuesday, tallying up Obama's commutation grants and pardons. The president has so far pardoned 212 individuals and issued 1,385 grants of commutation.

Comment: This may seem like a magnanimous move from Obama, but it could also be a strategic move in order to get Julian Assange to the US, who has said that if Manning is granted clemency he would do just that. It's also worth keeping in mind that Manning's stay in prison was so traumatizing that she attempted suicide at one point. It's likely that the damage done to her will be with her for the rest of her life. Sorry Obama, you don't gain any brownie points from the American public from this.

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Arrow Up

Furious Putin slams "anti Trump plotters"

Alexander Mercouris
The Duran
Tue, 17 Jan 2017 21:29 UTC
Vladimir Putin
© Sputnik/ Michael KlimentyevVladimir Putin
During a press conference with the President of Moldova, Russian President Putin made clear his anger at the campaign underway in the US to delegitimise and box in President elect Trump, and his still greater anger at the way Russia and he personally are being involved in it.

Putin broke his long silence today, both about the Trump Dossier and about the campaign which has raged in the US around the alleged Russian involvement in the Clinton leaks.

Putin's comments were made during a press conference attended by the newly elected pro-Russian President of Moldova, a former Soviet republic that rather like Ukraine is caught in a battle between pro-Russian and pro-EU factions. Though Putin had many interesting things to say about the situation in Moldova and about Russia's relations with that country, it was his comments about the Trump Dossier and the campaign concerning the Clinton leaks which got him going and which have attracted world attention.

This is what Putin said according the Kremlin's website:
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Take 2

Nothing is Real: Reality TV programming masquerades as politics

John W. Whitehead
The Rutherford Institute
Tue, 17 Jan 2017 21:23 UTC
When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience, and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; culture-death is a clear possibility."— Professor Neil Postman
Reality TV
© Stuff.co.nzOver the top: Is there too much reality TV on at the moment?
Donald Trump no longer needs to launch Trump TV.

He's already the star of his own political reality show.

Americans have a voracious appetite for TV entertainment, and the Trump reality show—guest starring outraged Democrats with a newly awakened conscience for immigrants and the poor, power-hungry Republicans eager to take advantage of their return to power, and a hodgepodge of other special interest groups with dubious motives—feeds that appetite for titillating, soap opera drama.

After all, who needs the insults, narcissism and power plays that are hallmarks of reality shows such as Celebrity Apprentice or Keeping Up with the Kardashians when you can have all that and more delivered up by the likes of Donald Trump and his cohorts?

Yet as John Lennon reminds us, "nothing is real," especially not in the world of politics.

Much like the fabricated universe in Peter Weir's 1998 film The Truman Show, in which a man's life is the basis for an elaborately staged television show aimed at selling products and procuring ratings, the political scene in the United States has devolved over the years into a carefully calibrated exercise in how to manipulate, polarize, propagandize and control a population.

Indeed, Donald Trump may be the smartest move yet by the powers-that-be to keep the citizenry divided and at each other's throats, because as long as we're busy fighting each other, we'll never manage to present a unified front against tyranny in any form.

This is the magic of the reality TV programming that passes for politics today.

It allows us to be distracted, entertained, occasionally a little bit outraged but overall largely uninvolved, content to remain in the viewer's seat.

The more that is beamed at us, the more inclined we are to settle back in our comfy recliners and become passive viewers rather than active participants as unsettling, frightening events unfold.

Reality and fiction merge as everything around us becomes entertainment fodder.
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Chess

SOTT Focus: President Trump vs. The Pathocracy

Corey Schink
Sott.net
Tue, 17 Jan 2017 22:25 UTC
Trump and Clapper
© Reuters
The war between the Establishment and Donald Trump reveals a level of political struggle Americans haven't witnessed in decades, perhaps centuries.

For decades, battles in American politics have played out behind the scenes, sometimes waged through assassinations, bribery, threats, psychological warfare, financial warfare and blackmail. But rarely has the dirty side of politics been aired for the public to see.
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USA

How Trump was able to win and how the media missed it

Joel B. Pollak
Breitbart
Mon, 16 Jan 2017 00:00 UTC
Media pen
© Scott Olson/Getty ImagesThey ignored him.
Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election for many reasons. He had a celebrity profile, the ability to self-fund, and a gift for piercing his rivals with a single put-down. He held skeptical positions on immigration and trade that millions of Americans also support, but which both parties had previously shut out of the debate. He also worked harder than Hillary Clinton, campaigning in blue states experts said he had no hope of winning.

