There is little doubt that Russia attacked the US. Voting system in 2016 and 2020 on behalf of Donald Trump to assist in his election. The first time successfully and the last time less so. But those are not the only attacks that country or those criminals that it harbors has engaged in.
We all are familiar with two of the major ransomware attacks: the attack on Colonial Pipeline last month which led to gasoline shortages in which Colonial had to pay the attack group based in Russia millions of dollars to stop it; and the most recent strike against JBS which threatened a quarter of America’s meat processing capacity. Experts said Americans might have experienced significant meat shortages had JBS not gotten back online quickly which they did by also, like Colonial, paying a ransom to these Russian criminals.
We do know that the Russian FSB was involved in a months long attack known as Solarwinds in 2020. After his attack happened there was no word from Trump for several days but when he spoke he dismissed the hack, which federal officials said posed a “grave risk to every level of government.” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Russia was “pretty clearly” responsible for the cyber attack. Senator Marco Rubio, acting chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said it was “increasingly clear that Russian intelligence conducted the gravest cyber intrusion in our history.”
The attacks are getting increasingly bold and part of the money earned from the ransomware attacks is going back into researching better methods to adversely effect Americans. Glenn Gerstell the former NSA general counsel recently said: “We’re not going to shut off all the lights in Moscow, whatever it is we’re doing now is clearly not producing the desired effect. We need to do something different.” Our military cyber units “wield cyber weapons that can take down networks and turn computers into bricks” but they have been held back from responding.
Trump did nothing about the attacks because it was his goal to protect Russia over America. It is expected that President Biden will meet Putin this month and confront him about these attacks. If he cannot resolve the issue, I expect the next target will be the banks and financial institutions.
Think of getting up in the morning and checking how your stocks were doing, going on your broker’s site, and finding all of them have gone. You go online and call but you cannot get through because millions of others are doing the same thing. You then go to your online bank accounts and see that you have no money in your accounts. It has all been withdrawn. You are broke except for the money you keep under the mattress. You go there and find it is still there.
Worried you go to an online grocery story to order some food. You pick out your necessities for the next week or so. You go to pay for it but your credit card cannot be processed. Now multiply yourself by millions who are experiencing the same problems.
That is in the offing when most of the country will wake up penniless. Obviously you want to protect against this happening. But you cannot. Your whole life revolves around these internet resources that are totally susceptible to Russian hackers. Trump’s inaction boldened Putin where now we have become totally vulnerable.
I’ve held three lotas in Ciudad Vieja since the late eighties. I’m a plank holder in the fate of Guatemala. Maybe, I’ll finish up down there.
Our Vice is a remarkably stupid woman. She knows absolutely nothing about Guatemala. One of you covering journalists, please, spear that bitch.
Why is our ignorant vice running her tongue in Guatemala? She’s an embarrassment.
When I was traveling around in Guatemala in 1987 there was some bandits running around robbing tourist busses at gunpoint. When I entered the country from Belize I asked the border guards if that was real or made up by the press. The boss looked down at my feet and laughed. He said, “You have nothing to worry about, Senor. Your feet are too big. (size 13 EEEE) The guerrillas are only stealing people’s shoes.”
Its is such a beautiful country as are most in Central America. It pains me how that area has been turned into a battle zone by greed from outside its realm.
Some of the Colonial Pipeline ransom funds paid have been recovered:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/06/07/colonial-pipeline-ransomware-payment-recovered/
Two falsehoods in your reasoning. 1. The alleged attempted attacks by someone or some group in Russia during the 2016 and 2020 elections did not change one vote.
