Just More “Turkish Democracy”
I wrote the other day about the boneheaded idiocy exhibited by the current gang of fools in DC current Administration’s reaction to the recent failed Turkish coup and its aftermath. Well, it looks like the other shoe is about to drop.
Turkey is continuing in it’s support for “democracy”. It appears that the Turkish Sultan President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has decided to order 130 media organizations shut down. Among those ordered closed were 45 newspapers, 23 radio stations, 16 TV stations, 15 magazines, and 3 news agencies.
But not to worry, friends. We’re merely “supporting the democratic government” of Turkey via supporting Sultan President Ergodan!
That must be the case. Our POTUS said so!
Category: "The Floggings Will Continue Until Morale Improves", Foreign Policy, Government Incompetence
How soon until they pull out of NATO?
They won’t. NATO gives them “top cover” against their historically most dangerous threat, Russia.
I also don’t believe that NATO has the cojones to expel them, either. So for the Turks, NATO membership is a no-lose proposition: it gets them something of value (protection from Russia), and they can get away with thumbing their nose at the rest of NATO.
Obama taking notes…
With fiends like these, who needs enemas?
I see what you did there ?
So it’s business as usual, then?
I am blown away at how stupid it was for Obama to come out in defense of Erdogan publicly and early.
Especially using the narrative of “defending freedom”.
Now all the insane shit Erdogan is doing is directly linked to our tacit support.
It is as asinine as the “Russians did it” narrative concerning the DNC hacks.
So much bullshit coming out of DC in the last two weeks.
If this surprises you, then you must not have been paying attention for the last two decades at least.
What do you mean by this? I was originally quite skeptical of this myself given the poor track record of attributing hacks in a reasonable way. But it seems there’s considerable evidence mounting that Guccifer 2.0 isn’t Romanian, as claimed, and does speak Russian, as he denied, and used VPNs previously connected to Russian intelligence.
It’s circumstantial, as there won’t ever likely be a smoking gun, but assuming the government isn’t just making stuff up,.. they seem to have a pretty viable indication of Russian activity of some degree.
I’ve been busy the past few days and haven’t followed the absolutely latest on this, so if I’m missing something I’m all ears.
Putin definitely has motive for wanting to put the screws to Hillary:
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/clinton-putin-226153
She injected herself into the Russian elections as the Dems and the media seem to have so conveniently forgotten.
No disagreement there. I’m just curious why lostcause feels the ‘narrative’ of Russian involvement is asinine given the growing evidence. It isn’t certain, obviously, but it’s also hardly ‘asinine’.
I’ve heard a lot of people ask why Putin would want to help Trump. This explains it. He’s more interested in screwing with Hillary.
It’s cute that you think Guccifer was the only one hacking the DNC and Das Hildabeest. It could have been the NORKs, the Chinese, the Iranians, the Tibetans, any 13 or 14 year old with an afternoon to waste, a group of seniors at an assisted living center or the Russians. From what I’ve read, the security on one of those sites, at the least, was less than one gets if you purchase Norton or use McAfee or AVB.
I certainly wasn’t claiming that Guccifer was the only one hacking the DNC, but ‘he’ is the one behind the current releases of information. And generally the security community takes a cautionary approach towards government pronouncements of hacking aggressors, because it’s instantly blamed on China or Russia even if it is a 15-year old kid in Topeka.
In this case, however, there is considerable evidence mounting that Guccifer, despite insisting otherwise, is Russian. Or, at the very leasy, knows the language and isn’t who he says he is, and uses Russian VPNs previously linked with Russian intelligence. So I simply don’t quite get what lostcause is trying to say.
Yes, security on the DNC’s (and Hillary’s) servers was abysmally bad, no question. And if nobody else hacked them, then foreign SIGINT people should be utterly embarrassed. But Guccifer is the only known entity at this point.
Guccifer was Romanian, not Guccifer 2.0. Guccifer hacked Hillary’s email server.
“A Russian did it” is not the same as “The Russians did it.”
There is no evidence it was a state sponsored hack.
State sponsored hackers do not leave script notes in their code. Particularly script notes in their language with their time zone time stamp in them. The goal of state hackers is to not only not be detected but make sure their state is not implicated. Maintain deniability.
Leaving script notes is asinine.
However, civilian hacker communities share hacking scripts and programs with each other constantly. These shared script almost always have script notes. So that other hackers can easily understand what different aspects of the code does, changes made, and can better troubleshoot, improve, or customize the code.