But one reason stands above them all: Donald Trump won his party's nomination and the general election itself because he, alone among Republican candidates, dared to defy the media and to speak directly to the American people.

Trump rally
© TwitterTrump Dallas Rally - American Airlines Center September 2015 - filled stadium 4 days notice.
He did not ignore the media: on the contrary, he probably granted too many interviews for his own good, and carted journalists around on a dedicated press plane for months.

On the contrary: they ignored him.

When I joined the traveling press corps for the last few weeks of the campaign, I was surprised by how little interest there was among many of the journalists in covering what was actually going on at the rallies we were shlepping 20 hours per day to attend. Most were cordial, and professional; a few were exceptionally hard-working. But in general, the story of the 2016 election had long since ceased to be of any great interest to them.

That was because most assumed Trump was going to lose.

Comment: Trump was eventually able to blacklist certain news outlets and ban their press credentials for nearly a year during his campaign. Included in that number were: Univision, BuzzFeed, The Huffington Post, Politico and The Washington Post. The act of ignoring can go two ways and sometimes is useful. Ignorance, however, rarely is.

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Life Preserver

Deplorable? Trump vows his Obamacare replacement plan will provide "insurance for everybody"

Robert Costa and Amy Goldstein
The Washington Post
Sun, 15 Jan 2017 20:32 UTC
trump
© Jabin Botsford/The Washington PostPresident-elect Donald Trump speaks during a press conference at Trump Tower in New York on Jan. 11.
President-elect Donald Trump said in a weekend interview that he is nearing completion of a plan to replace President Obama's signature health-care law with the goal of "insurance for everybody," while also vowing to force drug companies to negotiate directly with the government on prices in Medicare and Medicaid.

Trump declined to reveal specifics in the telephone interview late Saturday with The Washington Post, but any proposals from the incoming president would almost certainly dominate the Republican effort to overhaul federal health policy as he prepares to work with his party's congressional majorities.

Trump's plan is likely to face questions from the right, after years of GOP opposition to further expansion of government involvement in the health-care system, and from those on the left, who see his ideas as disruptive to changes brought by the Affordable Care Act that have extended coverage to tens of millions of Americans.

In addition to his replacement plan for the ACA, also known as Obamacare, Trump said he will target pharmaceutical companies over drug prices.

"They're politically protected, but not anymore," he said of pharmaceutical companies.
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Map

How the U.S. prepped the ground for ISIS' takeover of Deir Ezzor

Bernhard
Moon of Alabama
Tue, 17 Jan 2017 20:07 UTC
deir ezzor
© Peto Lucem
The city of Deir Ezzor (Deir ez-Zur) in east-Syria is on the verge of falling into the hands of the Takfiris of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). More than 100,000 civilian inhabitants of Deir Ezzor and thousands of soldiers defending them are in immediate danger of being murdered by the savage ISIS forces. The current situation is a direct consequence of U.S. military action against the SAA and non-action against ISIS.

Deir Ezzor is besieged by ISIS since September 2015. But the city was well defended by its garrison of Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and all further attacks by ISIS were repelled. Supply to the city was hauled in by air through the Deir Ezzor airport and through air drops by the Syrian and Russian airforces. Relief by ground forces and ground supplies are not possible as Deir Ezzor is more than 100 km away from the nearest SAA positions west of Palmyra and as the desert in between is under the control of ISIS.

Google map - bigger

Four days ago a new attack by ISIS on Deir Ezzor was launched and has since continued. ISIS reinforcements and resupplies had come over months despite air interdiction from the Russian and Syrian airforces. Yesterday ISIS managed to cut off the airport, where the local SAA command and its main supplies are hosted, from the city proper. It is now attacking in full force from all sides. Bad weather makes air support from the outside sporadic and difficult. Unless some unforeseen happens it is only a question of time until the airport and the city fall to ISIS.

Comment: More info on the latest developments in Syria via South Front's Syrian War Reports for the last week:



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TV

US media continues downward in 'slope of irrelevancy' - Max Keiser on Trump-Russia scandal

RT
YouTube
Wed, 11 Jan 2017 19:49 UTC
Max Keiser on RT
© Via YouTube/RT
A full-on war broke out between President-elect Donald Trump and the media at the end of his first press conference in 167 days after he called CNN and Buzzfeed "'fake news", refused to answer a question from them.

Host of RT's The Keiser Report and financial analyst Max Keiser shares his views on the matter.

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