2. There is no doubt a group, banditos, felons, criminals, paid for by whom, or engagned in profitable ransom, as criminals have been engaged in long before Eternet . . .in fact for millennia,, as old as human societies. The illogic is that some in Russia engaged in Cyber Attack means that the Russian Government aids or abets it. A few years ago I was the victim of a “sophisticated targeted cyber attack” that wiped out all my Word documents on two home laptops. My brother’s home computer at the same location was not affected. Nothing else on my two computers was impacted. About six years worth of my writing was erased. Who did it? Who knows? The FEDs I have been critical of, the Boston Globe, the leftist Media, the Academics who I am very critical of. Who knows> Maybe it was some teenager genius in Turkey or Missoula Montana who got a kick out of destroying randomly someone’s computer’s Word Documents.
But what you see from the NEOCON is to blame Russia . . .the entire country . . .for some cyberattack, and I heard a U.S. General say the U.S. should as it has in the past perform Cyberattacks against Russia and other Countries. This is reminiscent of the bombing of Serbia for over 70 consecutive days, hospitals electricity, bridges, cluster bombs in Belgrade’s public square, the killing of children ,, . . .Why . . .well look up Remember the Maine, the Gulf of Tonkin, Weapons of Mass Destruction . . . .and ponder . . . and look askance at the War Mongers, the Neocons on the Right, the war mongers on the left . . .all of whom who are looking for war to avenge old hatreds or to perpetuate American Imperialism, by blaming other countries of Imperialism, Autocratism, Oppression, . . .cyber crimes placed at the footstool of any country we want to wage WAR against . . . .As old as an eye for an eye . . .
How do you explain the previous, virulent attack orchestrated by the FSB? This attack is verified by loyal Republicans and accepted by both sides. Why did Trump poo-hoo this aggression and not respond?
Because it was innocuous, and changed not one vote. The disparate minor “attacks” were such as tapping into some local, hick polling place or voting city hall in New Hampshire. By analogous illustration.
Now think of this; yesterday a Top U.S. Retired General said that his guys, CIA, DOD, have already engaged in cyber warfare and He said we should resume it with more intensity . . knock out hydroelectrics, e.g. to hospitals. Now, who in hell does this general think he and his cohorts in the Executive Branch can wage war, wage any war, cyberwar, secret war, assasinations, coups, disinformation, without explicit approval of Congress.
Now, you do remember the US blasted Belgrade with cluster bombs, destroyed bridges access to hospitals, and knocked out power to neonatal wards in Belgrade, Serbia hospitals.
Now, get this, too. The US gripes about “disinformation” yet for decades US was behind our propaganda, Radio Free Europe, and now count how many coups, attempted and completed assassinations, and interference, our great counrty, the Good Old USA has been involved in. Remember Diem, the same month assassinated at JFK.
Let the war mongers in the Executive Office continue their disinformation and pointing war mongering fingers at benign efforts by foreign nations and ring them alarms for all out war, ala WMD and Remember the Maine, and Rememer the Alamo . . .let’s perpetuate wars, ad infinitum, just like imperialistic powers have done on pretexts for centuries.
Shake it off, Bill.
Shake it up, Abe . . .bring that sword of insight to our benighted nation under Biden’s and the imperialistic, Big Government, interventionistic Democrats who brought us . . .well just Joe the Baby Butcher Biden supported blowing up LIbya, Syria, Yemen, Iraq and let’s see who he who thinks himself the autocratic World Cop what quagmires he gets us in . . .and by the way Joe the Blow Biden, the Hollow Man, thinks when the Constitution shall make no law abridging free speech, free association, freedom of religion, the Dunce Joe Blow thinks he can abridge our god given inalienable rights by his leftist Executive Orders . . . .ponder Preferential Treatment base on race at Harvard Medical Hopsitals which is already in process of being implemented and they cite Joe Biden the Baby Butcher’s Executive Order as why they will give preference in treatment to people of brown skin and black skin, before the second classes, white, yellow, red people get treated . . .they omit the last three in Harvard’s new email . . .look it up Harvard email to all, dated April 2021 . . .think there’s something poisonous in the air in America? Think not? Try the reverse racisms of critical racist theories or of the malignant genderisms saturating Academia, the Media and the FEDS and STATIES . . .public schools corrupted to the core . . .