The existence of notes makes it far more likely it was a civilian hacker.
As for the VPNs, VPNs tend to be identified as “trusted” by hackers in countries, and if the “pros” are known to be using a particularly VPN it is likely amateurs will consider using them as well.
There is no “new” information on Guccifer 2.0. Everything being reported was widely distributed a few months ago.
For the DNC and unnamed “intelligence officials” to suddenly come out and say this is state sponsored immediate after the leak is highly suspect. They did not make this claim months ago when the hack occurred. Though one of the security firms the DNC hired strongly suspected it was a Russian hacker there was not way to say if it was a “pro”.
Guccifer 2.0 also claimed to be Romanian , at least according to Vice who claimed to have interview the hacker (from a few days ago, not a few months ago): http://motherboard.vice.com/read/dnc-hacker-guccifer-20-interview
But, as that report says, his Romanian language skills were filled with mistakes. He also claimed he didn’t speak Russian, yet ThreatConnect traced him to Russian VPNs that only have registration information in Russian: https://www.threatconnect.com/guccifer-2-all-roads-lead-russia/
(That infrastructure also overlaps, minimally as they admit, with identified Russian intelligence resources.)
Leaving script notes is bad if you’re a state actor who is unlikely to get caught. If you eventually intend to release information, and thus be caught, it could be a reasonable gambit to play.
I don’t have all the information, obviously, but there’s plenty of new information on Gucci2 all the time.
Like I said, the connection to Russian intelligence is far from certain, but evidence is growing that Guccifer is not what he claims and there are clear Russian connections. And if you were Russia, wouldn’t you be interested in hacking the DNC?
It was also asinine because it’s transparently misleading. The implication in raising the point here is that the Russians targeted the DNC servers because of some “deal” with Trump, or because they “fear” Clintoon.
As lostcause points out, there’s no proof at this point that the Russian government was involved – and if they weren’t, this is simply “crying wolf” and will be seen as such. And even if the Russian government was involved, as PT pointed out elsewhere it’s far more likely that it was merely due to personal dislike of Clintoon by Putin than anything else.
Like I said, I usually am the first to roll my eyes at claims of Chinese or Russian intelligence being a culprit in a hack simply because it’s so easy to label them. I heard from a friend that a well-known university once thought they were under ‘cyber-attack’, blamed Russia,… and only later found it they’d misconfigured their own router and we’re flooding their own networks.
But Guccifer, as shown in the links above, isn’t what he says he is. And the links trace back towards Russia. It will never be definitive – you won’t find a ‘smoking gun’ unless a) they did it and b) we have assets inside Russian intelligence with access to that information.
My point wasn’t that the Russian government definitively did this, but that it’s hardly an asinine narrative given these developments. It is, at worst, a reasonable guess. I’m assuming there’s additional evidence we’re not privy to as well, which helps solidify this theory to US intelligence.
It isn’t asinine to suggest possible Russian government involvement. It’s entirely possible that they were involved, either directly or by using Guccifer 2.0 as a proxy.
What was asinine was to make the claim very publicly considering the context in which it was made.
The Clintoon camp may be wrong. If they’re wrong, their candidate looks bad. And even if they’re right, implying it was an attempt by a foreign power to “support your opponent” is absurd on it’s face. Such a claim makes them appear either stupid or desperate.
Further, it also keeps those 30,000 “deleted private emails” never released for review in the public consciousness. That is something Clintoon desperately wants the public to forget. Why do you think Trump wondered aloud if the Russians might be able to find them?
The smartest course of action would have been to ignore the matter entirely. By bringing up possible foreign involvement, the Clintoon camp guaranteed that the issue stays visible – both the embarrassing content and all other related matters, like her “private” email issues. And people are reminded again that over 30,000 of Clintoon’s “private” emails were never made public or turned over to the USG for review.
Come on, you guys. lostcause voted for the Fool on the Hill. The fog has finally lifted, the veil torn, the tunnel vision cured – that sort of thing. Try to be a little more understanding of the level of naivete required to not see what was coming.
Still a progressive.
Just hate the Democratic party.
You could always go join the “fart-in” to show your displeasure. (smile)
Danny-boi Bernath has a better record in court than this administration has in foreign policy.
So where’s all that Hope and Change, huh?
Don’t worry, Obama will be get his house destroyed by the sea rising due to global warming when he leaves office and moves to his new house in Malibu, CA.
Nah, rumor has it he’s moving back to Hawaii in January, near the UH Manoa campus.
As if traffic there doesn’t suck enough already.