Its nice to see that you have come over to my side when it pertains to creative Nick Names.
Joe has dementia. Its not funny. Its sad.
I know that both parties suck. “A Jew will not replace me!”
Oh, yeah. Remember that night?
Why did Bonespurs and Putin go into a room alone for two hours and not even their top advisors were allowed in on the conversation?
And Joe and Hunter and the rest of the clowns in there now are no better.
I don’t feel sorry for you, Bill, but I do feel disappointed that a man of your intellect can’t see that both sides are the same. Its more important for politicians to keep promises to the rich slobs that financed their elections than to the oaths they took on entering office. We are not The People, Bill. There are no The People. All we get to do is vote.
What you and I need, Bill, and the other 330,000,000 Americans need, are a few competent leaders that will toe/tow the line. Political officials that will do their jobs. That’s it. How fucking simple and how far from reality?
You shake it off and I’ll shake it up. Deal?
Abe, shake hands over this. Congress writes the tax laws. Why not make tax forms on one postcard for persons, one page for small retail corporations and no more than four pages for mega corporations. Everyone pays some fair tax. No loopholes. Get rid of the IRS megapolis and make taxes simpler.
And, we will never agree that conservatives and liberals are the same.
As the Irish rebels say, “Up the Republic” and yes the FEDs are ripping us off and Congress is ripping us off . . . 40 years Biden in there . . .
Conservatives and liberals are not the same but the same mistakes drive both of them to their pathetic positions. Its like the news. Lets take CNN and FOX. A liberal, Ted Turner, founded CNN and a conservative, Rupert Murdoch, founded the other. These are billionaires that have a particular way of thinking when it comes to just about every subject on Earth. They come by their beliefs honestly. They were raised and taught and learned a particular set of values within their family and social structure that they believed were the correct values to live with. To live by. Many of those values are quite similar. Since money is power they realized that they could send out over the airwaves their beliefs. They created news agencies and staffed those agencies with people with similar values.
So far, everything is cool. As Lenny Bruce said; If it cooks for you, solid.
The beginning of the (current) erosion of this country’s foundation is when particular subjects and events on either side are perceived so differently, to such a great magnitude, that there will never be agreement by, lets say, Murdoch and Turner on those subjects. The news agencies then stop being news deliverers and become opinion generators. Depending on the allegiance of their fan base, the intensity of the message and the authenticity of it becomes framed entirely by opinion. There is no more news being delivered to either side. That is when it all becomes propaganda. And that is what we have on both sides. Propaganda mills that crank out persuasive arguments. And people, affected greatly by the internet and social media, stop thinking and just repeat mantras they have learned from their chosen propagandists.
You will now prove my point, Bill, by quoting some of this propaganda.
Abe, on taxes and else, we agree. Twenty Five Noon Time Nuts, there’s a bench dedicated to us near Castle Island, because we ran, jogged every day, 365, out around Castle Island from L Street Gym, Curley Recreation Center. Many ran scores of Marathons. It was a disparate group of men, from every byway, who agreed on nothing and argued every day/
Larry Tye, Boston Globe reporter, was one of us; he and others were more liberal, liberals, and ran with a few moderates, and ran with more than a few were hard core conservatives.
I strongly recommend everyone read Larry Tye’s book SPIN, about mass propaganda, advertising, its roots in Bernays and his uncle psychiatrist founder, Sigmund Freud. The Big Biz knew how to sell by mass psyching out their products, and Marxists, Fascists, Imperialists learned how to spin HATE into Mass Hysteria and Mass Murder…..justified by stuff such as WMD and pro-Commie or anti-Commie Disinformation. SPIN helps understand Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm . . .the people gobbled up the notion that all animals were equal, but some animals are more equal than others. Many FEDs and Congressmen/Executives and Staties think they are more equal than the Hoi Polloi, the mere People.,
PS And you opinion on taxes is right on.
When will your new blog make its debut?